1. The vast majority of trans people are good and decent people

 

The vast majority of trans people are good and decent individuals, who suffer prejudice and demonization by hostile groups who promote false narratives that incite public anger and abuse.

 

2. The false narratives that stigmatise trans people

 

The playbook is to take rare and isolated misdeeds of a tiny minority - just as all groups of people have miscreants - and generalise those actions into a false narrative that frames all decent trans people as threats and perverts, which they aren't, weaponising the isolated incidents to turn the public against decent trans lives. This has generated growing prejudice, danger and hostility on the streets. It is a conscious strategy.

 

3. Groups that campaign at the expense of trans people

 

Among the groups that campaign at the expense of trans people's fair interests are: some socially conservative Christians; some feminists with gender-critical beliefs; politicians putting votes before justice; those who use social media to slur trans people; and mostly right-wing news media who orchestrate hostility toward trans people by conflating isolated wrongdoers with trans people who do no wrong and contribute to society.

 

4. The ideologies that frame trans people in harmful ways

 

Among the ideologies that seek to incite criticism and disgust at trans people's expense are: fundamentalist and conservative evangelical Christian beliefs, portraying gender transition as unholy; gender-critical feminism that frames trans experience as fake and performative; right-wing political ideology that uses trans people as scapegoats to attract populist support; and related ideology promoted by news media and some wealthy financial backers.

 

5. Trans lives and trans experience are not an ideology

 

Their everyday lives are problematized and stigmatised by others. Their lives are authentic and as decent as anyone else's. Predominantly trans lives are not 'ideology' or 'lifestyle choice'. Nor is transition a mental illness. A trans person's life is a state of being, and just who a person is, living, loving, and being themselves.

 

6. Transition sets people free to flourish and live as the whole of who they are

 

Far from gender identity being framed as a problem, it can be a potential and a setting free to flourish as the psychological whole of who a person really is. Trans people fly planes, teach students, work in healthcare as doctors or nurses, and in countless other roles. That is not suggestive of 'madness' as hostile people try to allege, but of leading productive and caring lives.

 

7. The Supreme Court and the Equality Act's original context

 

Did the Supreme Court fail to read the Equality Act in the actual context in which it was drafted, intended, and passed at the time? The Equality Act cannot be re-imagined as something a person wants it to be 15 years later. It needs to be read as carefully as possible in terms of its actual meaning, intention, and context at the time that it was written. It may be argued persuasively that in 2010 it did not intend to restrict the term 'women' only to those born with female genitalia. The law in 2010 already made that clear: that - in law and society - trans women were to be one category of woman, and trans men were to be one category of man.

This context in law had already been cleared up for 6 years. The Gender Recognition Act of 2004 states (in Section 9, subsection 1):

"Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person's gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person's sex becomes that of a woman.)"

And in Section 4 we read that a trans woman with a Gender certificate (GRC) is "legally recognised as a woman in English law."

Therefore, it is plain that the law and context being applied in the Equality Act of 2010 frames certified trans women as women, trans men as men, and both gender and sex has already been established in law as inclusive of those who legally transition.

The Supreme Court 15 years later needed to uphold this as context and legal fact, which makes its own super-imposition of a definition based on 'biological sex' (a term never used in the actual Equality Act) seem like a retrospective and non-contextual re-writing of the law in terms that were never envisaged or intended.

To truly understand and correctly apply the original context of the Equality Act, we need to recognise the existing 2004 law (still law today in 2026); the social developments across the world that had led to seeing gender transition as legitimate and real, relating to the core being of certain individuals; the desire to recognise trans women as women in society (and trans men as men); the wording of the Equality Act itself; the accompany Explanatory Notes released with the Act by the legislators, indicating their understanding of the Act; the first EHRC Code of Practice, drafted months after the Equality Act became law; and the views of politicians in the period after 2010, with closer understanding of what the legislators set out to do.

So what does the Equality Act say? Perhaps first, we should note what it does not say… it does not repudiate the Gender Recognition Act or the fact that trans women were women 'for all purposes'. That in itself is a significant indicator of the context and intentions of the Equality Act.

In Part 2 Section 7 of the Act, the legislators recognise that a trans person can change their sex by transition. It says a trans person is able "to undergo, is undergoing, or has undergone a process for the purpose of reassigning a person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex."

