As far as I can tell the UK is the only country in the whole of Europe following America down this specific insane moral and political rabbit-hole.
It’s like they tried to get into the XXI century, failed and decided to go back to their time of greatness, the Victorian Era.
They do have a prominent billionaire who is bribing anyone to take up her anti-trans positions.
This is going to make it so difficult to plan out businesses and buildings that everyone will end up with gender neutral bathrooms and spaces. It’s my dream that all those lobby groups who think they’re protecting women will have to shit next to every man, woman, femboy, adult baby, theydy, them, zem, furry and otherkin in the UK.
No, there’s already rules in place from the previous government which says that all new builds and buildings euch are changing their use must have separate, sex-segregated toilets, unless the building is physically too small for anything other than a single room with a single toilet and sink. You can have gender-neutral toilets as well but not instead
guardian says these rules allow only providing universal toilets “where there is insufficient space” for separate facilities
From the article:
“The law here is a mess, and clearly many businesses will just go gender neutral to avoid the headache,
All of this is solved with just using more single occupancy bathrooms. Just an open hallway with rooms and toilets and changing stations. Sinks in the hallway.
Not allowed. I’ll copy from another post:
No, there’s already rules in place from the previous government which says that all new builds and buildings euch are changing their use must have separate, sex-segregated toilets, unless the building is physically too small for anything other than a single room with a single toilet and sink. You can have gender-neutral toilets as well but not instead
That’s stupid
This is not a bad consequence, better for all of us, even if the trigger is fear and spite
As a parent of two, this is best for the kids they claim to worry about. It makes potty training much less stressful
Do being a bunch of removed qualify them as being transgender too?
Why the fuck do these perverts care so much about what people do in a bathroom? How fucking weird
I was confused, but then the article was about the UK, where they stupidly did Brexit. Don’t worry, everybody. This is just about people who make dumb decisions.
You say that, but I mean have you looked around here lately? The Bri’ish don’t have a monopoly on stupid.
single sex toilets must be forever prohibited from existing, says actual equality and human rights
Why?
There are many different forms of sex people can have in public toilets and so restricting them to just one kind wouldn’t be equal.
Lmaooo… Best reply to my comment fr
Just have a bunch of single stalls and sinks. Why do we need gendered bathrooms?
I’m there to take a shit. I don’t care if a woman is washing her hands.
Not necessarily in the defense of single sex toilets, but I imagine not all men are gentle, and women (maybe even anyone else) would choose not to get peeked at from above by a nasty weirdo. I know, I know, not like only one gender could do it, but if I had to find a reason why one would want to have single sex toilets, this would be the reason that makes the most sense to me.
Or, you know, people being religious fanatics stuck in the 18th century, but who would be like that in 2026? /s
Eeeh, first one may not be that removed from actual risk. If we assume 1/10 of population is perverted, then cutting out hetero folks from perving on opposite sex is cutting that 1/10 to 1/100. So the chance some perv will actually go for it is lower. And this is a bigger issue for women than men, so makes sense to be watching out for that.
In USA that is, in EU we have full size stall doors and walls :|
People don’t just wash hands in a bathroom sink. They wash their face, groom themselves, admire themselves, apply makeup, etc.
Also, why waste space with stalls, when you can use urinals instead? I don’t want to wait outside a stall to take a piss.
The first thing you named everyone does so it doesnt need to be private.
The second thing is a urinal takes up a stall space so just have more stalls.
After being to places that do this, I can tell you it works fine.
I don’t want to mog myself in the mirror in front of women.
Also, urinals absolutely don’t take up as much space as stalls.
You can’t check how you look in the mirror in front of other people? Why, what difference would it make what gender they are, that’s kind of weird.
Nobody is watching you, you can grow up and deal with it.
Yes the space savings is based on only requiring one room vs two. And even in a one room scenerio the loss isn’t that much, about 1 urinal space for ever 14 stalls. Not to mention that there never is one room empty the other waiting scenerio.
Again, I was just in a facility that does this. These rooms are easy, convenient, and safe because the sink areaks open to the hall. It works great.
Stalls are not as efficient space, material, or queue wise compared to urinals. For those with penises and the need to pee, urinals are just better. It would be stupid to remove these.
