To think it is not at all sad that the Women's Institute is now only for actual women?

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

“Incredibly sadly, we will have to restrict our membership on the basis of biological sex from April next year,” Green said. “But the message we really want to get across is that it remains our firm belief that transgender women are women, and that doesn’t change.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/03/womens-institute-no-longer-accept-trans-women-members-april

Tellingly - they still think women can have a penis.

I feel very sad for the men's shed men who are now relegated to a small room with their trainset. I agree that when it comes to men supporting each other through life's struggles, it is important they can have their own conversations and spaces.

I gave the local WI group a whirl. I only managed one meeting, I can’t imagine what the appeal is.

The poor sad elderly trans people could always join the U3A.

Sadly, that won't do. The poor sad elderly trans people get a thrill out of infiltrating women's spaces in their fetish gear and having women going along with the pretence that they are women. The fact that some women are uncomfortable, but afraid to speak out adds to the thrill.

Unfortunately, a mixed group like U3A won't satisfy their fetish, so they will still be poor and sad...

It is very much area dependent. I have a friend who lives rurally and her local WI runs all sorts of events and is very well attended. Like a lot of things it is what you make it.

I've told this story before, but I've been shouted at by men in a passing car - in the way that men in cars shout at women - in an actual blizzard.

The car was on the other side of the road. Visibility was low enough to legitimately use foglights. I was dressed for the weather in hiking boots, heavy-duty trousers, thick anorak, big scarf, flat cap (mix of greys and dark blues - absolutely free from 'female signals). I'm of intermediate height - exactly half way between the average man and the average woman. Yet they still knew.

And women are even better than that at distinguishing sex.

I live rurally too. It was really uncomfortable. Nobody talked to me. It was incredibly cliquey. I gather some of the groups in big cities are much more interesting and age diverse. Mine’s pretty much exclusively millennial.

If I’m walking down the street and I become aware of someone walking behind me I’m usually pretty accurate at detecting if that person is male or female

How do you check if you are correct? How do you know that the woman you clocked as a woman is not a passing transwoman? You don't. You are just making an assumption you are correct.

I am actually fairly GC myself FWIW. But I like arguments to stand up to scrutiny. And I think someone who deliberately takes hormones and has facial surgery to blur the boundaries of gender perception has a chance of passing in ordinary conditions such as walking on the street.

Gait is a very big indicator of which sex someone is. No matter how much surgery someone has or what artificial hormone regime they adopt, they are very unlikely indeed to end up with the typical pelvis of the opposite sex, and that will affect how they walk. Other things that are very difficult to disguise are having large hands and feet, which is a typical male trait.

Disagree. I clocked a transwoman walking in front of me in a group of women all dressed in the same uniform. His gait and body shape was very obviously male in contrast to the actual women.

I passed them and looked back to check and his voice and face also confirmed that he was male.

As for the "how do you know if you have seen a TW/TM if they pass" argument I worked out how many TW I would need to see in a City Centre for me to have seen them all (statisticallly speaking based on % of population) and I DID see them all

I have to agree they leap out. But I think that anybody who's had any kind of plastic surgery also leaps out at me there's definitely a biological instinct to flag things that aren't quite right.

Well if less than 1% of the population are transgender and a very small minority of them do actually pass then I’d say the odds are in my favour really.

Have you ever seen that infamous clip of India Willoughby on Big Brother, they’re having a rant and then they stomp off? I’m sure India believes they pass, but that’s not a female gait at all, make-up and hormones or not they walk like a bloke.
A male acting as a female is a performance, that’s all it can ever be. It must be exhausting and I’m sympathetic, to a point.

Ok. For the sake of argument, let's say you're right and a significant number of people pass if you pass them briefly on the street and don't look closely or interact..

So what?

So bloody what?

I've never seen anyone hanging on to this "some people pass, wot about wigs and that highly curated film from 30 years ago" (by the way, seen Jaye Davidson nowadays? He looks fab, but don't pretend he could land a role like that now. Youth is an advantage) like a dog with a bone unless they were using it to try to push the idea that women's safeguards and rights shouldn't be enshrined in law or enforced because there's always a chance some mythical person might break them and not be clocked at all by anyone. People also drive drunk, speed and run red lights without getting caught but nobody suggests we just do away with all traffic laws and enforcement.

So ok, you've got your mythical dude who absolutely nobody guesses is a dude, ever, at all.
So. Bloody. What?

For me, it's the fact that I can't think of one 'transwomen' in the public eye who genuinely passes.

To be clear, I'm talking about video footage of them moving/speaking, not just carefully posed, heavily filtered static photos.

As I said upthread, the only exception might be those who were puberty blocked like Jazz Jennings or Kim Midras, but even then, there is something obviously jarring about their female presentation.

So no, I'm not convinced I'm missing them in real life.

I think I can fairly easily spot one of the transwomen I know as male from walking behind them in the street.

He still has a male name and has a full beard.

