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.

There are few issues more important than protecting the rights of women. Practically nobody would g.a.f. if transwomen - not all of them, but many of them, and their supporters - weren't constantly seeking to violate the rights of women. They even strove with all their might to change the very definition of "woman" to something anyone, male or female, could be. If you don't see why protecting the legal identity of "woman" and the rights which belong to women is important, then I can't imagine what you do think is important.

ThatBlackCat is on fire 🔥👏

Has it not occurred to you that a lot of us are mothers? And we are experiencing the lunacy of this push for gender identity to override sex first hand? My dd's athletics group (teenage girls) were expected to blithely agree to shower with a middle aged father who had recently decided he was just like them, for example. Damn right, I'm not going to keep quiet about that.

Unfortunately, it can only be a zero sum game when it comes to provisions being single sex.

There is no way that you can be in a space and that space remain ‘female only’. That is the material reality of life.

You can disagree with me all you want to, that doesn’t change reality about that which will remain as it is however you or I ‘believe’. You even acknowledge you are male, you also acknowledged that you are using female only provisions because they are ‘comfortable’ for you.

Your own position is contradictory yet you cannot see this. Maybe because you have gone so far already.

“I knew making someone feel uncomfortable was a possibility so I did what I could to limit the possibility of that happening.”

You, personally, cannot change reality. If anyone let you believe that you could do something that did enough to gain admission into female single sex spaces, they and you were mistaken. And the concept that you could do just enough to maybe remain less detectable as a male person in a female single sex space is misogynistic. Male people don’t get to decide who is ‘female’ for those purposes.

“You’re also assuming all female people are against trans inclusion which obviously isn’t the case.”

You don’t understand then how consent works. No female person gets to wave you through into a space meant to be for female people, if there is one female person who objects.

Please stop listening to false platitudes - single sex provisions are ‘zero sum’ situations.

“There is a difference between someone quitely using a space and someone going out of their way to make others uncomfortable.”

There is no difference. You have tried to twist logic to make yourself comfortable at the expense of those female people who need the space to be female only, there is no way you can quietly use the space that doesn’t contravene the notion of ‘single sex provision’. Single sex cannot be not a space that is ‘female single sex and quiet male people’.

Yes, if you guys could give an acceptable way of communicating our unhappiness and discomfort when seeing men in SSS, that would be great. I have a history of violent men and would prefer to avoid conflict.
A clear but not offensive statement or phrase would be very useful.

I knew a transman for a couple of years as a casual acquaintance before I realised. He was small and quite gentle, but I had no idea he'd been born female.
These days, and with transwomen Im probably more inclined to think about it but don't go around trying to work it out,with everyone I meet

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

Every single transwoman that has been in the media for whatever reason has been obviously male, extrapolating from that sample I'd say, yes it's unlikely that we would mistake a transwoman for a woman. If there were any that pass without the use of industrial strength filters then surely the TRAs had by now dragged them out as proof that there are gazillions of transwomen that pass and the silly terfs just don't notice.

And still you are showing you don’t understand how consent works. Thanks for the demonstration.

Or.should.I.put.full.stops.in.between.those.words.for.emphasis!!! Is this your new tactic? The ‘FALSE’, ‘COMPREHENSION FAIL’ with emojis and fallacy tactic failed, so now you are using full stops between words?

I think you really have surrounded yourself with women who love you and therefore won’t tell you the reality of the situation.

”You are asking me to believe that hundreds of women across years are engaging in an elaborate, silent conspiracy of fear, rather than accepting the simpler conclusion: they are treating me as a woman because they perceive me as a woman.”

This really does contradict your previous posts about perception. It is self contradictory as well, if you were a ‘woman’, you would have understood how female people may act in those situations.

I've never been surprised to find that somebody who I thought was one sex was the other, no. I suppose I must sometimes have failed to notice a trans woman washing her hands at the next sink in a public loo or something - I mean, surely statistically that's got to be true, right? But then you're not looking that closely at strangers in loos, or on public transport or standing in queues or whatever. When you're looking someone in the face and they're speaking and so on, I think you'll always see it.

It doesn’t really matter how many women think it’s fine, and how many people think they pass.

Some stuff is just for women- we need it. We don’t need it less because you want it too.

When say you wouldn’t feel comfortable in the men’s so you use the women’s, you override the women who wouldn’t feel comfortable with you in the women’s. They have nowhere else to go. Some of them can cope, and carry on, but don’t like it. Some may be unable to use that space and will be taking special steps to avoid it- going to a different building, going without drinks to diminish their need, working from home.

But that’s ok because you don’t see any performative discomfort and you’ll carry on.

Transmen were specifically mentioned in the FWS ruling as, for lack of a better exoression, an "edge case". They should not yse the women's if they pass to the extent it caused dustress.

