Can't believe I'm writing this, but disappointed in JK today

If 20% of women had pelvises that looked male to onlookers, we'd have noticed. That's one in five.

Of course they didn't pop out of the woodwork in the last 10-20 years!

I served a trans woman frequently in the hoisery department of Debenhams when I worked there doing a Saturday job 35 years ago. Could still tell he was a bloke.

The hands (amongst other things) were a dead give away.

I'm not sure all this debate about whether you can tell is all that relevant. Plenty of disguises are convincing, but that doesn't mean someone really is what they disguise themselves as. It can be very hard to tell if someone is disabled, what age they are and what ethnicity they have. But these things remain facts. Sometimes they can be hard to prove - far harder than sex - but we still understand that reality matters.

I don't actually agree with the claims that "you can always tell" - I have met people whose sex I wasn't sure of (not generally trans people, usually certain older butch women) although I think it's very unusual to be unsure once you have heard someone speak, seen them walk etc. There are some trans women and trans men who are quite convincing on screen/in photos though that is rare.

But the fact is that people know what sex they are, certainly in the west, as adults, everyone does. Just as with your age, disability etc, you know if you are pretending to be something you're not. There is no evidence whatsoever that humans have ever changed sex, no matter what they do to themselves.

Saying you can't always tell is irrelevant - so what? If you're male and in a woman's prison or sports team or hospital ward you have a strength advantage and statistically pose a danger that the women who have an exclusive right to be there do not, whatever you look like, and you shouldn't be there.

And the fact that through history some people wanted to be and tried to be the opposite sex is not surprising at all - there have always been stereotyped expectations on the sexes that some will have yearned to escape. That doesn't mean they were the opposite sex or that the opposite sex should have been required to accept them as such.

Gosh are you all still chattering on trying to convince yourself that every single person's sex is identifiable? And that somehow trans people popped out of the woodwork in the last 10 or 20 years?

To save you bothering to do your own research, I'll leave this Google result here.

Start
While transgender individuals have existed throughout history, identifying the exact "first" is difficult due to changing definitions. Roman Emperor Elagabalus (ruled 218–222 CE) is often cited as a very early figure, asking to be called "Lady" and seeking gender-affirming surgery. Modern, medically transitioning pioneers include Dora Richter (first known genital surgery, 1931) and Michael Dillon (first trans man to undergo phalloplasty, 1940s).
National Geographic +4

Key Historical Figures:

• Ancient History (Gala/Galli): In 5000–3000 B.C., Sumerian texts mention gala, priests who held female identities or androgynous roles.
• Roman Emperor Elagabalus (204–222 CE): Often recognized as an early trans figure, Elagabalus preferred to be called queen to her lover, wore feminine clothing, and reportedly sought to undergo genital surgery, asking doctors to "make me a woman"
• Anastasia the Patrician (4th Century CE): Fled her life as a courtier to live in a monastery, presenting and living as a man named Anastasius.
• Dora Richter (1892–1966): A German trans woman who is recognized as the first known person to undergo modern full gender-affirming surgery, including vaginoplasty, in 1931 at the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute.
• Michael Dillon (1915–1962): A British physician who is known as the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty and take testosterone, transitioning in the 1940s.
• Roberta Cowell (1918–2011): A British racing driver who in 1951 became the first British trans woman to undergo modern genital surgery.
• HRC | Human Rights Campaign +4

While earlier individuals existed, these 20th-century pioneers are generally recognized as the first to undergo modern medical transition.

End.

My husband struggles sometimes to identify trans women. He's a bit face blind and hasn't been genetically conditioned to tell the difference between males and females in the way that females are.

A hell of a lot of TW are certain they do pass as women. They don't. I'm not sure what they expect really, do they expect us to tell them that we can tell? Not mentioning it doesn't mean we don't konw.

I don't believe for one second that there are lots of men who are successfully passing as women unnoticed. Given that TW are meant to be a tiny minority I spot an awful lot of them.

TRA have created an atmosphere where it's impolite or distressing to mention their sex, then use the fact that no one has mentioned their sex to prove that they pass.