Not really no. Because you are now requiring two seperate bathrooms. Urinals dont really save any space, you cannot share it. So one row of lets say 12 stalls floor to ceiling are just as efficient. Only one common area open to the hall way, only one plumbing row (same a a urinal) and only one bathroom.
This system is more effective and just works.
Also, you add as many areas like this as the building requires.
Do you have a urinal at home?
Urinals can be packed far more tightly than stalls, so no they are not just as efficient. Urinals are also optimal for high traffic/volume scenarios, so having one at home is not necessary. They’re also easier to clean and maintain.
So, a bathroom ban for the entire UK?
Did you guys see the US speed running a regression arc and decide to try your hand at it?
Pretty much. I think we’re owned by the same media conglomerate as you guys, so it’ll be the same playbook
Terf island at it again.
Surely the legal challenge against this is already started?
The supreme court didnt actually mention toilets, and said changing rooms may work ( if they have privacy rooms)
It’s so obvious that so many here didn’t even read the article.
This really isn’t about toilets as much as locker rooms. Where each person must go to the gendered locker room for their biological sex. Unless there is an alternative. Such as a “trans locker room”
The whole toilet part is adressed in that most businesses will just remove the symbol for M/F on single stalls and call it a day. And most have a handicap friendly stall, which already is gender neutral.
This is more of an issue for places like hospital’s that are required to have gendered spaces.
I once heard one gender critical person who is against excluding Transgender people from toilets cause they need to pee too. He told he would be confused saying transgender person with passing(MTF) in male toilet. He also have a unsual idea of Passing Licences that in his opinion this licence should require the surgery. I don’t have contact with any transgender person who had a surgery, but some of these that I know and don’t have surgery have 100% passing. Imo stupid idea. Some gender critical people want to ban the surgery.
There is a solution to all of this. Unitary WCs. Each has one toilet, one sink, at least one method for drying hands and at least one sanitary disposal for non-flushable items. Mirror optional. A toilet brush might also be a good idea.
Communal rooms should go the way of the dinosaur.
That way, anyone, regardless of persuasion, intent or comfort level, can use a toilet in peace. And if they want to invite someone else in for safety, so be it.
All the problems with this solution are excuses, and usually not very good ones.
Maybe also a urinal in each? Too many times have I accidentally sat on stray drips from people unwilling to put up a toilet seat in unisex bathrooms.
I’m leaning towards no. If you’re sat on the toilet in a small WC room, that urinal is going to be nearby and very close to face height. Also urinals are only really usable by half the population.
Sanitary wipes might be a better plan. Even better if they can be made reusable, but that could be too much to hope for what with the need for yet another bin, and the propensity for confused people to put things in the wrong one.
Students already get up to mischief in the shared bathrooms at my college library. Sometimes their “intent” runs contrary to the mission of the college–taking illegal drugs, setting off the fire alarm, making a giant mess with toilet paper everywhere.
A minor lack of privacy (private stalls, shared sinks) can help prevent bigger issues. If someone has a medical emergency (OD, for example) there’s a chance someone notices.
The problem with that is not the students, or the layout, communal or otherwise, but the unwillingness of the institution to pay a toilet attendant.
We’re in a budget crunch. Last I checked there was an unwillingness to pay for more than 1 custodian. The restrooms get dire.
The attendant doesn’t have to be a custodian. The member of staff with the office closest to each bathroom is now responsible for at least checking that bathroom once an hour. It’s a budget crunch. Everyone has to do their part!
And if that doesn’t fix the budget crunch within a week or two, the bathrooms are now being checked.
You’re devoting at least 15% of the library sysadmin’s time to bathroom monitoring (the bathrooms are a long walk from the offices) assuming the bathrooms are empty each hour. You’re also requiring them to knock on each locked bathroom door and get a response (currently you can check for people passed out by glancing at feet under stall doors). There’s also the overhead of figuring out who is on bathroom duty when the sysadmin is out sick or working from home.
The budget crunch is at the state level, the library itself has very little ability to change it. We’ve already reduced subscriptions and services and staff to a skeleton crew.
Tough times require tough measures. Either you find what the students do in there acceptable or you don’t. If you don’t, someone needs to check, and if not that sysadmin, then it’s going to have to be someone even further away.
One alternative would be to have the restrooms be locked and to be unlocked on request. How key management works with that I leave open.
This would be ideal if there was a suite of unitary WCs, because one key per room per person.
