There’s a simple solution to this that I’ve seen some bars in my city do. Make all the cubicles and urinals gender-neutral and mark them as such.
This seems like the obvious solution. An area for stand-up wees. An area for sit-down wees and poos. Everyone can wash their hands together in an open area.
No need to bring gender into expelling waste. Wouldn’t be surprised to find modern toilets were invented by the Victorians so men wouldn’t have to find out that women also shit.
women also shit.
THEY WHAT?
I’m a woman. I can confirm it’s true
You should be ashamed of yourself madam
We fart too 💨
Fuck, I’ll inform the press
Endless love to all trans people I’ve got your back ❤️ 💙 💜 💖 💗
More anti-trans bullshit. I don’t understand the darkness one must possess to come up with these legal machinations.
I hope all people who have a problem with
transLGBTQ people die peacefully in their sleep. Tonight.Is anyone going to comment on the AI slop image used by the guardian?
You’re just wheeshting.
Well, not today, but I’ve been known to wheesht all over the place. The restaurant, the bus… It’s a condition.
It sure is something. It undercuts the credibility of not just the article, but the Guardian. If that’s possible. They’ve been putting out some hot garbage lately.
That probably isn’t AI, unfortunately. Wheesht is a Scottish word meaning to shut up.
Huh, TIL, thanks!
Did I read it wrong or is all that is required to meet guidelines to implement gender neutral washrooms accrossed the board? I feel like this would have the opposite effect that the anti-trans movement wanted and I am here for it.
For all the talking heads still “asking questions” and demonstrating absolute ignorance, if not bad faith, after all these years, here are some very tangible takes as to why bathroom bans means genocide.
If people are to use exclusively the restrooms that match their assigned at birth sex, then all people must be the sex that they are perceived to be. Trans advocates were not paranoid enough to imagine that the right wants to wipe trans people out of public life to such a degree, that no ambiguity about a person’s sex can further be possible, except for those “extremely rare genetic accidents” Ben Shapiro keeps talking about. Public erasure, however, of transgender and gender-nonconforming people amounts to the enforcement of cisgenderism by a state that defines sex as a natural binary with no exceptions, and no behavioral, nor performative, nor psychological deviations from the norm. (From my previous essay on this.)
The rest of this post comes from the real experts on the topic, the Lemkin institute for genocide prevention.
1
Statement on the Genocidal Nature of the Gender Critical Movement’s Ideology and Practice
Genocidal ideologies are ideologies that deny or seek to erase the existence of a specific group because of the supposed threat it poses to the holders of the ideology.
Focusing primarily on the imagined threat posed by transgender women, gender critical ideologues believe that transgender women are in fact men who are seeking to dominate cisgender women (women whose sense of self corresponds with their birth sex) by impersonating them and thereby gaining access to women’s bathrooms, women’s locker rooms, women’s sports teams, and other women’s spaces.
Transgender women are represented as stealth border crossers who seek to defile the purity of cisgender women, much as Tutsi women were viewed in Hutu Power ideology and Jewish men in Nazi antisemitism.
Like the religious targets of genocidal violence, trans people are often described as somehow polluted, sinful, or against God.
A fundamentalist gender binary was a key feature of Nazi racial politics and genocide.
2
Red Flag Alert on Anti-Trans and Intersex Rights in the UK
Since the ruling, “birth sex,” “biological sex,” and “natal sex” have all been used interchangeably, ignoring the multiple relevant components of biological sex and the existence of intersex people. Analysts immediately warned that the decision could be used to render single sex spaces off limits for trans people, including hospital wards, sports, and domestic violence shelters. For a group especially vulnerable to domestic violence, exclusion from specialised shelters is nothing short of cruel and could, in some cases, prove a death sentence. Transgender and intersex people may find themselves excluded not only from spaces of their current sex but also from spaces for their sex assigned at birth. Trans men would find themselves excluded from both male spaces on the basis of their assigned sex at birth, and female spaces if they are deemed to look too much like men.
The EHRC has, in the past few years, seemed to become a lobby group for erasing the rights of intersex and trans people on the basis of gender critical views. This has been explicitly confirmed by leader of the UK’s Official Opposition Kemi Badenoch. Following the UKSC Ruling, the EHRC erased decades of established practice protecting transgender and intersex people by taking a restrictive interpretation of the ruling in their interim guidance and refusing to consider the welfare of intersex or transgender people. The guidance dictates that anyone who is not binarily male or female is excluded from single sex spaces, ranging from public toilets to groups such as a single-gender choir. This interim guidance has been noted by the Good Law Project to be either wrong in law or a breach of human rights.
