Page 2 | Have you ever mistaken a woman for a man?

Renamed · 18/04/2025 22:21

In my experience, only men do this (I’m tall with short hair)

DoAWheelie · 18/04/2025 22:22

It's happened to me twice so far. Once when someone yelled at me for being in the womens, once when someone quietly went to get security. I keep my hair short as I'm physically disabled and can't wash it myself which when paired with my natural build makes me look a bit masculine.

user101101 · 18/04/2025 22:23

Winederlust · 18/04/2025 22:10

Do I think it's possible to make a mistake at first glance/behind/from a distance/in a photo? Of course.
Do I think any mistake would be immediately identified and corrected within 60 secs of actually interacting with that person? 100%.

Yes this is my experience when people think I’m a guy. They correct themselves within seconds. I’m petite so I’m often a bit taken aback 😆 but there you go

Id rather be questioned than have an actual guy in the women’s bathrooms

Renamed · 18/04/2025 22:23

Agree 100% with @nyancatdays

user1471453601 · 18/04/2025 22:23

A close friend of mine, defiantly female, frequently was challenged in her younger days for going into female lavatories.

She just doesn't conform, it seems, to what some women see as female.

You may think you know who is female and who isnt, but you dont.

NumberTheory · 18/04/2025 22:24

I know a few women who, at first pass, I thought of as male. All are women who attempt to look, at the very least, butch. It became fairly obvious they're female when I spent time with them. But I could see that I might be fooled in a bathroom situation.

So I do see this as a bit of a risk.

The thing is, if it hadn't been for the TWAW-and-should-be-welcome-in-women's-loos crowd, the risk of challenge would be much lower as people's initial assumption would be that they were butch rather than male.

ManchesterGirl2 · 18/04/2025 22:25

I get called sir occasionally, if I'm wearing outdoorsy clothes in town, or boy cut jeans. People realise once they take a second glance though.

Original poster

Moltenpink · 18/04/2025 22:26

nyancatdays · 18/04/2025 22:12

In nearly half a century of using the women’s toilets, I’ve never seen a single woman challenged in the loos for being a man. I feel pretty sure that if it happened frequently, I might have had some idea about it (and I spent a couple of decades as a lesbian - and though I’m not particularly butch, I never heard of any of my friends who were very butch being mistaken for a man in the loo!)

I only heard about this idea in the last few years from students and teenagers, and from
Tumblr. I think it’s a bit of Americanised discourse that has started floating around here along with the gender stuff.

I have a private theory that it seems plausible to young people who (a) don’t really have any idea or think about the fact that for large parts of the twentieth century, most women wore their hair short and many did not wear makeup or particularly “gendered” clothes, so they have some kind of idea that it is terribly “gender non conforming” to have short hair and not wear all the contouring/long swishy hair/overdone nails stuff they associate with social media-influenced “femininity”. They are too deep in the present moment to realise that many/most women went about all of the 70s, 80s and 90s in jeans or slacks and an anorak and a short haircut and still weren’t assumed to be either men or somehow making a radical statement about “gender”. They simply don’t understand that for most of the postwar period, mostly only very young women had long hair, and married or older women generally uniformly had short hair styles.

And (b) added to that, it doesn’t occur to the same young people to look at their grannies (or any older women), and notice that still most women older than about 60 have short hair and wear trousers. My mum is 72 and sings in a big community choir for older women, and last time they performed out of about 300 women only a handful were wearing a skirt or dress - they almost exclusively wear tops and trousers and have short hairstyles! I’m currently on a walking holiday in the West Country, and nearly all men and women are dressed completely the same in sportswear and hiking gear and identical fleeces and anoraks (can still easily tell who the women are though…)

The “women who are gender non conforming might get CHALLENGED in the loos” Tumblr/Twitter crowd just seem not to actually notice older women, or society around them in practice; nor take a look at what anyone older than about 25 is wearing to realise that very few women over that age are what you’d call particularly “gender confirming” anyway.

So, anyway. Long rant, sorry, but the short version is that I think it’s US-influenced internet scaremongering, by people who don’t seem to take the trouble to actually look around themselves on a daily basis.

Thank you. This actually makes me feel better, I won’t start buying dresses just yet then. Very good point about the older generations, my mother has always worn short hair and trousers.

OP posts:

WorriedRelative · 18/04/2025 22:27

Toilets aren't really the key issue. It is much easier in hospital or in prison to determine someone's sex.

And women should have certainty that if they are having an intimate search or examination and they request it is done by a female it is a born female doing it.

BettyFilous · 18/04/2025 22:29

I had short hair from ~3 years old until puberty and then again in my late teens and early twenties. By my late teens grunge was in and there wasn’t much difference between men and women’s basic outfits. I was regularly mistaken for a boy and then man. I couldn’t care less. I was never challenged in ladies toilets, maybe because my jacket was unzipped then and I have obvious boobs.

Igneococcus · 18/04/2025 22:33

Personally, I’m 6ft tall, broad shouldered, I don’t wear make up or dresses but I don’t feel like anyone would mistake me for a man.
Same, though I do wear dresses quite often but I can go weeks without any make up and I have had short hair at times and yet nobody has ever mistaken me for a man.

EatingTillIDie · 18/04/2025 22:36

I look absolutely horrendous in make up as I don't know how to apply it and always used to think I looked like a man in make up... I guess I just won't bother trying now just in case. Luckily I am a dumpy frumpy middle aged woman with massive tits and arse so hopefully will be fine.

Tbrh · 18/04/2025 22:37

I have definitely done this, many times. The real question is, how would you know that you did if you didn't realise you were wrong?

Snugglemonkey · 18/04/2025 22:42

I once met a couple, gay men and did not realise one was a transman. I still know them and honestly, he just gets more masculine looking with age. Greying beard, balding, 6 ft, becoming portly. I do not think he would be welcome in a female toilet.