Not ideal in the case of emergencies, I grant you, but then, you don’t want to be using a filthy restroom in an emergency either, so I guess go the whole way into that and put a chemical toilet somewhere outside nearby. OR the old outhouse with hole in the ground if you can’t stretch to that.
Oh! I thought you were suggesting a way to implement unitary WCs. As a way to handle the current bathroom issues, the current solution for my floor is one staff member has IBS and checks in on the restroom approximating their gender about once every 2 hours. The other floors and restrooms have their own idiosyncratic methods.
Thankfully, there’s an even better, easier, cheaper, and just solution to this as well
Negate the ruling and allow transgender people to use the correct bathroom that is congruent with their gender identity
IOW, MYOB.
International Olympic washroom, misunderstood yelling ouch bowel
better
just
it is neither of these
its way better than bathroom bans but defintely not better than unitary wcs
it divides us, is heteronormative, and still excludes some trans people (those for whose identity there is no bathroom for (nonbinary people))
unitary wcs eliminate creeps entirely, segregation provides a flimsy superficial defense against some of them
Communal rooms should go the way of the dinosaur.
obliterated by high velocity rocks?
evolved with the times into various forms perfectly adapted to whatever their niche may be.
just like pigeons, owls, crocodiles, finches, etc.
I believe that communal bathrooms are cheaper to build and maintain, hence we still have them, not because anyone enjoys using them.
That’s what he said:
excuses, and usually not very good ones.
he
they
internet accounts are they unless otherwise specified
i see, does make sense here
it still is good practice
especially that often “he” is used without consideration
Especially on Lemmy, where the users seem to fall into one of two stereotypes: ultra-nerdy dudes, and trans/NB people.
Hell, over at [email protected], they may even fit both groups.
trans/NB people
nonbinary people do fall under the trans umbrella
unless they are intersex in a particular way that they regard their nonbinary gender identity as matching what they were assigned
Philosophical question. In a jurisdiction that allows for full government recognition of someone not being either male or female, and if someone was “assigned NB at birth” then remains NB into adulthood… sounds like they wouldn’t meet the technical definition of trans.
This comment isn’t about taking anything away from anyone, it’s about a tiny little thought experiment.
why would government recognition affect whether theyre trans
but yes, intersex people can be cis enbies
More frequently it’s individual toilets and shared sinks.
Yes. The few times I’ve run into this has been great. I think people who are used to stalls initially feel weird when they hear about it but the toilets in this setup are enclosed with floor to ceiling walls and a door. It’s so much more pleasant.
Single-sex toilets and changing rooms in England, Wales and Scotland must exclude transgender men and women, according to a new code of practice from the equalities watchdog.
But the long-awaited guidance also says that businesses and service providers have to offer practical alternatives such as gender-neutral toilets for people who do not wish to use services for their biological sex.
I guess I’m naive to hope that a business would rather convert existing facilities to two multi-sex bathrooms rather than have to build and give up existing space to a third bathroom.
I hate, with a burning passion, the term “biological sex”.
We have frankly, no fucking clue how our genetics and gender are intertwined.
We used to think it was “just chromosomes”, but then we discovered “biological men” with double-X, or double-X and a Y, or vice-versa.
Or intersex individuals.
Then, we also got to consider that, say, a “biological woman” can transition to a “transgender man”, which renders no change to their genes, just hormone levels, and they see physical development, voice deepening, hair growth, etc, just like a “biological man”, or vice-versa.
In conclusion, “biological sex” is just another gross simplification created by people who’s minds are so pathetic they can’t comprehend reality and so choose to live by mantra founded in disproven pseudo-sciences, religion, and other excuses to avoid critical thinking, and then put themselves in positions of power.
The definition of sex is simple. It’s defined entirely as the gametes one’s body is organized around producing. This is not an oversimplification. It is the reality that biologists have found in nature. It is settled science in the field of biology. Chromosomes are how sex is determined. Other species have completely different sex determination systems. Their sex is still defined by gametes.
Intersex is a confusing term. It has confused you. Some people are born with a Disorder of sex development. They are still either male or female.
Humans cannot change sex. Hormones can change some secondary sex characteristics. That does not change sex.
That’s a juvenile understanding of sex, yes
As stated, that’s the definition that the entire field of biology uses. If you think it’s juvenile, take it up with them.
