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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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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.
No, they didn't, they just said (and to repeat, they said it in the context of this guidance about access to gendered spaces) "it's a transphobic dog whistle", which is absolutely what it is in this context, and you strawmanned that up to "it's always transphobic dog whistle in every context, even if you omit the unnecessary oversimplifying adjective 'biological'" and made the argument about that.
Correction, very irrelevant point in this context.
No, there's an if at the start of that sentence and an and partway in.
I think it's rational to ban someone who refuses to accept that their lengthy sealioning is unwelcome from a comm designed to be free of exactly that kind of sealioning.
You act like you're unable to understand why those comments were unwelcome. If you do understand why they're unwelcome, stop. If you don't understand why they're unwelcome, don't claim to understand.
They applied their judgement in an unqualified and overly broad sense. They weren't just talking about "in this context." And if you aren't operating on the assumption that "it's always a transphobic dogwhistle," then why are people saying it's a transphobic dogwhistle when I simply say "it's not necessarily a transphobic dogwhistle"?
It's not irrelevant at all, but if you keep ignoring thr context that makes it relevant then I can't change your mind...
Which was clearly meant to be hostile and the disclaimer "if you're not autistic..." doesn't really change that.
First of all, I'm not sealioning. I don't know why you're fixated on that. I didn't say "Oh yeah, prove it's a dogwhistle" multiple times while ignoring evidence. I provided evidence in the form of a counterexample that it's not always a dogwhistle; evidence which was promptly and repeatedly ignored. In other words, you're the ones sealioning.
Second of all, this isn't a trans comm, and neither were half the ones I got permabanned from. So your logic falls short.
They're unwelcome cause some mods and instance admins want to create echo chambers where nuanced discussion isn't allowed, so they label any unpopular opinion as "transphobic" even when that accusation doesn't hold up.
Nothing I've said has been bigoted, y'all are just loading layers of meaning and interpretation onto my statements because you're conditioned to see transphobia and bigotry everywhere you look. It sucks that you have to put up with that stuff, but that's not what I'm doing and you're overapplying that filter.
Ib don't think you really thought about that question before you posted it. If I recall correctly, this is your first use of the word "necessarily". If you had merely said "it's not necessarily a dog whistle in every context -medics might use the term", you might have simply had a quick "but in this guidance transphobic dog whistling is very much where it comes from and in any case a medic is likely to omit the word biological".
Again, the context of this while discussion, as you keep rejecting despite the link at the top of the page, is the trans-harassment "equalities" guidance. The other context is entirely and irrelevantly of your invention.
I have no idea which comms you got banned from, but some whole instances are designed to be safe spaces so that trans people can complain about being excluded from access to public toilets in peace without you turning up to derail the entire conversion to be about what the word "sex" means. blahaj.zone is one such instance, and I know there are several other instances that are keen to protect trans folk from exactly the kind of "bbbut medically, surely" crap you're pulling here.
The fact that you argue rather than apologise when people say you're behaving insensitively to trans folk is exactly the reason I fully support banning you from trans-supportive spaces.
Wow. I want you to think of a phrase about a minority group that you personally acknowledge is offensive.
Imagine someone turning up after someone explained that that phrase was offensive and then spending upwards of three hours arguing that it it isn't offensive in some contexts. And then to cap it all, blaming that targetted group of people in general for being offended and hinting that they should have put aside a lifetime of prejudice and disadvantage so they can look more calmly rationally at the debate about whether it's always offensive.
Whatever, I don't even care anymore. You're just going to completely ignore subtext and connotation while playing semantic games about what is or isn't verbatim or what modifiers have or haven't been added for clarity. I'm done wandering in this labyrinth with you.
The next time a trans man dies of ovarian cancer because his doctor was too afraid to have him screened for it (or worse: didn't even know he has ovaries in the first place!), then at least I know it won't be my fault. I've done my part. I've contributed my bit to the discussion, and if you want to categorically reject it because it would require you to assimilate an uncomfortable truth into your worldview, then fine. What's it to me?
You make it really hard to care about anyone's feelings if I have to walk on eggshells to avoid being taken out of context, mischaracterized, labeled a bigot, and banned from a whole list of unrelated communities. Keep scratching your head as to why journalists rarely touch on the topic anymore, too.
If someone tries to say that the word "ethnicity" is insensitive to racial minorities and has no use other than as a dogwhistle, then I wouldn't be in the wrong for pointing out how it's a necessary concept in anthropology.
Just because people want to manufacture outrage about benign concepts doesn't make me responsible for their feelings.
I think if you break character and you're really honest with yourself and me, you may be able to come to terms with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you don't sincerely believe that 'ethnicity' is a word that you, personally acknowledge is offensive.
It was a breathtakingly futile attempt to help you for once look at something from someone else's perspective. I don't know why I tried given how insulated from empathy for anyone else's feelings or perspective you have demonstrated you are over the last hours.
Lol. You really think that the victims of transphobic talk are to blame.
Lol lol lol. You are parodying yourself now! You invented this timeline, this complete fiction, this flight of fancy in which someone was insisting that it's transphobic for a doctor to ask people about their medical history, (a context and an assertion that you, and only you invented) and then you blamed someone merely telling you that you were being impolite for the DEATH of your fictional character when they followed the imagined straw man advice that literally no one gave except you. And then you congratulated yourself that you had done your best to prevent the fictional death resulting from the implausible consequence of following advice that you yourself invented!
You have to give in and admit that the sheer audacity and absurdity of this far fetched straw man is actually funny!
Ethnicity is to race what sex is to gender. Race and gender are social constructs, while ethnicity and sex are biological categories that are often conflated with their sociological counterparts.
You wanted me to come up with a slur and then try to argue that it's perfectly fine to say? I'm not going to do that, because I'm not a bigot. Just because you're trying to mischaracterize me as one doesn't mean you can bait me into talking like one.
And then you act offended that I didn't blindly stumble into your transparent attempt at entrapment? You're not worth arguing with.
Nothing I've said has been transphobic, you're just using "victim blaming" as a shield to hide from information or ideas that conflict with your own.
As for the rest of your drivel, get over yourself. Trans men aren't a fiction, and many of them do have ovaries. The fact that you're manufacturing so much outrage over using sex as opposed to gender as a useful concept in medical contexts has the direct implication that doctors would be hindered from screening trans men for ovarian cancer. And if you can't see that direct connection, then I can't help you.
Feel free to blindly stumble into problems that no one could have foreseen because you're so averse to anyone pointing out where some notions might lead.
I'm done arguing with you.
You should ignore that poster. They're mentally ill.
Thanks, I was starting to feel like I had my back against the wall and was being outnumbered.
I'm mentally ill too though, so I don't think that automatically means someone should be ignored. But yeah, if they persistently misrepresent what I say in order to feel morally superior and make it easier to argue then I'll gladly ignore them, mental illness or not
I'll clarify that they've repeatedly demonstrated that they're unfortunately mentally ill in a way that makes it not worth your time to engage. Just downvote and move on.
Noted. Thank you
agreed, except that how is autism relevant?
It would explain an emphasis on definitions and a deemphasis from the social consequences of debating the definitions in a particular social context.
The person I was talking to admitted that it can be hard to tell the difference between transphobia and an only accidentally offensive post. I was providing a rationale for how the latter could have occurred.