Sorry I don’t know how to cite. About your objections:

“1. Menstruation. I think women should have a private space to deal with this from which men are excluded.”

I don’t know about the situation in the USA, but in Germany, public toilets must have separate, closed stalls which you can close from the inside so that nobody can see you or enter them. Such a law would be beneficial in the USA as well: more privacy, protection from voyeurs and ambushes at least as long as you’re in the stalls etc. Problem solved.

“2. Bathrooms are a place in which people are in a vulnerable, degraded position, and anyone with a penis is effectively someone armed with a loaded gun.”

You needn’t even have a penis as a weapon, a knife or baseball bat etc. works well too (but that’s not the point here). If a rapist or killer wants to enter a women’s bathroom, they’ll sneak in anyway.

Another problem I see here, lots of trans people both ways sometimes “pass” and sometimes not, so it’s not easy for them to find a solution.

“3. Some people will change their clothing to the opposite gender for sexual gratification, and it may sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between these people, and people who are presenting their genuine gender, so that allowing access to the women’s bathroom becomes a convenient place for sexual fetishists to get off of being in a women-only environment.”

I guess you can usually tell from the clothes and behavior what’s happening there. But of course, not everybody knows how to tell the difference.

On the one hand, I accept that transwomen are women, and in an ideal world, we would be able to have gender neutral bathrooms, but there are reasons why I’d find this objectionable:

1. Menstruation. I think women should have a private space to deal with this from which men are excluded.

2. Bathrooms are a place in which people are in a vulnerable, degraded position, and anyone with a penis is effectively someone armed with a loaded gun. The only thing standing in the way of a fate worse than death is that person’s choice not to pull the trigger. Cis women and many trans women do not possess that weapon, and this means that bathrooms need to be a place in which such weapons can be intercepted and entry barred to anyone in possession of one. The only way it is possible to do this is by guessing whether the person entering the bathroom is physically armed on the basis of their other features and gender presentation. It isn’t the sign on the door that stops people from abusing this situation but rather the hostile reaction from everyone concerned and calls for help before the person gets to the point where someone is actually sat on the potty.

3. Some people will change their clothing to the opposite gender for sexual gratification, and it may sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between these people, and people who are presenting their genuine gender, so that allowing access to the women’s bathroom becomes a convenient place for sexual fetishists to get off of being in a women-only environment.

I don’t think forcing everyone to use unisex bathrooms is viable for all of the above reasons. Similarly there is a problem with being more flexible about gender-policing the toilets, because the point of labelling the door women is really trying to say “Toilets with menstruation facilities for people without a phallus”, or more subliminally “toilets for the unarmed”. It is difficult to see how anything could replace that social system of protection so that anyone who is in the position of being sexually unarmed can be protected from those who are sexually armed. And I don’t just mean protected from actual assault, but allowed to use the facilities without fear.

In addition to this is the problem of how to provide a space for people who do not have conventional gender presentations/identities to feel comfortable using them. The only way of dealing with this seems to be to have male, female, and gender neutral options.

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