Perhaps, if all of the biologists are telling you you’re wrong, you might just be wrong?
i mean, you’re literally wrong?
Doesn’t sound to me like you know the difference between sex and gender. We do have a pretty solid idea of how genetics and sex are intertwined, including intersex conditions. Gender is a whole different thing.
You’re mostly correct, tho the bit about genetics (+++) and sex is a bellcurve meme… There’s tons we don’t know and a lot of it is a giant interconnected mesh of incredibly complex relationship we barely grasp with very little casual data, and just a tiny bit of epidemiological inference that we can almost try to reason from.
Can you explain further? I’m a biochemist / medical lab scientist, and between my studies in genetics, human sexuality, and endocrinology, it seems pretty well figured out. Between “normal” X/Y chromosomes, various chromosomal abnormalities (X, XXX, XXY, XYY, etc), and mutations like androgen insensitivity syndrome it seems there is significant causal data. Not sure if they’ve studied these with knockout mice but it’s well beyond inference at this point.
I’m not sealioning here, it has been like a decade since I was actively learning this stuff and I’m sure there have been more discoveries. In general though it seems like we know the genetics, we know the hormones and receptors involved, the developmental process and various maladies are known, etc.
I’m not sealioning here
Are you sure? I’m not.
For someone taking the trouble to disagree with “sex is more complicated than binary M/F” there sure are a lot of caveats to your argument.
That is absolutely not what I’m saying. I’m saying the biological processes that lead to intersex or otherwise “complicated” sex conditions are fairly well understood. Sex is much more complicated than just the M/F dichotomy, and the current scientific and medical understanding of sex supports this.
Those who deny that sex is more complicated than binary M/F are rejecting well established science.
You should ignore that poster. They’re not right in the head.
I’m so sorry, I completely got the wrong end of the stick.
Biological sex is a dogwhistle made digestible to appease the apathetic moderate
Edit: and this entire thread is proof of that 🍿
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 if it comes up, it is a discussion between the patient and the doctor and no one else. 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.
We have the language to be specific.
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?
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
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.
and if it comes up, it is a discussion between the patient and the doctor and no one else.
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.
Just FYI, I’ve never been asked about my “biological sex” from a doctor, and I’m pretty sure you haven’t either. You’ve been asked about your sex. That’s it. “Biological sex” is a right-wing dog whistle.
Yeah, it just says “Sex” and the “biological” part is implied. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a useful concept in some contexts to convey a relevant set of information.
Calling it “biological sex” might be redundant but that doesn’t make it inherently bigoted. Someone might simply be emphasizing the distinction between sex and gender. And besides, I’m not the one who started calling it that in this thread so don’t act like I’m just inserting it unnecessarily.
It’s funny how many seemingly innocuous words and phrases that I didn’t know were ostensibly dogwhistles end up being called dogwhistles. If there’s some secret right-wing code of words that mean specific things other than their apparent meaning, I assure you I don’t know it because I don’t follow those spaces or their jargon. And I can almost guarantee you that I’m not the only one like that.
So immediately jumping to “dogwhistle” every time you hear someone say something that’s supposedly in this list of secret right-wing code words is kind of a disingenuous argument and you’re just going to alienate people who then won’t take you seriously in the future.
Yes, and the language for that is “biological sex.” If you go to the doctor, they will ask you for your biological sex.
“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 says nothing about my medical history, it says nothing about my BMI, it masks certain cancer risks, it has never actually achieved anything useful at the doctor’s office. All it does is placate transphobes and 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, the question also covers cis women who can’t get pregnant and trans men who can.
Doctors don’t immediately get amnesia when something gets defunded … But claiming that doctors suddenly don’t know what to do is a hyperbole that misses the actual issue.
Yes, they literally do seemingly get amnesia. One of the main complaints we have about doctors is that they dismiss every concern by blaming it on us being trans. I’ve heard it described as “trans broken leg 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.
That should all be taken into account, of course, but pretending that “biological sex” is useless in medical contexts is an ignorant take.
This is contradictory. Trans people already face 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.
And besides, if “biological sex” is such a bogus concept, then what do we even contrast “gender” with in the first place?
Individual physical characteristics. Call it “Sex” and leave it open ended for all I care. It’s the enforcement of a strict binary, removal of agency, and purposeful ignorance of modern science that I take issue with - all while hiding under the term “biological”. It is for those reasons that it is often used as a dogwhistle.
