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Single-sex toilets must exclude transgender people, says Equality and Human Rights Commission
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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Biological sex is a dogwhistle made digestible to appease the apathetic moderate
You're thinking of gender, sex is scientifically determinable.
What about when you go to the doctor and they need to know what type of organs you were born with instead of what type of clothes you like to wear?
Sex ≠ gender.
It's wrong to try to force "gender" to mean "sex", but trying to force "sex" to mean "gender" is also wrong.
That isn't even a reliable indicator, and it is a discussion between the patient and the doctor and no one else if it even comes up. We have the language to be specific. Besides, doctors don't even know what to do with trans people regardless of gender or surgeries because all medical research on the topic has been blocked, erased, or burned by knuckledraggers
(MTF) When I go to doctors I have to explain to them that if they run my bloodwork as Male, every single damn metric on it is going to be flashing bright red. When it's run as Female, I can get actual data out of it. Also guess who you go to if you have titty problems.
I wasn't saying "organs" was an indicator. Obviously that's not the question on the medical form. I was using it as a placeholder because apparently I'm not allowed to use the term "biological sex." If you rule out the basic term used to describe something, don't be surprised when people use a less reliable descriptor to get the point across.
Yes, and the language for that is "biological sex." If you go to the doctor, they will ask you for your biological sex. Are you saying every medical questionnaire is really using transphobic dogwhistles?
Doctors don't immediately get amnesia when something gets defunded. If a doctor already specialized in gender-affirming care, then they still know as much as they did before this administration shut down new research. If they didn't specialize in it before, then they were already ignorant about it anyway so it's not like this makes them more ignorant.
Using the government to hamper medical research is a bad thing, yes. Giving bigoted doctors an excuse to let their religion or politics influence the care they give is a bad thing too. And so is making doctors who do care have to fear for their medical licenses in order to continue providing medically necessary treatments. But claiming that doctors suddenly don't know what to do is a hyperbole that misses the actual issue.
I wasn't saying otherwise. You said "biological sex" is a useless concept and nothing but a dogwhistle, so I gave a counterexample of a situation where it's has a legitimate use as a concept.
If a trans man goes to the doctor, it's not transphobic for that doctor to ask if he may be pregnant or when his last period was. That's standard information that doctors ask every patient who has ovaries. When it comes to routine medical exams, gender simply doesn't matter as much as biological sex.
Obviously if someone is on hormone therapy then it changes the indicators and target ranges for lab work. It changes the specific things to mainly look out for, like types of cancers and bone density or cholesterol issues. Having organs removed, whether cis or trans, changes risk factors for a variety of diseases and renders some screenings less necessary. That should all be taken into account, of course, but pretending that "biological sex" is useless in medical contexts is an ignorant take.
And besides, if "biological sex" is such a bogus concept, then what do we even contrast "gender" with in the first place? If those are different things, then each one logically must be something, or else there wouldn't be two different concepts, in which case the two concepts would collapse in on each other and become functionally the same. If you want them to be distinct, then pretending one of them doesn't really exist is counterproductive.
It's like race and ethnicity. Race is a social construct, sure, but nobody takes that to mean ethnicity doesn't exist or is just a useless dogwhistle.
"Biological sex" is poor language because it doesn't actually provide any useful information. It says nothing about my hormone levels, it says nothing about my fat distribution, it says nothing about my (in)ability to have kids, it says nothing about my dose requirements, it says nothing about my genitals, it has never actually achieved anything useful at the doctor's office other than cause bureaucratic headaches.
If a medical form needs to know if I can get pregnant, the correct language is "are you able to get pregnant". It's not transphobic to ask that in a medical context, if anything it's expected. It is transphobic to assume a trans person can't answer that truthfully. Besides, a lot of cis women can't get pregnant either, and it covers the case of trans men who can.
Yes, they literally do get amnesia. One of the main complaints trans people about doctors is how they blame everything on us being trans. I've heard it described as "trans broken arm syndrome". It's a similar issue to what cis women face, almost like it's a systematic issue that affects anyone who isn't a cis man.
