To be shocked by a transwoman guest on Jeremy Vine today asking a female caller what sex she is - and whether she’s “been tested?”

But who calls her out on it? As for other women who are suddenly claiming that their tall female friends or PCOS female friends are being called out and harassed in public toilets by other women, colour me sceptical.

It just goes to show how ignorant men are in general about the female body. Most of us spontaneously menstruate in our teens. 100% of girls who have menses are female. No testing required. Following from that an awful lot of us have been pregnant. Again, 100% of humans who have been spontaneously pregnant are female. The idiocy is painful.

What test could they have meant??

I think Maggie Chapman is genuinely, certifiably insane. The things she's come out with are beyond batshit.

That doesn't mean we open the door to them and invite them into our intimate spaces to give them more opportunities however.

This is all about the bad behaviour of men. I hope it's cracked down on quickly.

You do know that there are absolute numpties like Green MP Maggie Chapman, great ally of the trans, who says stuff like she doesn't know what chromosomes she has as she has never been tested? Despite giving birth to children? Yes, there are great answers to the questions but we are really dealing with the deliberately goady here, and the intent of the question is to mock and demean women.

Men don’t need to pretend to be women in order to hurt women, or to enter women’s spaces uninvited. I hope the SC ruling is enough to help women feel safer so the trans debate comes out of the media spotlight and I can then feel less conspicuous again.

I didn’t say hang on a minute I’m female, my breath caught in my throat and I was too focused on not crying to say anything back. That probably confirmed to these women that they were right. They probably left the interaction feeling they’d done some excellent feminism.

I got challenged a lot less before trans people were all over the media, it really got severe in about 2016.

This. Seems to be a lot of angry men on TV lately.

Really? Because there’s loads of us. You’re a gynae nurse you’re not an endocrinologist which is where most of us with severe PCOS tend to end up. I don’t think I’ve ever needed to see gynae in relation to PCOS, why would I?

@FannycrevasseOut of interest, did you get challenged more before or after tw were allowed to assume they could use the ladies? And what happened when you said hang on a minute I'm female?

As I said, I agree with the SC ruling, I wish, selfishly, however it had never been brought to the SC in the first place because I wish trans people generally hadn’t been targeted by the far right, catapulted into the national discourse and disproportionately depicted as a threat. Yes, there are men who pretend to be trans or pretend to be women in order to harm women, but no one disagrees that the vast majority of trans people (of
which there are vanishingly few) are just trying to live quiet lives, like me.

The SC ruling doesn’t change my position legally at all, what it does though is allows my sex to be challenged more, emboldens other women to question me more, makes my life more conspicuous. If you ask me to prove I’m a woman in order to still attend my all women therapy group for example, are they expecting me to show them my vulva? Carry around my birth certificate? (Which of course I could have had changed if I were male), on the spot DNA test? Realistically, what’s going to happen is my looks will be the only proof of sex anyone will ever actually use which in my case makes life a lot more difficult.

I feel for you, but this situation had come about as a result of men breaking the social contract by entering women's spaces - making women much more suspicious than they ever used to be.

Hopefully in time, trust in men to do the right thing will grow and problems like this will diminish.

I am a female who has birthed 2 children. My problem isn’t me not knowing my sex, it’s other women looking at me and assuming they know my sex. I don’t have a DSD, I have PCOS (admittedly quite severe). I am part of a support group for other women with PCOS and hormonal disorders and there’s bloody loads of us and many of us are bricking it.

So what would you have preferred the ruling to be? @Fannycrevasse The SC made a ruling that defined woman in a way that excludes TW, and as you are not a TW It makes no difference to your position. I empathise with the difficulties caused to you by the moves to include men in women's facilities, but what would you have hoped for from the SC to make this better for you?

I’ll make this point outside of a reply because I actually think it’s worth highlighting.

