OP, thank you for posting and your empathy and understanding on a hugely complex issue. NB. I’ve been typing for a while, so haven’t read the most recent replies!
Re: toilets, I think the long-term answer is third spaces, but in the meantime, am very sympathetic to your situation, and honestly unsure what the answer is.
I recently had a conversation with someone I love and respect who felt that an apparent TS on TV should, on the basis of their appearance (clothing, demeanour and probable facial surgery) absolutely use the women‘s. And I wanted to agree, I really, really did - but I also felt that they didn’t appreciate quite how difficult this is.
I, too, think that a TS using the women‘s toilets in isolated instances before the current ideology took hold would have met with much more sympathy. But now that women are, arguably, fighting for the very existence of these facilities, with the vulnerability of transwomen in the gents‘ a key weapon wielded against them, conceding any ground at all can feel very risky indeed from a strategic perspective, as well as taking an emotional toll. I think this is reflected in some of the replies you’ve received.
I also think that men can struggle to fully understand women‘s experience of their own physical vulnerability. I’ve seen this before in men’s comments on this issue. But to me, a petite female, it’s so distressingly simple. The appearance of the person on TV - and whatever degree of commitment to transitioning it suggested - can’t change the fact that their physical size and associated strength, and potential to be fully intact, mean they almost certainly present a considerably greater threat to me, much as any man would than a female does. Typically, I’ll be conscious of that. In this case, the voice would have made their sex clear.
Different women will respond to this differently. Some won’t mind. But many will experience some degree of fear at this, and that fear is legitimate.
It honestly scares me in itself sometimes how blind men seem to be to our own reality - lived experience! - in this respect. Personally, I do tend to avoid being alone in small, enclosed spaces with total male strangers. I’m outgoing, confident, speak my mind - and I’m also entirely rational in this personal choice. It’s unlikely to happen - but why make it likelier?!
The last time I was in a lift with a man, he made me feel so threatened I’ve not got in a lift alone with a man since. And do you know, all that he ever did was look at me - just as Miriam Cates described in the H of C. But that looking functioned as an expression of what we both knew - what every woman knows every time she’s in an intimate space with a male stranger. And that is, quite simply, that it‘s almost entirely up to him what happens next in that situation. She has no meaningful power. She’s totally reliant on his good intentions. The next move is up to him.
And yes, again I feel compelled to say, NAMALT, it’s a hundred-to-one etc. etc. etc. But when I’m heading into middle age and can still think of four times men have, quite unambiguously, sought to intimidate me in a very public space in the past 6 months (and you remember every single instance like this, you really do, whether you laugh or feel angry or get that horrible bolt of terror that almost all women know), I find it astonishing that women are in the position of having to explain the need for our spaces - to prove the legitimacy of this frustrating, exhausting lived experience.
So, OP, I want to welcome you in, I genuinely, truly do. I feel for you, and love that you’ve reached out to this site, and am anxiously hoping the replies appearing as I’ve been typing this out on my phone are respectful and empathetic. You deserve to feel safe. And so do we. And in the absence of a concerted effort to advocate for third spaces by organisations that are, instead, seemingly working to make you, and us, less safe and comfortable, I don’t know what the answer is…
So that’s probably all a bit pointless to type, but helped me clarify my thoughts at least!
At any rate, very best wishes to you as we all continue to navigate this minefield.