Stop using my safety as an excuse for your hatred.
If conservative men are suddenly so concerned about making this world a safer place for women, why don't they focus on the streets? Public parking decks? Bars? Their own houses? If they're so worried about women & children being preyed upon, why not try to prosecute those who have actually assaulted someone? I get the feeling it's because they'll find that most of the people they'd be prosecuting are cisgender straight men, & it seems to me that most conservative men aren't interested in that kind of justice.
Why not acknowledge the fact that sexual assault on college campuses is rampant? Because so far, no conservative politician has raised a fuss about that.
Why not fight rape culture, if you're so concerned for the safety of the women you know? Stand up against street harassment. Fight unfair laws that allow a rapist to see a child he fathered as a result of sexual assault. Stop asking women what they were wearing, if they were drinking, how many partners they'd had in the past. Act as though they're a victim of the rapist, not of their own actions.
I personally have never felt unsafe in a public restroom because another woman was in there, trans or cis. Places I have felt threatened: Walking down the street going about my own business, walking to the tanning salon across the street with my friend when I was 16, in a bar when a guy wouldn't accept that I didn't have any interest in him, at a party in a friend's house, in a distant relative's living room when I was a child & all he had to say was he "didn't remember" to make my side of the story suddenly disappear, in a public parking deck when two men followed me to my car & only fled when another car turned their lights on them, backstage during a performance, walking to my apartment/dorm/house from my car. All of these are places I have feared for my safety. Never have I felt unsafe in any place because a trans woman was present. I have felt unsafe plenty of places in the presence of cisgender straight men.
If a man is going to just dress in drag to go into a bathroom & assault women, 1) they don't count as a trans woman, & therefore your hate is misplaced; & 2) a law isn't going to stop them from doing that.
If you're so concerned with stopping the sexual assault of women, maybe you should start by showing that you won't stand for assault by your own kind. End the substantial backlog of rape kits. End the stigma that rape victims brought it on themselves. End the rape culture that you perpetuated.
Either start there, or stop using women as an excuse for your hatred. Because if you only care about our safety in public restrooms, then it's not really about our safety. Just like it wasn't about water fountains in the 1960s.
