I agree completely. But the eternal question is how do we tell the difference? If you accept the idea that "woman" is simply a feeling, how do you know whether I (or one of the rapists, stalkers and perverts) am a woman or not?

One of the biggest problems with discourse about women's spaces is the simplistic idea that they're all the same. That all we're talking about is bathrooms where people "just want to pee."

As you say, policing sex in bathrooms is largely impossible. Bathrooms are already policed by gender expression. Women who are a bit too butch are occasionally challenged. Trans men using women's bathrooms would make it even easier for nefarious men to enter. Trans women who "pass" already use them without issue. And in 99.9% of cases, they go into a stall, do their thing, and leave without bothering anybody.

But for the umpteenth time, this is not the case in communal changing rooms. This is not the case in prisons. This is not the case in rape-crisis centres. This is not the case in sports.

I think that for most women, bathrooms are by far the least controversial spaces. But if you want to talk seriously about this issue, you have to think about these other spaces too. You have to recognise the different needs and boundaries and expectations of privacy.

The solutions too, would vary depending on the space. And while I obviously have my thoughts, I think they should be discussed and decided by the women and trans women who will be affected most by them. Not by a man-spreading, man-splainer like myself. But that's the point I'm trying to make; they should be discussed.

The problem I see at the moment is that there is very little discussion happening. There's plenty of abuse and gaslighting, plenty of death and rape threats, plenty of lazy accusations of bigotry and wanting to treat people like "second-class citizens" against women who want to maintain sensible safeguards in their spaces.

But if we could just stop pretending that any discussion of this issue is a declaration of intent to commit genocide, if we could admit that it's extremely reaosnable to want a standard of womanhood that unambiguously excludes me, for example, I don't think I'd write a single further word on this issue.