Why are men still barging into women’s toilets?

Robin Moira White has two rock-solid reasons to steer clear of the ladies’ loos. One, he’s male. Two, he’s a barrister, which means he should know better than to treat women’s toilets like a legal grey area (that happens to have nice hand soap). And yet, last week, the trans-activist lawyer breezed right past the unisex loos in Westminster’s Portcullis House and straight into a female-only space.

We should have seen this coming. Last month, White told the BBC’s Woman’s Hour that he would keep using women’s spaces, in defiance of the UK Supreme Court’s ruling in April that men should not be able to access female-only facilities. This applies even if those men have a gender-recognition certificate saying they’re a woman. It is outrageous for anyone, let alone a high-profile barrister, to flagrantly contradict the law like this.

Kate Harris, co-founder of LGB Alliance, and Heather Binning, executive director of the Women’s Rights Network, were at a Women and Equalities Select Committee meeting last week, discussing that very Supreme Court judgment. That was when White, also in attendance, followed them to the ladies’.

‘We suspect he knew exactly what he was doing – and that we, of all women, would challenge him’, Binning told me. ‘Kate and I felt we had no choice but to speak up and tell him – a large man who is about a foot taller than either of us – that he should not be there.’

She found the encounter intimidating, as it was in a small space without cameras or security guards. ‘Silence from other women should not be interpreted by these men as consent [to enter women’s spaces]’, she told me. ‘It is beholden on the rest of the public, the police and employers, to uphold the law and to put practices and policies in place to defend women in society and not to leave it to individual women to take on this role.’

White is far from alone in flouting the rules, of course. As Harris told me:

‘Many male trans activists have expressed their commitment to break the law by continuing to use women’s facilities. This is a form of abuse towards women. The NHS, many MPs, trades unions, universities, schools and a range of public and private organisations have all expressed their willingness to undermine the rule of law by ignoring the Supreme Court ruling. This is unprecedented and should concern all of us who care about liberal democracy. ’

When Binning and Harris complained via email, Commons staff conceded. ‘The individual you complained about should not have been directed to the female facilities’, they replied.

In some ways, White and I aren’t so different: both of us are professionals who, whether we admit it or not, take our opinions to work with us. We’re both interested in equality and the law. But whereas he’s six feet tall with a voice like gravel in a blender, I’m four-foot-seven and sound like I’ve just inhaled a party balloon. It’s fair to say such things shape our life experiences. Put bluntly: I can bruise a man’s ego with some well chosen words. But if he wanted to, almost any bloke could end my life with his bare hands. I don’t obsess over it – but only a fool would forget it.

White has previously claimed he’s not been challenged when entering women’s spaces because people assume he’s female. I’d suggest the real reason is actually that he looks, and sounds, like an entitled bloke. What has hitherto allowed him to go unchallenged isn’t kindness, it isn’t really even courtesy – it’s fear.

Who wants to be the sales assistant who tells a hulking man in lipstick he’s in the wrong changing room? Or the receptionist who calls a man in a baby doll dress and with a 5 o’clock shadow ‘Sir’? The cost might not only be a job, but one’s front teeth, too.

Back in the 1990s, psychologist Dee Graham suggested women often develop a kind of Stockholm Syndrome in response to the physical power imbalance between the sexes. This isn’t a weakness, it’s a survival strategy. So women smile, flatter, fake laughs (and other things) – all to placate the group we can’t afford to offend. This might sound extreme, and it’s certainly controversial, but it’s hard to write off entirely.

Whether it’s the oddball women who pen love letters to serial killers or teenage girls cooing over men in make-up, a lot of females do actively suck up to dangerous men. And scaled up, this behaviour can be seen at an institutional level. To avoid reputational damage, female-led HR departments quietly hold open the door to women’s toilets and changing rooms – not necessarily out of principle, but often out of a subconscious drive for self-preservation.

This is why institutions – from the House of Commons to high-street banks – are pretending biological sex is complicated. It’s precisely because it isn’t complicated – and they don’t want to offend entitled, bullying men.

For all my strident views, if I found myself alone with a man like White in the ladies’, I would be hesitant to speak up. Not out of kindness – and not because I’m a coward. But because it’s a risk I simply can’t afford to take.

Jo Bartosch is a journalist campaigning for the rights of women and girls.