There is a trope going round at the moment. It has had a few iterations, but they have common elements. Essentially, “butch lesbian harassed in toilets by terfs.” The latest one had a double mastectomy due to breast cancer. These stories are being “spun” to show that masculine of centre women are the actual victims of “terf ideology,” and are facing increased “harassment” as a result of “terf rhetoric.”
This current article is my attempt to say something coherent about the harassment of butch lesbians (the claimed topic of these stories). But it is also about the real moral of these modern Aesop’s fables being spun by the TRAs: the removal of safeguarding and protections from women’s spaces, and the use of butch handmaids as human shields for trans identified males.
Butch Harassment
Anybody who knows me will know that I, of all people, am against the harassment of butch lesbians. Part of my job as a femme is to be a shield against the hatred that comes my butch wife’s way. If some horrible man stares angrily at her in the street, I link her arm or hold her hand, I put my shoulders back, and I stare right back at him with the kind of contempt that only an old school, fuck you femme can muster. For every hateful stare she gets as a butch lesbian, I make it my job to dial myself up to eleven and give her at least several adoring looks. For every fucking idiot on twitter who tells her to just transition already, I wrap her up and love her, in her woman’s body, just how she is. I love her for her strength, her steel outside, her butch-ness, but most of all, I love her for the deep well of vulnerability which all that strength protects.
I am a staunch defender of my wife in particular, of course, but also of butch lesbians in general. I do not want their lives made more difficult. But I’ll say it out loud; I just do not believe the stories that have been put in the public domain by various outlets. I’m sorry, I just don’t. They may be true in parts, like the curate’s egg, but the air of dishonesty clings to them. The cancer survivor who cried harassment turned out to use they them pronouns, and go by Taylor, not Tiffany. Can we take them at face value that any further questions were asked beyond a simple query about whether they belonged there? Were there any other ways were they signalling that they didn’t belong in the ladies - any other steps they had taken towards being a “they them” that might signal maleness? Or even that any perceived “harassment” was from terfs, not homophobes?
Context is key
How you respond to somebody who confronts you in a women’s space is absolutely key to the outcome. A simple, “I’m a woman” in your woman’s voice will be enough to mollify anybody in my camp (although it may not go so well if you are instead confronting a drunk homophobe).
The conversation with somebody in our camp has happened to my wife. It goes like this.
“I’m sorry, this is the ladies mate, the men’s is over there.”
“I know, it’s okay, I’m a woman.”
“Oh my god, I’m sorry, I’m embarrassed.”
“That’s alright, thanks for trying to keep spaces safer for women.”
The end. It’s happened to my wife. When she speaks, her female voice makes it obvious she is a woman. She signals, loudly and clearly, that she belongs where she is - and this is easy, because she does belong there. It happens to all sorts of women. @bluecatsarah recounts being challenged during her chemo: “Thing is: it’s obvious when I speak and laugh that I’m female. Even hairless, looking like a potato (no eyebrows or lashes) and swathed in baggy clothes. We recoiled, I laughed, he (cleaner thinking I was going to the wrong loo) laughed, end.”
Now there is a different way that this conversation could go, isn’t there? Somebody who really does belong in the ladies, wearing a name badge that says “they/them” and has a name like “Taylor” on it. And they’re tall, and broad shouldered, and have had a double mastectomy. Who knows whether they’ve taken any physical or hormonal steps down the road to being a they/them. Somebody who doesn’t want to say, “I’m a woman.” Somebody who believes that it is highly offensive to try to protect women’s spaces in the first place, and that anybody trying to do so is a hateful bigot. That conversation might go differently.
Sleight of Hand
But even if such a conversation would be more likely to become heated, and amount to “harassment” in the eyes of the TRAs, this is not the target of the morality tale of “butches being harassed in toilets by terfs.” There are precisely zero gender critical women who do not believe that butch lesbians belong in women’s toilets. It is a straw man, a sleight of hand, designed to cover something else. It’s a lie, in fact. And it is a lie to cover up a conversation that is much less defensible by the other side, because although butch lesbians belong in the ladies, males do not.
The conversation that TRAs are trying to avoid women having in the loos is this one:
““I’m sorry, this is the ladies mate, the men’s is over there.”
“I know, it’s okay, I’m a woman.”
“No you aren’t. It is very obvious that you aren’t.”
“I’m a transwoman. I belong here.”
“Out you go. My daughter is in here. I’m calling security. Put your dick away.”
These stories are not trying to protect butch lesbians from momentary embarrassment in bathrooms. The stories are, in fact, trying to demonise the woman in the videotape of the Wii Spa incident for ever saying a single word to a predatory man who was swinging his dick in the women’s room in front of a nine year old girl.
Aesop’s Fable
If the little tale about the butch lesbian being harassed in the loos by terfs had a moral, like Aesop’s fables, it would be this: “nobody should ever confront anybody about their presence in a women’s space.” Butch lesbians are simply being used, yet again, as human shields for trans identified men - or more accurately, as doorstops, to hold open the door of the ladies to anybody who wants to come in.
Butch women can generally be relied upon to hold open doors for anybody - but femme though I am, I have no respect for any butch handmaiden holding open this kind of door, to this kind of man. I’ve no respect for any butch handmaiden spinning a dishonest little morality tale around the experiences that butch women have had since time immemorial, a tale designed to give away the rights of their sisters. I’ve no respect for any self styled they them, a supposedly butch handmaiden betraying other women for virtue points from the trans crowd, and at the same time, putting other women at risk. None of this is “butch.” Butch is boundaried, space holding, safe. Butch is candid, strong, warm, straightforward. Butch doesn’t bother with slight of hand, virtue signalling, woke points. Butch holds a line, at personal cost, in the face of danger. You can’t be butch and fucking handmaid at the same time. You have to choose.
Pearl Clutching
So the question you should be asking anybody clutching their pearls on behalf of these self styled butch lesbians is this: “You obviously believe that it’s unacceptable to approach masculine looking women in women’s spaces, even if you mistake them for men. Are there ever any circumstances under which you think it’s acceptable to confront somebody you do not believe belongs in a women’s space?” Because the truth is that these people really do not give a single fig about masculine looking women’s experiences. What they actually care about is having help to hold open the door of the ladies to trans identifying males.
As @saralikeclara puts it, “it’s quite telling that men have taken it upon themselves to protect women from mildly embarrassing encounters amongst ourselves, and all they ask for is to save us from our blushes is for us to accept a larger risk of male violence.”
What the TRAs say is, “terfs are bullying butch women in the loos.” And what they mean is, “nobody should ever confront an obvious man in a women’s space, because transwomen are women and have a right to be there, so all safeguarding should be removed and women’s spaces should be made a free for all.”
If you don’t see how that removes women’s ability to protect ourselves, and flat out enables predators, at very best, you’re thick.
I suspect the Tiffany/Taylor whatever person is trying to put one over on us. In person we can tell 99% to 100% of the time with a glance at size proportions, movement, and listening to voice, etc. More than a few women have small breasts and look flattish under loose garments. And if after a polite request to leave the loo the person turns angry and starts screaming -- he's a man.
An ideology that doesn't want women looking out for each other's safety.
We're going to need a bigger red flag.