So to be clear, in the original context and purpose of the Equality Act, the Act itself states that a person change sex. This had already been recognised in 2004 in law, and the Equality Act reaffirms this. It does not suggest 'trans women' remain 'men'. It recognises a variety of 'attributes' of sex (a major one of course being a person's psychological reality in the brain). The Act's stated acknowledgment was in line with the growing understanding of these issues at the time, and this context is essential to understand intention and purpose in the Act.

The fact that in the actual context of the Act as it was drafted, the understanding of the legislators was that people could transition and change sex, and that a trans woman was a woman not a man, becomes obvious in the Act's accompanying Explanatory Notes, published with the Act by the same people who drew up the law.

In its notes on Section 7 of the Act, it re-iterates in Section 41 the "process to change his or her sex" and that's repeated in Section 42. The limitation of 'sex' by the Supreme Court to only 'biological sex' as the sole attribute of sex in the Act defies the actual words and context of the Act as it is written and intended.

This is further shown in Section 43, where the legislators' view of trans women as women is made evident by the use of pronouns that reflect the sex a person has transitioned to. A trans woman is referred to as 'she' and 'her'. Likewise a person born physically female is referred to after transition as 'he'. "HIS employer cannot discriminate against HIM because of HIS absence from work." This reflects both the 2004 law still in use, and the Act's own recognition that people can change 'sex'. There are 'attributes' of sex beyond genitals and chromosomes alone, in the eyes of the law and the legislators at the time.

Sex is defined in the Act as being a man or a woman, and the Act recognises that trans women can change sex and are women, and trans men can change sex and are men. That was the law already, from 2004, and it is upheld in 2010. Neither the Act nor the accompanying Notes limit the definition of sex to 'biological sex'.

The contemporary and immediate understanding of the Act and the legislators' intents and purposes provide us with further contextual evidence of what the Equality Act was trying to do, when we read the original EHRC Code of Practice, produced just months after the Act was passed. It is quite shocking to see how the later Code being superimposed on the Act 15 years later shows the EHRC swinging from principles of social inclusion that were originally understood and intended, to blanket exclusions in a wide range of social spaces, services and associations.

It is well worth reading what the EHRC explained back then, in full knowledge of the legislators and the contexts of the time.

Once again, we see trans men referred to repeatedly as he, him, his (Section 7:2.20) and trans women referenced as she and her (Section 7:2.24) in an example provided:

"A person born physically male tells her friends she intends to reassign her sex."

Moreover, it uses the term 'transsexual man' when referring to someone born female who then transitioned (Section 11.26 and 13:58). There is a presupposition between 2004 and 2016 that sex can be changed. That is the context of the Act. The supreme court's alternative definition is retrospective.

The Code recognises that there may be certain cases where exclusion of trans women might be reasonable, but these would be exceptional cases. For example, most people might recognise that it could be compassionate to distance trans women from certain rape counselling sessions because of issues like trauma (also addressed in the Act's Explanatory Notes Section 789).

But "any exception to the prohibition of discrimination should generally be interpreted restrictively" (Section 13:2) which is to say, in very limited and exceptional circumstances. Each exceptional case should be tested for proportionality. This is because trans women are to be recognised in law as women, and their exclusion is therefore discriminatory unless exceptional and proportionate.

The general principle of inclusion of trans women because they are women is stated in (Section 13:58): "The intention is to ensure that the transsexual person is treated in a way that best meets their needs." An example follows:

"A clothes shop has separate changing areas for male and female customers to try on garments in cubicles. The shop concludes that it would not be appropriate or necessary to exclude a transsexual woman from the female changing room as privacy and decency of all users can be assured by the provision of separate cubicles."

As most women's toilets protect privacy in cubicles too, excluding women who happen to be trans might well be seen as disproportionate along similar lines. At the time of the Act that was, in any case the status quo and had been for years. Clearly at the time of the Equality this was viewed as appropriate and reasonable.

This is another example of how the Equality Act should be read in the context in which it was written. There was greater emphasis on inclusion of trans people in the sex they had transitioned to. As the original Code says (Section 13:59): "Trans people should normally be treated according to their acquired gender, unless there are strong reasons to the contrary." Those should be limited and exceptional.

