SC-Fuelled Bathroom Aggression

[BisiBodi]

Firstly, this thread is for open discussion on a specific topic, stated at the end. It is not a thread that sits in judgement, or calls for people to sit in judgement, of the Supreme Court finding.

Now, read that first sentence again before proceeding.

So, I am posting this with the full permission of the individual concerned, whose photograph - again posted with their permission - is on the thread. The reason for that photograph will become evident soon.

Caz is a cis woman and a very, very successful music producer and DJ in London. She has recently been very vocal online about a recent incident that was almost certainly created as a result of the SC ruling and the subsequent interpretation by certain members of society. Here is her original post:

"This photo of me was taken a few days ago. This is what I look like, not that it matters, but to set the scene…
I was at the Festival Hall. Toilets on either side of two lifts - men’s on one side, women’s on the other. I was in the queue for the women’s. Men were queueing across from me.
I was facing into the bathroom, so from behind, you couldn’t see my face. I was just standing there, minding my business, when I heard someone shout,
“The men’s toilets are over here!”
I ignored it at first thinking someone was letting their mate know. But he kept shouting it "The men's toilet are this side!". Then I felt a tap on my shoulder, (meaning he came into the corridor of the women's toilets), he poked me and said
“Do you realise this is the women’s toilet?!”
Up to that point, he hadn’t seen my face. So what was he judging me on? My haircut? My hoodie?
Also, I was surrounded by women. It was pretty obvious I knew which toilet it was.
His energy was aggressive. I was shocked. I looked him straight in the face and asked: “What sex do you think I am?” Affronted he said: “I don’t know!”
Here’s where I wish I’d said, “If you don’t know, then shut the f**k up!”
But instead, I said: “Would you like to see my tits?”
I started unzipping my hoodie. He panicked: “No no no, don’t do that!”
His wife came out of the loo and saw what was going down and said with urgency, “Let’s go now!.”
She rushed him away before all the ladies around me could properly react. They were horrified by what they saw. One lovely lady said to me, "I can’t believe what I just saw!" Another one said, “I am so, so sorry you had to experience that. I held back from speaking up till it was too late because when he came and touched you, I thought he must have known you.” Another woman said, "You are welcome here!" and yet another said, "You must report him and get him kicked out!" I stood there, shocked, and unfortunately didn’t react quickly enough.
What’s interesting is that he wasn’t a staff member. He was just a random member of the public.
Also, my attire was more on the masculine side. So if he thought I was a trans woman, why would I be dressing like a man? If he thought I was a trans man, then under the new rules, I was in the right toilet!
His policing was based on my hair? My clothes? Maybe I had cancer? Or maybe I just like my hair that way. What makes him think any of that gives him the right to behave like that?!
It is fair to say also that I could have been a butch trans women but that is the whole point, you can't judge from a hair cut several meters away and its not anyone's place to.
For the record, I’m not offended by being thought to be a man. I have a strong male energy, (female too sometimes!). However I often feel if I could press a button and turn into a man I might, I don’t feel like I’ve earned the right to call myself trans, given the immense things people go through to be right in their body… but in spirit perhaps I am. Asides this I am a 100% biological born unchanged female.
What was offensive was his assumption that this kind of behaviour is OK.
This is what these new laws and rules are doing — they’re not making it safer for everyone. They’re fuelling public entitlement and policing of gender expression.
Afterwards, I tried to find them. I thought maybe it would help to have a conversation. To understand. Did he think he was protecting his wife? What made him do that?
I’ve been meaning to speak out on this issue for a while. But I’ve had a lot going on, it’s been a difficult time and I haven’t felt I had the head space.
In a strange way, I’m grateful for this moment. It gave me the push I needed to finally say something.
I genuinely believe there’s misunderstanding from a few of the much older cis community about what it means to be trans. I mean this compassionately, It is just something they do not understand and it frightens them. I wish I’d got to talk to that guy… open conversations are needed to understand what fears are fuelling their prejudice."

Again, the purpose of this thread is not to pass judgement on whether the SC ruling was right or wrong, everybody has their own opinions on that, but rather to open a dialogue on - and raise awareness of - the effect that that ruling is having on the small but disproportionately loud and aggressive members of society, and the fear being generated as a result.

Speaking personally, I am hearing many reports of bathroom aggression - perpetrated by both men and women - against anyone who doesn't 'look right', regardless of the facts or a sense of common respect for others.
Now that the ruling has passed, I think that as women the best we can do here - the absolute bare minimum if we want to consider ourselves reasonable, respectful members of society - is to be aware that this kind of horror does happen and is happening, and to call out that bullshit if we encounter it.

I'd be interested in your thoughts...

There is a theory that the best way to get across a message and convince someone of its veracity is to tell a story. A personal narrative works better than a fact-based argument.

