Fact is though that public restrooms are to be as inclusive and anti-discriminatory as is reasonably possible, and it's the public's responsibility to police these restrooms while we attend them. I can't think of a situation where it's okay for a parent to allow their small child to attend a public restroom by themselves without adequate supervision? As those are found in public places such as parks, etc? The restrooms in our public schools are already screened/monitored, and so the "impostor" threat should be small to nonexistent there anyway.
I've always made it a point to go into the bathroom with my son when he was younger to make sure there were no unpleasant moments. And this was years ago before the current situation. Now that he's older, I'll still go sometimes, but I'm always conscience of the time frame he's in there. If it's longer than I think it should be, I have no problem going in and checking on him.
I never said otherwise; but, public restrooms are often discriminatory, necessarily: one set reserved for the female sex, another for the male sex. Restrooms reserved, or at least meant to give priority to, handicapped individuals; restrooms with baby changing stations, and so on. This falls within the 'as possible' that you mention. With that said, my point is that in public discourse, identity claims are predicated purely on subjective grounds: I feel as if I am..., therefore I am. That makes it very difficult to police individuals who claim a particularly identity without risking discrimination lawsuits. That's obviously wrong, and the same for how identity is conceived, but it's the present reality. If a woman claims to be a man but makes no effort to look the part, who are any of us transphobes to tell he..him otherwise?
Sure, I totally understand that, and it's certainly not easy for everyone involved. Accommodation is a 2-way street. I can't just claim and go do whatever I want and expect everyone else to bend around my every whim. It's still the duty of every citizen to function within certain boundaries, even while those boundaries are being examined and challenged. Can't have rights without responsibilities.
In the new social dialogue of the Left, this is hateful, discriminatory, prejudiced, white-supremacist, violence-provoking speech. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You are expected to bend to the whim of everyone around you, because that's the respectful, validating, safe, loving thing to do. Which goes back to the point I'm making: the current social environment doesn't make it possible to police identity claims, so even though you're making completely sensible claims, they're cast as no different than our grandparents, who now hold 'old', ignorant, unacceptable views.
I actually tried bending to the whim of everyone around me and validate all of their feels and opinions for a little while as sort of a self-imposed social experiment ... and I gotta say that's a great way to completely paralyze yourself to the point of no longer mattering, to yourself, or anyone else. It's a veiled form of bullying shrouded in "tolerance" where only those who agree with the trending rhetoric are actually tolerated. And of course it's always the extremists who make the most noise, because reasonable people prefer the kind of discourse where actual, reasonable solutions can be hammered out which requires everyone to listen equally and do something other than be critical of the problems and the people who supposedly cause(d) them. But, human nature being what it is, I expected no different from the current political exchange which is basically a carryover from the nasty political exchanges of the past few years which are a carryover from the nasty political exchanges of the past few decades, etc. Nothing new under the sun and etc., no matter how you repackage it and try to sell it as "new", "current" or "trendy". Except now we have a Republican President which means the Dems are making all the noise, whereas the last 8 years we had a Democratic President and the Reps were making all the noise. It will swing again. And again. And again. And etc.
Not sure why you think perverts won't try more often to get into women's bathrooms and locker/shower rooms. Before the transgendered bathroom laws guys had to be more sneaky about trying to get in the women's bathrooms or locker rooms so they wouldn't be seen and get caught. Now they don't have to sneak in. They can just WALK RIGHT IN in plain sight and if anybody challenges them and calls the police they just have to say they "self-identify" as a woman. And there's no real way to prove them wrong. They don't have to pass some test to prove their sincerity. You just have to take their word for it.
Yep, it's a double-edged sword and unfortunately not a good one. Hopefully they re-work through this logic and see the flaws in it's design.
I got the impression that Dani was saying if it does happen that the perverts try to take advantage, the transgenders will become one of the loudest voices against it. A pervert who tries to ride the transgender train for the purpose of getting into a women's restroom is going to be making a mockery of everything the transgender community fought for, so it would make sense that they would want to take a stand against it.
The thing is that you going into the men's room isn't going to generate undue attention. If it were your daughter who seemed to be taking longer than expected in the ladies' room, you going in to check things out would be more unusual. At least in the more traditional worldview.
The problem is that it's impossible to police when those in "higher authority" insist that there are no rules. Traditionally speaking a man would be chased out of the ladies' room. Now we're told that such a person might feel female that day and therefore they are a woman and have every right to be in there. If the bearded individual taking an excessive interest in the stall where the 10-year-old girl is doing whatever she needs to do causes anyone concern, now it's apparently their problem because it's discriminatory to challenge the gender identity of the creepy person.
The ironic thing is that before the law started to get silly and all the talk of "gender identity" basically meant someone with male anatomy and a beard can be female today if they feel like it, those who were transgender were probably using the bathroom of their reassigned gender without any fuss, probably without anyone even particularly noticing it was happening. Open plan changing rooms would be more of a concern, simply because the transgendered would present as one gender while still having remaining anatomical features of the other gender. But that feeds right back into the question of why we expect people to undress in front of complete strangers based on nothing more than having comparable anatomy.
The trouble is that within so-called QUILTBAG community there are so many variations - it's a load of alphabet soup to essentially describe anyone who isn't heterosexual and cisgendered. The genderfluid are unlikely to take a stand against it because, well, tomorrow it might be them that feels female despite still having a full beard, the transgendered aren't a large enough part of society for their voice to be particularly loud, and it seems unlikely that they would risk turning on people who are kinda-sorta-like them for "not being transgendered enough".
What I don't understand is how such a very small segment of our population ( U.S. and world ) has come to command such a very large part of our attention in relatively recent times.