Transgender inclusion within policy is critical yet often missing. We propose a policy tool to assesses human rights, access to resources and opportunities, language, and implications for transgender and nonbinary individuals. Acknowledging trans communities as standard policy practice can serve as an essential practice to shift dialogue and norms.

Many U.S. states have proposed policies that restrict bathroom access to an individual’s birth sex. These policies have had widespread effects on safety for transgender and gender-nonconforming people, as well as on state economies. In this registered report, we assessed the role of disgust in support for policies that restrict transgender bathroom access. We found that sensitivity to pathogen disgust was positively associated with support for bathroom restrictions; sexual and injury disgust were unrelated. We also examined the role of disgust-driven moral concerns, known as purity concerns, as well as harm-related moral concerns in support for bathroom restrictions. While concerns about harm to cisgender and transgender people predicted support for bathroom restrictions, purity was a much stronger predictor. Also, purity partially mediated the link between pathogen disgust and support for bathroom restrictions, even after accounting for harm concerns. Findings and implications are discussed.

Antidiscrimination legislation is the vehicle most commonly used by communities to demand equality, but how should such law best be employed? In this article, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal decision in Hogan v. Ontario (Health and Long-term Care) is examined in relation to the removal of sex reassignment surgery from the Alberta Healthcare Insurance Plan in order to better understand the legal strategies designed to remedy different kinds of discrimination. This article argues that trans issues (involving people who identify as transgender, transsexual, or trans) ought not to be seen as additions to gay and lesbian issues legally or politically. Moreover, this article demonstrates that the fight for formal inclusion in legislation as a discrete or insular minority should be rejected by trans activists, as other legal strategies are better positioned to combat the processes of transphobia, thus potentially offering important steps towards substantive equality.