Katie Alcock is an unlikely heretic. For a decade she helped run Brownie and Girl Guide groups in Lancaster. Then she was expelled.

Girlguiding said she had violated its policies on equality and diversity. Her offence was to suggest that people born male who now say they are female should not automatically be welcomed by a female-only organisation and, for instance, share tents or bathrooms with girls.

In any other context, Alcock’s views would be uncontroversial. Organisations like Girlguiding have safeguarding policies to control interactions between girls and those whose male anatomy gives them the potential to be a threat to those girls. In any other context, Girlguiding would stand squarely behind Alcock.

So why, when the interests of transgender people are invoked, does Girlguiding seem to apply a different standard? It is far from alone. Universities, local councils, the BBC, and charities are among organisations where women who question policies intended to promote transgender equality fear sanction and dismissal.

A common concern is that measures intended to make life easier for people born male who now identify as women will have consequences for services and opportunities previously reserved for people born with female bodies.

Toilets come up with depressing frequency in this debate. Lots of organisations are adopting “gender neutral” bathrooms, or renaming their women’s toilets “gender neutral” to spare transgender people the awkward choice of whether to use the facility that aligns with their physical sex or their professed gender.

Yet what about women who aren’t happy sharing such spaces with biological males? Or who worry that opening up services reserved for women to male-born transwomen is unfair on women who have faced a lifetime of social and economic sexism?