This idea that all transwomen are close to passing is fucking bizarre. It just doesn't reflect reality.

(I can say the exact same about the transwoman I came across over the summer too.)

I can say the same about the transwoman who is my friend's kid. Being 6ft 3" and having huge feet is a fairly big clue.

There's a transwoman who lives nearby who I don't know personally but have mutual friends with. Again, similar story. Over 6ft. Had a LOT of facial surgery. Very noticeable bad surgery.

Indeed when I start to ponder that 1 in 10000 people is trans thing I was quoted by my brother, it's starting to get really bizarre when I reflect on the above (and I don't include my brother and his classmate who have not seen in many years. Nor do I include the two trans identifying kids at my son primary school which has about 400 kids as they are too young).

I'm fairly sociable but I appear to have a good number of transwomen I know and see reasonably regularly. NOT ONE would I describe as being remotely hard to clock as male.

Now maybe I do know loads more transwomen who I see regularly and don't clock as trans, but that opens another can of worms as an argument. It is starting to really really undermine this idea that there's a tiny number of transwomen who don't affect your life (and this concept of live and let live).

To add to this, I don't live in a young area or metropolitan city and yet I seem to have a large number of trans identifying people in my social circles.

So yes, I do think it's something that is impacting me regularly and something I feel I need to consider with women's only groups because I'm clearly not unlikely to be coming into contact with transwomen. Fuck knows what it's like if you live in central Manchester and are a student - those students who are well known for having lots of money for laser treatment and feminising surgery.

Has anyone actually bothered to pull up a photo of a trans protest march, to check whether their assertion about 'how do you know if you are right they are male' is an easily provable steaming shit of of an argument to use with a straight face. If you still are, I'm going to propose a trip to Specsavers is very much something you should do before you next get behind the wheel of a car.

I mean, how the fuck do we manage to identify Suzie Izzard as a convincing male character in a film?

Like, seriously, this argument about passing is frankly beyond disingenuous at this point.

I agree with the 'so what' challenge.

Even if some tiny percentage do pass, what's the implication of that? We have to let all men into our spaces, even the most obviously, ridiculously, unquestionably male ones?

Or we have a tacit agreement to turn blind eyes to the more successful at passing? But who decides who qualifies and who doesn't? And isn't this discriminatory to the ones who'd never pass in a million years?

Bottom line, everyone knows what sex they are. All these men need to show women some respect and stay out of spaces that dont belong to them.

Well quite.

And to be accused of being transphobic for stating the bleeding obvious is total gaslighting.

'We don't notice so we shouldn't complain' as a narrative is pathetic.

Turn it on it's head.
Are we supposed to not challenge the bloke with the beard in the women's because they might be trans?! And challenging them is transphobic? No fuck off.

Why in god's name should I put up with beardy wanker in the toilets?

Where's the line? Who decides the line? If I'm better at spotting transwomen than someone else whose perception filter should we be using?

Mine or theirs? Can we define this in law please?
Definitions
a) An individual is permitted to use the female reserved services and facilities as defined within the EA2010 if Bertha Smith of 6 Gateshead Road, Manchester perceives you as a woman.
b) An individual is not excluded from these female reserved services and facilities if they are accurately perceived by other unnamed individuals. c) The threshold standard of passing is legally set by Bertha Smith and not any other individual.

I also agree with the So what? if, and it is a very big if, a man passes successfully as a woman why are certain posters advocating that he is entitled to so decieve and to trangress the boundaries of women and girls?

Seriously, is that really what certain posters are insisting on and they cannot see the inherent dangers in this?

Quite RedToothBrush. It's nonsenical but worse it is dangerous.

Maybe we should get facial recognition software to do the defining?

Cos obviously recognition is all about faces too.

(Is facial recognition software is transphobic anyway?)

WI is a charity that was set up specifically for the benefit of women. Their policy of allowing men who identify as women to become members only came into force in 2015. Nowhere in its constitution does it say that men can become members. A woman is an adult human female, as well you know.

And those are the ones who have the time and money to put into trying to pass
If they can't do it I doubt any TW can

Exactly

Just got booted out of an Anti Reform group online for questioning a person who said that the WI should allow people of all genders. I asked if it would need to change its name in that case, got called a transphobe and while I was thinking of a reply, was booted out of the group.
I am not a Reform supporter (far from it) but it's so silly that this issue seems to over ride all others in terms of different views. I'm sure if I'd said I was a staunch Brexiteer, or am ardent Tory but still anti-Reform, they would have let me stay.

The idea that a passing transwoman isn’t just as ‘harmful’ to the organisation as one that could be clocked from space is a crap argument. Naomi Cunningham covered this I think in the Leonardo case. That even if a woman does not encounter a man in the loo the fact that the policy allowed men to use the women’s meant that no woman could be secure about who was using the loo. If trans allies think that telling us that we cannot always tell that really isn’t going to convince us not to care. The deception of a man using stealth to access a female only space is evil behaviour. The ability to deceive does not make it a neutral act.