To wonder if there's any actual evidence that's trans women are not safe in male loos?

1. I never said otherwise
2. I don’t think it’s that straightforward else there wouldn’t be as much discourse around it. I imagine businesses that outwardly are seen as taking any side, face controversy hence why most are on the fence. I have certainly seen anger directed at facilities if they are outwardly women-only or trans-inclusive.

1. women are not human shields for men scared of men's facilities. We don't let young, elderly, frail, gay or learning disabled men in the women's facilities because they feel unsafe in men's facilities.

2. businesses don't need to make any decisions about this now as the supreme court has done it for them. They just have to obey the law, no winging it required.

To be honest I think this argument can just be stripped back to men with Ockham’s razor. Women are less likely to be violent or harass people in public bathrooms. Men are likely to be more confident to say something or even hurt someone. I certainly would rather leave a restroom as opposed to confront someone or risk getting into a physical altercation. So trans women and trans men probably feel safer in women’s bathrooms as opposed to men’s bathrooms.

I imagine that for them it’s like walking through a dodgy alleyway - there’s an implicit element of risk if they are in men’s restrooms

I’m not really sure what the answer is as it seems to be an emotive topic for everyone. I think the most idealistic solution would be individual restrooms but that’s not practical. In fact I think the law around this in England isn’t really that practical because I’m sure a lot of employers/retailers/restaurants etc don’t really know how to confidently manage their restrooms with respect to this and stay on the right side of the law. So what the public ends up with, is a mismatch of attitudes from people winging it.

Say the quiet part out loud

Whats your number?

How many women?

How many women going about their daily lives can come to harm (where just keeping men out of womens toilets stops the harm) is an OK number of women sacrificed for your ideology?

FYI the UK prison data rates is just about as clear a peer-reviewed data set as any available.
They are the men who caused such serious harm in either public or private that they were sent to face a public trial for causung harm.
They were subjected process which demands a high bar of proof before being found guilty by the Court system and sent to prison for the harm.

Trans people, particularly trans women, are overwhelmingly more at risk of harassment or violence from males, not females.

UK Home Office data (2018–2022) on hate crimes shows that most transphobic hate crimes are perpetrated by men.

In the 2021/22 dataset, 84% of hate crime suspects across all categories were male, and there’s no evidence to suggest trans-related hate crimes differ significantly in that pattern.

Galop’s 2020 report on trans people in the UK:

• 4 in 5 trans people experienced a hate crime in the previous 12 months.

• The majority of those crimes involved verbal abuse, threats, or physical attacks, most often from men in public or domestic settings.

International studies (e.g. U.S. Transgender Survey, 2015) also consistently show:

• The perpetrators of harassment, assault, and sexual violence against trans people are overwhelmingly cisgender men.

• In intimate partner violence, trans people are disproportionately victimised, again, most often by male partners.

Women are far more at risk of harassment or violence from males than from trans people.

Violence against women is overwhelmingly male-pattern:

• In the UK, 97% of sexual offences and 78% of violent crimes are committed by men.

• The vast majority of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and harassment is perpetrated by cisgender men.

Trans people, particularly trans women, make up a very small share of the population:

• Fewer than 0.5% of adults in the UK identify as transgender (ONS, 2021 Census).

• Statistically, this means very few offences overall are committed by trans people, and where they are, it’s still overwhelmingly by those assigned male at birth (i.e. trans women), not as a unique category of risk.

There is no evidence that trans women, as a group, pose a heightened threat to women:

• No peer-reviewed UK studies have shown trans women to be a significant source of risk to cisgender women in public or private settings.

• Where risk exists (e.g. in custodial settings), it is based on individual risk profiles, not group identity.

In short, transwomen are more at risk from men than women, and despite the law should in my opinion make their own call which loo to use based on that risk. The chance of encountering a trans person in a bathroom is infinitesimally small, the chance of them doing anything violent even smaller.

Because you know full well that creating third spaces everywhere is impossible. It’s just not pragmatic.