And if your friend doesn't pass? Probably carrying a copy of the ruling to help "educate people" (as TRAs so live to say)

Howse doing a <chef’s kiss> job of demonstrating my earlier point about just how batshit people who role play as members of the opposite sex are around this subject

Women’s stuff is for women just isn’t an argument that means anything to people like ThatGreyDeer

to them women’s stuff is lying there unused by anyone of consequence and available for any brave coloniser to take advantage of

it’s why the law is required to keep men like him away from women’s stuff

@HarrietofFire

i asked chatGPT who recommended these phrases, I wonder if any of the men on these boards would prefer one over the other:

Here are some phrases that balance both clarity and non-confrontation:

1. “I feel uncomfortable in women-only spaces when men are present.”
2. “This space feels safer when it’s only for women”
3. “As a woman, I’m not comfortable with men in this space.”
4. “I know this is a sensitive topic, but I feel unsafe in women’s spaces when men are here.”
5. “I need women-only privacy right now; having men here makes me uncomfortable.”

If a woman said these phrases to you, would you leave or make a fuss?

It doesn’t matter how you try to say it, that is the accurate description of your approach to this situation.

You stated clearly that while you feel you can get away with it, you will continue. Based on your personal perception, which is doubtful to even have understood female people’s reactions in the first place.

Please stop trying to make yourself acceptable to access single sex provisions that are not there for your use because you are the opposite sex. Your approach will cause harm to at least one female person, the one who has reacted strongly enough that you finally noticed.

What you refuse to acknowledge is the harm your approach has already caused.

This is a basic safeguarding principles. It is not up to the person in the group of people excluded to determine when someone has been harmed by their presence.

Basic safeguarding principles are there to protect those female people who won’t react in your presence as the minimum. They are also there to protect the female people who already noticed your presence and just didn’t access the provision you just entered.

Yet many women including lesbian couples took selfies and posted them on social media of them voting for Trump over the They/Them and sports issue. There is a reason Trump ran the 'they/them' ads 10 times more than any other ads in swing states. Trump won on this issue alone. Democrats own internal polling company BluePrint2024 showed this was the number 3 issue people voted for Trump.

Damn those pesky statistics and the they/them ad. Damn reality, hey.

I acknowledge that it's hard to prove a negative and so it is potentially possible that I have seen men who present themselves as women and thought they were actually women.

However, I have also encountered an awful lot of men who genuinely seem to think they pass for women who absolutely do not. I have also witnessed many people around them go to great lengths to try to shore up the illusion on their behalf and insist (to the man in question and others) that they definitely do pass in spite of the blatant evidence to the contrary staring everyone in the face.

I have also never yet seen a particular example held up of someone "you'd never know!" who you actually would never know (or at least strongly suspect) is a man.

Because of this, plus knowing the extremely persistent, wide-ranging and subtle effects of testosterone exposure, plus understanding the evolutionary need (especially for women) to be able to distinguish males from females at a glance, I tend to think it's unlikely that I'm just being hoodwinked and that men are genuinely being 'outed' as such to the surprise of those around them.

I fully believe that people around them will pretend surprise so as not to offend, though.

A bit of a tangled web to be weaving, and with unintended consequences, but I understand that people are trying to #bekind.

There was a programme on R4 recently, and it was quite discombobulating to hear it being discussed so openly. The interviewee was making statements like, ‘In a few years time, history is going to wonder what on earth was going on to allow this to happen!’. He referenced the success of the Trump They/Them poster.

There was a discussion about ‘woke’ as well.

It may have been the media show, or the one about language… whatever it was, the open discussion of the whole shitshow was refreshing. No warnings, no apologies, just open discussion about reality. On the BBC 😮

single sex provisions are zero sum

This is a really important point. It shouldn't need making, but the Supreme Court had to explain it very carefully in their thoughtful judgement.

Of course single sex provisions are a zero-sum. They're either single sex or they're not.

The repeated statement that it's not a zero-sum game is a deceitful appeal to 'kindness', much like rights aren't pie. Yes, they are when one group wants rights that diminish another group's rights. You want a bigger slice? Well, if you want to cut your extra off my slice, you can fuck off.

Any minute now, they'll be telling us you can be slightly pregnant or a little bit dead 🙄

Here you are @TheGreyDeer.

“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?”

Please can you answer this because you did miss it and looking at your later replies, I think we need to know this so we know what the expectations are.

And the classic male entitlement makes itself clear 🙄

I’ve been thinking of something a bit more direct. At the moment I’m planning on using ‘Oh! The men’s is over there!’ While pointing. Would that work for you @TheGreyDeer?

I hardly ever notice, but then I hardly ever look in depth at passersby. My partner notices immediately.

Lots of people pass very well indeed, but those times where I’m having a conversation with someone, there’s often a small clue that makes me realise. Hard to put my finger on, but I’ll suddenly realise why I’ve had some dissonance.

I'd be very surprised if TheGreyDeer answered that question. Because he doesn't want to. He has no intention of not violating womens boundaries so won't answer what would make him stop, or if he would leave on that occasion but enter the ladies another time. I would really love to be pleasantly surprised though.