Gender nonconforming cis women in the U.K. are reporting increased incidents of having their presence in women’s bathrooms and changing rooms challenged since the country’s anti-trans Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.

“If you’re masculine-presenting or butch lesbian, women’s toilets are not a safe space. I’ve been spat on, screamed at and it’s just so sad that this looks likely to get worse,” one woman told the Guardian. “The looks of hate, the feeling that you just don’t know if you’re going to be safe, have really got worse since the ruling, to the extent I now either ask a friend to come in with me or use the disabled toilet, which I feel bad about because it’s preventing them from accessing it.”

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In a story published August 12, the outlet spoke to several cisgender women who, for one reason or another, do not fit rigid expectations of traditional feminine appearance. Each said they have been confronted, and in some cases harassed, in women-only spaces by bystanders who questioned their gender.

Caz Coronel, a composer and producer, said she was recently confronted while waiting in line for the women’s restroom at a concert venue by a man who insisted she belonged in the line for the men’s room. He kept harassing her about waiting for the women’s room until she told him, “Do you want to see my tits?”

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“I have short hair and don’t mind if people think I look male. I’ve often been called ‘Sir’, but when they see my face, they either apologize or ask me politely what I like to be called. But I’ve never had anyone approach me before in such a publicly aggressive way,” she said. “What then flashed through my mind was: Is this what this ruling has done?”

According to the outlet, many said they have noticed “an escalation” in these encounters since the Supreme Court ruling in April, which found that the legal definition of a woman under the country’s 2010 Equality Act is based on “biological sex.”

Claire Prihartini, a breast cancer survivor who got a bilateral mastectomy, said that she was harassed in the changing room of a public pool.

“I was standing with my top off in front of the mirror putting on my swimming cap,” she recounted. “Another woman walked in, gasped audibly, and said: ‘There’s a man in here!’ I said: ‘Oh, I’m not a man …’ in a friendly way, then she said aggressively: ‘You look like a man, there aren’t meant to be men in here’ and continued to look at my body. I didn’t want to engage with her any further, so I just walked off into the pool.”

Prihartini said that while the experience wasn’t “massively traumatic,” it “shocked me that someone felt empowered in the moment to question someone else’s gender so rudely, that it’s becoming normalized.”

As the Guardian notes, shortly after the ruling, the Equality and Human Rights Commission released an “interim update” on how the decision should be interpreted, suggesting that trans people should be banned from using public facilities that align with their gender identity. At the time, Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden told the BBC that there would not be “toilet police” in the country, “But that is the logical consequence of the court ruling and the EHRC guidance.”

Critics of anti-trans bathroom bans have long argued that, apart from being cruel and discriminatory, these measures would also likely subject cisgender women and girls to increased policing of their appearance. Those fears seem to be becoming a reality in both the U.S. and the U.K.

Both Taranjit Chana of LGBTQ+ anti-violence organization Black and Brown Rainbow and Bridget Symonds of LGBTQ+ anti-abuse charity Galop told the Guardian that their organizations have seen an uptick in reports from queer and gender-diverse people who have had their gender challenged in public restrooms in recent months.

“We’ve seen instances where LGBT+ people are being challenged and verbally abused when attempting to access toilets in public spaces, such as pubs,” Symonds said. “We’re hearing from cisgender lesbians who have been questioned about their gender in public toilets, something happening even before the ruling.”

Chana noted that women of color face particular scrutiny.

“Women’s toilets have never felt entirely safe for black and brown women, because we don’t fit that binary way of looking,” Chana said. “In some communities, facial hair is part of who we are, but in public toilets people stare and feel it is acceptable to make remarks because we don’t fit a narrow, European version of female.”

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