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.

Maybe this Hart man is what some people believe is ‘super feminine’?

With all the court cases going on it's time for the truth to come out everywhere.

Gender and transition are both lies, they aren't real.

It's time for everyone to go back to living their authentic selves and using the facilities that they have the right to use.

😂
It's in the eye of the beholder, I guess!

If I truly thought my presence would cause alarm I wouldn’t continue, but what you’re saying just doesn’t match with my lived reality. I haven’t had any issues in normal day-to-day life in well over 3 years now. Either every single person I meet is just being polite or I have reached some level of congruence

Do you understand that female people will act as if nothing is wrong in the presence of a male person they are distressed by? Do you also understand that we will be polite because we fear the consequence of reacting showing our distress?

Do you believe that female people should have a single sex provision to suit their needs? Not based on your personal sense of whether they accept you? Because if you believe female people have the right to have that provision, you are acting directly contradictory to respecting that need.

Either you respect female people’s needs or you don’t. Accessing female single sex provisions when you are a male person is not respecting female people’s needs.

And yet, you feel that you should be able to assume female people consent to your presence in female single sex provisions.

Based on what? Them not knowing you are male ?

A few months ago, I encountered a couple of trans identified* gentlemen wandering around the women's clothing in M&S on Princes Street, Edinburgh. It would have been impossible to mistake them for women.

*I'm assuming that they were trans identified based on their clothing - one was wearing a denim pinafore dress - and their hair: long, garishly dyed and with male pattern baldness. Also sporting the coloured glasses which some people use to detract from nose size, etc. I thought that they looked to be in their 60s, but maybe they were a bit younger.

What is remarkable is listening to nurses over the past days describe all the ways they avoided acknowledging the male person in their changing room and then hearing a male person say they haven’t had any issues before when using a female single sex provision, so therefore their presence must not have caused any female person encountering them distress.

Whodathunkit? Imagine thinking that vulnerable and scared female people will draw attention to their distress in the presence of a male person that is causing them distress just by being present in a space that female person needed to be single sex? And imagine that male person using that very lack of reaction as being an act of consent?

It is not new at all, of course. We have had many male posters in the past tell us this on FWR in the past.

I wasn’t specifically talking about single sex spaces. I was saying I have no reason to believe I’m not perceived to be a woman based on regular day-to-day interactions. I find it unlikely I would’ve gone so long without any problems if that wasn’t the case

I do understand that some female people would react that way, but I’m sure you’d also acknowledge that female people don’t all react exactly the same way. I’m a perceptive person and I’m quite certain I would’ve noticed discomfort or surprise at some point if my presence was an issue.

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

Plenty of cis women have bigger hands, deeper voices & massive frames to boot. It's exactly this kind of biologically illiterate logic that makes gender critical ideology a threat to cis women's safety from harassment. You want to wax lyrically about women not feeling safe & not speaking up but the reality is how do you think cis women feel when they use public bathrooms if they don't look sufficiently 'feminine' enough for the transvestigator police?

All gender criticals have achieved here by this half witted effort that created a cascade of negative unintended consequences is effectively making cis women unsafe & what for? 0.5% of the population?

The hypocrisy & idiocy is breathtaking….

So do you or don’t you use female single sex provisions, including female toilets?

And yet, you posted the name of a male person, with average sized male hands as an example of a passing male person that many female people “would kill to look like”.

Thereby inviting scrutiny and comment. I don’t think you can accuse anyone of hypocrisy and idiocy.

Also female hand proportions are not male hand proportions.

You’re assuming malicious intent where none exists. In the situation of being intimate with someone not disclosing would be malicious and a huge violation.

You are demanding I seek individual, verbal consent from every woman I encounter based on a suspicion that I have ill intent. Like you I want to live my life with as little fuss as possible

Based on my lack of problems in normal day-to-day interactions I believe this extends to female toilets because that is the most logical space for me to use based on how I’m perceived

I don't understand the obsession with "passing". You either are a woman or you're not! It's quite bizarre. If you "are a woman" why do you care what some random thinks of you. I'm a woman and I don't care what anybody thinks about me with my greying hair going into the shops in my trackies and daggy t-shirt. Sex means nothing but sex means everything seems to be the current trans theory. It appears nonsensical: a circular argument.

'There are no females with larger hands than the average female' or 'there are no males with smaller hands than the average male'

See where this goofy logic goes?

Almost as good as:

'I get to speak on behalf of & weaponise the experiences of all sexual assault survivors into perceiving trans women as men…because I do'

Do you think you’d feel differently if people started mistaking you for a man?

So you do use any female single sex provision that you, personally, feel you can get away with using without anyone causing an issue.

Thank you for confirming that you do not respect the needs of female people to have single sex provisions that exclude all male people.

Please do tell us just what is the reaction that you would consider enough to stop you accessing provisions that were never there for your use? Tears? A visible panic attack? Yelling?

Maybe you should have been watching the nurses describe their distress and how they forced themselves to act normally in front of the male in their changing room. I doubt you are anywhere near as perceptive as you think you are if you don’t even understand how some female people react in the presence of a male person who is causing them distress. I am beginning to think though, that you actually don’t care. It is only about your comfort.

provisions that were never there for your use
That’s not exactly true, is it? There has been case law over the years affirming trans people’s right to use single sex spaces that match their acquired gender. There is still the open question of whether work spaces are different to spaces that fall under the EA. The Supreme Court was clear their ruling only applies to the EA and workplace spaces come under different legislation where the case law supports trans inclusion in some circumstances.

Maybe you should have been watching the nurses describe their distress and how they forced themselves to act normally in front of the male in their changing room
I was following the thread and was horrified to hear what they went through. I do care and I would be genuinely horrified to learn my presence made someone feel unsafe, but that just doesn’t match my lived experience. Some trans people behave abhorrently, but I don’t think it’s right to paint us all with the same brush

I’m not pretending to be anything. If anything my life before transitioning felt like I was pretending to fit in a life never meant for me.

You’re right I do have an incentive, but that doesn’t override how I experience day to day life

No. Sorry. If you did care, you would simply not use the spaces. Who are you trying to convince here? Us? Or yourself?

You contradict yourself with each answer.

“Some trans people behave abhorrently, but I don’t think it’s right to paint us all with the same brush”

You are the one who demands to use female single sex provisions that are for female people. You don’t consider this abhorrent, but then you are personally heavily invested in your own comfort being paramount.

How should we categorise behaviour where a male person demands access to female single sex spaces and completely ignores female people’s boundaries and needs?

I am adding to this above.

What word should we use to describe a male person who knows that their presence is highly likely to cause female people harm, but will not stop using single sex provisions until at least one female person demonstrates somehow that they are distressed? particularly a male person who says they understand that female people will hide their distress in front of a male person they are distressed by as a protective measure?

To be clear. What type of person understands they are highly likely to cause distress to others being in a space but requires at least one female person to be harmed by their presence before they stop using the space?

What word should we use to describe a person who thinks they can speak on behalf of all women?

Patriarchy.

You have already shown across numerous threads now that you don’t understand consent.