Those who have transitioned will be forced to choose between being someone who is either excluded from society or who lives a criminalised life shrouded in secrecy. If the law in the UK makes people living beyond sex and gender binaries second-class citizens, it will also lay the groundwork for increased genital mutilation of intersex infants and conversion therapy of transgender people.
All of the actions described above fit neatly into the 9th Pattern of Genocide: “Denial and/or Prevention of Identity.” As we have repeatedly stated over the years, genocide does not only manifest in the killing of an entire group. In the case of trans and intersex people, genocide is often perpetrated by making it impossible for individuals to exist as their true selves.
3
Red Flag Alert for Genocide - USA
An apparently committed transphobe like Knowles may believe that transgender people are not real and are instead misled by something called “transgenderism,” so that by eradicating “transgenderism” he would not be eradicating a real identity. To that line of thought we can only note that the arrogance of determining which identities are real and not real, and therefore which identities can be slated for elimination, is already a giant step in the direction of genocide. Moreover, once an identity is determined to be illegitimate, criminal, and threatening, the killing of people with that identity is never far behind.
The Lemkin Institute reminds American voters and legislators that “the gender critical movement is a totalitarian and genocidal social force that targets not just transgender people, but also all the institutions of democracy that protect individual and collective human rights,”
Anti-trans legislation, anti-trans organizations, and the anti-trans movement must be fought forcefully in the name of saving lives as well as securing democratic institutions from the accelerating threat of fascism in the United States.
4
Red Flag Alert 2 for the Anti-Trans Agenda of the Trump Administration in the United States
The anti-trans movement in the US has made it clear that it will not stop at banning gender affirming care for children. Emboldened by this Supreme Court decision, they will continue their attempts to restrict gender affirming care for adults as well. Furthermore, they will ramp up their attempts to erase trans identity through various non-medical policies, including bathroom bans, bans on conversations related to gender in schools, preventing schools and workplaces from using pronouns or names that don’t align with a person’s sex at birth, banning trans athletes from competition, and criminalizing dressing as a gender other than the one assigned at birth.
The Lemkin Institute reminds people that the genocidal process involves far more than just mass murder. Most genocidal processes involve complex policies aimed at actively and systematically obstructing an identity from manifesting itself within the social world through laws, decrees, speech acts, and practices enacted by groups in power. As a result of these acts, people within a threatened community cannot live publicly as who they are and community identity development becomes impossible.
Given that leaders in the anti-trans movement view trans people as internal enemies and U.S. President Donald Trump has identified them a national security threat, the recent Supreme Court decision can be seen as part of a much larger internal cleansing operation aimed at creating a white, heterosexual, cisgender ethnostate
My beard always gets me funny looks when I use the ladies’ room.
Mom?
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 sex 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.
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.
I’m so sorry, I completely got the wrong end of the stick.
You should ignore that poster. They’re not right in the head.
Biological sex is a dogwhistle made digestible to appease the apathetic moderate
Edit: and this entire thread is proof of that 🍿
Removed by mod
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.
Removed by mod
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
Removed by mod
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.
Edit: got banned from an entire separate community (an unthemed meme community no less lol) for this discussion because they thought I was transphobic 🤣🤦♂️🤷♂️ Sorry for the misunderstanding, I’ll just stay out of it next time 👍🤣
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 but have seemingly 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.
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.
Removed by mod
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.
Removed by mod
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.
Removed by mod
theyre not ignoring it?
Removed by mod
You’re thinking of gender, sex is scientifically determinable.
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.
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.
That’s a shit video. Here’s a deconstruction:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-025-03348-3
“Why there are exactly two sexes” - what an irrelevant point. Here you are, as usual, turning up in a story about trans people to start another stupid debate about your favourite topic - the definition of the word sex. You always love to bring up your hero Trump’s definition of sex and call everyone else stupid.
It’s completely and utterly irrelevant. This is about trans people being denied access to toilets. Telling us your pet theories on sex is irrelevant. Not even this transphobic guidance suggests we check someone’s gamete size.
You’re just a transphobic troll.
That “paper” literally starts off deliberately conflating sex and gender in order to muddy the waters to reframe the conversation. He used a lot of words to essentially define male as “has penis that can go in vagina for purpose of procreation” and female as “has vagina to receive penis for purpose of procreation” (which still wouldn’t make sex binary since intersex exist) and had very little to do with biology on the whole.
The paper is peer-reviewed, from a Evolutionary Biology PhD, submitted to a journal specializing in the topic. He starts off talking about sex, mentions gender briefly for context, and then sticks to sex for the rest of the paper. The mention is “In recent years, however, this previously uncontroversial fact has been challenged in popular discourse, […] seemingly driven by cultural and political debates surrounding the concept of “gender identity” and transgender rights.” The paper is entirely about sex, and says “some people misunderstand sex because of gender”. That’s not conflating sex and gender, that’s specifically calling out other people that have confused them.
had very little to do with biology on the whole.
