Why can't people respect the rules around toilets!?!?

[coffeeandmycats]

I’m really angry and just need to get this off my chest. Me and my sister run a small shop, just the two of us and a couple of customer toilets, one for biological women, one for men, signs on the door. Never had any trouble. Until today.
A regular female customer comes up looking pretty upset, says there’s a man in the women’s loo. I go in to check. At first it sort of looked okay, hair, maybe a trans woman? But then I heard a deep voice, saw stubble and a broad build, a wig that looked like a last-minute costume. It was clearly a bloke who didn’t pass. Not even close.
I said politely, this is the women’s loo, please leave. He stared at me and said flat out, “I was born female.” Not I identify as a woman, he literally claimed he was biologically female. I asked him to go and he refused.
So I rang 101, didn’t want drama and wasn’t sure what rights we had as shop owners. The police said we can’t challenge how someone describes themselves. If he says he was born female, that’s it. We’re not allowed to question it based on how he looks. And since no laws were broken, they won’t come unless he’s being abusive or refusing to follow reasonable requests after shouting multiple times.
They also confirmed that the new Supreme Court judgment about women-only spaces is civil law, not criminal. That means even though legally women are defined by birth, you still can’t challenge someone in the moment just because they say they’re female.
I looked into it after, and yep, the Supreme Court (in For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers) ruled that “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 means biologically female. But that applies to protecting women-only spaces under civil law. It doesn’t let us stop someone on the spot from walking into the wrong loo. The police still can’t act if someone says they’re female, even if it’s clearly false.
This bloke walked into the women’s loo, lied about being born female, made women uncomfortable, and we’ve got no legal leg to stand on to stop him. Women customers left feeling unsafe.
So what exactly are we supposed to do? Sit back and let it happen because the law only kicks in later on? Are we just meant to trust someone who’s lying about their sex to decide what sexed spaces they can use?
It feels like women’s rights are just words, no power in real life. Anyone else run into this mess in their business? I'm nearly losing my mind over how absurd this is.

You know perfectly well that this isnt about 'gender' this is about sex.

Your initial post specified sex, but now you've done that switcheroo thing and you're talking about gender and you hope no one notices. Come off it.

The SC judgement is about sex. Everyone knows their sex. Can you please quit the nonsense pretending that they don't.

Reading the OP I wonder why it's men and biological women? Are we a new species now?

@MrsSkylerWhite i just don't understand why you're so invested in facilitating men who want to break the at the expense of women's. Men who 100% understand that they are breaking the law.

I don’t really understand the terms, tbh. I just think it must be incredibly difficult to feel that you don’t belong in your body on a purely human level.

Sorry that should have been 'men who want to break the law at the expense of women'

You’re projecting there. You aren’t particularly informed about any of this, are you?

You don't understand the term 'sex'?Seriously?

Lots of people face all kinds of difficulties in their lives. Should they all get to break the law because they feel like it?

Whay about the women who find if incredibly difficult to not have their legal entitlement to single sex spaces respected? You don't have any sympathy for them? Why do you only have sympathy for men here?

Really, if that’s a thing I honestly didn’t know. Not deliberate.

I’m a 61 year old heterosexual woman, never had any doubt about that. Very happily married for 35 years. Two “children”, one woman, one man.

I can empathise though and think it must be incredibly difficult to feel that you were born in the wrong body. Is that so wrong?

Anyway, it’s clear that most people reading this thread think the OP is NBU. The idea that a group of men should be treated like women when it comes to women’s spaces is the minority view.

What? Of course they do.

They don't have a giant box under their chin that hides all knowledge of their body from their mind you know!

They are trans women. To be a trans woman they must feel (or claim to feel) that the sex of their body is wrong for their mind.

Therefore, they must know what the sex of the body is, no?

They may not like it, they may believe it should be different, they may feel their mind has a different sex that means more than the sex of their body, but they nevertheless do know what sex they are.

So they are perectly capable of obeying rules that pertain to that sex.

They just do not want to because they believe these inner feelings of gender that are experienced only by them are nevertheless more important to the rest of the world than that the sex they actually are and the sex the rest of the world experiences them as. They believe their need to be seen as and accepted as a woman matters more than the fact women will experience this as being forced to pretend a man is a woman.

I don’t. I’ve been posting in the context of this thread.

But you can't empathise with the women who need their rights to single sex spaces respected.

Why do you think that is?

Fair enough.

You don't understand the term sex?

Well u suggest you do a bit of basic reading before further commenting.

Of course I understand the term sex. I was referring to TRA in that post.

Possibly because the only men who sexually assaulted me were my father and my brothers, both heterosexual men.

You can empathise without having to pretend their body is different to what it actually is though.

Pretending a man is to all intents and purposes a woman because of something in his mind is not just about him any more, it is about all the women you are expecting to give up their own reality and their own rights and protections in support of your pretence.

It might be kind to him, but it is not kind to them.

Okay so when you said TW don't know what sex they are, you meant what exactly?

I meant exactly that. They were born male but they don’t believe that they are.

I'm sorry. However I don't understand the relevance of this. Your experience is not all women's experience. Women do not need to have experienced sexual abuse to assert their own boundaries.

So they believe they changed sex?

The relevance to me is that men who believe they are women are less likely to abuse than men who know they are men.

No they aren’t!

Based on what?

But why is that relevant anyway? If we keep out men, why would there be an exception for this one group of men. On what grounds?

No. They believe they were born into the wrong bodies.

You may think it’s nuts - I might, shock horror, believe it’s nuts - but if that’s what they feel, who’s to say they are wrong?