https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/may-2025/defying-a-pervert/

Coming through Zurich airport, I was flashed in the ladies’ loo by a man in a skin-tight beige bodysuit and a dodgy Chelsea facelift. It was emphatically not a unisex bathroom, but at first I wasn’t too bothered to see a bloke dressed as a woman in there. I actually felt a bit sorry when he asked me in a chummy voice which of two lipsticks suited him best (note to aspirant women, we don’t actually go up to random strangers by the sinks and come on all 12-year-olds’ sleepover) and merely resigned when he asked me if his bra was showing. But then he took his penis out.

“Oh love,” I thought, “You’ve really, really picked the wrong day.”

Call me intolerant, but when returning from giving evidence in a case of attempted rape at the Supreme Court of Switzerland the absolute last thing I want to see is someone swinging their dick in my face. There are moments when it might be correct to rehearse a carefully calibrated argument about trans rights, but I find empathy easier when someone isn’t waggling their testicles at me in a space reserved for women. As it was, he didn’t get the reaction he was hoping for. When security arrived there may have been a moment’s doubt as to which of us was the threat, but not it’s my fault he’d picked on the angriest woman in Terminal A.

And what if I hadn’t already been exhausted and furious — what if I were a child or a disabled woman who couldn’t move quickly or just maybe a woman who wanted to have a pee in peace? That we have all of us at some point to tolerate such behaviour, so constantly, so relentlessly, is bad enough, but that we are expected to pander to it is obscene. Why was I so afraid of appearing a bigot, or even a Trump supporter, that I couldn’t say, politely but firmly, “I think you’re in the wrong bathroom, please leave”?