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, we mostly don't care - unless you are a man in a female only space OR the TW who approached me and my Teen DD in JL Leeds a few years ago near the undies section to see if we needed help.

That’s the mental gymnastics the TRA have been demanding from people. So now you’ve been told you using female spaces does cause harm, I assume you’ll be doing the womanly thing, budging up, being kind and using the facilities relevant to your sex?

Just goes to show how divorced from the actual female experience you are then doesn't it?

Lots of women actually do think through all of this when confronted with a man who identifies as a woman, it takes a fraction of a second to do it.

You clearly have no idea what it’s like trying to navigate a world where talking about sex based rights is immediately framed as a trans issue and you are framed as a bigot unless you place the needs of males with trans identities above female’s.

You have no idea how you are perceived! Have you not read PP explaining that women generally try not to draw unwelcome male attention? Most women would usually be polite in everyday interactions, even if we've noticed that you're a man trying to look like a woman.

We tend to go quiet or leave unobtrusively if a man is in the women's toilets or changing rooms. Any man who goes in there knows he is breaking the law and is probably causing distress to at least some of the women present. You may do it because you want to feel you're female, but other men do it for a sexual thrill or just to upset women. Adult males can easily intimidate women because they are unavoidably stronger, even if they have weakened themselves by taking wrong-sex hormones.

Your wish to use women's facilities doesn't outweigh women's need to have certain spaces free of men -- either morally or legally.

And you keep forgetting that women and girls will not show their distress. You seem stuck in these opposing reactions - warmth and acceptance or a fear / hostile reaction. The reality is many female people will act with warmth and acceptance while they are distressed.

It is shit to have to face up to this, I understand. But you have taken female people’s reactions at face value with no further thought, while you have acknowledged that your very presence will eventually cause one poor female person to give you that reaction you have told us you need to witness for yourself before you will stop using the female single sex provisions that you should not be using. And you know that you should not be using.

Frankly, why should one woman ever trust you to do the right thing and give her respect ?

You have made it so very clear that you do not understand female distress in the presence of a male that causes them distress. And you have made it abundantly clear that unless at least one female person shows you their trauma that you have caused directly in your presence, you will simply ignore what any female person telling you it causes distress.

So no to this.

“Right so everyone I encounter is just a super lovely person going out of their way to spare my feeling. After spending some time here, I have no doubt there are lots of people not willing to do that, so I guess I’m just extremely lucky to only encounter the nice people”

There will be a percentage of those nice people that will be performing that niceness. That is what you cannot acknowledge.

And most of us have been telling you that actually if you met us in the female toilets, we are certainly not going to show you how distressed we fucking are.

I am not sure how many more times it can be said or in how many more ways.

I’d say that women go through a similar thought process and tailor their interaction accordingly when confronted with any man. It isn’t even a conscious process IME.

It's not a simple interaction. It's an interaction that until very recently could have cost people their job and ostracise them from social groups. You benefited from women having been bullied into silence, this is mostly over, in the UK at least, you'll have to learn to live with that.

There's a bloke in my town who dress as a woman (or rather his view of what a woman should look like....blonde wig, heels & bright red lipstick). He still looks like Barbara in The League of Gentlemen.....

However, no-one bothers him at all.....aside from having a sneaky giggle....

How do you prove it?

@CohensDiamondTeeth you’re not the only one

I think men don't understand how women basically risk assess constantly when we are out of the house, a lot of the time it isn't conscious we do all do it. Spotting men acting in an unusual way is a part of that.

You think you’re a woman, mate. I don’t think you should be lecturing anyone on what constitutes “reality”.

I speak. It’s very clear from my voice that I’m female.

Males who have have had vocal coaching do not sound like me!

Replying directly to your original thought, a PP mentioned that she thought she clocked people’s sex reliably, but with a bigger margin of error for people of a different ethnicity to herself. It’s known that our facial recognition is most accurate with people who share our own ethnicity.

That could be why you didn’t spot Patti. In The Crying Game, I don’t recall realising the sex of the character before the big reveal, but I was much younger and more naive, and again the ethnicity question.

I remember a blond trans woman in a blue silk dress who appeared to pass, interviewing people on the street about their reaction. It may have been Paris? They appeared to pass according to the people being interviewed- but of course we don’t know how many were edited out. They were obnoxiously brash and confident, the kind of person I’d be swerving anyway- possibly male socialisation.

This.

I agree, and I think this weighing up thought process starts very young for girls.

Which is why I value my female only group when I do a particular hobby I enjoy. It's a small group of women and we "run" the group ourselves though, which does mean we get final say over who we include but calling it a hobby group makes it sound far more official than it really is 😂

I quite like men who aren't being sexist arseholes, or trying to invade female only single sex spaces, but every now and then it's nice to just relax among other women without having to do all that constant background weighing up of a situation.

I think it's like a program that always runs in the background on a computer, some women aren't necessarily aware it exists (running in the background, keeping them safe hopefully) unless it's pointed out to them, other women make a concerted effort to turn theirs off for their own reasons. The women who are aware of it just let do it's thing, comfortable in the knowledge that it's there, unless they go in for a closer look at it (I have! Kind of like a maintenance check. Is it working? Correctly? Not corrupted by any random silly/prejudiced/dangerous fluff?) until it starts flashing up warnings.

Going back to the butch woman in the Ladies gotcha (sorry, having trouble keeping up!), this was always a potential situation, whether trans even existed or not, and it's always been legal to exclude them (it's currently a sub-exemption under Schedule 3 of the Act, in case anyone cares). I guess it's rare, unless it's a transman.

The point is that such services are policed pragmatically on the basis of appearance, no certificates or genital inspections required. So non-passing transwomen should keep out. But also, passing transwomen should keep out. Because a) they might be mistaken, and b) they know what sex they are.

Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon, Ron…!

As the work of a FWR regular poster rightly points out, cubicles are not safer. If someone collapses or is taken ill, there is much less chance of them being found and helped. In addition, if a woman is pushed into one by a man who locks the door behind him, it is much less likely that someone will hear what is happening and rescue her.

Floor-to-ceiling locked cubicles are not the answer. But anything less than floor-to-ceiling cubicles lends itself to perverts putting phones under doors or getting their rocks off listening to women pee, so the answer - ALWAYS - is single sex spaces.

Exactly. I do follow thst posters posts and totally agree. Single sex is much safer.

I think it will be a case of the Dr Uptons, who admitted under oath that nothing would have been good enough.

It’s like the constantly being chatted up, thing. Women wear headphones now which helps. We used to go to women’s groups to opt out of that.

I can remember feeling pretty stressed, lost in the age before satnav on your phone, late, trying to find somewhere.
Bloke I asked for directions leaned into my car and made small talk, much to my confusion. Could I get rid of him without driving with him hanging in through the window?! Apparently I was a ‘good looking bird!’.

Gender is a social construct, and utterly meaningless unless it’s being used to force people into stereotypes that restrict their behaviours.

However, no one is going to serve you in a shop and say, “ here’s your change, have a good day, no one’s fooled, you’re clearly a bloke” because people have been school to ‘be kind’ and not cause offence. Just like when I see someone with a wig on, or a hair piece, I don’t comment, nor do I say anything about the tattooed eye brows or lip filler beaks, or the vivid streaky fake tan, or any of the clearly fake things we see day to day.

Sorry to break it to you, but the vast majority of people you interact with day to day will at least be suspicious, they are just not saying anything.

Me too. Was too cowardly to post it!