Finally, your persistent sealioning only contributes to the problem that no one ever fucking listens to trans people. We are a tiny and very vulnerable minority who are constantly being drowned out in a sea of cis voices that think they know the trans experience better than us (eg: when was the last time you saw NYT quote a trans person?) You have easily typed out more than any trans person in the conversation and have learned absolutely nothing from it.
Besides, a lot of cis women can’t get pregnant either, and it covers the case of trans men who can.
You don’t realize that’s actually more reason to ask about biological sex? If a cis woman can’t get pregnant, but she still has ovaries, and all the form asks is “can you get pregnant,” then that leaves out important information, such as “I have ovaries and should be screened for ovarian cancer.”
A field for “sex” (whether “biological” or “birth” or “assigned” or anything else) very much does provide relevant information, and just because there’s additional information that may be relevant (such as hormones and surgeries) doesn’t negate that.
And I never said it should be binary. That’s an assumption you’re making about what point I’m trying to make. I’ve never denied the existence of intersex people, and in fact I even mentioned how a person being intersex is relevant information for their doctor to know that isn’t covered by gender or “can you get pregnant?”
I’ve heard it described as “trans broken arm syndrome”.
Medical professionals dismissing people’s concerns is a completely separate issue from needing to know basic information about their bodies.
And by the way, even as an ostensibly cis man, I’ve regularly had my concerns dismissed by doctors too. It’s almost like when you never stop to ask someone what kinds of issues they face, you don’t realize that some of the issues you face, they face too.
This assumption that “cis men just automatically get all the medical treatment they need” is based in the fact that nobody ever stopped to ask cis men if they ever feel dismissed by their doctors. (Oh, and by the way, the cultural stigma that cis men are supposed to avoid the doctor because they need to be manly and strong might also have something to do with it, since most men avoid going to the doctor until there’s no doubt that something is absolutely wrong. As someone who finds that to be bullshit, and has gone to the doctor with a variety of concerns that get dismissed, I can tell you that dismissive doctors is endemic to the medical profession, and that cis men aren’t just magically immune to it).
A single binary “biological sex”
…
If you want to argue that this can be packaged into a nice little binaryI never said anything about sex being binary, so your fixation on making this about binaries is a strawman.
Finally, your persistent sealioning only contributes to the problem that no one ever fucking listens to trans people.
I’m not sealioning. I’ve listened to what people are saying, but just because I’ve listened to something doesn’t mean I can’t disagree with it. And since nobody has actually come up with a response to what I’ve said and have chosen instead to rely on thought-stopping accusations of transphobia and strawman arguments such as misrepresenting this as being about binaries or about toilets, then it seems I’m the one not being listened to. Do you realize how difficult it is to maintain a good-faith discussion with someone who wilfully misses the point?
You have easily typed out more than any trans person in the conversation and have learned absolutely nothing from it.
Why should I have to learn from anyone who’s responding to points I didn’t make? People make assumptions about me and mischaracterize what I’m saying. What is there to learn from that?
I’ve asked what terminology you prefer. I’ve asked what a medical form should ask instead of “biological sex.” But nobody responds to that because they want to dismiss it all as transphobia. There’s not much to learn from that.
And just because I’m on the spectrum and don’t know how to be concise while still getting my point across doesn’t mean a thing.
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:
Biological sex is a dogwhistle made digestible to appease the apathetic moderate
That’s not sealioning.
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
Sure it does, it’s the sex you have biologically. The second thing you’re talking about is called gender-affirming care and is distinct from biological sex. Both “sex” and “gender” are societal concepts, but sex is descriptive whereas gender is prescriptive. You can read that to mean sex is scientifically determinable, whereas gender is meaninglessly abstract. Sex says, “assuming all your bits work, here’s how you would contribute to the reproductive process.” Gender says, “regardless of what bits you were born with but dependent on what bits people think you were born with, here’s how society will treat you and expect you to behave.” “Biological gender” doesn’t exist, just like “sociological sex” doesn’t exist. So I guess in that sense, “biological sex” doesn’t make sense, because there’s no other kind.
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?
I don’t like it by association, because most of the time I hear it used by intolerant people (like right wing assholes on the “news”). Sometimes, though, I hear it used without malice, presumably because people don’t know what else to say.