Its like a 4 year old telling his mum that spiderman is here, leaving the room and returning dressed up, delighted that that she call him spiderman.

TRA use any feature where there is an overlap, like height, or where surgery/drugs can potentially make a difference to believe that they can look like the opposite sex, and ignore all of the other features.

So they are in the height range of a woman, but we're supposed to ignore their voice, or their silhouette? Lots of men say they cant use mens spaces because they have breasts, even though they look so male, no one would notice they have them.

No one see a man of 5foot5 and thinks they have womens height, they see a man who is shorter than average.

Sounds like useful information for any woman living in Afghanistan.

Could also be helpful for a woman needing an abortion in e.g. Texas. Presumably you just 'live as the opposite sex' and the pregnancy disappears.

Just need to work out what 'living as the opposite sex means'.

LOL When women had no source of income other than a husband, being small boned wasn’t the biggest obstacle to living as a woman - they needed a man to support them.

It’s vanishingly unlikely that this was a regular occurrence but that nobody else ever noticed. Especially as literature and history has lots of instances of same sex couples who were more or less open about their relationship, yet there’s never any serious evidence for trans couples.

These days they’d just use the “fairy” insta filter.

oh wait, they do.

The android pelvis is a red herring. I have one. It’s a female shape, just less common. No one would mistake me for a man based on my pelvis.

This is The Long View on faked fairies. The astonishing thing is that so many people (including Conan Doyle) believed in them simply because they wanted to. The faked pictures were made by two little girls as a prank.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002s4cv

To try to put this idiotic argument about the hidden-trans people to bed, let me propose the answer to my own questions about nominating an always-passing trans identifying man. Here's one you'd never know:

Taylor Swift. Yes, actually a trans identifying man. So well passing that nobody would ever know.

What, you say? I'm being daft? You're sure Taylor Swift is female? Well, of course you think that, that's just evidence of how well he passes. Your incredulity that Taylor is a bloke is proof that I'm right.

My claim is that according to you I can just say I’m a man and I’m a man. I asked you how someone lived as the opposite sex and that was your response.

Or going through an airport scanner.

They're going to find out in childbirth, one way or another.

I'm still waiting for a single always-passing-as-a-woman trans identifying man to be proposed. Just one.

Anyone else concerned about the one in five women with an android pelvis?

@Imdunfer ’s argument is the classical “argument from personal belief”:

”I believe that there are some trans identifying men who pass indistinguishably from women therefore such people exist.”

It’s the same as “I believe in fairies therefore fairies exist.”

Nobody has disproved fairies, and nobody can disprove fairies. But faries don’t exist, and someone strong feelings that they should exist is not evidence that they exist.* *

Yes that's what iwe'd I wrote, not this garbage that you claimed I wrote.

"So without making any changes physically, just telling someone I’ll now a man, I get all the male attributes and everyone will see me as a man, not the obvious woman I am! Awesome! Whoop! I’m now a man! No more housework, wife work, childcare worries or any nonsense like that!"

It's all so superficial as well; about whether you can fool the woman on the counter at Boots in the 10 seconds that you interact with her.
No woman is ever going to live, laugh and love with a trans-identifying male without realising that they are male.

If anyone has not seen this, it's worthwhile:

https://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/bmlwalker/

A pp scoffed at the height differential thing upthread. It's true you do get some very tall women, that's not an issue though. Take everything together, especially voice and gait which are very hard to falsify, and it's easy to distinguish between a tall woman and a man.

Women's gaits are different because our legs are literally a different shape to men's. We have a slight angle between the thigh and the calf that men don't have. Once I read about this I've tried looking out for it and it's very obvious.

That is true, but even so I don't think there's a single famous trans-identifying man of whom there is no photo or video anywhere that doesn't give away their sex.

But let @Imdunfer propose one.

Oh no, you first. It’s only polite.

Even if pp could, photos and videos are so misleading compared to meeting someone. The combined senses, in person, give us so much info taken together. As someone pointed out upthread, women have been proven to be much better at this than men.

@Imdunfer should propose a famous trans identifying man who always "passes".

Then we can have a look at photographs, videos of that person and see if we agree there are no give-away features anywhere.