A transgender woman facing disciplinary action over a T-shirt stating that she is still biologically a man has been accused of “hate speech”.

Debbie Hayton, a physics teacher in the Midlands, lives as a transgender women after changing her gender from male to female in 2012. But unlike many people in the trans-community, she does not believe her sex can be changed and is vocal about the fact that she will always biologically remain a man.

She is now potentially facing expulsion from the LGBT committee of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) for wearing a top adorned with the slogan: “Trans women are men. Get over it!”

If the TUC rules against Ms Hayton, who has sat on the committee for five years, it would mean that even transgender people face being accused of transphobia for saying that they do not believe an individual can alter the sex they were assigned at birth.

Ms Hayton, 51, who has undergone surgery and hormone treatment, wore the T-shirt at an event organised by campaign group Fair Play for Women in July, and it attracted a complaint in August.

According to the Sunday Times, 12 members of the LGBT committee wrote to Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, a federation of unions representing 5.5m working Britons, saying that by wearing the T-shirt Ms Hayton had “gone beyond discourse, and the expression of alternative viewpoints, and is now propagating hate speech against the trans community”.