Calling females with ambiguous appearance

[Brainworm]

TRAs are expressing increasing levels of concern for females whose presentation is ambiguous in relation to their sex. They often cite women with allopecia, cancer survivors and butch lesbians.

I thought it might be productive if we collate some ‘lived experiences’ so we can provide constructive advice to those concerned.

I am 5 feet 11. I have very broad shoulders and short hair, but not balding. I am also a cancer survivor (mastectomy) and live in ‘gender neutral’ clothes. No jewellery, no make up, always trousers, always flat shoes (trainers).

Pre menopause there were occasions when people did a double take, especially in winter when wrapped up - I was very hour-glassy (not willowy), so not androgynous in that sense. Once or twice, over 30 odd years I had people say things like - gosh, you’re tall, which I sensed was communicating some concern. As soon as I spoke, all concern was lost - probably due to 2 things. My voice is clearly female, and the nature of my response was pleasant.

Post meno, my waist has thickened. My fat distribution is still female indicating but less so, so I am less obviously female than before. However, I haven’t been questioned or challenged more. If I was, I have no doubt the same would apply once I responded as outlined above.

So, my advice to females who have androgynous, ambiguous or male appearances (I’m excluding those who take exogenous hormones with the intention to pass as male) is to accept, as fact, that your appearance is one that could lead people to question your sex. If this is upsetting, try and work on self acceptance - we are a lot more than our outward appearance. If someone questions your sex within the context of single sex provision, see this as them looking out for you, just as much as more feminine looking women. Rest assured that if you speak, this alone is likely to dispel their fears.

Anyone else have any tips to share? It would be great if the TRAs didn’t have to worry about this group and could instead focus on finding solutions for trans people.

Is anyone else sensing that women are scanning them for a longer time before being sure that they are women? I've noticed this, I think, at the gym, increasing in line with media exposure of the likes of Dylan Mulvaney, who do look very feminine.

LOL, no, I have an hourglass figure. Never been boy- shaped. I just wanted to comment on the hairstyles.

Though at about that age I was beginning to worry about body hair. Not just on my legs, I started growing bushy sideboards and in the next couple of years lots of facial hair - hadn't heard of PCOS then and the only suggestion my (male) doctor had for sorting it was zapping it with radiation! Spent many teenage hours painfully yanking it out with tweezers. Thank goodness there are much better solutions now.

What a shit. Sorry that happened to you . He still knew you were a woman, though, just not one who would sleep with him!

People who are very anxious about their sex are more likely to find it distressing to be clocked.

Most people aren't, and don't.

The TRAs will need to find another bullshit assertion to try and convince us that men belong in women's spaces, because this one does not fly.

Soz lads.

Oh yeah, men are so concerned about our feelings, aren’t they?

Just the other week a young guy mistook me for a man as I was getting off the bus. Guess what I did? Laughed. Because my sense of self is not so fragile and full of holes that I need constant reassurance and validation from the world.

Given relentless messaging that males will be using women's spaces regardless of the law or our feelings, that would be quite unsurprising.

Another thing for women to worry about. Add it to the list.

Cheers, lads.

In the depths of a bad Scottish winter everyone looks like a wheelie bin wrapped in a puffer jacket.

And still sex is usually pretty easy to judge.

'... a wheelie bin wrapped in a puffer jacket'

What a great turn of phrase!

I dont perform femininity in the way trans activists believe is the way we should. But I have never had anyone question I am female. So I find it difficult to believe these tales of women being questioned in toilets. I've fortunately not been raped but had most of the other bad experiences women get just for being female. Odd how so many of these reports come from TRAs and their handmaidens, people who need it to happen. Almost as if they arrange for it to happen.

These 'females of ambiguous appearance' keep morphing into 'rodents of unusual size' in my brain. Hard night in the Bluestocking.

Thanks. Now I have women accusing me of lying.

I happens.

I'd quite like to come back as a capybara 😁

That was my first thought - I've also replied that it's happened to me. But I do agree with her conclusion. These tales of distressed lesbians, usually with video interviews of them shaking & crying, have all struck me as more staged than Othello at the Globe.

