A Question of Some Considerable Delicacy

[theilltemperedmaggotintheheartofthelaw]

Ever since FWS, we've been told by TRAs that the country is awash with transwomen who are heartbroken and terrified because they've been told to stop using women's facilities, and this has outed them to their colleagues.

I'm finding this hard to believe, because I have virtually never mistaken a transwoman for a woman. There have been previous threads about this, from which I gather that the scientific consensus is that humans are very good at sexing other humans from an early age.

Maybe I am just wrong, though, and have been fooled many times. And maybe some people aren't very perceptive. According to a recent thread, Morgane Oger thinks he could only accurately sex about 70% of a mixed crowd; a PP on the same thread thinks Maya Forstater looks like a man.

So I would like to hear other people's experiences of this (please try not to insult or offend!). Were you ever surprised, when a woman turned out to be a man?

This piece about Kelly v Leonardo reveals the mindset:

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/10/terf-employee-admits-to-secret-cis-only-bathroom-at-work-i-wont-sacrifice-my-privacy-my-dignity/

Kelly also admitted to speculating over her colleagues’ gender identities and tracking their bathroom usage, telling the tribunal that over a period of six to nine months, she identified three people she believed to be trans who were using the women’s restrooms.

This seems to misrepresent what was happening. MK was not speculating: she knew that they were men, surely?

I'm interested primarily in what this means for the law, in particular in relation to Article 8 ECHR (right to private life). TRAs interpret this as an unlimited right to conceal one's sex in every situation. But how can even a limited such right exist, if there is no way in reality that such concealment can reliably be achieved, from everyone, all of the time?

Are they actually demanding the right to force everyone to pretend to be fooled? That's not a privacy right.

It’s usually fairly easy to identify trans women, when I was in secondary school one of our teachers transitioned, even if we hadn’t been there for before/after we would have still been able to tell they had transitioned from male to female.
My husband thinks I’m some sort of witch as I can usually accurately tell someone’s sexuality etc It came up in conversation when he was talking about one of his friends being single and how he hoped he’d find a nice lady to settle down with and I said that I always assumed he was gay. DH was surprised but ultimately I was right.
I have quite a few family members who are members of the LGBTQ community so maybe that’s why it’s easier to spot peoples differences, i’m also very sensitive to peoples moods and can pick up subtle shifts and changes so just generally quite observant I think.
I genuinely believe women are probably better at reading people, my DH wouldn’t have a clue unless it was extremely obvious.

How about men just follow the instructions on the door, it’s usually a handy pictorial guide, and just don’t come into our spaces.

He is still a man, what do people not understand, men are stronger athletically than women; otherwise why did we ever separate the sexes. This is so ridiculous. He is a man who has chopped off his penis. That's it, though they have probably had fake boobs added. Still a man. I don't wan't him on my ward.

Thanks for you considered answer, it's good to debate this way. I'm not under that illusion but I think there are women on this thread who are, from what they are writing.

I think we now have what your last paragraph is calling for and it's beginning to come together after a long period of madness. I hope to goodness that Sex Matters wins the Hampstead Ponds case, that will help a lot.

They can just follow you home, or sit next to you on a train instead. plenty more evidence of that happening.

Oh wow, you've really convinced me, you are sooo right! So lets remove all female spaces due to this whataboutery then, shall we?

How would you feel if a man asked to enter female toilets because his young daughter needed to use the loo and he didn’t want to leave her on her own? Would you let him in?

No man would ask that. He would either wait outside, or ask a fellow woman to take her. Your 'examples' are getting more and more ridiculous.

Yep, and how about men just don't rape. Problem solved.

No I disagree strongly with this. I don’t care how different people use a space. If they’re male, theyre male. I don’t want to change my clothes or have privacy of a female only space invaded by males of any kind with any intention they care to have. It’s simply rude and unfair to impose that on women without their choice/consent. I want to be able to trust the sign on the door that says “women” and now I can’t. It’s very anxiety inducing and I’m not an anxious person. Trust is broken - if you’re a male who is happy to break social contracts then I’ll have to assume you’re prepared to push other boundaries. Don’t you perceive that will be the case for a huge number of women? (The majority according to polls and it’s not for the other wims to grant permission on behalf of the others either)

You misunderstood my answer by
thinking I misunderstood the question. There, cleared it up for you. Which just proves that beliefs are insidious and affect others without them even noticing.

But they can and do change sexual characteristics. Gender is just how someone chooses to portray themselves. And what of intersex people? Must they strip for you?

You’ve never seen that?! And because of that, it’s never happened?!

Incidences MAKE UP DATA. It's a news report of a well known transwoman that has been written up in court reports. It's an incident. And the others, all with names too, that you can google, proves it happens.

