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.

I don't know Arabella, "gormless miasma" kind of worked for me 😂

Thanks for doing all that, @CohensDiamondTeeth. But Graham Linehan is a man! (Typo. Thought I should mention.)

Whilst I'm perfectly happy with anyone being any 'gender' they like, they remain whatever sex they actually are.
So if men want special consideration for being differently and specially gendered, why dont they use their male power to argue for third/fourth/etc sets of spaces and rights? Obviously, being male, they cant just have female sex-based rights because that would be a nonsense, what with sex being binary, and females being the more vulnerable sex due to our actual sexed bodies. But I'm sure the capitalist patriarchy we live in will bend over backwards to give them special extra rights if they just ask.

1% is 1 in 100.

Ive been to Tesco this morning. There were well over 100 people in the store, probably close to 500. Based on statistics, I would likely have encountered 5 trans people.

Tonight, I’m going to a sell out performance at a theatre with 1500 seats. Once we include cast and crew, That’s another 18.

Leaving aside activities in between, your stats would make it conceivable that I could encounter over 20 trans people today.

Ach fuck sakes! 😂😂😂

It should have said "I know he's a man, but Graham Linehan has been on the receiving end of this too"

I think I panicked because all the links caused a MN meltdown and I couldn't access any threads for a while, I managed to c&p most of it and finish it in flight mode (appropriate!), but what a numpty mistake! 😂

Deffo. Currently at a football match with a pint if beer. Going to see a Rush cover band later.

Help!

If I remember we were blokes for chatting about porn while watching football at the pub, weren’t we?

Gosh, Rush cover band makes it a slam dunk!!!

Did you just refer to a woman as a "male"?
So what you're actually saying is three transmen and one transwoman- which would be three female and one male in reality.

No wonder everyone is confused by this ridiculous ideology.

I also don't believe your rainbows and fairytale ending rhetoric tbh. I think you have been outed by your own words as a lying liar who lies and will be ignoring any posts by you from now on.

Yeah but at both events the queue for the women's toilet is way shorter so i'm using that despite my manliness

I didn’t say trans people doing exist, just that encountering one of us is generally unlikely. The issue here is specifically trans women and we make up ~0.5% of the population so there is a 1 in 200 chance that you’re meeting a trans woman.You’re also assuming trans people are spread evenly throughout the country when we know there are higher percentages of trans people in major towns and cities, so no it’s not likely you would’ve encountered 5 trans people in the shop.

Are you saying you identify trans people on a daily basis?

Correct. Now have you got any practical ideas on how that can reliably be achieved?

When you've solved that one you can work out how to 100% stop men raping women.

Or we can live in the real world and realise that neither of those things will ever actually be possible.

Oh, right. May as well give up and legalise both, then?

Why would you even suggest legalising rape?

Absolutely this. I can spot a TiM within minutes, there are so many giveaways, hands, Adams apple, voice, heavy make-up that still doesn’t cover stubble are the most obvious. Those who have had surgery and facial hair removal etc can be more difficult to distinguish, especially when they’ve had these procedures & oestrogen very young like Hunter Schaefer, but even then, there’s always something.

Is there a way of knowing if it is a trans person, or a man in women’s clothes?

So you are saying as men are always going to abuse women, we should make all spaces mixed sex? We can’t stop burglary either so by your logic no one should lock their doors.

Oh I'm so sorry, I thought your post was suggesting that because you will never stop 100% of men coming into women's toilets or 100% of men raping, the rules against them are therefore pointless.

What did you mean?

1 in a hundred is not a small number of people for those who live and work in cities. We typically encounter hundreds of people on a daily basis, which makes it statistically likely that you would encounter trans people every day.

Of the hundreds of people I have encountered today, I have not paid any attention to their sex or gender presentation. This has no bearing on what I have been doing.

I encounter lots of transwomen every week during to the nature of my work - both as patients and colleagues. I did used to mind encountering those who are colleagues when in the changing area, but not in the canteen.

Fortunately, my workplace has responded positively to the SC ruling and now I don’t have any unwanted encounters with colleagues who are transwomen.

Thank you for your comments. I don't feel we're much forwarder with the original question, of whether there are (m)any transwomen who pass to everybody all the time. And the question seems likely to be left unanswered by research, for fear of offending the amour propre of transwomen.

That being the case, transwomen should surely proceed at all times as if they don't pass, to be on the safe side.

It's not about individuals. If the sign on the door says 'for people who identify as women', it might just as well say 'keep out, SA survivors and religious minorities!'. And it's obvious that the % of women unhappy about sharing with men must be much higher than the % of population made up of transwomen, so Howse's arithmetic is all to cock.

It's not about passing, because he might be self-deluding or passing-but-still-dangerous.

It's not about the GRC, because it's just a piece of paper.

But it's also not really about predation, because that's only one of the many reasons behind why single-sex services exist. They exist because literally everybody wants them, which is why they're exempted by the Act. So the question is why should transwomen be outside the rules? Given that there's no correlation of GRC to passing status, let alone to being guaranteed harmless, the only qualification is one of self-ID. Which is why the statutory guidance went unamended for years post-Haldane - because it was impossible.

TLDR: Sex is too important to conceal except in superficial situations where it doesn't matter.

Lol, check out all the rabid defensive cope & all because of the suggestion Maya Forstater 'passes' as a man! So much for 'safe spaces'.

Yup, I picked it at hello.,,,

Of course it is. He's already acknowledged that not all women will react the same way, so he already KNOWS he is causing distress.
Just like he knows full well that even if some women don't clock him (depending on the situation perhaps) some women definitely will. No one "passes" to everyone all of the time.

That was not my logic. It's not any logical conclusion from anything I've written.

Probably already been pointed out that the guidance won't change the actual law which has already been clarified. No men in women's single sex spaces.

Well you’re suggesting making all toilets and other spaces mixed sex as men won’t obey the law and stay out of female spaces so you want to legalise them being allowed in. You’re the one who compared men entering women’s spaces to rape. So if we legalise one because we can’t stop it, why not legalise the other.

Yes it is. You said we couldn’t stop men invading female spaces so let’s not even try.