This whole argument of support for a very marginalised group somehow being a "widespread attack on women" is a thinly veiled attempt to keep marginalising trans women.
Because most people reacted well? Good one. No, it's representative. Women lost their jobs just for agreeing with JKR on this. People talking about how they want to or how everybody should "punch TERFs" and all that is also not made up either, that reaches into the ranks of German politicians even. The question isn't so much whether that's going on but rather who looks the other way while it does, and why.
> This whole argument of support for a very marginalised group somehow being a "widespread attack on women" is
Your strawman, and basically proves my point. I can, in context of TERF's being mentioned in one breath with Nazis and pedophile, even show you threats of violence for a perfectly valid statement, and you can neither confirm the statement is valid, nor condemn the threats. Instead you attack me as well, that I am "thinly veiling" what you make up from thin air.
And women are also VERY marginalised, and brutalized, and have been for millennia. That lesbians get attacked for "genital preferences" or women for saying "actually, don't call us menstruating bodies, we're women", is just a continuation of that.
Women don't want trans people to not have human rights, they just want to keep theirs, too. To frame that as an attack on trans people is just rich.
> That lesbians get attacked for "genital preferences" or women for saying "actually, don't call us menstruating bodies, we're women", is just a continuation of that.
Of course attacking lesbians or women in general is not okay. But that doesn't require throwing trans people under the bus either.
How not? There is an inevitable clash of rights when it comes to protected spaces and who is permitted where.
A group of lesbian women want to hold female-only events, but they're not permitted by law to exclude the heterosexual males who call themselves lesbian women.
Similar conflicts apply to most other women's spaces, between the women who want to maintain these spaces as female-only, and the males who want to gain access to these spaces on the basis that they identify themselves as women or female.
To me, it seems the obvious criterium is: have you transitioned? I don't think that's an unreasonable standard, although it can be hurtful to transgenders who are still transitioning and eager to finally get accepted for who they are.
In cases of single-gender events, it also depends on what the exact reason is for making it single gender. There are fuzzy edges around gender, and if you're going to draw a line somewhere, it doesn't hurt to stop and think about why and where exactly you're going to draw it.
That they may insist on access to spaces they know are intended to be female-only, despite being well aware that many women are uncomfortable with this male imposition, is already an indicator of dubious intention. Perhaps not directly predatory, but certainly a violation of boundaries.
I don't think that an advanced stage of transition can broadly override this, in reality. Becoming a modern type of eunuch isn't the same as actually being a woman. It seems unreasonable to compel women to accept these as being equivalent.