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?”

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I genuinely couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A woman called in to make a point and instead of responding to her argument, the guest asked her what sex she was - and even questioned whether she’d been tested to confirm it.

I found it incredibly demeaning and unsettling. AIBU to think this kind of behaviour undermines the whole idea of respectful discussion and actually silences women?

I've been asked directly whether I'm male or female ('a boay or a lassie' to be precise) and I just answered the question. Unfortunately that's where we are at times. Hopefully things will settle down as a result of the judgement and we can get back to addressing stereotypes.

Yes but not in your woman's voice

The simple fact is you cannot police this without resorting to extremely draconian, invasive measure. There are, whether you like it or not, trans women who really pass very well. There are women who are sexually ambiguous, whether you admit it or not. People are complicated and sex is varied.

Trans people have been toileting and changing where they please since forever. This has not changed. The only thing that has changed is the unrelenting negative reporting on trans people and certain obsessive individuals who do nothing with their lives but scour the internet, desperately searching for any individual examples of bad trans people.

But well done. You've won. I have no doubt that this will go further, and we will see innocent transpeople and sexually ambiguous women (and men) arrested, harassed and hurt just for being in a space. I hope you're happy. I guess I've got to be happy to collateral damage.

What is a woman’s voice? I have over produced testosterone since puberty, I can hit an A2 comfortably and when I’m upset I can be very low in a natural talking voice. This is exactly the problem. You think you know all women based on the centre of a very wide spectrum.

Transpeople had lots of opportunities to campaign for third spaces instead of expecting access to womens spaces that don't belong to them that women never consented to them taking. My sympathy therefore is limited.

You asked a question and I'm trying to help. I can see that this is not working out as a discussion so I will leave it here.

I wish more people had this attitude with the men who have caused this issue - the failure to do that is actually what has changed. What a horrible emotionally manipulative post.

It is literally unbelievable to me that there are women on here actively supporting the bullying and harassment of other women because there was a trans women somewhere else who did something wrong.

"Collateral damage"!

We're worth it to them Fanny. It's worth us being confronted and intimidated because there's a small chance that we might have dicks and they have every right to know what's in our pants.

I'm so tempted to put on my deepest voice and just tell them to fuck off.

Also it’s not me as an adult woman I am most worried for - in my support group there are ambiguous girls under 18, some of whom haven’t gone through puberty at all yet due to hormonal delays etc but who look like young, ambiguous adult women. These girls struggle enough with their identity as women because they’ve grown up being told if you’re not feminine you must therefore be trans by their misinformed peers. We are hurting these girls and throwing them out of the tent with the trans women and calling it an unfortunate side effect of the fight to protect women from trans women and I just worry at what point we decide the harm we’re doing outweighs the protections it’s affording? The SC ruling was and is right, but I’m not sure we should be celebrating.

I understand my existence is confronting, thanks for engaging respectfully.

I wish I had your balls! (SORRY.)

As it is though, I don’t, because I’ve spent my life being told im not woman enough. I found feminism in my teens and it was the first time I felt gloriously female. Feminism was about NOT conforming to everyone else’s ideas of what women were or ‘should’ be and that, to a girl struggling with facial hair, weight gain and an absolute corker of a nose, meant the whole world. I was a WOMAN and it was ok for me to be that and simultaneously have to shave my belly button strip. It was ok for me to be a woman AND sing baritone with the lads at choir in school because they were all mumblers and I could roar their part out like a bloody lion AND I was a girl so fuck you shit heads who bullied me, I’m awesome because FEMINISM fuckers. That’s how feminism used to make me feel, like I could do anything and it didn’t matter what I looked like because society was wrong and I was right to look the way I did as a direct challenge. It was middle fingers up and off I went.

Then the trans debate started up in about 2015ish and that’s when I started noticing I was getting a lot more negative attention and for ages I wasn’t sure why, I thought it was a left wing/ right wing thing for the longest time (I had blue hair for a while) until the comments started and that’s when I realised it was because I look masculine and like I was trying too hard to look like a woman, and suddenly everyone was scared of trans women and therefore scared of me. Except I never felt the people who challenged me were afraid, I was though and it’s women I’m afraid of not men.

I don’t know the exact moment it happened, but suddenly feminism doesn’t make me feel like it doesn’t matter what I look like anymore, in fact it’s the only thing that makes me feel like that matters very very much. Like I say, kicked out of the tent.

I agree with third spaces being the natural solution, just not a practical one. My mother is disabled and it’s hard enough to use the single available disabled loo in restaurants when the baby change is always in there so you end up queuing behind parents all the time. It’s not practical to expect every establishment to retrofit a whole new set of toilets so it will be the disabled loo that ends up as the third space..

