Across the vestibule
Caz Coronel was standing in the queue for the ladies’ at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank when she registered a male voice shouting across the vestibule: “The men’s toilets are on this side!”
At first the composer and producer paid little attention, until the man – whom Coronel describes as tall and in his late 60s – approached and touched her shoulder. He continued to challenge her about being in the wrong queue until she asked him bluntly: “Do you want to see my tits?”
Really? Did that really happen?
It doesn’t sound very plausible. Two queues outside the rooms where the toilets are, and a guy shouts from one queue to the other queue? I know, we’re supposed to think he’s a fanatic and so he does this peculiar thing that no one would normally ever do, but I still think it sounds…how shall I put this…made up.
Since the supreme court’s ruling on biological sex, debate around its practical application has focused heavily on access to women’s toilet and changing facilities – in particular after initial advice on implementation from the equalities watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, amounted to a blanket ban on trans people using toilets of their lived gender, which many say in effect excludes them from public spaces.
Ah their “lived gender” – is that what we’re calling it now? There’s your actual gender and then there’s your lived gender? Does that work for other categories? Can we have a lived species that’s different from our actual one? Can we have a lived age? A lived height? A lived pedality?
Critics of the ruling have suggested it may likewise affect cis women who do not adhere to a straight, white template of femininity.
Critics of the ruling have suggested a slew of stupid things; that doesn’t mean the Guardian has to wring its silly hands over them.
Support groups report some early indications that gender nonconforming women are facing increased challenges, raising wider questions about how women read each other’s bodies and whether women’s toilets have ever been entirely safe spaces.
Therefore it’s fine for men to be in women’s toilets. Brilliant thinking, Libby Brooks.
Claire Prihartini was diagnosed with breast cancer a year and a half ago. “I had a really lucky experience: I found out early, opted for a bilateral mastectomy and didn’t need further treatment.” Her chest is now flat, with two small scars and no nipples.
In May, Prihartini was in the women’s changing room area of her local pool. “I was standing with my top off in front of the mirror putting on my swimming cap. Another woman walked in, gasped audibly and said: ‘There’s a man in here!’ I said: ‘Oh I’m not a man …’ in a friendly way, then she said aggressively: ‘You look like a man, there aren’t meant to be men in here’ and continued to look at my body. I didn’t want to engage with her any further so I just walked off into the pool.”
You’ll never guess who she is. Not in a million years.
Prihartini, whose experience was first shared on social media by her husband, Jolyon Maugham, founder of the Good Law Project, is at pains to make clear that this was not “a massively traumatic experience”. After she walked away the other woman did not continue to challenge her. Like Coronel, however, she links the incident directly to the supreme court ruling.
Does she now. Why not link it to the past ten years of relentless bullying of women who don’t want men joining us in the toilets? Why not link it to the problem rather than the solution?
I like to live as a European Rabbit on Saturdays.
‘I’ve been spat on, screamed at and it’s just so sad that this looks likely to get worse.’
I wrote elsewhere about the ‘spitting’ thing – you may recall that legend had it that returning Vietnam vets were ‘spat on’. Interesting book about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spitting_Image
It occurs to me that in both the Vietnam situation and this one the ‘spitting’ story was/is meant to do the same thing – disguise and disrupt the actual solidarity between the alleged ‘spitters’ and alleged ‘spat upon’.
@guest
Wow, I didn’t know that about the spitting myth. Very fascinating! Now I”m going to read more about it. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the tip, guest. I just put it on my birthday list.
Once upon a time, seeing scars on a flat chest from a mastectomy would have elicited instant compassion and a determination not to ‘mention anything’; because there would only have been one likely explanation and “christ, how insensitive would that be”?
But now, the trans lobby have trained women to assume the worst, because in a women’s’ space, they have to.
As one does. /s
snort
I thought that was odd but then I don’t frequent such places myself so I wouldn’t know.
@5 good point…. The story is pretty far-fetched anyway, but now that you mention it this is a woman presumably in her 50s, not otherwise apparently ‘trans identified’ and not doing anything particularly activist or trans-related, so why would the alleged perpetrator have a gender-related freakout rather than drawing the obvious conclusion that the woman had, or might have had, breast cancer? Your point makes the story even more suspect.
Apparently Caz Coronel is “diverse”. Not anything diverse. Just diverse. Maybe the imaginary man was just freaking out at being in the presence of such an indefinably multitudinous entity.
…as opposed to how homogeneous all the rest of us are…
We’re all Samey McSamerson, every last one of us.
Why wouldn’t the woman yelling about there being a man in the woman’s changing room be lauded as a trans ally? After all, a woman with a flat chest and scars ought to trigger the recognition that he’s a trans man, a man like any other. The reaction is therefore entirely appropriate.
@12 that dawned on me a while ago as well, posting elsewhere – wouldn’t it be politically correct to complain about a ‘man’ in a woman’s space, upon seeing a woman with mastectomy scars?
Well you see…um…er…no I know: trans allies know which people are trans and which are faking, because trans allies are the good people. That’s how that works.