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...

Strong male energy 🤣

I think there are a lot of people who need to relax their views of masculinity and femininity. It's become clearer that people are suspicious of those who subvert their expectations of what a woman or man should look like.

What is needed is very clear messaging within organisations/ service providers that access to single sex provision should be determined by sex and if anyone is concerned about someone failing to follow this requirement, they should report it. What should happen then, is action being taken with the person who breached the rule. This action should make it clear to the offender that they must not use the wrong sex facilities. Action should also be taken against people who take it upon themselves to intefere with others in relation to the provision they are using, stating clearly that this is their job, not the ‘interveners’.

We are in a hiatus where trans activist are throwing everything and the kitchen sink to create confusion and sow division. Organisations and service providers who are being misled by this are failing to address the issues. However, as clear and coherent messaging gets through to them (such as the Heath and Safety Executive’s letter to Sex Matters being sent to all organisations) we will see them sorting this out themselves.

It’s a shame that in the meantime, trans people are suffering from their advocates failing to engage in lobbying to ensure they will have suitable facilities where these aren’t already in place and gender non conforming people may face unnecessary hassle.

A woman with short hair. How we all survived the eighties when we all had short hair I will never know.

so how’s it going OP? Got enough screen shots to take back to Reddit yet?

It's a non story really.
Once again, a perspective someone protecting women's spaces is rebranded as anti trans. Caz was challenged because wrongly, was assumed to be male. Until they saw her face then easily and correctly realised her sex.

Readers Note:

Just for reference here is the latest results on whether female people in the UK want their spaces to include male people with transgender identities.

The answer is no.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5247162-results-of-yougov-survey-dec-24-for-sex-matters?page=1

Also, something to watch is statements like ‘the majority of people support trans rights’ or similar. Yes. The majority of people support people with transgender identities not being illegitimately discriminated against.

However, it is important not to confuse legitimate with illegitimate discrimination. The majority of people in the UK support female single sex spaces remaining single sex and excluding all male people over about 8 years old.

Dear madam,

We cannot let men into the ladies.
We can teach men to be less aggressive when dealing with people they don't know.

Regards,
A random lady who was almost aggressively kicked out of a pharmacy chair for pregnant women because no one could tell she was pregnant from behind at 7 months.

The photo is of someone obviously female and the man who commented is a jerk. It was none of his business. Also probably a bit thick. She doesn't look remotely like a man. The jerk probably has the same total lack of perception that makes some transwomen think that they pass for female.

There's a woman who regularly posts "funny" (not) youtube/insta videos of herself pretending to need to prove herself as female in entering a single sex space. She's deluded. No one thinks she isn't female.

Single sex bathrooms are for everyone of that sex no matter how they dress or what their hairstyle is. If this is culturally understood by everyone, and no one thinks they get a pass to go into the single-sex space of the opposite sex, then there's no problem with all the huge diversity of people of that sex from accessing the single sex spaces.

There should be a legislative requirement that all public buildings and businesses that are large enough that there needs to be more than a couple of individual stalls must have a unisex single-occupancy provision as well, so that if anyone personally feels uncomfortable using the bathroom of their sex they still have appropriate facilities. If any transman genuinely thinks their appearance might cause distress to anyone in the womens space they might choose to use such. However, 99.9% of transmen don't look remotely male. There are about 0.1% who have taken enough testosterone that it takes about 10 seconds rather than 0.25 seconds to work it out. Among those women who aren't trying to cosplay the opposite sex, there are precisely zero who actually look male. Even those with PCOS who grow facial hair don't actually look male.

This whole think is such a strawman argument

Blimey, I missed that too.

1. I'm a Millennial.
2. There's no such thing as the "cis community".
3. Understanding what it means to be trans doesn't make the slightest bit of difference to what it means to be a woman, or our need for single sex spaces. Why would it? Not everything is about trans people. Most things are not about trans people, in fact.
4. If we're going to get into sweeping generalisations about people based on their age, let's talk about how few people under 40 seem to have the foggiest idea what feminism is.

It's stupid because TRAs mostly also want men to be kept out of women's spaces and dont want a free for all (the only difference being they want men with a special identity to be allowed in).
So unless they're saying the SC ruling has somehow made people worse and judging sex, I'm not sure what the connection is.

All this story does is remind us of the fact that aggressive men should not be anywhere near the women's toilets.

This ^

”the law came in 15 years ago”

Needs to be repeated at every opportunity.

It is not a new law. If trans supportive groups influencing policy and training around single sex toilets had not misinterpreted that law, then perhaps we would not have this abysmal mess.

To be fair, it was very confusing when you couldn't tell the difference between Princess Diana and David Bowie from the backs of their heads.

So much easier in this modern era where men look like Jason Momoa and women look like Kim Kardashian.

Unless you're Caz, of course.

There’s no such thing as a ‘cis woman’ - we are not a subset of our own sex! HTH 🤷‍♀️

I think this is a load of old chatgpt - most men have stood well back in the battle for sex-based rights, why would they be stepping-up to protect women now?!
Activists are attempting to sow as much confusion and disruption as possible.

Alternative Captions (as the attached cartoon is originally about racist colonialism rather than sexist colonialism)
Panel 1: women appreciating the single-sex spaces that they won the right to during the 19th & 20th century.
Panel 2: trans-identified males deciding they can take those spaces
Panel 3: aggression from males increases as women continue to say "nope"

Yep. I'd say at a conservative estimate, 95% of these stories are made up.

My thoughts are that this sort of thing would never have happened (if it even did) before hordes of men started claiming they are women and self-IDing themselves into women’s spaces.
That photograph is clearly of a rather pretty young woman and could have been taken in any decade over the last fifty years, all of which I have lived through as an adult.

Exactly this.
That photo is undoubtedly a woman.

Personally and likely missing the whole point of the thread….i think the response of Caz in “would you like to see my tits” was perfect. She put him back in his box effectively.

This had nothing to do with the SC ruling, it was just a bloke being aggressive and an arse.

If Caz identifies as a "cis woman" that's up to her.

What I object to is the idea that anyone born without a penis who calls herself a woman is a "cis woman".

It’s interesting that every woman spoke to “Caz” in the same way that she writes.

Random men shouting at women is a tale as old as time.