"The denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances" (Section 13:60).

The EHRC itself, in its 2014 guidance for businesses - ''What Equality Law means for your business"- defined gender reassignment as "The process of changing or transitioning from one sex to another."

In the years immediately after the Equality Act, there seemed to be understanding of the importance of including trans people - some of the most marginalised and vilified people in society - and recognising that some people transitioned and to use the words of the Equality Act and its notes, people "reassigned their sex…" "changed their sex". As the 2004 Act said of trans women: "The person's sex becomes that of a woman." This was the recognised context of the Equality Act and it continued to spur inclusion rather than exclusion in the years that followed. For example:

The Women and Equalities Committee in Parliament said (Transgender Equality Report) that although there needed to be some "limited ability to exercise discretion" in exceptional and proportionate cases, "however, we are not persuaded that this discretion should apply where a trans person has been recognised for all legal purposes under the Gender Recognition Act. In many instances this is unlikely… to meet the proportionality test." In response…

The Cameron government reaffirmed the full legal and social status of those recognised as women 'for all purposes' in 2004. They addressed "the sensitive issue of separate and single-sex services, making it explicitly clear that the exception can only be used in exceptional circumstances."

It stated: "Gender dysphoria is not a mental illness" and in 'Providing Services for Transgender Customers' it upheld the inclusivity of the Equality Act stating: "A trans person should be free to select the facilities (such as toilets or changing rooms) appropriate to the gender in which they present. For example, when a trans person starts to live in their acquired gender on a full-time basis they should be afforded the right to use the facilities appropriate to their acquired gender."

In the same document, with reference to the Equality Act, the government stated that "refusing to allow a woman to use female facilities because staff perceive her to be male" was discriminatory.

So we can see that through the years 2004 to 2016, within which the Equality Act was drafted, there was a context and intention of inclusion, a recognition that people could change sex to align with their gender, that trans men were men and trans women were women, and that legally and socially trans people should be included in society except in very exceptional and proportionate cases.

It may strongly be argued that the Supreme Court judgment in 2025, fifteen years later, superimposed meanings and sparked actions that the Equality Act never intended. In short, many people believe that the actual context and intent of the Act has been retrospectively altered… altered in ways that have triggered exclusion rather than inclusion, and harmed trans people's lives.

 

8. Is the EHRC implementing the Act in ways never intended?

 

Not only did the Supreme Court judges form an anomalous judgment that sided with gender-critical feminists, and set itself outside the original contexts and the expressed understanding of the law that was drafted in 2010, which did indeed include trans women as women - in law, in its language, in its intent…

But after the judgment, the EHRC then amplified the ruling, making general what should only have been exceptional cases of differentiation. Many critics now say this was over-reach. The divergence from the context, intent, and purposes of the Equality Act, its Notes, and its original Code of Practice seem so blatant as to suggest that the Code drafted - 15 years after the original Code - by the EHRC may have been ideologically motivated and driven.

As explained in Section 7 of this site, the Equality Act was aligned to the existing Gender Recognition Act, in classifying trans women as women, and trans men as men, deploying pronouns like 'she', 'her', for trans women, and 'he', 'him' when referring to trans men who had 'changed sex' to better match their authentic gender identity. Both laws respected that.

However in 2025 and 2026 the EHRC has reflected the exclusionary rhetoric of pressure groups who wanted to deny that trans women were women at all, even though the law said that in many cases they were. It then set out on a very driven course to amplify and some would say to effectively 'weaponise' the very contended retrospective reframing by the Supreme Court, to claim that as trans women were 'men' (entirely contrary to what the Equality Act itself says) they should be excluded from almost all women's spaces… an exclusion completely at odds with the 2010 Act which said that any restrictions should be exceptional.

The haste with which the EHRC tried to push these exclusions through, and their suggestion in an early interview that trans women (for example) could use the men's toilets - at huge danger to trans women - gave the impression to critics that it was partisan and party to the agenda of gender-critical feminists. In short, a concern that they were ideologically driven to extract trans women from female spaces in society and deny their reality - in law - as the women they legally were.

In short, they hijacked a single (highly contended) ruling and extended it into a universal statement of exclusion, in complete contradiction of the 2004 law, the real context of the 2010 law, and quite contrary to the original Code of Practice of 15 years before which upheld the far more inclusive understandings of that Equality Act.

