I want to pick up on the undertone in some of the posts on the last thread of "you're all man-hating paranoics who think everyone with a penis is about to jump out and rape you".
Of course no-one thinks all men are sexual predators. But a hell of a lot of them are - and, newsflash, they don't come with the mark of cain on their foreheads for us to distinguish them from the nice decent men. And we know (see links upthread for instance about a guy who sexually assaulted several teens in a Manchester branch of Asda while disguised as a security guard) that sex offenders will go to extraordinary lengths to gain access to victims. Pretending - note pretending - to be trans is not going to be much of a stretch.
Okay, let's look at what we do know, in terms of numbers.
90% of violent offenders in the British prison system are male.
98% of sex offenders in the British prison system are male.
So, what proportion of the male population do we have to be worried about? Reputable, peer reviewed studies (google the work of David Lisak for instance) suggest that possibly about 1 in 18 men will admit to having carried out behaviours ( e.g. having sex with a woman who said no, but using your body weight to restrain her) which meet the legal definition of rape. If you repeat the questionnaires actually using the word "rape" 1 in 20 men will admit to it.
That's a lot of men. That's why we have sex-segregated spaces where women are vulnerable - changing rooms, locker rooms, hospital wards, prisons.
The worry here is not the majority of perfectly nice transwomen who have dysphoria, are trying to make the best of a bad hand life has dealt them and just want to get on with life quietly. The problem is the proposed legislation is a pile of shit which will effectively outlaw single sex spaces, allowing any male bodied person who fancies it - whether suffering from genuine gender dysphoria, an attention seeking day-tripper like Travis, or a sexual predator - entry to any and all single sex spaces.
And the thing is at the moment, trans people who want legitimately to be counted as "feminine gendered" for purposes like going into women's toilets can do so, by getting a GRC. There are also, in the current legislation, exceptions to allow for where biological sex matters.
However if the new law goes through, there will be no exceptions. Not on hospital wards, not on closed mental health wards, not in rape crisis centres, not in prisons (remember women in the criminal justice system are much more likely to have been victims of child abuse, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, sexual violence, than women in the general population - and the vast majority of women in prison are not there for violent offences, they are there for drug and property crimes).
