Transgender bathrooms

Here's a trans woman:

Ok, imagine two scenarios:

1. She walks into a women's restroom.
2. She walks into a men's restroom.

Who is in more danger? Is it the other women and girls in the women's restroom? Or is she, herself, in far more danger in the men's restroom?

If I painted my nails red and drove just a few miles out from our current liberal town, I'd legitimately fear for my safety in some bars' restrooms. I can't imagine if I was wearing a dress.

"I'm sorry, you'll have to use the men's restroom, where Bubba Joe will ensure everyone stays safe."

And when people talk about their "lil girl" being in the same bathroom as "some man in a dress", or yell "think of the children!", I say yes: think of the children: The transgender children. A lot of kids start transitioning very young, like 8 or 9 (or much much younger). Imagine some teenager getting beaten for being different in the wrong place. And if you believe transgender kids need to be beaten in order to "cure them", please stay away from me and my family (Based on tons of comments I've seen, a lot of people do believe this.)

The simple fact is transgender people are on the receiving end of far more violence than the average person, in a restroom or not.

I'm sorry, you'll need to use the women's restroom, where you won't make anyone uncomfortable.

Yes, someone somewhere will try to claim to be transgender to harass women in the women's restroom, and that's bad. But harassment and abuse are already illegal, and "man pretending to be transgender in order to assault women in the women's restroom" is an exceedingly rare crime: transgender people have been using restrooms for a very long time, but anti-trans activists can only ever bring up a few cases of abuse. So using "someone could use it for abuse" as an argument against transgender rights makes little sense, and could equally apply to anything (Catholic priests, guns, string), but somehow 99% of anti-trans people never make the argument to ban gun sales because someone might use it for non-self-defense purposes.

There have been gay men and women using restrooms and locker rooms forever, yet "gay person harrassing straight person or straight child" is not a huge deal, is it? If it is, I haven't heard about it. There are far more gay people than trangender people, surely that would be a bigger issue and we should be hearing something about it. There are laws about loitering and harrassing already on the books. Regardless of gender identity, there are numerous laws and social conventions which prevent "somebody just hanging out and staring at other people in the locker room". That's the way it works now, so adding gender identity to the equation doesn't really seem to change much.

I've avoided discussing this on Facebook because I don't want to debate with that kind of ignorance all day, but I really want to ask: do you personally know any transgender people? You might and not know it, but I doubt that any of the people spewing tired old arguments on my newsfeed have ever (knowingly) interacted with any, much less got to know them. If they knew a cousin or a coworker or a doctor who was transgender, I doubt they'd be making such a hateful, ignorant fuss about it.

Further reading:

1. Disorder