Heartstopper Forever film TRA propaganda: "People don't want me using public bathrooms", "Government is taking away my rights"

Heartstopper had this in one of the earlier series too where Elle (main trans character) went on a radio show to talk about art and then the presenters started talking about trans rights.

I have such mixed feelings about Heartstopper.

One the one hand, season 1 in particular, is such a sweet gay love story that I feel like a lot of gay kids would benefit from seeing.

On the other hand, Alice Osman (author) seems fantastically bonkers. She writes about school like she never actually went to one. And all of the queer stuff is cringeworthy.

He absolutely hasnt misunderstood. It's deliberate.

Sorry, OP, I just realized we are no longer talking about the film. Complete derail! Apologies.

Good points. For example, an Islamic bookshop for Muslim women. But that would be based on "religion", as you mentioned, not "bookshop" or "women". Wouldn't it?

And why would any man want to enter such a place, anyway (hmm why, indeed)? But, that would mean they would have the right to not hire a man who wanted to work there. But the exclusion would be based on religious belief, not sex?

So that would not be a proportionate means to achieving this legitimate aim (women's bookshop). It would be a proportionate means to achieving a different legitimate aim (Muslim women's space that just happens to be a bookshop)?

I'm getting confused.

The Hostel I use in London has a female only floor, they always known what a woman is, even before the SC Judgement.
St Christophers if anyone is interested.

In reality, as we all know, there are huge sections of the population who need more toilet provision and daren’t go out like the elderly and disabled who rightly have a real distress about not being able to ‘hold on’.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg92nl5w25o

"People don't want me using public [toilets] bathrooms", "Government is taking away my rights"
is typical fear-mongering hyperbole, it belongs with 'the most marginalised' and 'literal genocide'.

It's a very obvious tactic - fostering a sense of constant existential danger looming over transpeople, resulting in hypervigilance and exaggerated responses to non-existent threats.

I'm sure most transpeople are sussed enough to see it for what it is, but unfortunately there are a lot of vulnerable and suggestible transpeople as well - young people in particular, but not solely them - who buy into the hyperbole.

It could just be dismissed with an eyeroll as immature nonsense, but it has serious consequences:
If you believe the hype that you are the most oppressed, the most marginalised, that you daren't leave your house, that you are not allowed us any public toilet, that people want you dead, etc., every form of 'resistance' to your 'oppression' is justifiable.

That means verbal and physical abuse of women, threatened or actual violence including rape and murder, 'arm the dolls', delight in women's suffering as in HH's response to AW's murder - all 'justified' because of the programme of transphobic annihilation that's going on.... allegedly.

It's a blatant tactic, easy to spot, but it's also a dangerous one.

And as always with the TRAs the focus in on toilets. Because complaining about women only changing rooms, prisons, hospital wards, rape crisis centres etc sounds a lot worse.

Thats what the Supreme Court was about - the fact that a MAN was running Edinburgh rape crisis and there was no woman only
raoe support. He told women who wanted a female only service to “reframe their trauma”

fuck off

Religious reasons should cut it. There are enough misogynistic religions to choose from that segregate men & women.

A good example of a single sex service that doesn’t involve getting undressed would be a taxi service for women only. Another would be a women only hotel.

snap!

but a bookshop for men next door to a bookshop for women is OK too.

A bookshop exclusively for biological women? Without exception? For all employees, all customers? I'm not sure that would hold up in court, unless the two bookshops carried exactly the same stock, all the time, without exception (which would be nearly impossible). Otherwise, you might be discriminating against one sex or the other.

I think making a case for an exclusive single-sex bookshop would be a hard sell to the courts, although I could be wrong. You'd have to be pretty clear exactly why you were excluding men from the women's bookshop, for one thing. What's the justification? Dignity, perhaps, if you could prove that men were making women feel uncomfortable in a lesbian bookshop?

It would make an interesting court case.

But agree everyday common sense reasons like people will be partly undressed in the facility are quite adequate to justify separate sex services.

Separate bookshops for men and women would require some quite specific circumstances to justify, as there isn't in normal circumstances a privacy or dignity reason to have sex segregated book buying.

It is always a legitimate to have a single sex service for reasons of privacy, dignity, propriety etc where it gets more contentious is if you provide a service for only one sex not two parallel services one for males & another for females. So my previous examples of a lingerie shop for women is OK but a bookshop for men next door to a bookshop for women is OK too.

I presuming heartstopper means being in love not a cardiac arrest?

