If inquire into why spaces are separated we get various arguments based on human behaviour: safety and hygiene are the most common arguments I hear. Stuff like modesty/embarrassment/nakedness etc. are not usually talked about as much, but - I feel - often implied. I find the comparison to saunas interesting; they seem to be often mixed without problems: but there are two important differences: while nearly everyone uses public toilets, using saunas is far more optional. And the taboo nature of excreting heightens feeling of shame, which is absent with saunas. — Dawnstorm

This got me thinking about changing rooms in various gyms I've been in. None of them have been mixed, and women have complained about the presence of biological men, as in this story:
https://www.newsweek.com/gym-chain-center-tish-hyman-dispute-flooded-negative-reviews-10989692
This is also an issue in school locker rooms. Girls, understandably, are not always comfortable with biological boys being around them while they're changing.

Well, here's where differ: I do not think bathrooms are "divided by sex." I believe this is surface rhetoric. Bathrooms themselves are social constructs. And bathrooms being "divided by sex," means that bathrooms are gendered: there are bathrooms for girls and bathrooms for boys and unisex bathrooms. Gendering bathrooms is, first and foremost, something we're doing. Something we're used to doing. Something ingrained in our daily praxis. Gendering bathrooms is social behaviour. — Dawnstorm

That's interesting. It may be due to a difference of gender definition. For most of the life of the term gender it was a synonym for 'sex'. Probably about 60 years ago there was an introduction to create a new meaning from gender. This meaning of gender is 'Non biological social expectation from a particular sex."

So what does this mean? We know from biology that on average, men are taller than women. Can an individual man be shorter than a woman? Sure. This is biological expectation, not gender expectation. Gender is when society places cultural actions on a biological sex that have nothing to do with their biological sex. So for example, "Women wear dresses". Is there anything innately biological in a woman wearing a dress? No. Its purely a cultural construct of subjective expectation.

A trans gendered individual is not a trans sexual individual. It is an individual of one sex that does not like the cultural expectation of their sex. So they might be a man who likes to wear dresses, or a woman who likes to wear top hats. Or perhaps a man believes that only women stay at home and take care of the house while men have to work. So he lets his wife work and stays at home.

Bathrooms are not gendered. They are divided by sex. Urinals are designed for the biology of males, not females. The privacy is afforded each sex because there is also more than urination and excrement, but menstruation from women. Not to mention that there is nudity and clothing removal to take care of biological needs. One does not go into the bathroom to affirm that one is male or female, they use the bathroom because they are male or female.

The trans gendered community wants to argue that enacting the cultural expectation of the other sex gives them the right to be in spaces divided by sex. So if a man wears a dress, feels like a woman, and acts in a cultural way that he believes women aught to act, that he should be allowed in the women's bathroom, lockers, sexual abuse centers, and jails. This male can be fully intact and not on hormones.

To make my position clear: sexual facts applied in social contexts is always gendered. That includes biology: the way we organise the facts to make sense of them could be different. But biological facts do set boundries of what is likely to be successful. So empirical research is going to be far more strict than socially structured excretion. — Dawnstorm

So this is an incorrect view of gender within gender theory. Gender and sex are completely different meanings. Meaning you can have division based on sex differences, and based on gender differences. Anything based on biological differences is a sex differentiated situation that is not cultural. For example, getting a prostate exam. Since only men have prostates, the exclusion from females getting the exam is not a cultural difference, but a reasonable one based purely on biological ones.

The issue with many trans gendered individuals is they are likely unintentionally applying sexual differences as cultural expectations. Either that, are they are really trans sexuals and desire to have the cross sex access without the need to take hormones or have surgery. And of course there are always bad actors who want to cross these spaces for duplicitous, malicious, or perverted reasons. I want to be clear I do not think this is the majority, but it must be recognized they exist.

Smart people are good at building elaborate justifications that work out logically. But these elaborate legitimisations, too, are constructs, and not ones likely to be shared with trans people - or me, for that matter. — Dawnstorm

True and well said. I hope my point is based on rational argumentation and not merely bias or lazy thinking. The key is when we start saying things about rights and laws, we have to be very specific and accurate with definitions.

Now I'm a cis male and use bathrooms for boys without a second thought. I neither know or care if I ever shared a bathroom with a trans man. As a result, this is not an issue that intimately impacts me. Which also means that I'm talking from an easy place. I can question the status quo with little problem, because a change won't impact me personally at all. — Dawnstorm

Same, I really appreciate your humbleness and self-awareness in this.

Does Ms Pacman have a female biology? My personal take (in worldbuilding terms; I know Ms Pacman is just pixels... or scan lines... depending on the technology) is that Pacmen reproduce by mitosis (when you've eaten enough you get an extra life, no?). This is only partly a joke. — Dawnstorm

Its light hearted, but your point is well stated. Its interesting to think about what people feel. Some people might view Ms. Pacman as 'biologicaly female' as in 'female pac-creature'. Some people may feel that there is no separated sex intent between the two creatures, and that the only difference is that one wears a bow while the other doesn't. In the same way, it may be possible that humans view 'man and woman' in similar fashion sometimes. I personally cannot view a person in any other way than biology. If you pointed at the blue sky and told me it wasn't blue, I could no more unsee the blue sky than view a man or woman as a biologically distinct person. But, it may be that there are people who do not see biology, and generally only see cultural actions as their primary view of 'man or woman' and legitimately could swap them out in their mind without any compunction.

I think though that my viewpoint is the norm. When Mulan was found to be female, no one said, "Oh, well you were a man, but now you're only a woman because we made you wear a dress." Its an odd way of thinking that doesn't seem quite right.

This got me thinking about changing rooms in various gyms I've been in. None of them have been mixed, and women have complained about the presence of biological men, as in this story:
https://www.newsweek.com/gym-chain-center-tish-hyman-dispute-flooded-negative-reviews-10989692
This is also an issue in high school locker rooms. Girls, understandably, are not always comfortable with biological boys/men being around them while they're changing. — RogueAI

Hello RogueAI! To bring it to the OP, do you believe that it is a human right that a person's gender allow someone to enter cross sex spaces? That if a woman is uncomfortable with this, she is against a human right?

Hello RogueAI! To bring it to the OP, do you believe that it is a human right that a person's gender allow someone to enter cross sex spaces? That if a woman is uncomfortable with this, she is against a human right? — Philosophim

No, I think women have a well deserved fear of biological men. I think they have a human right to some traditional women-only spaces and sports. This is easy to do in sports, but incredibly difficult to legislate wrt bathrooms and changing rooms. Suppose you have a biological woman who has transitioned to a man and looks like a man. Do we want him to have to use the ladies bathroom/changing room? And vice-versa? On the other hand, if a biological man is walking around the PlanetFitness women's locker room with his junk hanging out, the ladies have a right to complain.

I think they have a human right to some traditional women-only spaces and sports. — RogueAI

What is this human right?

Suppose you have a biological woman who has transitioned to a man and looks like a man. Do we want him to have to use the ladies bathroom/changing room? — RogueAI

I personally don't mind. I had an encounter with a trans gender woman years ago in the male bathroom and it was fine. I think the case here is whether a person can identify the trans person as their natal sex. A person could disguise themselves as an employee and go 'behind the counter', behave like an employee, then leave without anyone knowing. But is that right? If someone can disguise themselves (trans gender, not trans sexual) as the opposite sex, does it make it ok for them to use opposite sex spaces?