🤦
You should fix your ignorance. It’s painful
The thesis relies on conflating sex and gender. Sex from an evolutionary biology standpoint and gender from a modern sociology standpoint are mutually exclusive. Literally apples to oranges.
Tell me you didn’t watch the video without telling me you didn’t watch the video. This cringey war against facts you’re waging is why people talk shit about you when you’re not around.
And no it’s not “cAuSe ThEy ArEn’T bRaVe EnOuGh To SaY iT tO mY fAcE!” It’s because you’re exhausting.
Insults don’t change the fact that it’s a shit video
Colin M. Wright, the author of the book you linked, is an “anti-transgender activist”. Here is a nice collection of his bigotry.
🤦🤦🤦
That’s not a book, that’s a peer-reviewed paper published by a PhD Evolutionary Biologist in a journal specific to the topic. Nobody in the field has published a response disputing it, because he’s right.
If you don’t like being told the truth by him, take your pick of anyone else listed here that signed a statement affirming the same thing:
https://projectnettie.wordpress.com/
Fuck’s sake. Reality isn’t transphobic. Do better.
Reality isn’t transphobic, but that guy definitely is.
Also I’m not discussing sex in humans with you again. I and many people, who’re are way more knowledgeable, have wasted hours of their life doing that. Much less under a post about a stupid bathroom law.
PS: I’m sooo sorry that I said that the piece of written work you linked to was a book.
…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.
Not saying anything about humans, but animals meant for breeding would be… removed if they were like that
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
That’s a shit video. Here’s a deconstruction:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-025-03348-3
Colin M. Wright, the author of the book you linked, is an “anti-transgender activist”. Here is a nice collection of his bigotry.
🤦🤦🤦
That’s not a book, that’s a peer-reviewed paper published by a PhD Evolutionary Biologist in a journal specific to the topic. Nobody in the field has published a response disputing it, because he’s right.
If you don’t like being told the truth by him, take your pick of anyone else listed here that signed a statement affirming the same thing:
https://projectnettie.wordpress.com/
Fuck’s sake. Reality isn’t transphobic. Do better.
Reality isn’t transphobic, but that guy definitely is.
Also I’m not discussing sex in humans with you again. I and many people, who’re are way more knowledgeable, have wasted hours of their life doing that. Much less under a post about a stupid bathroom law.
PS: I’m sooo sorry that I said that the piece of written work you linked to was a book.
You’ve wasted hours of your life being wrong. Please do better
Cis ppl showing they’re not ready to hear this yet
Removed by mod
Ok, so what about those that produce no gametes? What about those that produce both kinds?
Humans that don’t produce gametes still have bodies organized around producing either sperm or ova. Their bodies still contain sexed structures. An example in other species is worker bees, which are sterile females. How do we know they’re female? Because of the sexed structures in their bodies! Even though they don’t produce gametes, they have structures in their bodies that are required for producing gametes of one type, and not used in the production of the other type.
No humans have bodies organized around producing both types of gametes, because we are Gonochoric. Other animals do have body plans organized around producing both types of gametes, such as in Androdioecy. Those species give a good example of what humans are not.
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?
You’re literally wrong. Here’s a public statement that a bunch of biologists and other scientists have signed:
https://projectnettie.wordpress.com/
In mammals, there are two types of gamete and two classes of reproductive anatomy.
Biological sex does not meet the defining criteria for a spectrum.
Do you have a source other than just “nuh uh :(”
first off, wordpress? ooo, authoritative! second, look up the SRY gene.
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.
Removed by mod
As you can see from this article, Colin Wright is an absolute transphobe and should not be used as any sort of supporting source:
Colin M. Wright, the author of the book you linked, is an “anti-transgender activist”. Here is a nice collection of his bigotry.
Removed by mod
Reality isn’t transphobic, but that guy definitely is.
Also I’m not discussing sex in humans with you again. I and many people, who’re are way more knowledgeable, have wasted hours of their life doing that. Much less under a post about a stupid bathroom law.
PS: I’m sooo sorry that I said that the piece of written work you linked to was a book.
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
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.
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.
That’s the great thing… you don’t. They are trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. There are already laws in place which forbid harassment. There is absolutely no need to create a law which can’t be enforced anyway and is most likely causing more trouble (for cis people too!) than just keeping things like they were.
It was working just fine before this law no?
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.
Intersex individuals demonstrate variation within the sex binary. They’re still male or female.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development
Please stop pushing the idea that reality is “biological essentialism”.
Variation within a binary makes it, by definition, not a binary system.
