Butch women and public loos-not sure if correct place to post..

[Lesbianactually]

My partner is very masculine in appearance and is mistaken for a man all the time. This isn't usually a problem to her as she's aware of (and happy with) what she looks like.

However public loos (including in bars/restaurants etc) are a different story. It limits where we can go out, always has to be somewhere she feels comfortable, and these are few. Where she lives it isn't a very nice area and if I visit her she refuses to go out unless we're not drinking alcohol and/or will be very quick. First world problem I know, but I'd love for her to be able to leave the house for longer on occasion or for us to be able to share a few drinks and have some quality time. She lives with others so we don't get it at home.

She's better than she used to be. A few years ago she made herself quite poorly by holding the urge for up to 6 or 7 hours, & nowadays she won't do this, but largely through avoidance rather than management. She still panics if we go out, quite often. We live near a 'gay village' and she's fine there but last time we went with some friends, they wanted to go to a bar outside of it and she became visibly distressed as we were drinking alcohol and this means she needs the loo more often.

I've tried to help. The crux of the issue is she hates being confronted, told she's in the wrong loo. She's noticed if we're in a not so nice area, people are less tolerant/open minded and when they have confronted her they're quite nasty about it. In nicer areas she's less uncomfortable. In my local pub (we live quite far from one another) she's fine, and she has been confronted in there but she just responded that she was a woman and was there with her girlfriend and she'd show her ID if she wasn't believed. She wasn't upset by this at all but she has also in other places, had some people grab her and try to drag her out, get quite aggressive with her etc.

I know this is an anxiety-induced situation and perhaps does not need specific advice other than for her to get help for anxiety but just wondered if anyone else has experienced anything like this, anything that's good to say to people if she finds herself in this situation, any ways I can help?

She has a disabled key, from the time she made herself ill with this, but it isn't always practical to use that and it would be better for her to be happier to use the female loos generally. It's causing her unhappiness in life and limiting what she does/where she goes.

Thank you.

But the calls to challenge any man in women's toilets do not come with an acknowledgement that there are butch women some of whom look very masculine.

Of course they do. That's why they are being asked!
Most women when confronted by a male or someone they believe is male in a female space will just leave. If we don't challenge those we see as male then what do we do ignore them? Call 999?
Asking someone if they should be in the female space has less consequences than ignoring a male in that space.

It's really weird and sad. I have very very butch lesbian friends and this has never really been an issue for them. Occasionally they have been questioned but the moment they open their mouths it's clear they're women.

I have also seen an Irish lesbian who is obviously female complaining on Twitter that she gets grief when she uses women's toilets. I'm afraid I simply don't believe her.

I have been reading this thread with interest. I am a female who had a double mastectomy due to breast cancer. I live flat, never wear a prosthesis and have short hair due to chemo. I haven't been confronted in a toilet yet but I know of others in a support group who have. There are now more women choosing to live flat.

I'm as GC as they come, but nobody deserves this! Appalling.

FreezingThyme · Yesterday 21:28
Name change fail? I've not name changed? Do you mean the woman I'm talking about? We are an women only group ( WI. )Trans women are allowed but she isn't trans.
So a mixed sex group then.

I was angry when I found out trans women could join the WI. To me, they’ve sold out. It goes against everything the organisation stands for and what we have fought for. In our branch there are all ages , lesbian, straight and a few different nationalities. I would not like a bloke with a penis there no matter what he claimed his gender was. My group to me is a sanctuary. A safe place of supportive women.

@Lesbianactually , your DP is female and happy to be a woman, but she is choosing to present herself in a way that makes her appear male. In a way, she cannot really complain if she is actually mistaken for a man, as she chooses to present herself in that way. If she is choosing to do this, then being mistaken for a male when she goes to the toilet will be one of the unfortunate consequences of her choice.

We cannot expect life to happen as we think it "should" happen, we need to live life as it is.

The elephant in the room that nobody seems to want to drag out is: she could also choose to dress more womanly when she plans to go out for a drink. this way the chance of being mistaken for a man when he goes to the toilet will be greatly reduced. Perhaps simply carrying a woman's jacket to wear on top of her more masculine clothes could do the trick?

These days we are so obsessed with individuality and the "sacredness" of expressing ourselves the way we want that we tend to forget that, if we do this, we need to accept the good and bad consequences of it.

If you dress like a man, you may be mistaken for a man. Fancy that!

If people think you're a man, many will try to stop you going into a women's toilet.

Ergo... if you don't want this to happen, don't present yourself as a man.

I think you have to factor in people going out; having a few drinks; being a bit intoxicated; just seeing the back of someone disappearing into a cubicle. I don't think you can categorically say that all women will recognise the sex of a person - or have time to do so, when visiting a loo.

This OP centres on one person's feelings. It's not a polemic against gender critical attitudes. I think it's most decent to consider that the OP isn't making a political point. Even if she were, it's not healthy forum etiquette to jump to that conclusion, and there's a unique situation to be considered and engaged with as an idea, without diverting the discussion to a hot topic..

I imagine that one could be 'comfortable' with one's appearance, but be distressed to think that every time you want to pee you are going to be frightening other cloakroom users. Anticipating encountering shocked and angry responses, is not really a nice state of mind to be in.

