Jeez, people like you love making the race/trans comparison until you're asked why it's valid to just declare that you're a woman, but you can't just declare that you're black. Then it's not okay. Right? 😏

But sure, the difference is that "white" is not a protected class. There is a very clear difference between women wanting to be separated from men in some instances (for their safety, or for their ability to compete in sport for example), and white people forcing black people to live separately, with lower standards, because of their racism.

There are good, objective reasons why women occasionally need spaces separate from men. There is no good reason why white people need spaces separate from black people. This is obvious to anybody who isn’t racist. God, you "woke" lot are so convinced you have the moral high ground, you don’t even see that your arguments are almost always dripping with racism and/or misogyny.

As for the burden of proof, I'll repeat that I have never claimed that trans women are a threat to women. So there's no need to demonstrate anything. I'm saying that the proposed re-definition of "woman" to "anybody who says they're a woman," will inevitably weaken society's ability to keep women safe from men. Not trans women, MEN. If you can't see the difference between the two, you're not very good at this whole "trans ally" thing. You're also perfectly proving Rowling's point.

This doesn't mean that trans people don't need and deserve protection too (again, primarily from men). Both Rowling and I have stated this explicitly. But society has functioned for a very long time on the basis that in certain circumstances, women, because of certain sex-based realities, get their own spaces, their own sports etc.

So if you're saying society should change in a way that makes a significant number of women feel less safe and comfortable, if you're saying that women should suddenly just "ignore penises" in spaces that were created to give them privacy, if you're saying that a man should be able to gain access to a female changing room or crisis shelter, simply by asserting that he's a woman, then the burden is on you to justify the change.

You’re right, the First Amendment protects your right to be a misogynist. It protects your right to condescend to women about lives and experiences you know nothing about. But whether you like it or not, women have rights too. And if you don't care enough to think carefully about how to protect their rights and safety as well as trans women's, don't try to convince yourself that you have anything even approaching empathy.