Well thanks for providing those examples. It might be even better, however, if you provided some links to reports of these incidents. And looking at some of the examples on your list — (Hadden Clark, Michelle Kosilek, Gavin Boyd — for example) it’s not at all clear that they had anything to do with trans women having access to women-only spaces. And it’s hardly surprising that there are some very violent people in prison!

There will of course be examples of violent trans women, just as there are violent men and violent females. Also there will be many examples of males being assaulted by men in men-only facilities — and (probably rarer) examples of females attacking other females in women-only facilities.

The question I asked in my article is: “are trans women any more likely than other women to attack females in toilets and changing rooms?”

Maybe you have an answer to that? It’s not something we can answer through anecdotal evidence.

Then, it would be reasonable to ask how significant any difference in risk was. Suppose the odds that a random trans women would attack someone when they visited the loo was 1 in 100 million. Some people would say that does justify segregation, as ‘even one attack is one attack too many.’ But this is a weak argument, because if you enforced segregation on the basis of such relatively tiny statistical risks, males and females might never be allowed to share public spaces at all. Unisex nightclubs would certainly be right out! And who knows what restrictions we might then place on young black men, who might statistically represent a bigger risk than most other groups?

And if a trans woman is determined to assault someone, not being allowed into a women-only facility isn’t going to stop them. They can either just ignore the rules and force their way in anyway — or just commit the assault somewhere else, such as in a park somewhere.

It’s arguable that there is a level of risk that would justify segregation, but where is the scientific study that shows us how big a risk we’re talking about here?

And then we have to ask something else: If trans women are forced to use men-only facilities, what is the risk that they might get assaulted then — perhaps by some very transphobic men? By banning trans women from women-only facilities, we might be swapping one risk for a considerably bigger one.

So, let’s have the scientific studies and the scientific evidence. If you know of such a study, please provide a link.