How would I prove I'm a woman?

[OliverKitten]

Posting in here because I think you lot seem to know quite a bit about the rules around all this stuff, hope that's ok!

Say there was a counselling group near me for natal women only, and they had decided it was proportionate under the EA to exclude men identifying as women because of the content. But say I am a very masculine looking woman (and yes I know it's almost always easy to tell what sex people are, but there are a very very small percentage of people with whom it's trickier) and the organisers challenge me. What document can I easily get to prove my sex? Not passport, driving licence, as they can be changed with a GRC I think? I think also that there is nothing on my birth certificate which distinguishes me from someone who is a man who has had his birth certificate changed to say he is a woman.

https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/registration/gender-recognition says that the Scottish gov maintains a confidential record of who had a previous birth cert registered with a different sex, but this is not available to the public so I couldn't use this.

Is it possible for me to prove my sex under the current system in Scotland (short of medical exam)? Or is it completely impossible now?

Apart from the above type of scenario, which is hypothetical, I can't think of why I would ever need to prove my sex in a real life situation, but somehow I feel like I should be able to, if I wanted to!

I agree that the GRC shouldn't change anything.

What I'm suggesting is that the problems happen when people conflate sex and gender. If we actually made the difference completely explicit, held both about each person, and used the appropriate one for each situation, I think things would work better.

We'd need to negotiate as a society which situations should be based on gender (my suggestion: pronouns, maybe certificates - so long as we are clear it's gender not sex) and when we use sex (my suggestion: sex discrimination claims, prisons, sports, single sex spaces etc).

😁😁😁

I agree gender identity doesn't belong on official documents. However I'm less opposed to it than legal sex being changed on official documents including birth certificate which to me is wrong.

It would need a lot of figuring out and negotiation, but that's what politicians do.

You could argue that the amount of political work needed isn't proportionate given the number of Trans people in society. It affects so few people that they should just accept that sex is what we use in all situations - and they just need to accept that everything isn't always perfect for every member of a society... <laughs hollowly at the idea of TRAs accepting anything that isn't exactly what they want, regardless of impact on others>

But given the situation we're in, it might still be the best way forward for women as well. And that makes it useful to >50% of the population, so the political work needed becomes more justifiable.

I agree that teaching society the difference between sex and gender would be a good start. Of course, that would require someone to come up with a non-nonsensical definition of gender.

gets popcorn

I'd rather the "gender" field was completely optional though, and the "sex" field compulsory. Because gender is ultimately about stereotypes, and I don't wish to define myself by reference to those.

So we're back to pronouns.

The only thing I think "gender" should signify is that the person may wish us - but cannot compel us - to refer to them using different pronouns to the ones indicated by their sex.

Such as?

I'm asking because a while ago I tried to join a female only group for my area [I moved to France nearly 2 years ago] and was told that my profile couldn't prove I was a female. Great I said, how do I prove I am female when I have to lock my account down due to around 35 years of being stalked by my ex...so I cannot have my real pic on there or too much identifying info.

They never got back to me.

I'm in France too, @AlisonDonut!

What kind of group was it? A Facebook group?

Yes an Expat Women in France group.

I just checked the message and she still never answered my query.

That's weird, because I was more or less chucked out of a similar group for making it clear that I didn't believe in gender woowoo.

I guess it's all down to the beliefs of the moderators.

Arabella, thanks for the transcript, that’s quite something! Feel v sorry for the gynaecologist!

@MargotBamborough what do you want to know?

Well mainly, does your mother actually look so much like a man that people might mistake her for one?

Because I find this very improbable.

I'm not accusing you of lying, but I absolutely think a lot of women are lying when they make this claim, such as the woman in the Pink News article I shared. I think some women who are deep into trans activism make this claim to undermine the case for single sex spaces.

I don't think most trans men pass as men although facial hair could well trick anyone who isn't looking too closely. And I think that perhaps very large women like Gwendoline Christie or Miranda Hart might pass as men if they medically transitioned, i.e. had a mastectomy and took testosterone over a sustained period of time. But Gwendoline Christie and Miranda Hart don't look like men, because they are women and they have not made any changes to their bodies to make them look like men.

