Good article.
Although I wish rather than hang everything on that female people have a right to be safe, writers would also remember that female people have a right to group themselves and separate themselves as a biological class purely to have the privacy, dignity and freedom from embarrassment considered normal in our society .
A male person may wish to identify as a woman and wish everyone to believe they are a woman. This does not mean there is the slightest difference to the experiences of female people between that self identified male body and the men in the men's single sex spaces next door. None.
I wholly respect that some people don't identify as their biological sex and want an alternative provision. I believe they should have it if they want it. I don't believe female people should lose the right to ever be apart from male people or be expected to perceive some kind of difference between male bodies depending on the subjective announcement of the male's inner sense of self. And that's a sentence I've written thinking dear God, I live in a time and place where I actually have to spell this out.
And as I say over and over again - and Debbie I get this is not easy - what happens to the female people who cannot share a single sex space with any male, regardless of how that male identifies or the extent of their transition? Do we just shun all orthodox females, those with disabilities causing perceptual issues, the traumatised, the anxious, the raped? Because until males wanted into female spaces, female spaces successfully served all females.
Should we chuck out a proportion of females and deny them any space at all so males can be assured of two spaces they can choose from? How is that fair unless you automatically view male people as intrinsically more important and valuable than female ones?