Pardon my ignorance, but what term would you suggest instead? Birth sex? Assigned sex? Something else?
I’m not the person you asked, but ‘assigned sex’ is fine. The common one is ‘assigned gender at birth’.
The common one is ‘assigned gender at birth’.
*assigned sex
gender is assigned at birth by society, sex is assigned at birth by biology
usually they match, but sometimes they dont (hard-to-detect intersex conditions (which are never noticed), easy-to-detect intersex conditions (that get you mutilated))
sex is assigned at birth by biology
Minor unimportant correction: Sex is usually assigned at birth by nurses. It’s occasionally incorrect because it’s usually decided by what the baby’s crotch looks like rather than a blood test.
no, assigned sex is assigned by biology
nurses failing to notice that youre intersex doesnt make you not intersex
nurses attempt to discern the birth-assigned sex; they do not decide it
The word “assigned” is used exactly to describe a decision by a second party (the nurse) based on the limited information they have at the time.
Midwives relatively frequently incorrectly assign intersex people at birth.
Your actual sex isn’t assigned by anybody, and certainly isn’t decided at birth, but rather at conception.
Timeline:
- Conception: chromosomes determined.
- Womb: hormonal context influences gender characteristics.
- Birth: nurse assigns male or female.
I totally understand what you’re saying, but if you take gender out of it and just think about humans as any other animal, you could classify animals with penises and animals with vaginas separately especially if you’re breeding them. The AI overlords won’t care when they’re breeding us.
EDIT: two types of genitalia instead of just penis and vagina. And not all but many animals.
Here’s the thing though, pretty much everything you just said is wrong. It’s not that simple if you think of humans as any other animal. Here’s a video link that is pretty long, but dives fairly deep into this topic that is massive from a scientific point of view.
That’s a shit video. Here’s a deconstruction:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-025-03348-3
Woah. I don’t have an hour and a half to dissect all the ways an animal with a penis and an animal with a vagina may not fit the standard classifications of male and female. Not discrediting that there are so many different life forms out there that can’t possibly just be two categories, but you also can’t say that “pretty much everything I said is wrong.” If I wanna breed dogs, I’m gonna need two types of genitalia. Elephants? Same. Salmon? Ducks? Lots of animals can be classified in that way. Not all their characteristics, but their reproductive traits for sure.
Yeah but toilets and changing rooms aren’t for reproduction.
If you go entirely by who has a penis or not, at least you allow some post operative trans people to live freely, but I’m not going to be checking any genitals at the toilet door, nor doing any blood tests for that matter.
This guidance deliberately leaves trans people with two bad options: go in one toilet and be harassed or attacked for being trans or go in another and risk being attacked legally.
Agreed. Just commenting on biological sex. The law sucks.
…and animals with both, and animals with neither, and…
Sure but you can classify the ones with just two types of genitalia as something or another. Doesn’t mean you can’t have other layers of classification.
That’s tautological.
So you’re saying it’s true
tautologies are necessarily true, but usually not useful. for instance, I am either a bot or I am not. strictly true, but not a helpful statement.
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I’m not entirely sure what point you’re making, when sex reassignment surgery exists.
Not all trans people get it, sure, but many trans men have dicks and many trans women have vaginas. These usually align cosmetically but will have functional differences to their cis counterparts. Where would you crudely sort such people?
There’s also genital nullification surgery (think Barbie doll - nothing at all).
All good. I’m referring to the comment that I replied to stating that they don’t like the term “biological sex.” Not saying that trans people should be bucketed into being men or women based on their goodies. I’m saying that biologically, across many animals, specifically mammals, we can say something has this kind of genitalia or that. Call it male or female. Call it bapu and beepo. It’s a biological difference that can be classified along with other traits.
But humans aren’t just animals and this statutory guidance shouldn’t treat them as if they’re just animals.
Agreed. Just commenting on “biological sex”. The law sucks.
Gotcha. Their point is kind of right though; sex is less of a strict binary category and more 2 clusters we (people) created that allow us to more easily classify specimens based on strongly correlated traits. Both clusters have some overlap, and no trait on its own completely determines the cluster.
E.g. I knew a case of this woman who grew up her whole life never knowing she has XY chromosomes, because she had seemingly typical female sex characteristics. It was only when she and her husband where struggling to conceive and they went to a fertility clinic, that that fact came to light. “Biological male” might be the cluster you’d want to put her under, but she lacks many of the features of that cluster, so in that case the binary classification is a little weak.
