
(1/2) Absolutely! I think an example is helpful in this so I’ll just use myself. Calling me a “trans woman” is equally accurate to calling myself a “woman” with no modifiers because “trans” is an adjective that adds specificity to an already-correct noun. As the saying goes “Trans men are men, trans women are women.”
(2/2) Words like “transwomen” treat the whole phrase as one noun, notably a DIFFERENT noun than “women”. It’s a linguistic trick to imply that “woman” isn’t an accurate word to describe someone like me, so we have to coin a new word which is “transwoman”. In that way, it acts as a transphobic dogwhistle for people who don’t believe that trans people are their actual gender.
it treats trans not as an adjective to describe a person but makes a new compound word creating a separate class. “trans woman” adjective + noun, “transwoman” noun that denotes someone is not a *woman* but a separate class. the compound word(s) transwomen/transmen are commonly used by transphobes, especially TERFs.