While I agree with the ruling and accept it was required to protect women and girls, I am a woman who was assigned female at birth who, due to PCOS and a few other hormonal quirks grows quite thick facial hair, which I pluck but when things are bad, I have to shave which leaves me with a shadow. I’m also overweight and unfortunately have a naturally quite ‘masculine’ set of facial features (I take after my dad). I wear my hair shortish and I don’t wear very feminine clothes anymore because when I do, I look like a trans woman to other women and I find I get stared at less when at a glance, people assume im
male. When I used to wear dresses, I got challenged in public toilets by women quite a few times over the years. One woman shouted ‘you’re a pervert coming into the ladies where there’s little girls!’, another spoke to me at the sinks and said ‘you do realise we’ll never accept trans women are women, you’re not welcome here’. Another said ‘you don’t pass you know’ on her way out as I was entering a cafe. I will say I have never once had abuse thrown at me by a man. It has gotten a hundred times worse in the last couple of years to the point where I fully stopped dressing in feminine clothes about a year ago and whenever I can, I use disabled loos/ baby changes. I am a ‘cis’ (I hate that word) female.

Despite agreeing the supreme court ruling protects MOST women, it actually makes my life significantly harder but when I try to talk about this, im immediately assumed to be a TRA. I’m fully expecting to be challenged more often now and asked to ‘prove’ my sex and I’m genuinely frightened about it. All I’ll ask is that people don’t take this ruling as cart blanche to be arseholes to people you don’t think are feminine enough.

I used to believe feminism existed to make sure we smashed through the image of what women SHOULD be, I believed it existed to help women like me. But, if this Supreme Court ruling was an act of feminism, then I feel very much kicked out of the tent.

Woah, untwist, I’m not making any point other than the irony in the OP who seems to have spectacularly missed the point.

No one in this scenario was forcing anyone else to do or say anything. The person calling in asked the woman’s sex and whether she had ever had her sex tested which OP found so spectacularly offensive she decided to write a post about it. Yet, the Supreme Court ruling (something I agree wholeheartedly with if that matters to you) opens some women up to exactly this if they happen not to look ‘female’ enough. As a woman with severe PCOS who’s been challenged in a toilet before, I’m troubled by it although recognise that there was no other sane outcome of the Supreme Court ruling, and my own case here is an edge case compared to the good the ruling can do for the protection of women and girls.

This is where I think both the OP and you have come unstuck and where you need to reflect: you jumped down my throat not knowing my own beliefs because you were looking for opposition and not for discussion. OP has done the same thing and it’s not how we navigate any of this sensibly. My original comment gave no indication of which ‘side’ I’m on because I don’t think picking sides and declaring war on the other one is helpful at all. You and I probably agree more than we disagree on this particular topic, but even though I’m in your ‘side’ it doesn’t mean I can’t understand why the Supreme Court ruling isn’t all ‘good’ and why I believe recognising where it also harms women is important.

Even the name 'Plastic' is a very pornified choice that strongly suggests fetishistic motivation rather than genuine dysphoria to me.

Of all of the thousands of established female names from which this person could have chosen, in the quest to pass as a bona fide woman, why on earth would you choose such an odd, unpleasant-sounding non-name?

Oh look, apparent trans people absolutely not conforming to opposite sex stereotypes.

I can't believe there are people arguing in all seriousness that there's nothing to do with stereotypes.

Edit: also it's lawful to exclude both.

All of Life is a test. Then you die. 🤣

How would you know?

You can assume that when you see someone you think is trans that you’re right.

But you’re also assuming that you’re right when you see someone who you think has an appearance that matches their genetics. Someone who’s really successfully transitioned wouldn’t be apparent to you, especially as those people tend to keep very, very quiet about their history.

(yes, I’m making an assumption that you don’t genetically test everyone presenting as a woman that you meet).

It pretty obviously means she had some sort of editing mistake - probably meant to type ‘The reality is you are the sex observed at birth’ or similar.