How trans people feel about correct-sex toilets, in their own words

[MyAmpleSheep]

This is an interesting Reddit thread where members of the trans community write about how they feel about not using wrong-sex bathrooms toilets facilities. (The original question doesn’t say toilets, but that’s how most responders have interpreted it, I think).

https://tinyurl.com/musmm897

There’s a mix of responses, some activist, some self-pitying, some stories that are sad. Genuinely useful and thought-provoking to read what people say.

I can’t very much influence how people should post here, but it would be very easy to only to highlight or mock the more unreasonable responses in that thread. Perhaps I’m allowed to ask Mumsnet posters to be thoughtful, though?

So I do understand that a genuinely gender dysphoric person would find it agonising to be forced to use same sex toilets [though we know gender neutral and disabled facilities where they are suitable are available]. I’ve watched my DD wait for me to go in with her, or loiter to use the disabled loos to reduce dealing with other people.

However, when I had my 3rd, 4th and 5th miscarriage and found mother and baby groups in parks and coffee shops painfully difficult, and pregnancy announcements agonising, or when my anorexic mother would spend 5 hours on Christmas Day making a huge meal that she then had to watch us eat whilst she pushed a few sprouts around the plate… there was no expectation that mothers with babies should not be allowed out in public, that pregnant women should not share their wonderful news for fear of upsetting the childless, that other family members should starve along side my mother in case it triggered her.

What happens is that the world keeps turning and regular exposure forces you to face the issue; learn to regulate your emotional responses and consequent behaviours; it forms a sort of incidental socially constructed exposure therapy - in fact, isn’t life, itself, intended to be one long exposure therapy session? One in which you are forced to understand that you are not the centre of the world and that other people are just getting on with their lives? That you can chose to muddle along, conform in at least a small way to expected cultural and moral norms to grease the wheels of daily life and facilitate adequate social functioning… or you can be bloody-minded and obstinate and make your own life difficult and piss everyone else off in the process?

Yes.

but nobody told them.

in fact they have been brought up without the slightest notion they are insignificant dust specks with vanishing and fleeting existences.

theyve experienced no real challenges so they invented some, they have no comprehension of how bad life in Russia or China is, so they invented some make believe trauma.

someone told them life was supposed to be on easy mode and they cannot handle the slightest challenge of their world view.

That's an interesting take on things. Do you think that most of the people who are saying they'll carry on using opposite-sex spaces are doing so because they don't really believe themselves to be trans? I.e. because they're "at it" to quote Humza Yusaf.

'....or you can be bloody-minded and obstinate and make your own life difficult and piss everyone else off in the process?'

Oh, wow, I feel seen! 😂

6 foot 4 brick shithouses complaining about feeling unsafe in the men's insist that wee old grannies and little girls must just get over their fear, alarm and discomfort at seeing Brenda shoulder his way into the ladies'.

Single sex toilets only accelerates the impetus for 'passing' by the sounds of things. The irony of a movement dedicated to preventing the medicalisation of youth & sex stereotypes seems completely lost on them. Short term gain long term pain?

Your argument is that men should be accepted in women's toilets so that men don't have to take drugs and undergo surgery to try to be less obvious when they go in women's toilets?

"The nasty GC women made me cut off my penis"? Really?

Tbf, the last pathway does seem to be the natural route for most of us in my family. If there’s an easy way or a hard way to achieve something, we seem to find an even more obscure and bloody impossible route. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Was that "tut and move away" or "reframe your trauma"?

My argument is you can't have it both ways where you claim to be against medicalisation but then encourage it which doesn't help your 'cause' of single sex toilets BECAUSE TRANS WOMEN WILL PASS.

You don't appear to comprehend how the unintended consequences work you enable work against you. But do carry on regardless.

the girl, later young woman, who spent some time in prison

This doesn't jog my memory. Please remind me?

I don't know how why or where you think I encourage medicalization. Can you please point to anything - a single thing - anything at all - I've written that could lead you to think that?

Your risible nonsense argument appears to be that locking my front door encourages burglars to break a window to gain entry - so I should leave my door unlocked. Otherwise I'm encouraging the breaking of windows.

First of Rule of Misogyny: Women are responsible for what men do.

By virtue of being pro single sex spaces is an encouragement of medicalisation. That you fail to comprehend the basic logic of a legal requirement to 'fit in' encourages people to do so doesn't reflect well on your cognitive abilities.

From a transman:
"Things as small as getting a coffee with friends would be essentially off limits."

Well, no it wouldn't be. Most of the coffee shops I go to are small locally run places, too small to have more than one unisex loo. Even some of the larger ones just have one loo. I think the only place I could go in this town for coffee where I'd be faced with Gents/Ladies would be McDonalds, so FFS go somewhere small/local and there's no problem!

So for me, this indicates someone who isn't looking for ways to live comfortably, they're looking for ways to be a victim. Which, going out for a coffee, they're not.

