The rules for closing the bar were that one of the regular male customers had to basically be second to last to leave, and he’d check the restrooms (plural – men and women) to make sure that a predator wasn’t hiding in either one before I could actually lock the doors.

The law shouldn’t put the burden of protecting women’s restrooms from rapists and other predators on trans women – we have enough shit to deal with without also being held responsible for acts by people who aren’t us. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the law doesn’t actually allow would-be rapists to enter the women’s restroom in the first place, that there is no community that has instituted laws protecting trans rights (including the right to use the proper restroom) where there’s been a plague of men in dresses committing rape in the restrooms, and some cities and states have had these laws on the books for years.

No law will stop a man who wants to rape a woman from raping a woman. It just won’t happen. The laws against rape now don’t stop men, and why is a rapist who is prepared to violently violate a woman’s body somehow going to respect a law that explicitly forbids him from entering a restroom in the first place? It’s not like the iconic figure-in-a-dress symbol on the women’s restroom is now or has ever been a magical talisman that stops men from entering.

I said in the post that Lisa Harney addressed your argument. Please read that and actually address what she had to say before commenting again.

I think the primary fear is of sexual predators pretending to be transgendered and exploiting the law. I agree that true transgendered wouldn’t be a threat, and sexual assaults by them aren’t an issue, but unless carefully written and enforced this could open the door for truly ruthless predators pretending to be transgendered, putting innocents at risk and reinforcing negative stereotypes, however undeserved.

in the Islamophobic incident in Camden NSW most people basically said that they agreed with the main anti-Islam campaigner but were too scared of racial vilification laws to say it explicitly

I don’t really trust polls. There’s too much evidence that people often give the answers that they think are “politically correct” to poll takers, rather than saying what they actually believe. Also, no one asks how *important* these issues are to people who are privileged enough to not have to think about it — how many cis people, upon hearing of Angie Zapata’s murder, have an attitude of “Yeah, ain’t that horrible? Now, let’s put more burgers on the barbie!!”