The Code started in 2025 appeared to impose universal exclusions on almost all women's organisations, extending hard-line restrictions (based on genitals) upon a plethora of groups and contexts that had nothing to do with genitals at all. This reeked to many of ideology and bias, deploying gender-critical narratives that were no part of the original Equality Act at all.

This 'agenda' of the EHRC (far beyond anything the Supreme Court called for) seemed to concerned parties to lack responsibility and adequate care for the impact and damage it would cause, not only on trans people's ordinary lives, but on businesses and organisations that were operating with trans inclusion before (in line with the original Act and the original EHRC advice to businesses in 2011).

Such generalisation around genitalia (no part of the Act's original intent) ironically may also risk challenge of cisgender women who choose to present or express themselves in 'masculine-associated' style or manner. This, as has been argued, may lead to some of them being challenged in women's spaces. Yet, these spaces have operated peacefully for decades - because trans men and women are as decent as anyone else.

This peaceful operation was known and accommodated at the time of the Equality Act. No effort was made by the legislators to frame trans women as anything other than 'women' for the purposes of things such as toilets, membership of groups like the Women's Institute, and thousands of other women's organisations from which they may now be excluded. It simply wasn't the intention of the Act.

In the EHRC's almost blanket restrictions there seemed to critics to be a reckless abandonment of proportionality (the Act's own touchstone). Fifteen years before, the legislators never intended such disproportionate ousting of trans women from their legitimate places in society as women, and trans men as men. The restrictions seemed out of all proportion to what the Act ever intended.

Inclusion had been a fundamental principle of the Act in 2010. Indeed, the EHRC's original Code, a few months after the Act was passed, reflecting the intentions of the Act at the time, states (13:5) "If a service provider provides single or separate sex services for women and men, they should treat transsexual people according to the gender role in which they present."

They had access to check with legislators. They were far closer to understand the pulse and intentions of the law. So their guidance, backing up the Act's identification of trans women as women, stated there is "No need to exclude transwomen from a changing room if it has separate cubicles." That was the understanding, at the time, and it could be strongly argued that excluding trans women from cubicled toilets was not envisaged. Indeed the Cameron government made that clear.

The Government Equalities Office issued guidance in 2015 that followed the spirit of the Equality Act. It advised:

"A trans person should be free to select the facilities (such as toilets or changing rooms) appropriate to the gender in which they present. For example, when a trans person starts to live in their acquired gender on a full-time basis they should be afforded the right to use the facilities appropriate to their acquired gender." As an example, they add: "The pub allows all trans customers access to the toilets appropriate to the sex in which they present."

This inclusive approach to trans people had already been reflected in the EHRC document 'What Equality Law means for your Business" (published in 2011):

"Generally, a business which is providing separate services or single-sex services should treat a transsexual person according to the sex in which the transsexual person presents (as opposed to the sex recorded at birth)." (page 17)

Such inclusion was proportionate. As the original EHRC Code 15 years ago stated (13:59), explaining the original purposes of the Act: "The denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances."

That emphasis on proportionality seems far from the blanket Code of 15 years later which has tried to impose an exclusion far and wide, in a way that seems vastly disproportionate and doctrinaire. It's certainly does not seem to many to be what the Equality Act intended.

Indeed, it may be fair to argue that the actions of the EHRC have been brutal in their consequences, harm and loss for trans people in the UK, out of step not only with the Acts of 2004 and 2010, but out of step with good practice in many other countries, and out of step with the need to treat a tiny minority with dignity and respect.

To fully see what is happening, the programmed stigmatisation of trans people has to be seen in its full context: the convergence of those who oppose even the concept of transition - the religious conservatives, the gender-critical sub-branch of feminism, the right-wing (often financially sponsored) politicians using trans people to drive divisions, the conservative news media - all seeking to lock out trans people, to vilify them, to portray them as 'fake'. By weaponising rare and individual incidents by bad players who can be found in any group, they portray all decent trans people as threat, when in fact they need protection as much as anyone else. But in a 'race to the bottom' these populist voices have the effect of subverting trans people's lives - and even their very identities - so that the thug or hater on the street feels empowered and vindicated to carry out threats and abuse. It is a deteriorating situation.

