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Notes -
For the purpose of this post I will use the following terms in the following ways:
Woman = Biological woman. Man = Biological man
Well it seems like we are on episode >9000 "transgender bathrooms".
There is currently a man named Sarah McBride who has been elected to congress. This person (a man), who wishes to be seen as female, has caused another member of congress named Nancy Mace (a woman) to start whining and complaining on various social media videos and news interviews about her (Nancy's) concern that Sarah will try to use the female bathrooms, lockerrooms, etc. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has said that the policy of the House is that women's restrooms/lockerrooms are for women, and men's restrooms lockerrooms are for men. There are a number of non-gender specific bathrooms around the house grounds that are open to anybody who doesn't want to abide by this.
Here is what I actually think a reasonable framing of this question is: "can men with a cross dressing fetish involve non-consenting women in their crossdress-play?" In a reasonable society I think the answer to this question should be: no, obviously.
Everybody seems intent on being dishonest towards each other when talking about this, so here is what I think is a reasonable answer to "why does anybody care? Just let everybody pee in peace!".
Bathrooms are extremely vulnerable places; they usually have one exit, you are often in there alone, and you are often doing something which makes you physically vulnerable (using the toilet). It seems completely reasonable for women to want to keep men out of these spaces.
To put some additonal context here: I think that the tide is turning pretty sharply on gender ideology within the democratic party (at least for anybody mildly near the center). I've seen several prominent-ish democrat spokespeople openly blame transgender people for the 2024 presidential loss. You also have the UK making it illegal to trans your kids, as well as a recent, prominent NYT article that was critical of transing your children (unfortunately the google index seems very intent on not showing me links to the article, but has plenty of links to people talking about it.
I do not think that describing trans women as 'men with a cross dressing fetish' is very close to reality.
There is a small fraction of people who are genuinely very uncomfortable with their biological gender. They sometimes take hormones, get surgery and go through byzantine legal processes to change their legal gender. They kill themselves at elevated rates when forced to conform to their biological gender. This is not just some kink.
Different cultures have dealt differently with non-conformists of all sorts. Killing them at the earliest opportunity is certainly a popular choice.
Modern liberal democracies generally frown on that and try to do better than just applying whatever solution would suit the majority of people. We don't accept "most straight men would prefer if they knew for certain that the man peeing next to them was not sexually attracted to them" as an excuse to kill all the gays and bisexuals, or even kick them out of the military.
The bathroom issue is simply an issue of trade-offs. Having to use a gendered bathroom which belongs to a gender one does not identify as clearly can be humiliating. Imagine getting told that you are too small or weak to qualify for the men's bathroom, or that you are too large, ugly or flat-chested to qualify for the women's bathroom.
On the other hand, there is both a perception of danger if people who are not cis-women are allowed in women's bathroom as well as possibly some actual danger.
I think that the actual danger is over-rated. With the possible exception of Hogwarts, gender restrictions in bathrooms are not strictly enforced. Someone who is entering a women's bathroom to commit rape is unlikely to care that he will also break some trivial statute about not going to the women's bathroom. Nor would punishing someone who disregards the gender sign on a bathroom (for example, to avoid waiting time) with a lengthy prison sentence be proportionate.
There will probably be some sick fucks who like to jerk off in the women's bathroom who can use the excuse 'but you see, I actually identify as a woman' if they are seen entering or exiting, but this is a lesser concern.
At the end of the day, it is a numbers game. If half of the rapes are committed by men in women's bathrooms who had previously invoked their gender identity as an excuse to be there, then I would agree that this was a huge fucking problem and we should restrict access to improve women's safety.
As things stand, I don't think it is a huge practical issue. At the risk of sounding like some woke, I think most women I know would very much prefer having to share their bathrooms with trans women to losing access to abortions.
A decade ago, Scott argued for drawing a more complex gender boundary than 'has Y-chromosome' as a cheap and easy way to improve outcomes for a lot of people. I think that his article is still spot on.
I think that the bathroom safety argument frequently is used by anti-trans people not because preventing rapes is their first and foremost concern, but because it is one of the few issues with trans rights that the average person will care about.
I addressed this here.
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