In fact, many of these posts were sheer Victim Olympics and self-pity. Oh, I'll have to emigrate (to where?)! Oh, I'd rather die! Oh, I won't comply!

The only posts that mentioned women's discomfort were those posts by transmen, saying the women would see them as males invading their spaces (not once we've looked at the size of your feet and hands we won't!). Transwomen of course don't even acknowledge that women exist. I found that very telling.

I don’t care how they feel.

Every single one of them at some point used men’s facilities comfortably then made the decision to invade women’s spaces based on what? A costume?

They’ve took the piss for years - I care as much for their feelings as they do for the women they’ve intentionally intimidated over the last decade.

This is lunacy.

I actually don't give a stuff if grown men want to castrate themselves or grow breasts. It doesn't bother me. I don't think the public purse should have to pay for playing along with fetishes, but in theory I have no objection to adults doing whatever they like to their own bodies.

So to the extent that your argument makes any sense at all, you can consider me to be 100% fully in favour of medical intervention for trans identifying people if you want (I really don't care) - men need to stay out of women's single-sex facilities. That's all there is to it.

LOL the mental gymnastics here is astounding. Wanting SEX-BASED facilities is predicated on biological sex, not how many surgeries someone has had to fake it. We are not encouraging anyone to go and have surgeries, any more than Harrods is encouraging people who cannot afford their luxury items to rob a bank to pay for them.

Because the point is, it doesn’t matter how much a transperson ‘passes’ or how much surgery they’ve had … they should chose to use with the toilets for their natal sex or the gender neutral ones if they are convinced they pass so well they are at risk in the men’s.

Glad to see you owning your contribution to 'self acceptance'/medicalised youth which effectively becomes their entry card to single sex toilets.

Problem solved!!!

One is reminded of feather brained Trump starting a war to get more only to end up with less that before.

Men with cosmetic surgery to imitate their idea of femininity don't belong in women's spaces any more than men who don't.

It's about their sex, not the gender stereotypes they try to follow.

We expect them to respect the law and respect women's boundaries. If they don't, they are creeps and predators. With or without false boobs.

It sounds like you would approve of branding trans people on the forehead as a solution to helping men stay out of woment's facilities.

There's a lack of mature responsibility that you ascribe trans people; that they can't help themselves. That trans-identifying men are victims of some helpless desire to be in places where they should not, at the service of which they are compelled to mutilate themselves, and that is something I am supposed to care about or for which I should feel regret. That this class of men bear no responsibility for themselves, and that nothing resonable can be expected of them. That any action - any action at all - they wish to take is reasonable and if it's not reasonable it's someone else's (women's) fault. It's so infantilizing and demeaning.

Women are not the people with the issues to fix here - and it's not down to women to fix them.

There's a lack of mature responsibility that you ascribe trans people; that they can't help themselves. That trans-identifying men are victims of some helpless desire to be in places where they should not, at the service of

Did you even read the thread you posted? Many trans people make it abundantly clear they are going to continue using their preferred toilet. And why wouldn't they? It's not illegal for them to do so. It might only be illegal for service providers not to prevent them from doing so.

And how the new ruling will be applied in case law is very much vague:

"A general rule [of equality law] is that you must not discriminate against someone,” they said. “Say if we’re talking about service provision in gyms, under Section 29 [of the 2010 Equality Act], you must not discriminate against anyone and that applies for services.

“You then have what’s called the carve-out, or an exception, to the rule, which in this case is single-sex spaces, which is Schedule 3 of the Equality Act. That says in some circumstances, having a separate or single-sex space can be justified.

“Now, the Supreme Court has said, ‘OK, well, a single-sex space means a space for biological sex,’ but the point here is that these provisions are permissive rather than exclusionary. This is where everyone keeps getting it wrong.”

Davies argues that because the 2010 Equality Act and related laws are meant to protect rather than exclude, the idea that they can be used to bar trans people from single-sex spaces is wrong.

“If you have a single-sex space, my interpretation is that 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, right?” Davies adds. “The Equality Act is meant to be a shield rather than a sword. It’s not meant to attack people and get rid of their rights.

“Even if you do have a single-sex space, the exclusion must be proportionate, which means that 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. The law hasn’t changed on that.”

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/09/16/non-binary-barrister-supreme-court-ruling/

of which they are compelled to mutilate themselves, and that is something I am supposed to care about or for which I should feel regret. That this class of men bear no responsibility for themselves, and that nothing resonable can be expected of them. That any action - any action at all - they wish to take is reasonable and if it's not reasonable it's someone else's (women's) fault. It's so infantilizing and demeaning.

In other words: 'My contributions to the shaping of culture are not responsible for any unintended consequences they caused'.

Don't look now but you are infantilising yourself.

Howse that? Male people will ‘pass’? Considering how reliably people seem to be able to correctly identify male people even after puberty blocking and surgery, maybe you shoudn’t consider your personal lack of ability to identity the sex of other people as being the universal experience.

a legal requirement to ‘fit in’

What legal requirement is that then?