Some reports come from Black women. The woman I posted was accused of being trans on national TV in that programme "handcuffed" or whatever. Then after that, other (white) women have come to excitedly tell her that they agree she looks like a trans woman.

The rude twat registered you as being a woman. He made an assumption about your sexuality based on your appearance. But he correctly clocked your sex. The OP is asking about cases where women have been misgendered.

And what difference does their colour make? Am I supposed to believe everything someone says because of the colour of their skin? I havent watched the programme you refer to but if you believe tv programmes are not made with an agenda I have a bridge to sell you.

Yeah there was no agenda. It was just a white woman saying that she thought a Black woman was male.

Race makes a difference becauae racists often accuse Black women of being masculine/men.

The point is that this only happens now because so many men have been insisting they're women and invading women's spaces.

The TRA line is that this is our fault for wanting our own spaces and not accepting men who claim to be women as real women and welcoming them into our spaces.

It's not our fault. It's those men's fault. If we could trust them to stay out we wouldn't need to be so vigilant and suspicious of everyone, some of whom turn out to be actual women.

I guess TRAs might point out that regardless of whether you find the questioning upsetting or not, you ‘just wanna pee’ and should be able to go about this without challenge.

I was on the train yesterday, just wanting to listen to my podcast, and a ticket inspector came and required me to show him my ticket.

My son bought me an amazing kitchen knife for my birthday. When he bought it, there was a hoo- ha at John Lewis because he didn’t have his ID with him. He just wanted to shop.

There are all kinds of interruptions to ‘just getting on’ with activities of daily living.

Many grips need to be gotten, both with coping with someone not correctly sexing you and with people checking you are in the right place

This happens to me fairly often, 5”9, buzz cut, no sense of style 🤣 It’s never been a problem! Just smile, say yep I’m a women, we normally both laugh in a relieved way.

I would be happy to be challenged every single time before we as women let men in unchallenged for fear of offending people like me.

Yes I'm a cancer survivor with short hair, a relatively deep voice (I sing tenor as Alto is too high for me) and gender-neutral/masc presentation, never wear makeup, and I own precisely zero skirts/dresses though my fat distribution is clearly female-phenotype if I'm wearing clothes that allow that level of shape detail to be scrutinised. I don't mind being mistaken for male at all. There's a bit in one of Hannah Gadsby's shows about it - getting mistaken for male feels like a "holiday" from the misogyny women face daily - for a few seconds you are a straight white man, "top-shelf normal", "king of the humans". It never lasts for more than 3 seconds because people aren't that stupid, and the things that can cause the misperception are too peripheral to really fool anyone. In the event of getting challenged in a ladies loo it would take approximately 2.5 seconds for the challenger to look again, realise they were wrong and we'd all laugh good-naturedly about it. No one is criticising me or any other gender-neutral-presenting woman of being insufficiently feminine or policing loos to only let in properly feminine women. The only criterion is being female.

XY males can't bluff their way into female spaces by pretending to be transmen on testosterone. Adams Apple and Pelvis shape are the main giveaways but a female person with a beard still looks like a female person with a beard, not a male person, if you look properly after the first glance.

It's been happening to me since I became an adult. My first firm memory is hearing the little boy in the garden next door saying "who's that man, mummy?", around about the time a woman in the loos told me I was in the wrong one in Slough shopping centre. Both 48 years ago.

I've lost count of the number of service people who have called me sir or mate. Last happened a few months ago on a bus. I prefer it to "love" !

👏👏👏

This, and it's not until the trans people told me that I was supposed to be getting upset about it that it even crossed my mind I might get upset about it. I usually just find it funny, though recently, thanks to the trans people, I've had to be concerned about the women who are looking for reassurance that I'm not a man. Thanks again guys.

Bottom line is that too many of them don't 'just wanna pee', they want access to a place with non-consenting women in uniquely vulnerable situations.

They can pee anywhere, including the men's loos, and do it far more quickly than women can.

If you were on a train you might have had cause to visit one of the few mixed-use loos we encounter regularly. Often a horrid reminder of many men's refusal to sit down and keep shared spaces clean.