These are the real contexts within which the EHRC of the past year has been operating, and those who drafted the Equality Act would have been horrified.

 

9. The exclusionary claim that trans women are not women nor trans guys men

 

Trans women are women, just as trans men are men. This is recognised in law - to take the example of trans women, they are legally women 'for all purposes', as the Gender Recognition Act says. That Act became law in 2004 and it is still law.

But more than that, they live psychologically as female - it is simply who they are . It is their innate and essential being and identity. And that female identity gets lived out socially, as the Equality Act recognises, applying 'she' and 'her' pronouns.

Women are diverse and trans women are one kind of woman among many. The Equality Act does not deny their womanhood, and acknowledges in the Act(7:2) and the Explanatory Notes which the legislators drafted (7:41) that a person can undertake a process to change sex. That's the Act's own language.

The term 'biological sex' does not even occur in the Act. Nor does the Act imply that 'biological sex' is the only exclusive test of who a woman is. There are other ways of attributing womanhood, according to these laws. This term 'biological sex' is imposed on the Act 15 years later, retrospectively, and contrary to the Act's context and understanding at the time the Equality Act was drafted and passed.

Trans people can decently, honestly live their lives in the sex, and as the gender, they find themselves most aligned to in their innermost state of being… their 'gestalt' consciousness, their deepest sense of self. They deserve dignity and acceptance as women and men, in the sex and gender of their deep self-knowledge and life, when - as the Equality Act itself states - they 'change their sex. That can lead to far happier more productive lives, often breaking free of mismatch and dysphoria into psychological ease.

 

10. Not all women crudely brand trans women 'men' and many support them

 

Not all women crudely brand trans women 'men' and many support them as women. In an online petition over a hundred thousand women ('Not in our Name') have signed in support of trans women as legitimately female (which they are, GRA 2004), and in opposition to the disproportionate restrictions they believe are being advocated by the EHRC. It is perfectly possible for cisgender women to affirm and value trans women as women. There does not have to be an attritional zero sum game. There can be acceptance, support, and a willingness to get alongside. It is a respectful thing to do for decent but marginalised people.

For years, countless women have been inclusive of trans women, with a live and let live and supportive attitude of kindness, instead of what can seem like a mean-spirited 'witch hunt' by certain trans-hostile campaigners. Women have sisters, and daughters, and aunts, and colleagues, and neighbours, and friends who transition. And the more they know and understand trans women, the more they can get insight and compassion. Trans women have been using women's toilets almost completely without drama for 30 years and more. It is very human to need, it happens in a cubicle, and there is no need for a vendetta. But have the EHRC created a problem, where for decades people just got on with their business (aka having a pee) and then carrird on with their day?

 

11. Trans people need protection not exclusion

 

Critics believe that the EHRC is weaponising Equality Act in a disproportionate way at odds with its actual intentions. Trans people are a tiny minority who face abuse, mockery, threat and violence on the street. The 'monstering' of trans people by news media and politicians has provided thugs with a sense of mandate to call trans people freaks and perverts. It has amplified the hatred of the ignorant.

Trans people need inclusion, not scapegoating, more than ever today. The glib suggestion by one EHRC lead that trans women could use the men's toilets was outrageous in its lack of humanity and compassion. Trans women, for example, need safe space to pee, at least as much as other women, and for decades that safety was offered, along with general inclusion in many other walks of life, activities, clubs, and women's groups. Trans people need to be integrated into society as women. Trans men need to be integrated into society as men.

 

12. What about unwell trans people on hospital wards?

 

As a trans woman with a vagina who has worked as a nurse and provided intimate care and compassion to men and women alike, with consent, I find it sad and ironic that campaigners think I would be 'safer' on a man's ward than a woman's. Many health professionals agree: the exclusion of trans women from women's wards is ideological and not based on realistic risk. I have never heard of a single sexual attack on a female hospital ward by a trans woman. It's a false stigmatisation of trans people when they are ill, who just need care like anyone else. Moreover nurses know that you never carry out intimate and private care, washing, or changing gowns, except behind closed curtains. But hostile parties, and people with anti-trans agenda, try to vilify trans people. Their exclusion in this case is wholly disproportionate.

