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.

To answer the question in the OP, Were you ever surprised, when a woman turned out to be a man?, yes, I have had that experience.
The person in question was elderly. 70s I think. I had been at an afternoon-long event at which they were the presenter. A week or so later, someone told me they were a transwoman , which I hadn't remotely expected at all.

I think that among elderly people in particular, there can be a fairly gender neutral basic bodily presentation, so that something as simple as putting on a dress and so on can create a wholly female appearance.

I've avoided sex-specific pronouns, but at the time (before TRAs cornered us all into a position where we were forced to choose between self-erasing 'be kind' on the one hand and exceptionless realism on the other) I would have been happy to refer to this person as 'she' even after I knew they were a man.

I really do think that people of this sort - if they have fully transitioned surgically and hormonally - deserve something better than the toxic situation that trans activism has generated. Prior to this activism there was the real cultural possibility of a fully robust gender recognition procedure leading to a legal status that could permit certain rights to access SOME female spaces (e.g. toilets but NOT female domestic abuse refuges or women-only candidate lists and seats on a board). That cultural space seems to have been frittered away by trancel activism.

Yes this is a good point. Of all the transwomen in the public eye, I can't think of a single one who passes.

Maybe, at a push, those who were puberty blocked, but even then, there's something not quite lining up.

Well we had a nomination for that upthread** . But I wondered if that mention was to drive traffic to someone’s YouTube videos.

I wondered if the poster was spruiking for clicks for that person. However, it was an interesting demonstration on just how poorly some people are at correctly identifying another person’s sex category.

(**warning : don’t click links that you don’t have confidence will be safe).

Is this how you feel about the Bible?

I was at an event on Monday night. There were a few trans identified men present. Two I noticed immediately. One I didn’t notice until he spoke and then he had the deepest voice known to humanity.

He was sitting down at the time, so perhaps I’d have noticed if he’d been standing.

Previously I have been at event at the Scottish Parliament where a trans identified man was there in support of detransitioners.

I had no idea he was a man, I was a good half head taller than him. My hands and feet were bigger than his! He was quite open about being male, he told me. But I really hadn’t noticed.

Of course. And all religion. And just as it's fine for people to believe in any deities they like, it's also fine for anyone to believe whatever they like about themselves, as long as they don't expect everyone else to believe it too (or demand that people be compelled to believe it).

Many ppl here have pointed out the similarities between belief in transgenderism and belief in religion

I am very short and only once in my life have i come across a man the same height as me and he was still obviously a man. I am surprised to hear there are so many tiny TW we wouldn't know are men

I was reading a new study recently that reminded me that puberty blockers only suppress some aspects of the bodies development. It is why we still see male people who have had their puberty blocked retain some male body cues.

Also, it reminded me that unless a boy has had their testes removed, suppression is also variable across people and within one person across time.

Some people declare that blocking puberty means male people don’t develop cues that they are still male. This is a falsehood.

Yes. It's mythology, like Greek or Roman or Norse mythology.

But then, in this country, in this era, no-one prevents me from believing and saying that. No-one tries to coerce me into declaring that the Bible is factual truth.

Genuine question @WiddlinDiddlin- if these people dressed androgynously and you’re not sure if they were male or female, in what sense were they trans? Was it literally that someone would just tell you they were? Trans is a set of feelings and behaviours; if your colleagues weren’t trying to present in a way that was opposite to the stereotype of their actual sex, then I don’t understand how they were trans.

Here we go again!

All the measurement charts are for averages.

There is huge overlap in male and female anatomy (but emphatically not in testosterone).

There will always be women stronger/taller/narrower hipped etc etc etc than the weakest/shortest/widest hipped etc etc males.

This defining of women by the standard of an average woman is demeaning to the many who don't match the standard.

But no one will ever change the pelvis on the left to the one on the right and vice versa because one is designed to allow for childbirth and one most definitely is not

Article 8 is a limited right. It does not simply supercede all other rights - even if a TRA says so. Rights have to be, and are, balanced 'against' one another. (Just to get back to the OP, and away from the usual intellectually-vacuous silliness from the overnight visitor).

Do you think C sections were invented for no reason?

You are again talking about the average woman's pelvis.

Well quite. The question was surely about whether transwomen often 'pass'. Surely passing means trying and succeeding in looking like the opposite sex. How is a man wearing baggy, gender-neutral clothes trying to pass as a woman?

What are they getting away with?! There is ZERO data on trans women assaulting women in toilets in the UK.

This all sounds like some people don’t like men assaulting women. That’s been an issue for thousands of years, and they’ve never had to disguise themselves as women to do it.

Is it that you don’t like being ‘deceived’ (I’m assuming because you’ve never lied to anyone)? Ask a person if they are trans then. You’ll get the answer you deserve.

How demeaning do you think this post is to women whose pelvis does not allow them to give birth naturally?

It’s honestly bleak to read so many women say, very clearly, that they’re uncomfortable sharing intimate spaces with males and watch that be brushed off as ‘no one’s ever said anything to me, so it must be fine’. Women learn young that confronting men can put us at risk. Silence isn’t consent, it’s self-protection.

The thing is here we can't be physically intimidated by men so we can speak with unvarnished honesty. That's why we will call TW men and once you use the correct language everything is so much clearer

its so bloody freeing

how do you know they are "fully transitioned"? Have you been discussing their genitals at work?
("full transition" is just body modification. Nobody can change sex)

It is absolutely delusional to think they "pass". And it is lying and wrong if they use women's facilities.

Oh please I'm infertile, that shit won't work with me

Ooh look. It’s the totally passing gentle trans identified male friends. F they were so lovely they wouldn’t use women’s spaces would they? At least I can cross this off my bingo card now

and is transphobic. Either everyone who says they are trans (they will say they are the opposite sex) is what they say, or they are not.

Women, so so so many women, have suggested a 3rd space to keep trans people safe. They don't want that. They want our spaces.

And infertile women that’s another one off my card