@CloudyVanilla
You've also massively extrapolated a lot of that and downright misrepresented a lot of what I said. I never said I valued male feelings more than female feelings. When asking for data or evidence that the social acceptance of trans women would be detrimental to women, I was given an anecdotal example of gender neutral toilets and a Muslim woman. My point was if both being transgender and religion are abstract and debatable ideas, then why is it automatically the right of the religious person to take precedent?
Again, you've said I've dismissed "evidence" but no one has given me ANY evidence. Quite the contrary. I have mentioned that the vast majority of male violence to women is perpetrated by males known to or close to the victim. Trans women are at an even higher risk of this violence. But proportionately it's still a much more pressing issue to you to focus on excluding trans women from environments, many of which they already have a legal right to be in and there is no resulting wealth of evidence that trans women are doing significant harm to women.
I have mentioned that the vast majority of male violence to women is perpetrated by males known to or close to the victim. Trans women are at an even higher risk of this violence.
Why is it, then, that women are murdered by those close to them at a rate of 2 a week in normal times, 5 in lockdown, yet trans women have half the average murder risk? Who determines that trans women face 'an even higher risk of this violence'? How is that violence recorded and reported, and who's to say, as you so confidently do, that it's worse than that against women? 13000 men in jail for sex offences, mostly against women - that's 1 in 2500 men in the population - and yet only 1.5% of the reports of rape made to police ever see charges, far less convictions. Do you really imagine most women report? So where does that blithely confident statement come from? Stonewall? What's the source of your own stats?
One in fifty in the male prison estate identify as trans, as of 2018. In 2016, when the numbers asserting that identity from prison were far lower, 60 transwomen were jailed for sex offending from a population estimated to be 200,000, whereas just 126 women were, from a population of 33 million. Rhona Hotchkiss, who was a prison governor in Scotland, has said that there are now more transwomen in jail there for sex offending than women - NOT because transwomen pose more threat than any other male, but because they pose the exact same threat. Those stats align with the numbers of male sex offenders, when you calculate respective populations. So why are transwomen fine in spaces where women are vulnerable, when other males aren't - and in fact, in the case of prisons, where the United Nations mandates males must not be, as a basic human rights standard for women? What's the difference, from the perspective of women's best interests, instead of focusing on the best interest of the males in the equation?
Male bodies pose a threat to female bodies. Gender identity doesn't alter that. And given gender identity is also both subjective and unprovable, you're saying that women must accept a subset of males as female solely because they say so, and accept an exponentially higher risk rate than that posed by female women. How is that okay? Why are you placing the ease of a small group of male people higher than the safety of a large group of female people?
Of course it's just a small subset of transwomen who pose any sort of risk. It's a small subset of all males. But because we don't know which they are, but we do know women pose a very low risk indeed, we exclude all males from spaces where females are vulnerable, not because we think all men are hideous predators, but because some are, and excluding them means assaults and attacks on women are sharply reduced. Given the risk factor is exactly the same with males, irrespective of how they may identify, just how many women are you prepared to dismiss, as collateral damage? Women already exist who have been harmed in direct consequence of these policies. Why is that not as important? Why are they not as important?
Were you aware that a vast majority of women prisoners are there for property crime, while most men are there for violent offending? That most jailed women have been assaulted and abused by men long before they ever reached a prison, over half in childhood, and that there are huge levels of mental distress already, which mean they are retraumatised by being locked in with males - any males, even the nicest, kindest and most sincere possible - because they know what a female body is, and it's gaslighting to tell them a male is a woman? Same, obviously, in women's shelters and rape crisis support services. Karen Ingala Smith has talked really movingly about that. Why don't you care about those women? Why is your concern focused on people of male biology?
When women understand that 80% of transwomen have no surgery and take no hormones at all, a majority start to say no, they don't want them in spaces where they're vulnerable, and actually come what may, they don't want female sporting competition open to male bodies on a basis of identity - with good reason. If you can't identify sex, and rights based on sex, you can't combat sexism. Misogyny isn't predicated on women's performance of gender. It's because of our sex. And once you start arguing that women have no right to sports or changing rooms or dorms or shelters or refuges of our own, as soon as a male person asserts a claim that a male body is less relevant than a subjective belief to have a feminine soul... then you're focusing on male wants, and dismissing female needs. As has been the case through history. How is that feminism? Clearly, it's not.
I care about all human beings. Everyone should be treated with respect and dignity. I recognise that trans people do face marginalisation, which must be addressed. Transphobia is real, and violently abusive men pose a threat to trans people, men and women alike, as they do women - yet instead of tackling that threat, all the hate is aimed at gender critical women. It's also fairly clear that there is economic disadvantage, as so many seeking a GRC are below the costs threshold (though given the overlap with mental health challenges and autism, it's hard to unpick a multi-factorial, complex picture enough to know that it's mainly down to transphobia... but I am certain that's a factor in too many cases, and in too many lives.) I also think that liberation movements have every right to centre the group they fight for - trans groups do, disability rights orgs do, and feminist orgs should. Yet women are being told it's our job to centre some people born male, even though they pose the same risk to us as any other male, because they're at risk from other males, and assert that their sex isn't relevant, just their belief about themselves. Why is that our responsibility? Why do we have to increase our own risk, and lose our own privacy and spaces, when all properly conducted polling shows that that is not what women want and they do not consent?
Women are also human. Women also matter. Women should have the final say on who gets to share communal changing spaces, and sleeping accommodation, and shelters and counselling support which has been designated single sex. And women should not be shamed for prioritising their own best interests, needs, and rights, in the face of a fullscale demand that they open them up to any male who asserts an unprovable, subjective, wholly personal belief. There is no human right to expose your cock to a group of naked women in a single-sex changing room or shower without their consent - yet that's precisely what's being claimed. It's completely lunatic, frankly.
And finally, your statement that sharing the above has always been the law, and that it has to be decided on a case by case basis when an exemption is applied? That comes from guidance from the EHRC, which they recently had to withdraw due to legal challenge. They aren't empowered to create law at their behest. Yet effectively, that's what they did. A Judicial Review is pending. So no, that's not anything like as clear as you believe it to be.