 

13. What about the Women's Institute?

 

As with various other associations and groups, for decades trans women have been welcomed in the Women's Institute in many locations: not least, because they are women. The Equality Act doesn't deny that. No physical danger is presented by trans women being included: no unfair advantage. Membership in no way comes under an 'exceptional' need to exclude. The actual context and intention of the Equality Act was to include. But the EHRC's generalisation of what should have been only exceptions has created a problem that did not even exist before, when trans women (who often suffer isolation) were welcomed in kindness and broad-mindedness. The 'Not in our Name' movement calls out the exclusion of trans women, and seeks a respect that allows different types of women to co-exist and show solidarity to one another.

 

14. False claims that trans people are fake

 

The claim that trans people are 'fake' is a hateful smear and slur that is promoted by those who seek to demean the lived reality and integrity of trans women and trans men. Gender-critical feminists allege that we are just acting, and that we are fake women. The opposite is true. For years before transition, that's when many trans people felt fake: trying to act out a role and identity that society said we should when, inside we were psychologically in deep distress, hiding behind an incongruent pretence of a gender at odds with who we knew ourselves to be.

In the end, that kind of performance can lead to the fragmentation of a person's life. The cost of performance outside your true self can be devastating. As author of this site I can testify to the decades where that fake life led to self-harm and the strangling of the true person inside. But when I transitioned, that's when the fakery ended. Such a psychological ease came flooding into my life: a healing, a sense of wholeness, and well-being. So many years of harm to myself just disappeared, and I became a nurse and flourished. Today my life is happy, I'm deeply loved, and I try to be the whole and best of who I am.

I am sad that hateful people frame trans people as 'fakes' and 'predators' and threats'. We are not the ones with 'ideology'. The vast majority of us are just trying to live decent, caring lives. It's who we really are.

 

15. Trans women care about all women's flourishing

 

Trans women care about all women's flourishing. Why wouldn't we? I am one. I have deeply cared about women all my life: my aunts, my mother, my daughters, my colleagues, my friends. All of us, as women (and as human beings) deserve safety, and respect for who we are and what we can give to society and to those who we love. As a nurse, all my instincts have been to care about every woman who's unwell. I have tenderly care in long, hard shifts like so many health workers do. And as a woman, I know the unwanted attention of people on the street, and misogyny. I don't appropriate every experience of every woman, but as a woman I care about other women. And I care about men as well. That's just rational. It's being a decent human being.

But psychologically, hormonally, and in the loveliness of my body, I identify with other women in my life. This is true of the vast majority of trans men and women. We have been through a lot to be who we are, but yes we care, deeply, as decent people: to suggest otherwise is to insinuate a lie.

 

16. The world is beautifully and wonderfully diverse

 

We should celebrate that. The human race is so diverse, and the Equality Act set out to protect that diversity, not to promote exclusion but inclusion. Trans people just want to get on with their lives as part of diverse manifestations of men and women: or indeed of non-binary lives that some people live. Diversity is seen in life throughout our planet, in countless species, and colour, and in human diversity too. It is wonderful. We can either share that diversity together and accommodate each other's differences with kindness, or we can go down the road of populism, division, hatred, othering, and the exclusionary policing of tribal boundaries.

It doesn't have to be that way. Instead of meanness of spirit I urge you to find the best of yourselves in: generosity, kindness, responsibility for one another, balance… and proportionality. We should help one another to be the whole and best of who we really are. Sadly I believe the EHRC guidelines demean. They literally 'other' trans people, and that was never conceived or intended by the Equality Act, which was drafted in the context of the Gender Recognition Act's affirmation of trans women as women and trans men as men. It was a part of opening up to diversity and inclusion.

 

17. The Equality Act's pronouns recognise trans men and women

 

Basically, if your name is Nicholas, but you ask to be called Nick, if a person deliberately goes on calling you Nicholas, then they are being a dick. It is a simple politeness, if a trans woman has a new female name, to address her that way, and use pronouns like 'she' and 'her'.

That's exactly what the Equality Act (and the Explanatory Notes the legislators drafted to go with it) does. The legislators acknowledge that people can change their sex. And if they have, then clearly appropriate pronouns apply. So it deploys pronouns 'she' and 'her' when referring to trans women, and 'he' and 'his' in reference to trans men. It's in the text and literally what the documents say.

