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Earlier this week, the Scottish Government updated an advice document called Supporting Transgender Pupils in Schools, amending the parts of this guidance that relate to toilets and changing rooms.

Unsurprisingly, given the general state of public discourse in Scotland and the UK, this generated lots of headlines and noise.

The advice states that separate toilet facilities for boys and girls must be provided in schools, and that under the 1967 regulations around school premises, this must be based on biological sex. This is obviously, whether a strict legal reality or otherwise, related to the recent Supreme Court judgment that the Equality Act should be interpreted through a lens of biological determinism.

The guidance also makes clear that the needs of trans students must be taken into account, suggesting that this may involve the provision of gender neutral facilities, and warns against ‘outing’ young people against their will.

It also includes radical suggestions such as respecting people’s preferences for the way in which others refer to them. Most of us would probably like to think that those sorts of positions don’t really need to be stated explicitly, but we are where we are.

It's fair to........

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