Right.

Please deposit everything you’ve ever been told about sex and gender to one side so they can be incinerated, you shan’t be needing them ever again.

Something you need to know: There are men, women and nonbinary folks. There are also people who fit in to one or more of those categories, or who don’t feel like any of them.

Gender is complicated, personal, and there is infinite variation. It’s an identity; it comes from you and is all about how you feel. There is nothing intrinsic to any gender; the only thing that unifies all women is identifying with ‘woman’ in some way. As such it is fundamentally self referential; I am because I am.

So, there are people of any and all genders. Some of them have vaginas, some have penises, others have different junk.

What’s in their pants has no bearing on what their gender is, however what their gender is may have some bearing on what’s in their pants. Sex and gender- whilst not the same thing and not dependant on one another- are still related, culturally and personally.

“I have a penis so I must be a boy” is a false statement. Being a boy is simply a matter of being a boy; there is no requirement. Self referential remember- I am because I am.

However for some trans people there is the feeling of “I am a boy; I must have a penis”. This varies from person to person. Not all trans men want penises; not all trans women want vaginas. Not all trans people who feel dissonance and/or dysphoria feel it as connected to their gender. (“I am a boy. I must have a penis.”)

Dysphoria around sexual characteristics isn’t intrinsically linked to gender; there are people who feel affinity for their assigned gender and yet who feel dissonant and dysphoric around their body, and there are those who are comfortable in their body but not their assigned gender.

Dissonance/dysphoria also is not restricted solely to physical characteristics; it could mean that a trans woman feels dysphoric when her clit is referred to as a dick, when someone gets her pronouns wrong, when she is misgendered, etc.

So, on to How to refer to people with vaginas, or “but isn’t life just simpler if we only talk about cis people”:

Just say what you mean. It’s very simple. Are you talking about women, or are you talking about people with uteri? Are you talking about men, or are you talking about people who are at risk for testicular cancer?

It’s simple, it’s clear, and it doesn’t misgender anybody.