Canadian Politics Today

So you'd feel it's reasonable for the Muslim woman to want a ****-free environment, and that the gym should find a way to accommodate her, but everybody else needs to toughen up?

Whaaaaat ?  That's a complete non-sequitur.  How did you even get there ?  You asked why some food choices are protected by law and I answered you.

So it's like a contest?  You only get a safe-space if you're the most oppressed?

I don't know, but it seems to me excluding men is reasonably rationalized as a way to provide space for women.  I don't know how else these things would be decided.

Yes, trivializing the feelings and experiences of those who aren't comfortable in the environment being proposed will assuredly lead to understanding on this issue. 

I don't mean to trivialize those feelings but to point out how using such arguments would not be acceptable in any other context, and yet are seen as acceptable here.

--Brandi Sudyk

This quote comes from the perspective that trans women simply can not be seen as women.  It's an understandable point of view, but it isn't aligned with the emerging view (I can't call it a consensus yet) of human rights for trans people.

But this whole issue started with "I am not comfortable exercising with men" and people accepted that as valid.

Yes, because of the dynamic of providing a place where people feel safe.  The idea of excluding me from a space because of my gender is an affront to my individual rights, because it assumes I am a risk, however on the whole it provides rights to a group.  The principle, in theory, is reasonable accommodation. 

As such:

A 2015 study [PDF] reported that trans Ontarians had “nearly universally reported” experiences of transphobia, and 67 per cent “feared they would die young.”

That reality is especially harsh for trans women. They are targeted not just because they are transgender, but also because they are women. That means they are “particularly vulnerable,” as the Ontario Women’s Justice Network puts it, to transphobic violence, sexual violence, and transphobic sexual violence. (In 2014, 55 per cent of all victims of hate homicide in the U.S. were transgender women, almost all women of colour.) It’s the perfect example of intersectionality—different layers of identity that co-exist and in this case impede. Gapka calls it “additional hardship.”

http://torontoist.com/2016/06/379820/

 

I think there's a general standard of behavior we'd hope for from people we share a locker room with... personally I feel like there's no reason anybody in the locker room should know your sexual preference, and if you're acting in a way that makes your sexual preference known it's probably because you're doing something that makes somebody uncomfortable.
 

Inappropriate behaviour is always a reason for an individual to be excluded.  But you couldn't see BodyBlitz excluding Lesbians because straight women 'felt uncomfortable' about it, nor could you come up with an outlying case where some incident happen and use that as an excuse to ban Lesbians.  These are some of the arguments you can see being used against trans women.