Séamas O'Reilly: Trans people have spent a decade being attacked in a moral panic

The poor provision of unisex children’s facilities— which reinforces gender stereotypes and inconveniences women and men both — was, incidentally, an issue I remember being quite talked-about a decade or so ago

Séamas O'Reilly: "Let us speak as adults. Despite being around 0.5% of the population, trans people have spent the past decade being attacked in one of the most flagrant moral panics ever perpetrated on the British public." Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan.

Any father of young kids will have some experience of women’s toilets. In 2025, dads are still forced — with deadening regularity — to knock on the door of a female toilet and say, apologetically, that their child needs the facilities. 

This is because, even here in London, one of the most modern and accessible cities on the planet, thousands of cafes, pubs, restaurants, and cinemas still put baby change or child-accessible toilet facilities exclusively in the women’s loos.