So before all this gender hooha, how did masculine looking women cope? Either they were perfectly fine beforehand , and any confusion is caused by the fact that some men felt entitled to enter women’s spaces and do no one was sure if they were women or not, or there was a lot of confusion before this gender hooha but no one ever knew about it?

Which more or less sums the situation up. In many, many cases, how do you tell? And what must it be like for masculine looking women to be constantly challenged when they are using the facilities they're perfectly entitled to use?

The offices in which I (occasionally - we mostly WFH) work have shared, but perfectly private facilities. Each cubicle had a ceiling to floor door and its own basin, but not many companies, public services etc can afford that.

I'm afraid it's the genital inspectors or nothing.

Which more or less sums the situation up. In many, many cases, how do you tell? And what must it be like for masculine looking women to be constantly challenged when they are using the facilities they're perfectly entitled to use?

The offices in which I (occasionally - we mostly WFH) work have shared, but perfectly private facilities. Each cubicle had a ceiling to floor door and its own basin, but not many companies, public services etc can afford that.

I'm afraid it's the genital inspectors or nothing.

I feel, as a FWR lurker, that I would have seen linked articles to bank up the fact that trans identifying men aren't safe in men's loos, and therefore that's the rational why women should budge up and accept trans identifying men in their spaces.

I'm pretty sure with a quick Google I could fund evident that trans identity men have made women's spaces unsafe (Kate delowski? The one who worked for a charity and made a masturbation video).

So AIBU to wonder what hard evidence there is?

Which more or less sums the situation up. In many, many cases, how do you tell? And what must it be like for masculine looking women to be constantly challenged when they are using the facilities they're perfectly entitled to use?

The offices in which I (occasionally - we mostly WFH) work have shared, but perfectly private facilities. Each cubicle had a ceiling to floor door and its own basin, but not many companies, public services etc can afford that.

I'm afraid it's the genital inspectors or nothing.

Which more or less sums the situation up. In many, many cases, how do you tell? And what must it be like for masculine looking women to be constantly challenged when they are using the facilities they're perfectly entitled to use?

The offices in which I (occasionally - we mostly WFH) work have shared, but perfectly private facilities. Each cubicle had a ceiling to floor door and its own basin, but not many companies, public services etc can afford that.

I'm afraid it's the genital inspectors or nothing.

Which more or less sums the situation up. In many, many cases, how do you tell? And what must it be like for masculine looking women to be constantly challenged when they are using the facilities they're perfectly entitled to use?

The offices in which I (occasionally - we mostly WFH) work have shared, but perfectly private facilities. Each cubicle had a ceiling to floor door and its own basin, but not many companies, public services etc can afford that.

I'm afraid it's the genital inspectors or nothing.

I think you are onto something here. The system we need:

i) doesn’t lead to suspicion that people are in the opposite sex loo,
ii) each individual can decide for themselves if they feel fine with having males in the women’s loo
iii) to make ii workable, that must mean no males in public women’s loos or we undermine the consent principle in ii. (Ie you may feel fine for males to be in with your granddaughters, but the workable principle can’t be what each individual’s grandmother agrees to)
iv) no genital inspections.

This, luckily for you, has just been clarified as the law of the land.

Looks like I am a hateful bigot by that definition then, oh well.

I don't think there's any confusion from @HangryLikeTheHulk

You're supposed to let them all in. If this makes you less safe, who cares? You're just collateral damage a woman. And if you don't do this willingly, you're a hateful bigot.

Good to get that cleared up.

I am getting confused now
So WHICH Transwomen are we supposed to allow into women only spaces now?
Ones that "pass" (so none then)
Ones that are harmless (how do we know?)
Ones that have had their penis removed (I really don't want to have to check that)
Ones that have never threatened women on SM?
Ones who aren't doing it just for sexual kicks?
Ones who are in their 70's?

If a TW is a woman just because they say so then any man can be one, and in fact in order to be a TW one first has to be a man.
So who exactly are we supposed to let in now? Men?