This post is a classic example of what happens when you conflate, or allow to become conflated, the words “sex” and “gender”.
“Sex” is biological reality. It is not possible to change sex, no matter how many hormones are taken or how much surgery undergone. You are the sex capable or potentially capable of producing either a) large immobile gametes (female) or b) small mobile gametes (male).
Certain public spaces are sex-segregated because it has been recognised for a long time that the sexes have different needs, particularly when vulnerable, and as a sex class women are at risk from men as a sex class. This is based on biological differences; men are on average stronger, penises can and have been used as a weapon and so on. As a society, we recognised (until seemingly very recently) that as we cannot identify the predatory men from the respectful men, it is acceptable to exclude ALL men from spaces where women are vulnerable: public toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, rape/DV crisis shelters etc.
“Gender” meanwhile is a set of socially-constructed roles and stereotypes designed to prescribe how the two sexes should behave. They’re prescriptive and damaging to both sexes but particularly to women, as they seek to control female behaviour in ways that disadvantage us. Blue for boys / pink for girls, “boys don’t cry” / “that’s not very ladylike”, men are breadwinners / women are nurturing are all examples of gender stereotypes.
Nothing, other than the weight of society’s expectations (and I don’t underestimate how powerful that can be), prevents any of us from pushing back against gendered stereotypes. Once upon a time it was frowned upon for women to wear trousers, now it’s not even noteworthy. There is absolutely nothing preventing a man from wearing a dress, long hair, make up and calling himself a stereotypically female name if he so wishes. It does not make him female, or a woman; it makes him a gender non-conforming man, and more power to him. He should not be subject to harms for breaking gender norms, and he should certainly be safe to use men’s toilets, changing rooms etc no matter how femininely he chooses to present.
If other men are not capable of accepting feminine men in their spaces they need to become more tolerant, and if any of them behaved violently or abusively towards the GNC man then they should, as another PP said, be subject to criminal charges, just as they should if they attacked (verbally or physically) an elderly man, a gay man, a man with LDs, or any other vulnerable man using the male facilities.
(if you think that transgender men should be allowed to use women’s spaces because of a perceived fear of being harmed in men’s spaces but you aren’t extending the same invitation to those other vulnerable categories of men…why not?)
If a person is repulsed by their own sexed body, their genitalia and/or secondary sex characteristics, that would be better described as “body dysmorphia / dysphoria”, since “gender” is not a biological concept. And personally I do not feel that quite barbaric and experimental surgeries based on selling people the lie that they can change sex should be the treatment for anyone’s discomfort with their body, unless you also advocate for stapling the stomachs of people with anorexia and amputating the limbs of those with BIID.
I absolutely understand the various reasons why around 90%+ of men who present as women retain their penises. Sex is sex, gender is gender. Absolutely not the same thing, so no need to have surgery to conform to gender stereotypes.
100% of men should stay out of women’s spaces though, however they identify or present. We’re not shields for vulnerable men.