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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 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.