I think for a woman to be genuinely mistaken for a man she would need to both be much larger than the average woman and have medically transitioned. Otherwise it's going to be obvious what sex they really are.

So in these "I'm a cis woman who was mistaken for a man in the women's toilets and attacked by women" stories, I'm inclined to believe that one of the two people is lying. Either the person claiming to have been mistaken for a man (and the use of the phrase "I'm a cis woman" is a bit of a giveaway here), or the person claiming to have mistaken her for a man (possibly due to homophobia, as a PP suggested, or intolerance of gender non conformity).

@MargotBamborough My mum wasn't lying and as far as I know didn't share these humiliating experiences outside the family though I think one was witnessed by someone in her rambling group. It was a horrible experience for her and for us to hear about as her children.

She was in her fifties, was very short at 5ft 1 and a bit with size 5 feet. She was overweight and at her biggest was a size 18. Her boobs were huge but so was her stomach so was quite rounded. She wore comfortable practical clothing such as fleeces if weather was cool. She did not wear makeup etc unless a special occasion and did not dye her hair. She had started wearing her hair very short for various reasons and didn't choose to have butch hairstyles though this was hit and miss depending on the hairdresser and a couple of haircuts ended in tears. She did have facial hair but it was very regularly threaded.

She didn't have a feminine look but I never thought she could be mistaken for a man. I'm sure the type of people who don't believe these encounters can happen don't actually care about the feelings of the person they hurt and would not accept that they were wrong and probably go round saying that they can absolutely tell the difference 100% of the time. She died a few months ago and these experiences happened over a decade ago and they come back to me and upset me that she had to deal with it. It makes me so angry and I wish I had been with her.

From your description, it sounds like the aggressors could not possibly have believed for one moment that she was a man and were only saying that to hurt and humiliate her. I'm so sorry that happened to her.

I am still hugely hugely sceptical about women attacking supposedly masculine women for being in women's spaces because they genuinely think they are men being a thing that actually happens though.

A woman has to try really hard and alter her body in fairly extreme ways to look like a man, and even then most will never manage it.

Much loved member of my family, in her 70s, full blown bulldyke lesbian (her words) all her adult life. Crew cut, the whole nine yards, usually in biker leathers. Has never been mistaken for a man or looked at twice in women's spaces, and if she was she'd only have to smile and say hi and immediately the other woman would clock that she was female.

This is largely a myth created to bully females into submission about men being in their spaces without arguing. (In case of upsetting a female.) It's leveraging female socialisation yet again, in a highly manipulative way, because often on gullible and well intentioned people it works very well.

We also need to consider WHY would anyone question whether someone in a single sex environment was a woman. It is because men are predating women’s spaces and transideology dictating that they can. It is because we see the likes of Eddie Izzard turning women’s toilets into mixed sex toilets and not caring that women didn’t consent to the removal of our single sex spaces. Why would anyone even consider asking you to prove you are a woman if it were not for the behaviour of men?

Yes, @Shelefttheweb, what could possibly be making some women so paranoid that they're second guessing whether that slightly odd looking person in the toilets is actually a woman or not? I wonder... 🤔

I agree this is true for the core of the genderist movement that started pushing TWAW / TMAM.

However there are a lot of well meaning people who have got caught up in the "tolerance, acceptance, TWAW/TMAM is what good people think" aspect once the lines were drawn without every really examining WHY this should be the case.

So I think it's always worth reasking the simple, basic questions. Not the one about "what is a woman" because people have already picked their meaning there, but about the undeniable, simply observeable fact that sex and gender are not the same thing so there's no basis or moral justifcation for the TRA insistence on conflating them.

😂😂😂👏👏👏

"Men can be Women" is controversial, but "Scousers can be Geordies" is a step too far!

I am still hugely hugely sceptical about women attacking supposedly masculine women for being in women's spaces because they genuinely think they are men being a thing that actually happens though.

That's why all the fun is to be had with hypothetical situations.

You'll just know.
It's not like I ever confuse a small man for a woman or a tall woman for a man. It's always obvious.

Ask participants for a letter to say how many weeks pregnant they are.

Oh sorry, I saw the word natal and got tge wrong end of the stick!!