166
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 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.
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