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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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What we're all is trying to drill into you is that the absurd things we describe are not strawmen. They are official policy and actual law in many places.

Guess I’m as bad as a TERF then. If you make no attempt to present as a woman before going to the woman’s bathroom or locker room, obviously you might make people uncomfortable and they wouldn’t be out of bounds in asking you to leave.

Yes! This makes you as bad as a TERF! Your common sense here is - and I want to emphasize that this is not hyperbole or exaggeration - against the law in California. You cannot ask a man not to use the women's shower, as this constitutes discrimination against their self-declared gender. The relevant law is the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which includes "gender identity and gender expression" as protected categories.

Here is one attempt to fix this with legislation. The site Trans Legislation Tracker declares that this is an anti-trans bill. Their own hostile summary includes this: "The Legislature finds and declares [...] Gender identity is fluid, and there is no ability for a commercial enterprise to determine if an individual's claim of a gender identity is sincere or is a pretext to obtain access to the opposite sex's intimate spaces." Which is absolutely correct! Just the acknowledgement that bad actors exist is treated as anti-trans!

You need to get your head out of the sand. Trans-aligned politics is absolutely bonkers. The vast majority of us allegedly "anti-trans" folks aren't being bigots; we're just trying to restore a measure of normalcy.

The vast majority of us allegedly "anti-trans" folks aren't being bigots; we're just trying to restore a measure of normalcy.

The vast majority of anti-trans people are not enacting minimum standards to use toilets or do other sex-segregated activities: they're banning trans people completely, regardless of how well they pass, how much effort they've put in, or how sincere they are. That is the mainstream anti-trans view. Your view, if you have described it accurately, is fringe.

they're banning trans people completely

I don't propose banning trans people (whatever that means). I don't propose rounding trans people and herding them into camps. I propose making people use the public facilities and compete in the sporting events that concord with their sex. I'm not saying "trans people can't compete in sporting events ever"; I'm saying "if they wish to compete in sporting events, trans people must compete in the sporting events corresponding to their sex, just like everyone else".

Read the entire sentence. They're banning trans people completely from using toilets or doing other sex-segregated activities. Let's set aside sports and consider only toilets. In what way are cis women harmed by sharing toilets with passing trans women? Note that women's toilets don't have urinals, only stalls. Users will never see other people's genitals. If the trans woman passes, other users won't even know she is trans. On the other hand, sharing the toilet with a passing trans man might actually be unpleasant.

They're banning trans people completely from using toilets or doing other sex-segregated activities

...unless they use the one given to them right there, same as everyone else.

It's like saying that you're banning me from using the toilet because I'm a compulsive germophobe and you refuse to have the bathroom extensively fumigated after each person goes in. The facilities are there for trans people, they're allowed to use them, they're throwing a massive tantrum at the way they're allowed to use them. That is not 'banning'.

No, it's not the same as everyone else. They're the only group being banned from using the toilets concordant with their gender.

And if they knew trans men existed, they'd want to exclude them from both men's (because "they're women") and women's (because they look like men) spaces. This is not hypothetical. Regarding last year's landmark UK Supreme Court ruling:

This judgment means that trans men can be excluded from men’s single-sex spaces. But there may also be cases where they are excluded from women’s spaces too, despite being considered women under the ruling.

The court found that it might be proportionate to exclude a trans man from a women’s single-sex service such as counselling for survivors of sexual abuse where “reasonable objection is taken to their presence … because the gender reassignment process has given them a masculine appearance…”.

That ruling is bullshit caused by the UK government's inability to ever tell women no, and I do not support it in any way.

As for the rest, trans people are permitted to use the toilets concordant with their sex, as are we all. You know this is what I meant. You may disapprove of my invisible rider that this is a good thing, but saying that trans people are being banned from using the toilet is straight up 100% rubbish and you know it. If you would like to argue that forcing trans people to take two steps to the right and use the toilet associated with their sex is evil, please go ahead and do so.

That ruling is bullshit caused by the UK government's inability to ever tell women no, and I do not support it in any way.

So what would your preferred policy be on the question of trans men?

As for the rest, trans people are permitted to use the toilets concordant with their sex, as are we all. You know this is what I meant. You may disapprove of my invisible rider that this is a good thing, but saying that trans people are being banned from using the toilet is straight up 100% rubbish and you know it. If you would like to argue that forcing trans people to use the toilet associated with their sex is evil, please go ahead and do so.

You should have been able to infer from context that that was what I meant. The person I was originally responding to suggested anti-trans people just want reasonable minimum standards for trans people to use their preferred toilets (which I would support), but that's false: they want to ban trans people from using their preferred toilets completely.

the question of trans men?

They're women who want to be (treated like) men. As with trans women, sometimes we can harmlessly and voluntarily indulge this desire, other times not.

The original poster was pointing out that saying, "look, we understand your desire to behave like / be considered as the opposite sex, and don't wish to give you shit over it or impede your daily life, but we both know that biologically this is not true and we need you to use the toilets associated with your biological sex" is considered just as TERFy as "y'all are freaks and perverts, take that dress off".

People are sensitive to the biological sex of the people in whose proximity they are expected to take their clothes off and make themselves vulnerable, especially when that space is by necessity closed off and unmonitored. Therefore, we require people to use the toilet (right there, free, easily accessible) associated with their own sex.

This sensitivity has been heightened by cases like Isla Bryson, the rapist turned trans lady, very blatantly discovering transness to get into female spaces, and heightened even more by the complete inability of many authorities and activists to even acknowledge this possibility, much less to make any plans to mitigate it.

You wade in going 'people are being BANNED' as if this is some terrible deprivation of liberty, and I genuinely don't know if you use this language because the actual requirements are so trivial and so uncontroversial that you need to punch it up a bit, or because you have worked yourself up so much about the issue that you unconsciously act as if trans people are being made to wait on the pavement until their bladders explode.

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