Thank you. The article really did touch a nerve - and I know I'm one of the (very) lucky ones as regards male violence/abuse. I can't imagine how the large proportion of women self-excluding from such spaces of necessity as opposed to choice may feel reading it.
I just don't know how to make these men understand. When they hand-wave a male into our spaces, they're taking away our equality in the most tangible, distressing sense.
Single sex = do your business unconcerned.
Mixed sex = every time a male of any description enters, including a "fully transitioned" transwoman, he becomes dominant, in that, if he so chooses, he can harm you.
Gone is that exquisite knowledge of absolute safety and equity. And, instead, you experience that uncomfortable, sometimes distressing, consciousness that you are now secondary to him. You assume he won't target you, it's unlikely he will. But he could, and if he does, there's nothing - nothing - you can do about it.
In a sense, the moment he enters, you're "in his hands" regardless of whether or not he chooses to act on that.
It's a monumental betrayal of women and expression of male privilege to dismiss this as utterly insignificant as Jenkins does.
Re: the cafe, I actually thought I was disappointed but not unduly concerned by the loos, until one day I exited a stall to see a man just two feet away washing his hands. The reaction was instant and visceral, as the moment I saw him, I was forced into assuming and trusting that he was one of the good ones. And yes, he was, the odds are that he will be, but why the hell should women have to experience this vulnerability to access public life?
And there are far, far too many bad ones. Including, the evidence positively screams, among Jenkins' favoured "transwomen".