Of course most people/animals are not intersex (or transitioned), but the point is that the biological sex binary is kind of a shorthand / way of making life easier to classify most of the population, but it’s not perfect or tidy.
The easiest way to stay accurate is to just narrow down to the specific relevant trait (“person with facial hair”, “person with androgenetic alopecia”, etc.) depending on what specifically is measured/being talked about. But being that precise can come at the expense of being less clear/accessible to the layman, which is why we use biological sex as a concept.
Sex is binary. Her body is still organized around producing one or the other of exactly two gamete types, which defines whether she’s male or female.
…nope. Her body can’t produce either. And she has a uterus and fallopian tubes.
For sure. There are always outliers and opportunity for more granular classification. Doesn’t mean the classifiers we have now are wrong, just not complete. I think it wouldn’t be as big of a concern if we didn’t relate male and female so closely to man and woman.
It’s a concern when we use it to discriminate against trans people.
I hate, with a burning passion, the term “biological sex”.
For anyone else questioning topics like this, here’s a fairly lengthy but great video on the topic.
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Biological sex is just that. It’s your reproductive organs. Neat. Simple. Clean cut(or uncut) in most cases. Aberrations exist, but they’re rare.
Gender is a psychology. It’s an identity.
No it’s not. It’s a whole bunch of loosely correlated characteristics, many of which can be changed.
That’s completely untrue.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-025-03348-3
The thread of this conversation is exactly why a line has to be drawn and written in law using the clearest measure there is.
Oooor just let trans folk use the damn bathroom? There doesn’t need to have a line drawn
There always needs to be a line drawn in law.
Agreed, the line is use the bathroom and don’t shit on the floor
Clearest measure here wouldn’t be the “biological sex” anyway… Because going mens bathroom doesn’t require a penis, last time I checked. But it does require to be perceived as a man which relates more to other characteristics like beard and appearance. Same goes the other way around.
And how do you define something as subjective as that in law? Absolutely absurd.
It was working just fine before this law no?
A) No it doesn’t. Where I live, it is entirely legal for a man to enter the women’s bathroom. Nothing to do with transgender folks; it simply is not a crime.
B) The UK has an official “gender recognition certificate” program. If you wanted to draw a line, I would think that individuals with such a certificate would fall on their recognized side of the line; however, under the new standard, a trans women with an official government issued gender recognition certificate is still considered by that same government to be a man for the purposes of using a toilet.
You need to get a grip it’s stupid fucking shit like this that cost us the culture war.
This illogical nontopic was started as a culture bomb to fracture the left imo. Sometime around 2015.
The culture was isnt lost, but it’s not going to be won by deciding that we can have a little hateful bigotry, as a treat, because black/Jew/queer/gay/trans is “icky”.
Case in point. I never mentioned any of those groups, and I never discriminated trans people. I disagreed with this fucking idiot that’s the extent of it. Thanks for “Trump: Birthright citizenship is a disgrace” thanks for that you stupid fucking cunts this is your fault.
I never discriminated trans people.
You directly replied to a post talking about biological essentialism and a misunderstanding of sex as a mechanism for discriminating against trans people, telling them “get a grip” and that caring about that scientific reality is “stupid fucking shit.”
Whether you believe it is or not, that is a form of discrimination, as it essentially posits that we should just ignore these facts to appease closed-minded individuals to “win” the culture war, even if that “win” comes at the expense of… being trans not being considered “real” or “biologically accurate” by those who entirely misunderstand what being trans is.
You need to realize that pushing scientific fact to the margins to appease other people fighting the ‘culture war’ does nothing but harm people so those other people can continue to live in ignorance.
Your mentality is the same as someone arguing that we shouldn’t have talked about there being no biological evidence for black people being dumber than white people because that would “lose us the culture war” against white slave owners that think they should get to own slaves because black people are dumber than them. Maybe you win their votes, but you’ve done nothing but enable the continuation of slavery by not confronting its widely believed yet incorrect ideological backing.
Not talking about things like intersex individuals and the unknowns about the links between sex and gender doesn’t win you anything in the long term if it comes at the cost of every single trans and intersex person’s (millions of people in just the USA, and that’s likely an undercount) rights by backsliding on public understanding of the subject.