As for 'comfortable', I imagine OP's girlfriend has got to be comfortable with how she is. Just like we all do. What else can she do about it? 'Comfortable' for her could be: 'I've learned to live with how I am and how I seem to compare to other people, and I'll just get on with earning my living and surviving'. It's a mature decision on her part. Her experience in the toilets could bring up all sorts of other half-memories to do with feeling accepted, and perhaps that is why she is anxious.

But, I still think that this is one for the pub or eaterie management to help with. It's hard for OP friend to be in this position, if she doesn't like confrontation, but it might be easiest for the landlord/manager to go to the cloakroom door and say: "Jenny's got a vagina, and she's using this toilet". It might even happen that management might have a staff toilet, not to tucked away in their private area, that OP friend could be allowed to use, if venue is very busy.

I am sorry for your girlfriend. Unfortunately this seems to be a case of scared women scaring other women in a situation not of our making.

This is what 'gender criticals' have to deal with when they point out the many cases of men who have a fetish for wearing dresses commiting crimes in women's toilets, changing rooms, prisons, so many of them arrested for raping children etc.

Maybe the Aunt Lydia's who are hell bent on destroying women's rights can have a good think about what they are pushing and supporting. Think about the women in other countries who have no rights, the girls that aren't allowed go to school, the crimes committed against them purely because they are female. Men worldwide know exactly what a woman is. It's a huge shame so many women will live in denial for male acceptance and happily give away our hard fought for rights.

So she was asking for it??

If you dress like a man, you may be mistaken for a man. Fancy that!

well no

i wear womens jean and a womans jacket and ive still been mis-sexed on a few occasions and told i was going into the wrong loo (by a man)

im not going to wear a tutu and a pink jacket just in case

and I’m not a butch or a lesbian

i agree with others on the thread too numerous to mention ….and i see what antelope is saying

i think ‘masculine’ women have on occasion been blocked from the ladies loo pretty much for ever, i am happy to be told that these incidences are unfortunately rising. But that is absolutely completely and utterly down to the events of the last 5/10 years

years ago i might have glanced at someone in the bogs and thought they looked ‘masculine’ at first glance but I wouldn’t have looked again or said anything because obviously they were female cis they were in the ladies bogs….not anymore

Fuck me sideways

thats a cos not a cis!!!!

teach me not to type because….mrs holt was right all these years

I'm not sure what presenting yourself as a man entails. Most women dress in jeans and tee shirts or sweaters and flat shoes. Fashion is fairly unisex. OP's girlfriend gets taken for male because some people think she looks male.

Dressing like a woman to avoid harassment is a ridiculous idea. Girls have fought hard to be able to wear trousers to school in winter to keep their legs warm and presumably to avoid showing their knickers if crawling around the floor for a large-scale art project.

When women get older, short hair is indicated as more flattering because long bouncy hair can form a great contrast with an aged and lined face. (Aged 60, I've been having these decisions to make about my hair style.) Mascara can accentuate the thinness of your aging lashes. In the same way, having less feminine facial features doesn't mean that sporting long hair will make you look feminine. And beyond that, surely people should have some choice in how they style themselves.

Back to the 'roping in pub management' idea, which I incline towards I think staff around the place is the best idea. Punters should approach them for help rather than themselves accosting the individual who appears to have walked into the wrong convenience.

Perhaps I’m being too simplistic here but if i saw a particularly masculine looking woman in the ladies’ toilets I’d assume they were a transman (if trans at all), not a trans woman who would surely be making every effort to look female. And therefore (arguably) in the correct convenience.

Or they could simply be a woman.

Nice to have that luxury. I know it happens.

And aurynees comment that the solution is to dress "like a woman", is a perfect example of how some individual gender-critical women are making life harder for women who do not fit into neat boxes of feminine and largely gender conforming. Feminism used to be about fighting for women to be who we are in all our diversity, not to push us into boxes.

Feminism used to be about fighting for women to be who we are in all our diversity, not to push us into boxes.

Feminisim continues to do that. It is the gender crowed that believe children are trans if they play with toys marketed at the opposite sex or choose clothing marketed the same way. The same crowed believe being a women is about wearing dresses, make up and long hair while doing cute twirlies and head tilts...cos ya know that's all women are.

As I said yesterday you can put foxes in the hen house then complain that the hens are scared of anything with a bushy tail.

@CrossStichQueen Have you missed the comment in this thread saying women should dress like women - whatever that means. This is not uncommon in gender critical groups. Very anti feminist.

What is a luxury belief @antelopevalley is pretending that we can't tell the difference between men and women.

Have you missed the comment in this thread saying women should dress like women - whatever that means. This is not uncommon in gender critical groups. Very anti feminist.

So take it up with the posters that said that. Many feminists do not believe women should dress more feminine in order to stop being viewed as male most feminists believe that keeping all males out of female spaces is the answer as this reduces the need to question butch looking women if males are no longer allowed free regnum as they have now been gifted.

Good job I don't do that then.

I have been gender-critical all my life and participating in these groups for over five years and never seen any gender-critical woman say that women have to dress like women, whatever that means, and never seen aurynne participate in those forums either