The Repeal the 8th [amendment of the Irish constitution, re abortion] campaign used personal narrative to great effect, and has been the subject of academic study e.g. Storytelling and the Repeal of the 8th Amendment: Narrative and Reproductive Rights in Ireland by Orlaith Darling, and
Crozier-De Rosa, S., & Barclay, K. (2024). “She is finally home”: feminist storytelling, family imaginaries and transnational solidarity in Irish abortion activism. Irish Studies Review, 32(3), 331–356. https://doi.org/10.1080/09670882.2024.2368938
The use of personal experiences in contexts like the campaign for a woman's right to choose has been described as an act of “radical public vulnerability”.

I think the Caz narrative fits into this type of campaigning, as does Dawn Butler MP's story of her butch lesbian friend who has to be protected by straight women when she uses the women's toilet, and all the bearded transmen who have started to appear in narratives.

It's as if TRAs believe that if enough narratives of lovely lovely friendly transwomen, or terrified 6' butch lesbians, or devastated bearded transmen are told, eventually people - apart from a few old GC women who are mentally incapacitated - will turn away from believing that human sex is binary and immutable, and that the established toilet provision based on sex should be retained and enforced.

It's not working. Storytelling about people who have unscientific beliefs about biology are not going to change the minds of people who are biological realists.
Stories that attempt to evoke sympathy for people who can't deal with biological reality, or with judicial affirmation of that reality, don't work.
Quite the opposite - any story about a friend who is some combination of lesbian+butch+6'+transman+beared immediately sends up a red flag.

How dare you?!

What the hell do you know about our experiences?

There is a theory that the best way to get across a message and convince someone of its veracity is to tell a story.

Well yes, but we all already know that gender stereotypes are bullshit and men are aggressive which is why we need our own spaces so not sure what the point was.

What it means is the poster doesn’t understand concepts like “ male energy”. This is basically a spiritual concept that has nothing to do with physical sex. In spirituality the idea you have a “strong male energy that isn’t equal to a strong female energy” effectively means you’re unbalanced and have a lot of work to do on yourself.

I do wish people would stop appropriating terms they don’t understand. I doubt the poster thought they were saying they were unbalanced but that’s the consequence of using language and concepts they don’t understand.

@BisiBodi Part of Caz's original post: "I thought maybe it would help to have a conversation. To understand. Did he think he was protecting his wife? What made him do that?" And this is the mistake she made - not asking him what his motivation was and why he thought it was his duty/responsibility to challenge her (I concede that she was likely shocked by his persistence and then his physical approach caught her off-guard). However, posting on (anti)social media about one (admittedly shocking) encounter to "start a conversation" about how the SC ruling has emboldened anti-trans sentiment - and that these are regular occurrences now - is disingenuous. Furthermore, her response to show him her tits hasn't helped "start a conversation" at all, has it? In that moment, she had the opportunity, with a real-life individual who is likely misinformed and misguided, to "start a conversation" with him about why he did what he did, but instead she reacted to him equally aggressively and didn't move the larger "conversation" forward in any constructive way.
On a separate note, I'm particularly surprised that this was a man challenging her. Up to now the TRAs narrative has been about "hysterical TERFs" being wrong to feel threatened by trans-women in their single-sex spaces, yet he was threatened by no-one - unless he was, as Caz has assumed, thinking his wife could feel threatened. Who knows? And we never will - simply because Caz didn't "start a conversation" with him.

It's such a weird thing to lie about as well.
If you're going to make up easily disprovable random rubbish, why not at least make it interesting?!

He was defending women's spaces! I am grateful for men like him! There are too few of them. We need more men to step up.

https://www.trust.org/resource/only-adults-good-practices-in-legal-gender-recognition-for-youth/

'...there are certain techniques that emerge as being effective in progressing trans rights in the ‘good practice’ countries.
...

1. Use case studies of real people'

People storytelling having ignored all the real life examples by women really isn't going to cut it is it?

All I take from this is that the man who challenged her was a rude twat with dreadful eyesight. The woman concerned says she has very male 'energy' and isn't particularly insulted at being called a man. I don't know what the purpose of the story could be, other than to try and show that women suffer at the hands of idiot men regardless of their appearance or 'gender identity'.

I suspect it fits very nicely into the misogynistic concept of men still having control over women’s toilets and who can use them. There is also an air of men punishing women because they don’t fit gender norms, ie where the women are disrupters. I suspect soon we are about to see similar stories but of men dressed as women breezing into women’s toilets and being unchallenged because they look so much like women. I suspect at least one of these stories will involve someone asking the trans identifying woman for a tampon to prove the point.

It’s false narrative. It will soon be picked up by AI and presented as true.

Once you have lied that men can be women, the way could not be any clearer. If you'll lie about that, you'll lie about anything.

Yes, it's a shame for their storytelling approach that we have so many more compelling stories.