This is contradictory. Trans people already gave discrimination and confusion from doctors on the norm. Eg: I've even had issues with my ophthalmologist, as if being trans has any effect whatsoever on my eyes. A single binary "biological sex" marker erases all the nuance involved and strips us of the language needed to properly convey it.
Individual physical characteristics. If you want to argue that this can be packaged into a nice little binary then at least us
Finally, your persistent sealioning only contributes to the problem that no one ever fucking listens to trans people. We are a tiny minority to begin with, and are constantly being drowned out by cis folk who think they know the trans experience better than us (eg: when was the last time you saw NYT quote a trans person in an article about trans issues?). You have easily typed out more than any trans person in the conversation and have learned absolutely nothing from it.
You are sealioning. You don't speak to your doctor in order to use the loos. In this context, "biological sex" is a transphobic dog whistle.
I'm not commenting on the top-level post, I was replying to a comment that said:
That's not sealioning.
You don’t speak to your doctor in order to use the loos. In this context, “biological sex” is a transphobic dog whistle.
the term "biological sex" doesnt make much sense tho
what are all of those complex medical treatments trans people can get, if not biology? far more advanced and interesting biology at that
and "biological sex" isnt a binary either, 1 in 40 people are intersex, mostly with almost no effect, but not in the binary either
So what do you want to call it then? It's not like I'm attached to the term itself, but the point is that it's a useful and necessary concept in some contexts so there needs to be a term that refers to it, and you can't just assume anyone who uses the most common term to describe it is transphobic.
And I never said it's a binary, but if a person is intersex then that's probably important information for their doctors to know because there may be certain medical complications that they're more at risk for as a result.
I've yet to have any single interaction with a doctor where knowing I was born with a penis has been helpful beyond not having to ask questions like "might you be pregnant?", but so many flags in medical paperwork that just result from them mislabeling me as a male.
Okay, so are you just going to ignore the inverse situation where a trans man goes to the doctor and the doctor does have to ask if he might be pregnant?
theyre not ignoring it?
No one has addressed the situation even though I've mentioned it twice in this thread now. That seems like ignoring it, no?
Is it transphobic for a doctor to ask a trans man if he might be pregnant, or no?
no
if they are, at the time, able to be pregnant, it makes sense and is not transphobic
Okay, then it makes sense to have a spot on the intake forms to denote biological sex, or assigned sex at birth, or whatever term you want to use for it.
Otherwise a doctor seeing a new patient won't know the appropriate questions to ask.
There should also be sections to mark any medications one is on, including hormone therapy, and any prior surgeries, including organ removal.
So instead of saying biological sex is a useless concept that only transphobes use, why not mention what your preferred terminology is so that people who actually care about being affirming can use the correct term?
Oh, if you actually care about being affirming, the correct term is gender. What you say to your doctor is private. Gender is the public facing bit. It's the relevant bit for which toilets you or I go in, which is what we're discussing.
The correct term is not gender, because gender is different from sex. If you go to the doctor and all they ask is your gender, they're missing critical information.
I never said what people tell their doctors belongs anywhere other than their confidential medical record.
I wasn't speaking in reference to bathrooms. A commenter said "biological sex is a transphobic dogwhistle" and I pointed out that that's not always the case.
And really? Someone called this "transphobic apologia" and permabanned me from several communities that I've never participated in anyway? I pretty clearly distinguished that what I'm saying is not transphobia, but I suppose if you lack any nuance then it could be hard to tell the difference.
If I didn't value trans lives then why would I give a shit if your doctor fails to screen for the correct types of cancer because they don't know your biological sex? If I was transphobic, that wouldn't matter to me at all.
I get it, there's a lot of transphobia in the world and that probably makes you see it where there is none, but golly, permabanning from several unrelated communities is petty as hell.
This post is about public gendered spaces. A toilet doesn't have gonads. Your derailment into medical treatment is not helpful and the opposite of affirming. If your trans friend, should you be capable of retaining one, complains about access to toilets following this development, interrupting them to tell them that they're always going to have to mention their sex assigned at birth to the doctor is deeply unsympathetic at the very least.
It's a transphobic dog whistle in the context of this guidance.
