But you got me good, I love the Socratic method
Yeah yeah. Bonus round: what about boys going to the men's bathroom?
fuck. That's a very good point. Because this has in fact created problems. For the most part, when I see kids going on the bathroom, parents always go with them. If there's a kid(boy) only with his mother, i've seen no problems with women accepting the kid needs to go to the women's bathroom. The notion is that we protect kids because we do distinguish clearly a possible threat towards them as they're vulnerable. But when reaching adulthood, women are still vulnerable to men strength, so technically still vulnerable.
I assume that to be true for very young boys, but a 12-year-old isn't going to be escorted by mom, or feel particularly great about being dragged into the women's bathroom by her. We're very comfortable letting 12-year-old boys go to the men's bathroom by themselves. Why is that?
I believe it has to do a lot with education. And I mean education as the society education, what people tend to do. Still, my mother would wait outside if we went together somewhere, and for the most part, 12 year old kids don't hang out alone. I'm pretty sure a responsible parent would tell his son to not use certain type of bathrooms (bathrooms that are isolated from the place itself) to prevent things like what happened to cassie hansen. Parents thought a church was a safe haven, but the bathrooms were kinda apart from the place. Result: dead daughter. Then again, this is a case that happened on a 6 year old, but it could happen to a 12 year old too.
A pedophile once tried to lure me to see "the skateboard he had in his car trunk", I booked it. I was about 13 years old. And I've been personally sexually assaulted (if deep tongue kissing is considered sexual) when I was 5 years old. So believe me that there are reasons to care a lot about kids at any age. Any precaution is good precaution. Not to the extent of helicopter parents, but I will never take my child's safety for granted.
I believe that bathrooms on places like restaurants, shopping malls, would pose no threat to kids (or the transgender issue at hand). Then again I don't like in the US and I don't know how public bathrooms are for the most part. So it'd be a stretch for me to have a say in the matter.