Karen Danson's very bravely told story.

Jennifer Melle.

The story of 6ft5 paedophile Kate Dolatowski who liked to attack his child victims in women's toilets.

Isla Bryson. Karen White. Amy/Andrew Miller. The list goes on. Pictures of all these men with feminine gender identities alongside a list of their crimes and behaviours is usually quite enlightening too.

It's funny how we're supposed to employ our womanly empathy for Caz but not for the victims of all these trans identified men. And the nurses being forced by NHS management to undress in front of men. Lucky lucky Caz that she's middle class and rich enough to never have to face the situations these women have faced and are facing.

Lucky Caz that she's not a dementia patient being chastised and gaslit for correctly sexing a care worker. Or a disabled woman who wants single sex care in her home but cannot access it. The women incarcerated - against all human rights law - with male sex offenders who are living in daily fear, some of whom sexually assaulted by the man and gaslit that THEY'RE the ones in the wrong.

The worst that happens to Caz is a mildly annoying social interaction with an arsey bloke.

Obvious woman in the picture

But it's the TRAs who've brought this on themselves. Now many women are hyper-sensitive to men barging in where they're not wanted, pretending they're women so they can aggressively "pee where they please."

I spent so long composing my long post about 'storytelling' that I nearly missed this.
It's the funniest thing I've seen in ages, and that's saying something, as these threads are full of witty women being funny.

Isn't it sad, Arabella, that in just a few short years - time flies!- you will be older and you won't be able to understand the concept of a feedback loop, and it will frighten you🙄

I'm so glad you posted it.... while you still can

I'm not sure why you are posting this here.
This is clearly about the behaviour of a male. I suggest you try Dadsnet?

Alternatively if you want to ask about the reactions of the women in the queue then be clear about that.
I for one have no problem with women using women's toilets and neither did any of the women in the OP.

I find the term cis-woman offensive please stop using that term - you would presumably be very upset if you or trans friends were misgendered. The reverse is also true.

ETA - how do we know it was his wife? that is a big assumption - could have been his carer? he sounds like he might have social skills deficits

Almost all the 'old ladies' I know at craft group or coffee mornings or at church or staffing the charity shops have hair a bit like that. As have I. In the fifties, sixties, seventies and even eighties, cutting your hair short was a symbol of being an adult woman not a schoolchild. Very easy to maintain, and environment friendly because it minimises water and shampoo consumption.

I'd be a bit surprised if any of them felt obliged to flash their breasts. I suspect some of the people described in the opening anecdote had drink taken at the time.

Indeed. I am beginning to think that Specsavers and the NHS need to a male focused campaign for eye testing. There might even be a PhD or two in the offing to explore when men seem more shortsighted than their female peers.

I do find it interesting that this male, choose to show his aggression to a female.. but somehow believed that he was 'protecting his 'wife'.

I have two children who might have been classed as gender non conforming at various times in their lives... the football playing, 'boys clothes wearing' female was not welcomed by the footballing playing boys in the playground, but the long haired football playing male, who adults often thought was a girl, was never shunned. (yes.. this is storytelling!!)

I think the man in this story, somehow had the inner sense to know that he was not at any risk from this female, because despite his prejudices, he knew deep down that this was a woman.

Indeed - I know few people over 60 who have hair longer than a chin-length bob. I’m not that age yet ( a couple of years), but I was planning on going against the grain and keeping my waist-length ringlets precisely because it seems okay now for older women to wear their hair longer. I’m just grateful we older women are no longer required to have a blue or purple rinse and perm with our shorter cuts.

You may be on to something. Might also explain why large males with masculine proportions and mannersims are unable to see that they don't look female when observed by women. The detail of clothes and haircuts aren't really the identifying features...

She’s clearly a women, anyone can see that from the photo
Using the term cis outs you as insulting women so I really don’t know why you are asking everyone to be so polite when you can’t be that yourself.

Womens spaces are just that. If a few people have to be questioned to retain the safety of all then I’m afraid that’s just life. I’m surprised any woman would have a problem with that

Think you should accept it and move on.

Aye ok hen.

indeed. I'm in my 70's, have been called "Sir" many times in my life, my hair is shorter than that of "Caz". Any man challenging me about using the women's loo would get a big smile and a shrug of the shoulders - at which point it would be obvious I was female.

It's really not a big deal. If the event recounted actually happened of course.

I'm quite certain that even though female people are generally better at identifying sex, most male people are also perfectly able to identify short-haired women as being female. After all, until recent years, there was no lack of female people of all ages sporting a wide range of hairstyles. And as @DeanElderberry and others have pointed out, there is still no lack of female people of most ages sporting a wide range of hairstyles.

It seems that only those male people encountered by Righteous folx have a particular propensity to (a) visual deficiencies (b) obsession with gender conformity (c) confrontational aggression.