Even if private conversions with your doctor and registration forms were relevant in a discussion about using a term like "biological sex" in guidance about gendered spaces, still in 2026, if your doctor's registration has "Biologocal sex: M/F" and nothing else, your doctor is transphobic asshole who has decided to mistreat (in both senses) a persecuted minority.
Really. If you can't see how derailing the topic and pontificating about what your doctor needs to know in a discussion about who is allowed to use the toilets in peace, then you lack empathy.
I'm no mod. I don't have the time or the inclination to clean up the worst shit on the site
I didn't ban you, but I'd be shocked if a comm or instance designed as a safe space for trans people wanted you showing up there banging on about their birth sex. Prebanning you stops you from showing up there to sealion the same stuff they're absolutely sick of hearing, because I promise you, you aren't the first nor the first thousandth person to debate "biological sex" in the context of trans people's rights.
Your assertion means so much less than your behaviour. All three racist things I ever heard were prefixed by "I'm not being racist, but" and the weirdest thing ever said to me by a retailer was was prefixed by "I'm not being funny, but".
It is genuinely very hard indeed to tell the difference between someone on the autistic spectrum turning up in a post about trans people and arguing something unhelpful, unsupportive and upsetting to trans people at length out of pedantry without realising that they're derailing the conversion and upsetting trans people, and a sealioning transphobe.
If you aren't transphobic and you aren't autistic, I would expect you to adjust how you speak in this kind of context.
Didn't do it, but I understand it, and the fact that you can't seem to understand why it happened is the same reason they wanted to do it.
I didn't leave a top-level comment. I replied to someone who made an excessively broad statement lacking any nuance. They didn't say "it's being used as a transphobic dogwhistle in this context," they suggested that it can only be used as a transphobic dogwhistle. So I provided a counterexample.
Ignoring the fact that my comment was a reply to someone else's, and responding as if I was leaving a top-level comment, means you're the one ignoring context.
I don't just randomly blurt out "doctors need to know their patient's anatomy!" in irrelevant situations. My response was a reply to someone saying "biological sex" has no useful meaning except as a transphobic dogwhistle. How is that so difficult to understand?
If my friend wasn't talking about the bathroom, but said "biological sex is just a transphobic dogwhistle" without qualifying it as "in ____ specific context", then I would push back and say "then how will a doctor know whether to ask a trans man if he's pregnant?" And so far no one has been able to provide a good answer to that, so that tells me you're just using "transphobia" as a dismissive thought-stopper because you're uncomfortable with considering a reality that feels taboo (specifically because it's treated as "transphobic dogwhistle" in all contexts, leaving no room for nuance).
It's not derailing or pontificating because it was in response to a different comment which was attempting to make an overly-broad judgement. If you think I'm making this about toilets then you need to reread what I said, because nothing I said has been about toilets.
Yeah, except it wasn't just trans comms, several of them were completely unrelated. Some mod saw my comments and decided to be petty and ban me from every comm they're a mod on. That's what's ridiculous.
Also, I don't just show up in trans comms talking about bathrooms and birth sex. That would be psycho. This isn't even a trans comm. And what I said was relevant to the discussion.
And nothing I've said has been sealioning, people are just refusing to address the very legitimate point that I made that doctor's need to know what sex someone was born as in order to ask the right questions and screen for the right things.
I'm not "debating" biological sex. The fact that you think that's even a debate is kinda dissociated from reality. I acknowledged the difference between sex and gender in my first comment, and said we shouldn't conflate the two. At no point did I say anything like "gender must match sex," or "there's only two genders," or "there's only two sexes." All those layers of interpretation have been added on by other people to uncharitably lump me into the category "transphobe" just so they don't have to think about what I said. That's a strawman.
Except I didn't prefix what I said with "I'm not transphobic, but." I didn't say I wasn't transphobic until after someone accused me of being transphobic. It was a simple rebuttal, because nothing I said was transphobic. You saw a shadow of a tree and thought it was freddie kruger.
Great, so you're assuming I'm not autistic. Neurotypical defaultism is ableist.
Oh, I can understand why it happened. It's because someone was being petty and trigger-happy without caring to stop and think critically for a moment. I didn't say I don't understand how this could happen. I just called it petty.