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 was introduced to someone's "niece" recently. I found myself looking round the table thinking, "Am I really the only one here who can see the five-o'-clock shadow??" It's insane.

Let’s all remember too the ‘kindness’ training that the Darlington nurses had to do after they reacted negatively by complaining about a male in their female single sex space. By listening to their stories I don’t believe any showed any ‘distress’ directly , but complained to authorities. And were directed to do kindness training

And yet, we have a poster declaring that women are showing only honest reactions, in their opinion which is based on their perception.

And that poster cannot understand the thought processes that women are describing that they themselves experience in that situation to him. Yet even reading us saying it does not shift the entitlement felt so strongly by that poster.

All we can do, is keep on talking about it and campaigning. Getting that solid clarity about who is and isn’t included in female single sex spaces will just another step.

But fuck… we shouldn’t have to be in this situation. Yet here we are…

I only have to walk 100 metres to encounter a female person who believes they are a man.

I guess some people just think others live in a similar bubble to them if they cannot understand that in a populated area there really is a high chance of meeting someone who has the philosophical belief that they should be described as being of the opposite sex to their material reality.

Your experience isn’t my experience

Isn’t that the crux of the matter? Your experience is not, and never will be the experience of a woman. You will never know how women feel, you will never understand the way women have to use instinct, experience and sometimes even lies about how we are feeling to keep ourselves safe. You will never have to make a judgement about is it safe to challenge this man, or is it safer to keep quiet. These things are beyond your experience and understanding.

You will also, because most of us can tell at a glance what you are,never understand how your attempt at woman face has failed at the first hurdles, the way you walk, your gestures, your voice gives you away. Your make up may be immaculate but as the saying goes you can put lipstick on a ……

The thought process at the time of the interaction isn't convoluted. Its really quick and simple "Man presenting as a woman incoming. Will want she/her-ing."
The thought processes that dictate whether the person goes along with the she/her-ing, and why, will have already happened prior to the interaction.

This. And there was also only a very short 'sweet spot' between the time when it was acceptable for people to say that, for eg, a rape victim had 'asked for it' by wearing too short a skirt; and the time when it was acceptable (obviously it still is to a great extent) to ostracise, attack, denigrate and sack women for saying that males are not females.
So society has always expected women to risk assess every, even minor, issue and interaction.

Maybe this also helps to reassure women that we are not alone in this campaign.

“If someone wishes to believe that they possess a gender identity that doesn't match their sexed body, that's their right.

But what many people seem to have forgotten is that with freedom of belief comes the freedom not to believe.

So I'm going to lay my cards on the table and say that I do not believe in the existence of gender identities and I won't pretend that I do. And I also make no apologies for that because non-belief is not discrimination and non-belief is not hate. The right to question, to disagree, even to offend is the bedrock of democracy. And so for the sake of women's rights, child protection, and medical safeguarding, it's essential that we now have this gender identity debate openly, honestly, and without fear.”

Mia Hughes.

This is taken from her opening statement in the recent debate with Oger.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5432384-livestream-debate-with-mia-hughes-and-morgane-oger?page=1

I have pasted the transcript of the entire debate in this thread linked. Oger’s words are not unexpected, but still very disturbing in how much misinformation he puts out there to support his arguments.

However, Mia Hughes’ answers are worth a read or listen too.

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The other thing to bear in mind is that men with a high ability to impersonate women are not less male, and are not less dangerous. Arguably they could be more dangerous, or certainly more likely to be motivated to invade women's spaces.

Me and DH went to an event recently and we were swapping cars to drive home (in the dark). As he handed me the keys I asked if he had parked somewhere safe with good lighting, people around etc and he thought I meant so the CAR was safe. It did not occur to him that when I parked I asseessd how safe it was going to be to return to the car later when it was dark.
Risk assessment is our life, I believe its how we know what a man is no matter what they wear etc

Because trans people don’t go to the supermarket? Or Tescos? Why is there likely to be an under-representation of trans people in the supermarket?

Or apparently work in customer facing roles. That would be a surprise to some male people with transgender identities where I live.

There are 2 that work in my local Sainsburys

There are a couple of reasons why I think I've probably never mistaken a transwoman for a woman. The first is a statistical argument -- I have run into a number transwomen who struggled to present in a way that indicated that they wanted to be treated as women and also a vast number who were clearly men but provided enough cues so that I could easily figure out they wished to be perceived as women. The are a small number who surprised me by their lack of awkwardness and good style sense, even though they were obviously men. There are none who've I've met who I was initially confused about and later realized they were trans, and there are none who i thought were women, who i later discovered by other means were men. For there to be a large population of transwomen who are 'undetectable' the population would have to be highly bimodal. Yet there is no evidence of that, not in celebrities, not in public figures, not in the super rich with access to unlimited funding for body modification, not in extended friends and families.

The second related reason is that I've had the experiences of being confused by on-line photos, where the person in the photograph looks ambiguous, or even distinctly like a woman, only to meet the person irl to discover that they are very, very obviously a man. The discrepancy is probably due to camera angles, the flatness of the 2D image and the strategic use of filters. This provides an explanation for why there are claims that some trans women can pass undetectably.

I’ve certainly noticed a few in TV shows that I wouldn’t have noticed before, so would have effectively “passed” because it wouldn’t have crossed my mind. I might have wondered why one of the women was less attractive than the others, but still got the part, even though she couldn’t act.

I see a lot more transmen now too. I wouldn’t have noticed them before, but there is quite a distinctive “look”.

That said, I have met androgynous people where I wasn’t sure if they were male or female. One was a while back. I suspect she had a DSD. More recently, one of my daughter’s friends stumped me. Probably a young woman who’d taken testosterone, claiming non-binary status, but asking was against the rules, so I guess I’ll never know.

I might have wondered why one of the women was less attractive than the others, but still got the part, even though she couldn’t act.

I had that with Rose Noble in Dr Who. Admittedly I was not paying much attention, but just enough to wonder why they had cast someone too old for the part, and why the other characters were banging on about how pretty (nope!) and loveable she was. Plot relevance? I was thinking (but I think that a lot when people talk about their feelings, so...). Anyway, I got it at the start of the next episode when Rose was wearing a bandana, after which I couldn't unget it.

@TheGrayDeer “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”

I went out for lunch with a friend the other day. The waiter, mid-twenties at a guess, who served us was dressed in a fairly gender-neutral black outfit. Hair was long, nails were painted, some make-up was applied, jewellery was worn. About 6'2", broad shoulders, large hands, some stubble showing. Clearly male. I have no idea whether he identified as a woman or not because that's not the conversation you have with a waiter. I didn't care how he chose to present himself because that's none of my business. I didn't use pronouns because that's not how you interact one-to-one. We had a perfectly pleasant conversation, including admiration of a rather nice necklace he was wearing. That's the kind of 'nice people' most people like him would encounter in everyday life. It didn't mean that either me or my friend saw him as a woman. His sex was irrelevant in that situation and his gender identity was his own business in that public place.

Had I met him in the ladies I would have felt very different. I would have been alarmed and somewhat angry. But he was rather larger and younger than me, so in a confined space with nobody else around, I would have said nothing.

Quite. Bit ironic a male is trying to tell women he knows how they really feel.

It seems a dispiriting quest, to try to pretend one is something one is not, and then to worry constantly whether one has pulled off the deception.

I note that both examples you give of people who couldn't tell are men.
I wonder how many women were fooled especially in person not photographs.

The annoyance/stress/anger from not passing bothers them so much they convinced a load of clinicians to sterilise children and fix their bodies at a pubescent state in order to make it less annoying/stressful/angry for that generation.