Hastentoadd · 18/04/2025 22:44

Moltenpink · 18/04/2025 21:40

I’m seeing a lot on Twitter & TikTok about how the new ruling means that women will be challenged in bathrooms if they present as masculine.

I just don’t see it happening. I know women of all shapes, sizes, heights, muscle tone, haircuts. I know butch lesbians and women who have lost all their hair from chemo. I never see them as male in appearance.

Personally, I’m 6ft tall, broad shouldered, I don’t wear make up or dresses but I don’t feel like anyone would mistake me for a man.

I don’t think I have, even if they are tall there is always something about bone structure, facial structure ( especially jaw), skin, the way they walk etc that I can tell it’s a woman

Mochudubh · 18/04/2025 22:45

I don't think I have but I do think it's easier for a FTM to "pass" as It's "adding" rather than "taking away". Testosterone "adds" the ability to grow facial hair etc and many transmen work hard at building muscle etc,. How hormones affect fat deposition etc I'm not sure. If I met someone who looked like Chas Bono, for example, I may initially think they were male, but IMO despite decades of hormones, Chas still has a very female fat deposition and I don't think it would be long before I clocked someone similar as female.

Mochudubh · 18/04/2025 22:48

To echo posters above, I'm definitely female but don't wear dresses as I reckon I look like the blokes in the old Bounty kitchen paper ads.

@EatingTillIDie I think we may have been separated at birth.

NotbloodyGivingupYet · 18/04/2025 22:55

WorriedRelative · 18/04/2025 22:27

Toilets aren't really the key issue. It is much easier in hospital or in prison to determine someone's sex.

And women should have certainty that if they are having an intimate search or examination and they request it is done by a female it is a born female doing it.

This.
There has been so much focus on toilets since the judgement, but the real issue is in hospitals and women's prisons, refuges and rape crisis services. The only time I've felt uncomfortable in a women's changing room was in tkmaxx when a man was sitting in there on a bench while his wife was helping their daughters trying on clothes in one of the cubicles.
Very odd.

Unpaidviewer · 18/04/2025 22:57

No I haven't. Most people are just minding their own business and getting on with life anyway. The only way I would challenge someone would be if their behaviour was suspicious and I believed they had bad intentions.

Catname · 18/04/2025 22:57

There has only been one time when I have been unsure of the sex of a person I met. They worked in a dive centre when we were on holiday and wore a short sports skirt but they had no bust and were quite lithely muscular. I can’t remember an Adam’s Apple and their voice was heavily accented so was no help.

Both DP and I were completely unable to tell.

Thesquaregiraffe · 18/04/2025 23:01

Stepfordian · 18/04/2025 21:56

No, I once mistook a five year old
boy with long blonde hair and a fringe in a pink t-shirt and denim shorts for a girl, until he started speaking and I twigged immediately.

i was in Sainsbury’s with my son (who has long red hair - age 13) and a lady commented on his shoe laces not being done up and how her daughter is the same and then, when he looked at her she corrected herself and said “ohhh! You’re a handsome boy!!”. It was a very good response to be fair and we both laugh about it now.

But a couple of weeks ago we went to a well known pizza restaurant and we were both referred to as “ladies” by the waiter… - he is clearly a boy. He’s just into rock music and wants his hair long.

We absolutely shouldn’t stereotype or just assume. However I do think “women” should be allowed secure spaces.

Notgoodatpoetrybutgreatatlit · 18/04/2025 23:06

Me. I'm a non gender conforming butch lesbian. It used to happen literally all the time. Not so much now, still most weeks if I use a public toilet.
You cant tell me that it's rare! I used to get annoyed. I have to say all the trans focus means it happens to me much more often. Spikes in interest in toilet and trans issues really empower the amateur toilet police. I was once verbally abused in Cambridge, which you wouldn't expect, well I didn't. I was told that I was disgusting and should be ashamed of myself.
It's all very tedious to be on the receiving end. Only place it doesn't happen is in gay bars. Actually it has sort of happened a couple of times, a lot of straight women in gay bars and clubs, however on those occasions I felt empowered, and just grinned at the women who were about to say something. And yes I know when a woman in a queue for a toilet is about to say something.

Scottishtizzler · 18/04/2025 23:09

Yes, probably most of the time up until my late teens, in some cases it was in ways that was really embarrassing and public, but certainly not as an adult.

HildasLostSock · 18/04/2025 23:12

Not that I know of, no. My (then) 9 month old when I was asked if it was a boy or a girl (he was wearing a fluffy grey pram suit) a lady commented that he couldn't possibly be a boy he was too pretty 😂 & I was occasionally mistaken for a boy myself when I was 6 or 7 & had short hair (I wore t-shirts and shorts typically) but adults - no.

MerryMaidens · 18/04/2025 23:17

I'm tall (6ft ish) and quite athletic and muscly. I'm female/feminine presenting, in a low key way (minimal make up etc). I quite often see people looking at my feet to see how big they are, and I assume to check if they should think I'm trans (they're small, fwiw). It happens to other tall family members too and I have a very tall female cousin with strong features who gets it a lot. I get 'sir' a lot as well, and I've given up correcting people because they usually end up being embarassed and then it all gets awkward.

I find it intensely irritating. Tall women are already socialised into thinking they are taking up more than their fair share (i.e. not very much, given they're a woman) of space. It feels like quite an intense policing of my body. I love it when I go to the Netherlands or Germany and no one looks or comments.

So can people 'just tell'? My experience says they can't. I mean sure, if we had a proper chat then maybe they could.

I think single sex spaces are really important. I don't want to be policed out of them because I don't present as the average woman, though.