This is a pretty clear indication of the true context and views of those who drafted and passed the Act, and is in line with the law that recognised trans women as women since 2004 (which still exists) - a law which the Supreme Court's retrospective revision renders incongruent (which was congruent at the time). Apart from which… affording people the names and pronouns they request is simple decency, good manners, compassion and kindness.

 

18. To grow, or give way to populism and scapegoating

 

As a good society do we seek to open up our culture so everyone can flourish, or do we retreat into divisions and hatred, demonising people and sinking to the worst and lowest public discourse, massaging contempt for minorities, and seeking to make scapegoats of the marginalised?

In sections 1 to 7 on this site I have outlined how propaganda and campaign groups, social and news media, have been used to generate a social witch hunt against trans people. We can see the playbook being used: it is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s.

But there is a better way, if people want to build a compassionate country, and that is to welcome diversity, and seek to protect minorities, with policies of inclusion. Just as trans people go through transition to grow into the whole and best of who they are, so in the communities we build, we can seek to rise to the top rather than sink to the bottom, and in doing so grow as a society into the whole and best of who we could be: not dividing and scapegoating minorities, but opening up to respect for others, and affirmation of the diverse but real lives that people lead.

That was what the Equality Act truly set out to do. Sadly, there is a vendetta being run against trans people's acceptance in society. That vendetta is deliberate, ideological, with the aim of setting people against one another.

 

19. Politicians running scared of losing votes and caving in to populism

 

Politicians need to have courage to reject simplistic slogans, and resist what Yeats called the catch cries of the clown: those craven populists who use division and scapegoating to distract, and incite artificial fear or contempt. The 'monstering' of trans people is low politics. It is not accidental. Rather, out of fear of losing votes to even more extreme groups, the weaponisation of trans people has been a race to the bottom.

What is actually needed is decency and proportionality, which is exactly what the Equality Act in fact advocated, for example building on the Gender Recognition Act, rather than rendering it incongruent. That was never the Equality Act's intention. It reasserts that people can and do change sex and gender (you find those words), it follows the 2004 Act in recognising trans women as women, trans men as men, and deploys the appropriate and congruent pronouns to that effect.

Even where scenarios may - exceptionally, to use the Act's language - benefit from compassionate intervention (such as a trans woman not being the appropriate person to lead a rape counselling group)… the Act calls otherwise for proportionality, not a generalised repudiation of what the GRA and EA both set out to do. Politicians know there is far more nuance than that.

But where is the courage to be decent?

Of course, too many in Parliament are running scared of losing votes by sticking their heads above the parapets on these issues. Many opt to hide behind the Supreme Court's highly-contended judgment and the EHRC blitz, so those people can carry the can while the politicians lie low. But that's political cowardice and not real leadership: it leaves trans people abandoned as the real people carrying the can in their actual lives. Everyone knows there is a terrible 'monstering' of trans people going on, but too many politicians prefer to cave in to that populism than take a stand on decency, if it means losing votes.

At least 140 MPs have had the guts and principle to sign a Motion to challenge the EHRC's guidance. If others were morally decent, they would not cut trans people loose, and abandon them for the sake of dog-whistle politics, while news media continue to treat trans people like pariahs. As so often happens when justice is at stake, it is a political issue of courage or cowardice.

 

20. The true spirit of the Equality Act

 

Fifteen years ago, the culture wars were less febrile. Most people had started to take a live-and-let-live approach to trans men and women, accepting that we were just getting on with our lives, and many affirmed us, included us, and showed tolerance and respect. There was greater generosity of spirit and proportionality, and that was the social context within which the Equality Act was drafted and passed. Trans women were, as the Act itself recognised, women. Trans men were men. The legislators used pronouns that reflected that view, and was drafted on the back of the 2004 legislation that established a trans woman could change sex and be a woman, a trans man could be a man, 'for all purposes'. It was congruent recognition in both Acts. Trans people were to be included, in the sex they transitioned to, apart from a few exceptional circumstances.

