Your position is that this is about protecting women's spaces and making them feel safe and dignified.
Your position is also that somebody like Buck Angel must use the women's bathroom, because he is "in fact still a woman."
My assertion is that this is contradictory, because forcing somebody like Buck Angel to use the womens' bathroom will make women and girls feel less safe, not more.
This is about every female-only space, not just bathrooms.
Consider prisons, for example. There have been many cases recently of male criminals being transferred to the female prison estate, on the basis of their self-declared so-called "female gender identity", who have then raped and in some cases impregnated women incarcerated with them.
It should be obvious that the same risk is not present from other female prisoners. Even if they happen to look very butch and/or hirsute. So keeping prisons single-sex is clearly a much better policy for incarcerated women.
Even for bathroom spaces, the prospect of laws that penalize males who decide to use female bathrooms is good news. This is because the threat of negative consequences for such behavior makes it much less likely that any such males will even bother trying, which means that women in general will not only be safer, but also can feel safer, because they know that any individuals encountered in these spaces are almost certainly female. Even if, like Buck Angel, they don't conform to feminine stereotypes.
"It should be obvious that the same risk is not present from other female prisoners"
This is false. Female inmates are raped by female inmates, and male inmates are raped by male inmates. This is a "rape in prison" problem, not a trans women problem. In fact, rape of biological women by trans women in prison is extremely rare.
And, again, your stated hypothesis is self-contradictory, because it implies that the problem of inmates getting raped is solved by putting trans women in male prisons, which is plainly false. It will likely increase the number of rapes.
"the prospect of laws that penalize males who decide to use female bathrooms is good news"
I remember tiredly accidentally using a women's bathroom after a long flight. I'm not looking forward to being punished for it because of the latest moral panic. I'm sure all of the women who are falsely accused of being men because they don't conform to societal stereotypes of what women look like also feel much safer.
Meanwhile, there are, as far as I can ascertain, currently no cases of trans women assaulting biological women in women's bathrooms. I'm sure cases exist, but they must be exceedingly rare.
There are, however, plenty of cases of trans women being assaulted (and, in some cases, murdered) in men's bathrooms.
Rape of female prisoners by male prisoners is extremely rare overall because, thankfully, most prisons are still segregated by sex. However, in every jurisdiction that has decided to implement a policy of housing prisoners by self-declared "gender identity", this has - as everyone against such policy predicted - made the problem of sexual assault and rape in prisons worse, because this enables predatory males access to female victims, who are trapped in prison with these men.
This is why we have single-sex prisons in the first place, because of the inevitable harm to women, through violence, sexual assault, rape and unwanted pregnancy, that was committed against them by male prisoners in mixed-sex prison systems. Look up the work of Elizabeth Fry: she and other prison reformers extensively documented the horrors of prisons in Victorian England and in particular the awful impact upon women of being incarcerated with men.
Exactly the same is happening now, in the 21st century, because of these misogynistic "gender identity" policies that benefit males while deliberately ignoring the risks and harms inflicted upon women.
You’re assuming that most women would rather share bathrooms with trans men than with trans women. I suspect that were these mad ideas ever to be fully implemented in practice, we’d find that that was not in fact their revealed preference.
The truth is that most of the people currently stirring up a moral panic around gender are barely even aware of the existence of trans men and simply haven’t thought this through properly. Which isn’t surprising, as they don’t care about the issue itself, but only its potential as a political wedge.
It's a reasonable assumption that most women prefer to share female spaces with other women, regardless of how they look, and not with male intruders who have decided to disregard women's boundaries for their own pleasure while falsely identifying themselves as women.
If trans men have to go to women’s bathrooms then that actually makes it easier for cis men to go into women’s bathrooms too (as in general they are indistinguishable with clothes on). So there isn’t even any internal logic to this idea. The only way to have bathrooms segregated by genitals is to have genital inspectors outside bathrooms, which is neither practical nor desirable (not to mention that bottom surgery is a thing).
"It's a reasonable assumption that most women prefer to share female spaces with other women, regardless of how they look"
This is not a reasonable assumption based on my experience talking to women, and if it was, I don't understand how it would work in reality. Even if biological women preferred sharing the women's bathroom with trans men, rather than trans women, how would biological women know whether they were sharing the bathroom with a trans man or a biological man?
It seems much easier for trans men to pass than for trans women, so allowing trans men into women's bathrooms basically ensures that all men can freely enter them, claiming to be trans men.
> so allowing trans men into women's bathrooms basically ensures that all men can freely enter them, claiming to be trans men.
Any examples of this hypothetical situation actually happening?
If these spaces were regulated by law, and there was a realistic prospect of penalties for males who choose to impose themselves on female spaces, then this would have a significant deterrent effect. The males who say they're women (including males with a transwomen identity and your hypothetical set of males who claim to be transmen) would refrain from intruding.
Since the question here is what women would prefer, I haven't done an extensive search, but it seems at least a majority of women support allowing people to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/09/28/3-public-spl.... Interestingly, men are more strongly opposed than women.
I'll also leave this comment for thought. You're arguing that allowing transgender women into spaces reserved for women (unqualified) degrades the utility of them. I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to this argument, but not universally. I think allowing transgender women into women's sports is maybe not right, because transgender women don't have the same underlying physicality as women who have grown up with female hormones. I think it's an interesting discussion about why we perhaps somewhat arbitrarily segment sports in this way but not others (why no under 6 ft basketball leagues?) and the role that genetics plays in sports vs training and practice, but I think it's a generally effective means of allowing a group (generally women) to have meaningful leagues where it's not just women + men who aren't very good but have a genetic advantage. As well with regards to prison, since this is already a segment of the population (people in prison) who have committed some crime, so trusting them in the way we might trust random people from society to act may not be the right choice.
That said, your comments make it sound like you don't respect the existence of transgender people in general.
In particular, "I don't see how this is a self-contradictory position. Women who've decided to call themselves men are in fact still women.", and "It's a reasonable assumption that most women prefer to share female spaces with other women, regardless of how they look, and not with male intruders who have decided to disregard women's boundaries for their own pleasure while falsely identifying themselves as women.".
The first is I think clearly denying the right of someone to identify as transgender, and the latter is a fallacy. I agree that women would not want to share the bathroom with "male intruders who have decided to disregard women's boundaries for their own pleasure while falsely identifying themselves as women.", but this is not an accurate description of transgender women.
If you think it's an inaccurate description of how you feel (that you do in fact respect transgender people) I would suggest that being more careful in your debate might help you to convey your arguments effectively.
> I agree that women would not want to share the bathroom with "male intruders who have decided to disregard women's boundaries for their own pleasure while falsely identifying themselves as women.", but this is not an accurate description of transgender women.
How is it not accurate? They are male (by definition), so when they decide to impose themselves upon a female space this means they are doing so with a disregard for women's boundaries.
Based on your comment, you seem to believe that "woman" is just an identity, that any male can choose to adopt if he desires so. If that is the case, why do you believe this?
Your position is also that somebody like Buck Angel must use the women's bathroom, because he is "in fact still a woman."
My assertion is that this is contradictory, because forcing somebody like Buck Angel to use the womens' bathroom will make women and girls feel less safe, not more.