Rose
The bathroom debate is a bit of a red herring and probably the easiest to solve with better segregation of stalls etc. Trans ppl have used bathrooms of their choice for decades. This is more about the lazy way organisations simply slap "all genders" on the female toilet and think that's problem solved. It's a matter of fairness, and of making adjustments to help women feel safe.
There are other areas, like the ones I mentioned, that are much more difficult and would put women in much more intimate contact with male bodied trans ppl. Like showers in swimming pools, female dorms in youth hostels, spas etc. And female wards in hospitals etc. All of which are starting to operate on the basis of self id without assessments, without consultation with users, without referall to legitimate sex based exceptions under the EA. And women who object are immediately shouted down as anti trans, hateful, TERFs, bigots. There IS not debate. Organisations daren't touch the issue with a barge pole.
Women's feelings have to matter in this. There's that case with the trans woman in Australia complaining because she was excluded from an all female gym because she hadn't had surgery. There is absolutely no question of this person "passing", she looks no different than a man in drag. While I appreciate her situation is difficult and wish I could think of a solution, I really cannot see how she can expect women to be comfortable in intimate spaces with her. Women who are paying to be in an all female environment. Who will be called names if they complain. It's a conflict of interest and I have no idea how it can be resolved, but I do not see how women can be expected to sacrifice their sense of dignity, privacy and safety.
The problem specifically with the change of rules in Girl Guides is 1.) the way it was done - fait accompli without a discussion, against the voices of many of the group leaders and without any impact assessment of consequences for girls, no plans for safeguarding etc. 2.) The explicit rule that parents (who are trusting that their daughters are in a single sex organisation) do not even have to be informed 3.) This includes self id for both staff and children, for intimate care and for overnight stays.
The safeguarding and fairness problems are obvious. And they're not all "little".
Personally, I'm on the more compromising end of gender critical opinion. But the use of TERF to describe women who insist that there is a material difference between biological women and trans women is offensive and extremely overused in the debate. You can get called a terf for discussing rape or breatsfeeding.
Have you tried searching the hashtag "punch a terf"? Or the activists abusing lesbians for not wanting "lady dick" (what about that unbearable dysphoria, eh?)? The iconography of baseball bats and bloodied t-shirts aimed at "terfs"? Very easy to find lots of young male misogynists that I categorically do not want anywhere near female only spaces, ever.
And let's not forget trans women (in the once understood sense of post op transsexual) like ButternutSquash earlier on the thread, who have lived in peace, supported by women, for decades, and are really suffering from the toxic ideology of current transgender activism. That's where I see the "invasion" in the debate, and that's where the push-back comes from.