Lol it's very much alright.

I know you and I are on different sides probably, as you agree with the ruling and I don't. But I really have empathy and also feeling massively let down by women who proport to care about other women. This thread has been eye opening. Some people seem to care about women, but not women who don't 'look like' women. They're worth it as sacrificial lambs just so long as trans women are hurt.

i have said: i generally don't challenge. But i'd say I'm sorry that you are upset, but i am also concerned that women's spaces are reserved for those who belong in them.

i know this is probably a really emotional and difficult thing for you, and I'm sorry it affects you. But If someone really thought you were a man - do you honestly believe they shouldn't point out that it's the ladies?

I'm trying to find a way that potentially hurts the minimum number of people here and do appreciate your replies.

Got it. We should just put up with every, literally, Tom Dick and Harry coming in because some people might be challenged and get upset.

Since most people here have said we don't actually challenge people, and are talking hypothetically to find a way forward the replies are disappointing. Because bottom line they are the arguments the TRAs have been using.

I'm out.

ETA: there was a reason i put "collateral damage" in those quotes. Don't let that fuel your outrage.

You’ve articulated something for me there, it’s ’I will hurt us as long as it also hurts them’ that I’m struggling with when the ‘us’ actually just means women who don’t look like women. As I’ve said I don’t see any other way the SC ruling could have gone and I agree with the verdict but I really wish it wasn’t brought in the first place. That’s the bit. I’ve just had a look and less than 1,000 GRC’s are applied for per year, and in my support group alone there’s 20,000 members all of whom have either the severe form of PCOS or another hormonal issue that impacts their gender presentation (it’s mostly PCOS though, overwhelmingly). That’s the problem though, the trans community have been massively amplified (often against their will) and we haven’t, so the threat from them seems larger than the risks to us, when in reality the numbers say different.

YANBU.

Even more startling, here is Heather Herbert - who once posted on social media a selfie taken lying on a toilet floor while dilating a newly acquired faux vagina - asking Martine Croxall on BBC News how she would feel if told she was not a woman 😔.

Yes, I believe that unless I am staring at you, trying to approach you or doing either of those things to someone else, you shouldn’t approach me. In return I will never ever make conversation in a women’s toilet, I will never make eye contact or approach you. I will piss and leave like pretty much everyone else.

But the problem isn't simply the trans community. The problem is all men - anyone of which could access women's spaces on the grounds that they 'identify as women' - with women being powerless to stop them.

If Tom dick or Harry are staring at you, have been hanging around in there too long, have an erection, leer, try to talk to you then yes absolutely then you can challenge them. I would say if they engage with you in any way, that gives you the right, My name is Kate though and I tend to piss, wash my hands and leave like most other people. Because I know I make proper uncomfortable I wouldn’t dream of making myself conspicuous in any way.

You are powerless to stop a man who means you harm from entering a women’s space and abusing you regardless of what he is wearing. A man who wants to rape you ina women’s bathroom isn’t going to feel the need to justify his presence to you and say ‘I’m a woman’ before he attacks you. Likewise, if he wants to stare at you while
you wash your hands because he gets a perverted kick from being in a woman’s loo, he’s going to do that and your discomfort and challenge of him will be part of the kink. No one should be staring or attacking anyone else in a woman’s space, but the SC ruling doesn’t stop perverted men from entering women’s spaces in any way, sadly.

I think where we probably differ is that I just don't believe that trans women are inherently a threat. That's why I get torn to pieces on here lol. I spend an awful lot of time around trans women and gender diverse people. I've never felt unsafe in those spaces (namely the gay scene in a big city). When I lost my hair, all the (well meaning and wonderful) straight cis women in my family looked at with pity, and I don't blame them. My queer friends didn't. They just told me I'd managed to out-butch the butchest woman in the group and that it suits me!

No. I'm not waiting to be confronted by a leer or an erection, or worse, waiting for my daughter to be confronted by it. We've had issues with men in two public facilities in my areas filming girls in public toilets. I'm truly sorry it's difficult for you but no, I'm not waiting for these things to happen.

That doesn't mean we welcome them in with open arms. 🙄

Now we know the law. There can be no excuses from men who want to access women's spaces, they know they aren't allowed. If they enter it's because they've chosen to break the law. Women can now feel more empowered to assert themselves and uphold the law.

And of course this goes far beyond bathrooms into areas which will be dependent upon ID.

More entitled male behaviour. Good on that presenter.