Thread by @shaunjlawson

This is Khadijah Farmer. In 2008, she was ejected from a woman's toilet in New York because "she looked like a man".

Khadijah Farmer is not trans. She's a woman. I'm just wondering how people on my TL explain what happened to her.

This is Eloise Stonborough. She's not trans either. She's a woman. She's been 'confronted tens of times in public toilets'.

Including by a woman as she stood quietly in line to use a toilet in a park. “She stormed off in a huff when I refused to leave".

“One of the worst times was in an art gallery. A man started screaming that there was ‘a f**king man going into the toilet’ at the top of his voice, and started following me around the gallery once I’d left the toilet. I had to tell security so he could be escorted out".

There was even a confrontation at an Eddie Izzard gig, where Stonborough was driven from the toilets by a person who called her a “pervert”.

My TL is currently full of people who insist that 100% of women worldwide ALWAYS, in ALL circumstances, know when someone's a woman or not

So how do they explain these two cases? And they're not the only ones either.

Below, a thread from Quora. "How do I, as a biological female who gets mistaken for a man, cope with it? I hate myself every day. I'm hideous". 😢

quora.com/How-do-I-as-a-…

And here's another thread on the same theme.

Exactly how do people on my TL explain the above given their blanket insistence that this NEVER happens to ANY woman?

quora.com/Have-you-ever-…

One of (very many) things which frightens me about the discourse right now is the prospect of this happening to other women with stereotypically masculine features.

Who by the way, exist! And always have.

It reminds me a bit of when a frothing mob went after a paediatrician because they thought that was the longhand for 'paedo'.

I thought this movement included challenging traditional stereotypes? Not reinforcing them whenever it suits you to 'own' someone on the internet?

I even saw a woman rejoicing that Harwood had been "ripped a new one".

Ripped a new one? Rapey, dehumanising, misogynistic, pornified language? About THIS? And no-one commenting below that tweet even noticed. Extraordinary.

The thing about this entire debate is it concerns people - trans people - who are a minority. A small minority. And with regard to small minorities, language ALWAYS matters.

That's not 'tone policing'. Nobody would say that when describing any other small minority.

There are also minorities of men with stereotypically feminine features and minorities of women with stereotypically masculine features.

Shall we just pretend they don't exist? Shall we erase them in the way women everywhere are frightened of their lives and rights being erased?

A majority, a large majority, even an enormous majority is not magically 100%.

People who defy your stereotypes and generalisations exist. And a discourse like this harms and yes, absolutely, can certainly endanger them.

It's not OK.