Why Dame Angela Eagle is wrong about butch women

This Telegraph article reports claims by Dame Angela Eagle that gender-critical feminists want men who identify as trans to show their passports in order to access public toilets. Dame Angela further claims that making men use the men’s toilets will lead to ‘non-gender-conforming women’ being policed when using the ladies toilets. In addition to having to show passports to get in, she ‘dread[s] to think what else they might want us to show’.

She claims that ‘butch-looking’ women will be particularly at risk from this posse of women guarding the toilets, and appears to use the existence of masculine women as a reason to allow men to use women’s facilities.

I’m a butch woman. I like my hair very short indeed, and I have a penchant for unisex clothing and comfortable shoes. In addition, nature decided to make me six feet tall. I can tell Dame Angela that I’ve been policed in using the toilets for many, many years, well before the current debate about gender started.

I’ve seen women on Twitter saying that it doesn’t happen, presumably because it hasn’t happened to them or their friends, but I can assure you, it happens to me regularly. Not every time I go into a public toilet, but often. I’ve had older ladies take one, horrified, look at me, washing my hands, and back out of the toilet; I’ve had girls of ten or eleven stop me (very bravely, I thought at the time) and point out that I’m going into the ladies and am I quite sure that I don’t need the gents. I’ve had the double takes, I’ve been called ‘sir’, the lot. What I haven’t had is violence, because the women I meet in public toilets are not aggressive, they’re worried.

I used to be a bit bothered by these reactions- I felt that these women could really do with expanding their ideas of what a woman can look like; we’re not all five foot five with long hair and a liking for frocks. Now, however, I’m actually quite encouraged by them. The current push to expand what women can look like to include men means that toilets have become a battleground, and men are using women’s toilets to film themselves, take photos, produce porn, and generally assert their dominance. The social contract that kept men out of women’s facilities has broken down, and using the ladies has become a power trip. For women to stand up to this and challenge someone they initially perceive as male is a brave act. Once eye contact is made, or I start to speak, they understand that I’m a woman, not any kind of man, and relax.

So yes, Angela, I am a butch woman who is policed in using the ladies toilets. I get the funny looks and the questions. But I’ve never had to show my passport, or, as you not-very-subtly imply, my genitals. Women know what women are, and you have the Gender Critical arguments backwards. We don’t want to make women conform to stereotypes; women (and men) can dress how they want. Choosing to opt out of stereotypes, or opt into the stereotypes of the opposite sex, does not change who you are. Men, however they choose to dress, will always be men, and should stay out of the ladies’ toilets.