Beauty
Policing how someone looks to use a toilet is wrong
Dr Helen Webberley on Times Radio: the gender debate, with Jo Coburn, Times Radio
What people think
There should be some kind of check at the door of a women's toilet. That if someone doesn't look female enough, it's reasonable to question whether they belong there.
What is actually true
A transgender woman has the right to use the women's toilet, full stop, and that right doesn't depend on how she looks on any given day. The moment we start policing appearance at a toilet door, we've created something genuinely awful: a world where any woman who doesn't fit a narrow idea of femininity gets challenged, questioned, made to feel like an intruder in a room she has every right to be in. That's not safety. That's humiliation dressed up as concern.
More from this conversation
Misconception
Sex varies in humans; gender identity is a separate thing
Misconception
The Supreme Court ruling still protects gender reassignment
Misconception
The patient is missing from the debate on their own care
Misconception
Medicine does not means-test who deserves treatment
Beauty
Trans people want ordinary lives, not a political debate
Misconception
Tavistock's problems predate the Cass Review