Here I am, tail between my legs and asking for forgiveness.

Actually, that's not quite true. I'm here to apologise to Erin and to the others I pissed off through my comments on the restaurant thing.

Here it is in words that I hope cannot be misconstrued.

I agree the bouncer was out of order. I believe he acted in a bigoted and unprofessional manner and should be punished for that.

I do not agree that the woman concerned was totally blameless. I saw an attitude in her and the way she spoke that may well have been at least partially to blame for the fact that she was treated so badly.

In addition, she waltzed into the restaurant looking it has to be said, more male than female and I think that anyone who didn't know who she was would have had to have had a second look - confirmation that she was indeed a she.

Having said that, what followed was where it all turned to shit.

According to her, she showed the bouncer her ID and it showed that she was indeed female, but he chose according to her, to ignore that.

Now my opinion is, that had she not been quite so confrontational (reference the attitude) in the first place, that may not have happened. It did however and now I hope that the restaurant concerned is walloped. If not for her treatment, then for hiring a bouncer, the actions of whom, they could not control.

In short I feel that the bouncer was wholly to blame, though I feel that her attitude could well of exascerbated the situation.

In conclusion, I managed to piss a lot of you off and I didn't mean to do that. I was looking with straight eyes and I wouldn't have known that the woman was in fact female and I doubt whether the restaurant did either. Regardless of whether they had signified their affiliation with the Gay Pride movement, one cannot be expected to know whether someone like her is male or female without asking. If I were in their posisiton I would have been hard-pressed to have known one way or the other.

The handling of the whole thing was wrong, but I feel that at least one or two comments failed to see that perhaps she was even slightly wrong and the whole focus seemed to me to be on the fact that she was wronged, not that she may have been confrontational in the first place, getting her feathers ruffled for being thought male when wearing a male style suite, shirt, short hair cut in a predominantly male style and with a voice that could have been mistaken.

So the restaurant was in favour of Gay Pride, but how were they supposed to know her gender?

I didn't.

I'm sure others would feel the same way however many women there may be in that area who choose to look like her, including a fair proportion of the male population I shouldn't wonder.

When writing your fictions, don't you always say that when a man is dressed as a woman, he should use the womens toilets? You don't have him saunter into the gents do you? So why on earth should someone dressed and looking like she chooses to, NOT draw attention to herself walking into the ladies?

Verbally slap me if you will, but both my girlfriend and I thought that the woman in question was of questionable gender. By that reckoning and from your own stories, she should have used the gents. Your dressed men use the ladies - how wrong is that?