Re your article (‘I’ve been spat on’: gender non-conforming women tell of toilet abuse after UK’s supreme court ruling, 12 August), while it is possible that these women’s experiences are as a result of the recent supreme court ruling, this has been happening to me and others I know for a long time. A very long time.

My experience as a gender non-conforming 37-year-old woman is that, since I was about eight, I have been regularly mistaken for a boy or man, and that a few times a year, these incidents are deeply embarrassing to me or involve someone being openly hostile.

For example, in 2022, when flying to the US, I was detained for an enhanced search because they did not believe that I was female, as stated in my passport. I was humiliated to the point of tears, not least because I had recently shaved my head for brain surgery for a tumour and had a prominent scar.

I have long lived in a world where I expect to be mistaken for a man and feel on edge as a result. My crimes? Being 5ft 8in, slim-ish, with short hair, an angular face, a deeper voice, and preferring loose clothing. Perhaps my walk is a little confident. The chromosomes remain XX.

This isn’t about the trans or non-binary debate. The real issue is that in this country, we have an extremely reductive view of what even a biological woman should look like, sound like and dress like. To an extent, the challenge to binaries has unfortunately and bizarrely played a role in reducing the visual and social footprint of natal womanhood even further. I am regularly asked by well-meaners my pronouns too – something I find just as insulting.

The way I am is no statement, no protest, no challenge. It is simply how I have always been. Comfy, lazy, functional. Why should those be the preserve of men?
Felicity Hawksley
York