Talking about transgender issues makes me nervous.

Like a lot of people, I consider myself pretty nonjudgmental. So when it comes to discussing trans issues. the last thing most of us want to do is seem aggressive, transphobic or to condone the abuse that trans people already face.

Over the last couple of years I’ve found myself less and less likely to ask questions about topics, like trans rights, which have the potential to be incendiary. And the recent ‘Man Friday’ protest carried out by a group of women who are concerned about the impending Gender Recognition Act is a perfect example of this.




In case you missed it, a group of women who connected over Mumsnet have founded something called the ‘Man Friday’ movement, where they ‘identify’ as male on Fridays. Last week they attended an all male swim session at a pool in Dulwich, wearing just swim shorts and swim hats. They claim that they’re raising awareness of the ‘illogical’ nature of the gender recognition act, a piece of law which will allow all people to use the gender the identify with, rather than the one that they were assigned at birth.

Their actions have been condemned by trans activists as ‘transphobic’.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

In all honestly, it’s starting to feel like anyone who asks any questions at all about trans issues, is labelled as being transphobic. Not by your average transperson who wants to get on with their life and enjoy finally being their authentic self, but by a small and extremely vocal minority.

While I don’t share the Man Friday group’s feelings about trans women, I respect them for putting their heads about the parapet on such a difficult issue.

The lines around what makes you a woman have become blurred and it’s now possible to decide for yourself, without surgery or living as the gender you identify as for any amount of time. Shops like Topshop allow people to use whichever changing room suits the gender they have self-assigned.

So, if we’re naming the elephant in the room, there’s nothing to stop men from using a false gender identity to gain access to spaces where women are vulnerable, like changing rooms and bathrooms.

When we discuss this, we’re not talking about genuine trans people going through years of reflection on their gender identity in order to perv on women in the loo or in a changing room. We’re talking about people using the excuse that they ‘identify’ as female in order to enter spaces where they do not belong.

Which is exactly what these women did when they attended an all male swim, demonstrating that it’s hardly impossible.

Would you want to be the swimming pool employee who told a man – even a man wearing trousers and rocking a beard – that he’s not welcome in the women’s changing room? Would you want to take the risk of being publicly shamed for being bigoted and transphobic?

I wouldn’t.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

The TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) stance is that ‘no penis should be in a female changing room’. It’s is extremely hard line (many transwomen can’t afford surgery), and I wince when I see the kind of aggression being levelled at trans people in their discussions. But, again, at the simplest level, I can’t help agreeing that if someone has made no concession to transitioning other than saying they identify as a woman, I would feel uncomfortable sharing a communal shower with them.



Whether or not that has any bearing on if they should be there, is a different discussion.

The complicated question is, if we have decided that it’s not breasts, a uterus and a vagina that makes you female, then we need to replace that list of criteria with something.

But what?

I recently watched a video from a transwoman about her right to use her selected bathroom. And I was with her every step of the way, until she answered the question ‘So, what makes you a woman?’ with the answer ‘who gives a f**k?’

I give a f**k. I give a f**k because if the definition of my gender is being changed, I’d like to understand how and why and what it is that will render me female from now on.

I am not female because I have long hair, or because I wear dresses and eye liner and get highlights. I am not female because I wear a bra or because my favourite colour is pink. None of those aspects define me, and if I cut my hair off, eschewed dresses and started attending dirt bike racing, I would be no less of a woman.

Many of the most outspoken TERFs are gay women who do just that – skip the make-up and the dresses. And I can understand why they’re frustrated. Modern gender theory seems to remove all the definition from biology and place it entirely on outward signs of gender – signs which lots of women don’t want to have to adopt in order to be female.


My experience of being a woman is, for the most part biological. When I think about what makes me a woman, it’s tangled up with my female body. It’s the embarrassment the first time I leaked on a chair during my period, the frustration of trying to buy a nice bra in Topshop when I was a D cup and none of my friends had reached a B yet. It’s having sex for the first time, discovering masturbation, having pregnancy scares, feeling my biological clock start to tick as I enter my late twenties. Having adult men shout ‘nice tits’ at me when I wasn’t quite fifteen yet.

It’s as simple as having your bra’s underwire poke you in the chest all day or asking a stranger in a bathroom if she had a spare tampon. Small, universal experiences that any other woman – or at least any other cis woman – would understand.

So if you tell me that being a woman isn’t about having a biologically female body (often dismissed as ‘vagina feminism’) then I have to ask, what replaces those things? What will make me female if it’s no longer fashionable or ‘woke’ to see my female body as what makes me a woman?

Maybe being female is more complicated than that – maybe it’s a feeling and and instinct and an innate sense that can’t be defined. But the problem with an innate sense that can’t be defined is that it also can’t be litigated for. You can’t make rules around feelings. They’re too ephemeral. Too difficult to quantify.


The reality is, until someone can come up with a better explanation of what makes a woman a woman, the debate will rumble on, and it will be impossible to define. Which, as the Man Friday protesters illustrate, leaves single-sex spaces open and vulnerable to infiltration.

I don’t know what the answer is. But I do know that the more nervous we are to discuss the subject, the less likely we are to find answers.

It’s perfectly possible to discuss trans issues respectfully, without misgendering people or casting aspersions about their gender identity. The discussion doesn’t need to be aggressive. But we’re undergoing an enormous shift in the way that we understand gender, and to attempt to do so without being able to enter into a discussion will unquestionably be fruitless.

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