If you were having a cardiac arrest, I have academic studies to show how your chances of surviving very much depend in you are seen or heard collapsing. As 11% happen in toilets (the sudden need to defecate can be a sign, people rush to the toilet when they feel ill, the Valsalva maneuver), being in a design that has a door gap to show people nearby that you have collapsed, can save your life. The only design permitted to have door gaps is one in a single sex environment in this country. It can be up to 15cm floor to door.

edit: the logical conclusion (re the thread headline), if you think you are having a cardiac arrest, is not to use a ‘public bathroom’ if only mixed sex designs are available, unless you have someone with you.

This is not right.

In providing eg q female only space, the legitimate aim is the privacy, dignity and/or safety of women. The proportionate means of achieving that is the exclusion of all males, including those who claim to be “transwomen”. It is not assessed on a case by case basis

Point is though, the proportionality test happens at the point of do we provide a women only service at all. Not at the individual level of we all agreed this is a women only service but should we make an exception for this particular man.

Good, clear explanation, thanks. Better than all my waffling!

Alice oseman is the arch tra? Come on 🤣🤣🤣

You can actually. You can have a lingerie shop that doesn't serve men.
Because there's additional justification - for the privacy and dignity of customers who will be in a state of undress. A bakery that doesn't serve men would be a lot harder to justify in terms of proportionate means to legitimate aims. Conceivably if there was an ultra religious community you were trying to serve where women would not feel able to buy bread freely with men there.
Point is though, the proportionality test happens at the point of do we provide a women only service at all. Not at the individual level of we all agreed this is a women only service but should we make an exception for this particular man.

”Just because you want to” isn’t enough. You couldn’t say “my shop doesn’t serve women” for example.

You can actually. You can have a lingerie shop that doesn't serve men.
You could have a bookshop that doesn’t serve women provided you had a parallel bookshop that doesn't serve men. Privacy, dignity & propriety are always a valid reason for separating the sexes.

I see the writers of heartstopper have arrived already

Alice Oseman the actual writer is a they/them who claims to be aromantic and asexual - but of course she is and does

In fairness, it's a low hurdle. The desire for sex segregation in situations of undress is universal, including amongst TRAs, who demand only that they be made a specific exception to the general rule, like cleaners, emergency workers, or babies. The law does not allow for such an exception, for the reasons set out in FWS.

Howse! (do I win a prize?)

For anyone lurking here, this ⬆is complete BS from start to finish. A completely false reinterpretation of the law. All of it.

It's not illegal yet for trans people to use their preferred toilet
"Trans people" are required to use the public toilets that correspond to their biological sex. Legally. Simple.

It's only possibly illegal for service providers to allow them which won't even be known for certain until case law clarifies this. FALSE.

"proportionate "

A single -sex space is based on biological sex. There is no "proportionate." That part of it has already been decided. If there needs to be a space based on sex, it is provided on the basis of biological sex. End of.

If you have a single-sex space a trans person can still go into that single-sex space, but if someone complains, they can bring out a sex discrimination claim or the organisation can exclude that person, but that doesn’t happen automatically.
Disingenuous nonsense. Of course it doesn't happen "automatically" like some kind of magic. If no one else is there, nothing happens. If someone else is there and complains, by law the wrong-sex person must be removed, or the service provider will be breaking the law.

(put another way: if you're driving and not wearing a seatbelt and no one notices, nothing happens to you, but you're still breaking the law!)

THE LAW
If a service provider has a single-sex female space, they must not allow a biological male to use it. They can be sued if they do, doesn't matter who complains or how many complain. The fact that they are breaking the law is enough.

Workplaces must provide single -sex spaces, again based on biological sex only. They should also provide universal/accessible spaces (mixed-sex) and there are regulations about how these should be provided, built and maintained.

the rights of whoever wants to be in a single-sex space, if they’re complaining, have to be counterbalanced against the rights of a trans person. Those rights still exist. FALSE

The "balancing" has already been done before the space was created. That's the "proportionate" bit. If it's deemed necessary to have a single-sex space, then that's the end of the argument. There is no "counterbalancing " to be done. The space is single-sex, based on biological sex. Done.

The law hasn’t changed on that.

CORRECT. The law is the Equality Act 2010, which has not changed since 2010. The Supreme Court ruling in 2025 confirmed that "sex" is biological.

Workplace laws govern single-sex spaces for employers.

Long story short, everything Whisperingwaters has said is twisted, false nonsense.

Hope this helps the lurkers, and, thanks again to Whisperingwaters for prompting me to lay all this out in detail. Now it can be used to debunk future ridiculous posts!

ed sp