Now I know you didn't even bother to read the thread before posting. If you had, you would have read my post:

"That space, is where women flee men. Where we cry, where we seek help. Where we miscarry. Where we change openly at the sinks to go somewhere. Where we rinse out blood-stained underwear. It is so, so, so, so much more than a mere 'space'. It's a haven for the female sex. And you being there while women and girls are attending to feminine hygiene, miscarrying, crying, escaping a male following them etc is a violation of that sacred space. Only a male would not understand what the female sex does in those spaces. To you, you whip your dick out, pee, wash hands (hopefully) and leave. The male toilets are not an important space for males. The female toilets are a haven for females in the way the 'mens' isn't. That is what you with your lack of understanding of the female sex doesn't understand."

THIS

@Mamma246 please don’t co-opt ‘inter- sex’ people into this space. It’s an outmoded term and many people with DSDs have asked not to be hijacked in this manner.

Yep. The post was too ridiculous to bother with and I don’t like to encourage that poster’s tiresome nonsense.

I don’t use google for data either. If I did, I would find more evidence for vampires than trans crimes. Read a peer reviewed journal for once in your life.

The enjoyment of domination; personal 'excitement' of transgressing a boundary; to listen to women use the facilities; to steal used sanitary wear; to place a hidden camera; to hide in a cubicle and commit an attack; sheer convenience of using a closer/cleaner facility.

Many reasons.

The difference that you and others like you have made is that in the before time anyone who noticed a bloke going into the ladies would have no hesitation in telling him to get out and/or letting the landlord/proprietor know so that they could be fished out before the risk of any of the above was run.

Now when a man - any man - enters a women's space, it's clocked just the same, and all the same risks exist, but people like you have created a situation in which if someone complains and the transgressing man then says the words "I'm a woman", the complainant's neck is on the chopping block.

The reason women in men's spaces is less discussed is because the risks to the legitimate users of the space are both less and lesser.

It’s good that you recognise that men accessing spaces intended for women’s privacy and dignity is in itself predatory behaviour.

Why should society form itself around preventing a minutely small percentage of the population feeling sad because we don’t believe their personal delusions?

If men hadn’t started barging their way into women’s spaces in the first place then nobody would be at all concerned that any slightly masculine person was actually a man.

No one is denying males the use of a toilet. They HAVE a toilet they can use. It's called the male toilets. It's really that simple. It's not a choice between the female toilets or pee in public. They can use the males. And guess what? The males have CUBICLES too! How about that!

But this whole post is about people saying how noticeable they are…

How many times have you shared toilets with trans people and not even noticed?

'There is ZERO data on trans women assaulting women in toilets in the UK.'

There are at least two girls in the UK who would disagree with you. But, how many women reporting assaults, abuse and rape will satisfy your threshold for allowing female people to fully and legally exclude male people above about 8 years old from all female single sex spaces, including toilets.

Of course, safety is but one aspect of the safeguarding needs for female people.

There doesn’t need to be any ‘large’ data collection done to prove there are issues either. Because the ‘harm’ is not only about reportable physical harm. There will be a large amount of harm that will never be reported and only partly because women and girls don’t bother reporting crimes where they are the victim to any authority.

There are numerous harms.

Harms include:

-Rape and sexual assault.

-Violence.

-Sexual abuse that is not rape or sexual assault.

-Sexual abuse that also includes solo sexual acts or using the experience in future sexual acts.

-Any other abuse that may include verbal abuse, intimidation in any way etc.

-A male person's presence where female people need privacy and dignity.

-A male person's presence where female people need to feel safe from any male person's presence (over the age of about 8 years old).

-Female people self-excluding knowing that there may be a male person accessing that provision.

Narrowing the discussion to sex and violence offences does not remove these other harms from consideration for single sex spaces.

"I think we’ll just have to wait and see what the final EHRC guidance says"

It is the law now. The guidance is help for people who might not understand it or advise for institutions on how best to implement it.

So no answer.

Feel free to share any peer reviewed evidence which you think backs up your case. Please quote the exact reason you think this and supporting extracts from the text if paywalled.

Used to hang out in supposedly left wing circles where this delusion was rife.

One of the funny moments was waiting in the ladies toilets in a friendly lefty pub behind both a trans identified woman and a man. Really hammered home the entitlement and bullshit of popular trans.

Another funny moment was when there was a huge queue at the ladies in the train station. The obvious bloke pretending to be a woman, for bored of queuing and nipped into the blokes. I've just not been able to take seriously the issues about the toilets since that.

I met one passing trans in all that time. They still looked masculine, like the shoulders and jaw were just not right. Utter, utter narc whose parents had funded the surgery while young. They behaved very male when it came to sexual entitlement.

Yes. Women engage in conspiracies of silence ALL the time. About all sorts of things. We are socialised in this way to keep quiet and smile. Have you heard of fight, flight or fawn?