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.

No. Not some. All men. HTH.

No one is being excluded from public life.

They are being required to use the facilities provided for their sex, like everybody else.

Real safeguarding protects based on behaviour and risk, not the shape of someone’s body or the assumptions attached to it.

That's correct. We have single sex spaces based on the behaviour and risk from men to women. We don't make assumptions about those men based on the shape of their body or their appearance We just say that all men are barred from female single sex spaces.

You are making assumptions that men who say they are women have a different risk profile than men who say they're men.

I think you will find that's BS unless you are a south American prostitute but do carry on with your utter crap.

It’s an interesting point that highlights to me how selective I am when reading these threads. I tend to skim past the ones that deviate from the points I am focussed on and not engage in them.

I think you and I are on the same page in recognising the damage of gender stereotypes and in recognising that the category ‘transwomen’ holds as much diversity as the category ‘female’. I think we both also recognise the vulnerability and discrimination that can be part and parcel of having a trans identity and from being a natal female.

I think we disagree about single sex provision, but I’m not clear about the areas of difference - which would provide the starting point for debate. To this end, I’ll highlight areas where I think our views diverge, and provide my reasoning, and perhaps you can do the same…

I think natal female only provision is reasonable in situations where sexed bodies are significant and/or where recovery is supported by the exclusion of males.

I think permitting males, regardless of how they identify or look, to use female only provision means it is no longer female only. The value or rationale for being natal female only can be challenged, but arguing the case for natal female only and then seeking to include some natal males is incoherent.

I think it’s reasonable to make a case for having mixed sex provision that is exclusive to some natal females and natal males (e.g. linked to identity). I think the case needs to be made acknowledging it as such and not skirting over this not being sex based provision.

I recognise the challenge the above separation presents to many transwomen who do not want to be differentiated from natal women and would prefer provision be labelled and understood as single sex and to be included. I also recognise that many natal women want to be able to use single sex provision knowing that all males are excluded - in line with the rationale for its existence.

What in the above do you disagree with?

'You are making assumptions that men who say they are women have a different risk profile than men who say they're men.'

And evidence that supports that they should not be considered the same as male people for that risk assessment has been ignored repeatedly.

By what justification? The same one used everywhere else in modern safeguarding: behaviour, not biology. If you think risk can be spotted by anatomy, you’ve confused safeguarding with phrenology.
You may as well say “Let’s just ban men from everywhere; they are all potentially dangerous all of the time.” Which they are.

Indeed.

No. The justification for keeping him out of women's spaces is that he's a man.

This is the same misunderstanding of safeguarding and the legal framework I addressed a page or two back.

Safeguarding absolutely does not operate on the basis of response to individual behaviour, predatory or otherwise; it is pre-emptive and general.

Your posts on this are seriously misconceived and I think it is a foundational error in some of your thinking on this topic.

Oh for the love of God.

Your opinion might carry a little bit more weight if the very people you are talking about didn't routinely threaten to rape and kill women, decapitate them or recommend they die in fires.

Not to mention forcing umpteen women in the public eye to have extra security, smash up buildings where women are gathering, and punch OAPs.

'Transwomen aren't a threat' is a ship that hasn't just sailed, it's gone right round the globe, and fallen off the edge.

Some men do enter women's spaces in order to harm women. I'm afraid the fact that this fear is what you so graciously describe as 'understandable in a safeguarding context' certainly trumps any hurt feelings on the part of transwomen.

But surely you don't think that the only point of having separate women's and men's toilets, changing rooms etc was always just to prevent physical harm? Women are entitled to privacy and dignity. So are transwomen, of course. So why don't they campaign for third spaces?

By what justification?. Trans women are men. We don’t allow other vulnerable groups of men into women’s spaces, why this one?

'What’s missing is that trans women are statistically far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators (see ONS, Stonewall, and Galop reports).'

And again, the solution is not that these male people access female single sex provisions.

As we can't operate 2 separate societies we have made sensible decisions based on where women are most at risk.

It just seems odd when there are so many short men and tall women. It doesn't seem to prove anything and it just seems like a rather silly thing to fixate on.

It's like the I always know it's a man when it's likely that they don't always know.

To me those sort of beliefs/statements weaken the argument. If you're telling me that being six foot means I'm a man when I'm a six foot woman can I take anything you say (not you personally) seriously? Probably not.

To be generous I think that “data” is unreliable.

As a society we have decided that all men should be banned from some places all of the time. It's why we have separate male and female toilets, changing rooms, prisons, rape crisis centres etc

Real safeguarding protects based on behaviour and risk, not the shape of someone’s body or the assumptions attached to it.

But the vast, vast majority of violent and sexual crime is committed by biologically male people. That's not an assumption.

Absolutely not. I find it incredibly frustrating to believe that all women aren’t feminists, and would rather see gender thrown back to the dark ages of “man v woman”.
Progress.

Quite.

There are numerous nice men who wouldn't hurt women who arent trans. Should they get a pass into women's spaces then too?

Pretty much everything. HTH

If you are shilling for men, you are not a feminist.

HTH.

i don’t believe you have one iota of actual feminist sentiment, I’m afraid. It’s about women, not men.