Binary is 1 and 0. If you can have 1.5, or 1.234098723, you don’t have a binary system, you have a spectrum.
For example, take this beautifully complicated diagram from Scientific American:
Typical biological males and females are on either end of the spectrum, yet other options exist in between. Hence, not a binary, but a spectrum.
What do you call someone with XY chromosomes but female reproductive structures? How about someone with XX or XY chromosomes but ambiguous genitals, or someone with XXXYY chromosomes? What about someone with mosaicism that causes some cells in their body to have just the X chromosome, and some to have XY, with varying changes in what % each makes up of their body throughout their life?
All of those are real conditions, and that’s just a fraction of them.
The reason this essentialism is stupid is because it assumes a spectrum can in fact be boiled down to a binary, and also that the spectrum must specifically begin, end, and be defined by what is “typical”, and assuming anyone’s sex must solely be determined by its proximity to one of the two options, rather than simply… being allowed to be its own thing that isn’t binary, because the reality, obviously, isn’t.
Removed by mod
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.
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.
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.
I’m curious how they’ll handle enforcement. “Please present your genitals for inspection before entering”
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.
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.
It’s hillarious when they can’t see the difference and they either give confidently the wrong answer or internally panic lmao
In a past life, a super transphobic coworker asked me out a few times. He’d often go on rants about how women’s spaces must be protected and whatnot. He never realized I was trans.
It’s moments like that where I wish I could just tell him “hey I’m trans and you need to learn that we’re not sexual predators like Fox News likes to claim”, but staying quiet is an issue of personal safety. Trans visibility is a double edged sword that must be wielded delicately.
They are trusting that society will harass any and all women who don’t look feminine enough. It is social control.
Can confirm, this happened to me three times in one night up in Ayr (I wasn’t even stagging). Never going to that backwoods shithole again lol
A court will handle that.
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.
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 !unixsocks@lemmy.blahaj.zone, 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
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
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
IOW, MYOB.
International Olympic washroom, misunderstood yelling ouch bowel
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.
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.
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.
edit: we do have 2 non-staff ungendered single seater restrooms, but I can’t see anyone approving retrofitting the existing multi-stall restrooms in a way that costs money, arguably decreases safety, and increases pressure on custodial staff.
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.
single sex toilets must be forever prohibited from existing, says actual equality and human rights
Why?
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
That’s just a consequence of shitty bathroom design. In civilized places, bathroom stalls have actual walls and doors that go to the floor and ceiling.
That’s totally true. I just thought of the possibility because I grew up where not every toilet was civilised.
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.
I don’t want to wait outside a stall to take a piss.
You would not survive womanhood
I absolutely would not.
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.
Do you regularly admire your looks in front of women?
Ok, then don’t do that.
Nah… mogging myself in the mirror is the peak of my day
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.
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
Yeah! Justice for straight people! No longer shall we be forced to excuse ourselves in restaurants only to shamefully walk into the opposite gender bathroom to have sneaky restaurant sex with our partners! We want a bathroom where both men and women can walk in with their heads held high and then do unmentionable things to each other while their friends are waiting for desert to arrive!
Limited gender washrooms < “Shitter”
Like come on this is not that hard, everybody poops.
What’s that got to do with equality?
These people are suspiciously concerned with what’s going on between other people’s legs.
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
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.
Following? Make no mistake, TERF island has been pioneering this. The American Right has been funding TERF groups there as a test bed. It’s spilling over into the former territories like NZ too - a few days ago the coalition government there voted through a first reading of a „definition of man and woman“ bill (bills go through three readings before becoming law)
They do have a prominent billionaire who is bribing anyone to take up her anti-trans positions.
You’re a TERF, Harry
ah yes the rest of Europe is super tolerant against trans people. LOL. Russia has a laws that forbids gender reassignment surgery. And they have a law that bans LGBTQ “propaganda” basically write or film something positive or even neutral information about the LGBTQ will get you in jail. Hungary and Poland haven’t been very friendly against queers in the last decade. Almost every right wing party in Europe that has “family values” on their agenda wants to see trans people gone.
Hungary and Poland both just emerged from their very own far-right populist period.
Meanwhile Britain supposedly did too and then elected a supposedly “center” - “left” government and instead of it getting better this shit just got worse. Oh, and the Brexiter Tories were apparently not Right-wing enough for a large fraction of the population so Reform UK rose.
Even the “left” in Britain are nutters compared to all of Western, Northern and Southern Europe.
I’ll give you Russia, though - it is indeed comparable to Britain in terms of having 19th century morals.
Its interesting change. Considering companies has always been pro whatever is profitable. The question why this shift happened without any push back from companies and wealthy people. In fact most of these decisions seems to cost people more money.