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Get a fucking grip on fucking reality you stupid fucking idiot. Stop inventing things in your head to disagree with you putrid rotting dog cunt.
I see you’re not exactly into constructive conversation. Maybe chill out instead of getting so angry at comments online that it sends you into a fit of swearing rage?
justify it
Sure. Any time, any day. I doubt you’ll even read past the first sentence given how irrationally angry you seem to be, but maybe you’ll prove me wrong.
- The vast majority of people do not even know there are sexes that could be defined outside the binary of male and female. They don’t know that chromosome combinations outside XX and XY exist at all.
- When people are told this, many of them refuse to accept it, and simply cast it as “outliers” that in the end, don’t change their belief that “there are only 2 sexes”, sometimes because their religion simply states there’s only 2 against all currently known evidence, or even if they are just more broadly liberal and would still say gender is separate from sex. It is an uncomfortable thing for some to come to terms with to understand that something so deeply ingrained into our culture is much more complicated than it seems at a glance.
- This has been a known fact for centuries, and yet society broadly still assumes, by default, that it is “abnormal” and “undesirable”, so surgeries are often performed on intersex individuals as babies to “correct” their sex characteristics to match just the two binary options most people are familiar with, even if that individual later finds out and would otherwise have not wanted the surgery.
- To this day, people like you are continuing to call people like me a “putrid rotting dog cunt” for explaining this well-researched, broadly demonstrated topic with widespread occurrences across the globe, when the more reasonable answer to being told such a fact would be to spend even a minute on any search engine to find out you’re going against the whole of medical consensus and seemingly getting incredibly incensed over the fact that nobody agrees with you.
This just goes to show transphobes and bigots refuse to learn about the reality we live in and instead lash out because something doesn’t fit their worldview.
At work we had a male and female single-cubicle bathroom in reception. These are high-value bathrooms at work for dropping off the kids.
Somebody complained that there weren’t any gender neutral bathrooms so they’re both unisex now.
Now the men use the women’s bathroom and the women don’t use it anymore.
If it’s single unit why would women not use it anymore…?
My work had gendered single unit bathrooms but the women’s bathroom was farther away from the office space and since it was single room people of any gender just used the closer one regardless, and eventually they just swapped out the signs to gender neutral ones because of it’s single stall who gives a shit? No one is going in there with you.
Because men tend to cover things in their own excrement and leave toilet seats up or piss on them etc etc etc.
My highschool job was working at a sporting goods store. My closing duties each night were to clean the women’s restroom and occasionally cover for another department to clean the men’s room. I can tell you that the women’s restroom was always grosser. Yeah, there would be more pee on the seats and floor in the men’s room, but the rest of the place was far cleaner than the women’s.
Bathrooms are safe spaces for women. A line must be drawn in the most easy to define way to exclude men from the women’s bathroom. This is a court ruling to define law.
They’re making them use portajohns.
Make all WC unisex. No physical change other than signage. Will this fix the problem? No, it will make.a royal fucking mess of it all and hopefully press politicians to reverse their trans phobic laws.
One thing I like about the separation is that men tend to clear the toilet faster, which means the line moves quicker
I was recently at a venue that had two bathrooms: the unisex one which is all stalls, and one for men which is all urinals. Seems like the best of both worlds to me.
I agree. Removing that perk by making them all unisex is another thing that will make it a miserable experience for all. The idea is for it to be horrible enough for the TERFs to back off and the laws to change.
I’m curious how they’ll handle enforcement. “Please present your genitals for inspection before entering”
They are trusting that society will harass any and all women who don’t look feminine enough. It is social control.
Oh, this type thinks they “can always tell”.
Thing is, they can’t. Trans people pass as cis pretty often, even to transphobes. And they’re constantly ‘transvestigating’ people who are actually cis.
What this will actually accomplish is license to harass (and, yes, probably attempt to inspect the genitals of) anyone who’s even a little bit gender non-conforming. It will mainly hurt cis women and cis men who, respectively, don’t look feminine enough or don’t look masculine enough. Functionally, it’s just another way to enforce gender conformity.
It’s hillarious when they don’t can’t see the difference and they either give confidently the wrong answer or internally panic lmao
I like to hit 'em with a few photos of ALL trans people including ones like Buck Angel and have them pick out who they think is trans or not. They always fail.
A court will handle that.
