I appreciate your perspective. I agree with a lot, including that trans people are legitimately marginalized in our society in some measure (certainly the extent to which authorities fail to investigate murders of trans victims is abhorrent).
> The answer is not for the marginalized people and the dominant group to debate directly.
To be clear, this isn't "trans people" vs "non-trans people". There are lots of trans people who don't think it's appropriate to change our bathroom policies and non-trans people who think we should change those policies. The parties to the debate are different ideologies, not different trans/non-trans identities.
With respect to your steps vs debate, I think your steps describe a national debate, except for the earlier caveat that the debate isn't "trans vs non-trans" but rather different ideological positions and also that at any given moment different individuals in the debate (on any side) are at different "steps" in the process, and also that individuals on all sides vary in their willingness to listen or participate in good faith.
So basically a debate is a mess because people aren't uniformly acting in good faith nor are they uniformly disciplined about listening before speaking nor are they acting in synchrony (everyone within a group meets to listen to an ambassador for the other group, and then carefully considers together, and so on). However, over the course of months or years, things do tend to converge in a direction that most people feel pretty good about. That's what progress looks like.
> At no point in that course of action do random members of the dominant group need to discuss these changes with members of the marginalized group. As a white person I simply do not challenge what people of color say. There is no need for me to challenge them and I recognize that as a member of the dominant group it could be emotionally distressful for them to have to discuss it with me.
With respect, I disagree in the strongest possible terms here. No doubt you mean well, but black people and white people are equal, and race doesn't confer anyone with either authority or fragility with respect to having their positions criticized. If any given black person or white person feels triggered (in the clinical, not pejorative, sense), they are certainly not obligated to engage with the criticism, but to assume that someone is fragile on the basis of their race is the height of racism (however well intended).