What the Supreme Court appears to many to have done, with its interpretation amplified by the EHRC, is to retrospectively superimpose views that did not exist in the Act when it was drafted. If sex only meant 'biological sex' - a term entirely absent in the Act - then how did that find congruence with the Gender Recognition Act (2004) and the Equality Act's own recognition of other females as women in the legislators' words? How did the same politicians who passed the GRA's recognition of trans women as women, somehow also deny this very fact in law when they drafted and passed the Equality Act?

The fact is they obviously didn't.

The context of the Equality Act's drafting and intent was profoundly different to the interpretation of sex and women retrospectively back-prescribed by the Supreme Court, and then amplified with the exclusionary mind-set of the EHRC. The EHRC widened the anomaly created by the Supreme Court in regard to the GRA's clear definition of how trans women could be women, in the view of many being driven by gender-critical ideology at odds with what the law actually was in 2004 through 2010 and in the years that followed.

We see the inclusion of trans women as women being locked into the original EHRC Code of Practice in early 2011, and in their guidance to businesses (2014), and in the Parliamentary Committees and the Cameron government's own publications (see Section 7 of this site).

The spirit behind the legislation of those times was far more inclusive of trans women as women and trans men as men. Transition from one sex to another was accepted. It was not necessary to exclude trans women from female changing rooms with cubicles… for "the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances". "A trans person should be free to select the facilities (such as toilets or changing rooms) appropriate to the gender in which they present." That was published by the Cameron government in line with the view since 2004's legislation that trans women were to be treated as women and the recognition that people could change sex to align with their gender.

That was the context - and the inclusive spirit - within which the Equality Act was drafted and passed.

 

21. Conclusions - a better and more inclusive society

 

If the period from 2004 to 2016 was legally driven by inclusion of trans people in social spaces appropriate to their transitioned sex, the sad thing about the exclusionary campaigns - ideologically driven - which demean and diminish trans lives today… is the way they narrow down the wider definitions and variations of what it means to be a woman, reducing and policing it to be all about genitalia. It is reductive, and ignores both the different categories of people who are female, and the aspect of a woman's identity that is seated in the biological brain and a person's gestalt identity - who they really are - which may be irrevocably female (in a whole spectrum of different versions and expressions).

In short, it overlooks the lived reality that being a woman is not about bits alone, is not performance of dressing 'like a woman', is not only about sex if at all, but is at heart something you are, how you know yourself, how you recognise yourself in others: and in that heart of your being and consciousness - everything you have to give and offer to others from yourself - a person can grow in loveliness and potential to love, to serve, to flourish… in countless ways beyond genitalia alone. There is far more about being a woman than that.

Trans women are not trying to appropriate some single stereotype of social expression, or even everything that some other women have: they are trying to live their lives like anyone else. They are not an ideology. It's just who they are. And their lives are as mundane as anyone else's. They are not some kind of fetish. They get up, go to work, do shopping, washing, ironing, meet up with friends, read or listen to music, make supper. It's the same 'lifestyle' as yours I feel sure: it's called being a human being.

The author of this site, I know I am a human being who happens to be understood and recognised as a woman by people who know me; and know that so deep in my being that it's impossible to reverse because it's who I am. I am a threat to no-one, and a gift to those who love me; and like other trans people I deserve inclusion not exclusion. That's what enlightened people so often long for, and the politicians worked for it in the Equality Act period. Rather than marginalising people, we should care for one another, and dare to open up, more and more, to the whole of who we are, and the best of who we can be as a society. Love and courage expand us as people.

Transition has transformed my life and helped me to flourish, even in the sad face of those who demean who I am. They don't know me, but those who love me do. And I have been so grateful for the hundreds of women I have worked with and cared for, who like the legislators of the Equality Act just saw and understood me for the woman I am, and were happy to include me.

 

22. It doesn't end with trans people...

 

In several other countries we can see populism taking hold, because of social and economic disillusionment, which is exploited to recruit people. And as was evident in 1930s Germany and we can witness in some parts of the United States, opportunists try to harness supporters by identifying scapegoats and minorities to vilify.

Here in the UK we can see news media and other groups trying to turn the clock back, and deploying the dog whistles and catch cries of sexual and social conservatism - with trans people facing some of the worst contempt. But the playbook rarely stops there with one group.

Immigrants are also becoming targets of mob vigilante action via social media. Right-wing political parties threaten to cast non-British nationals out of their homes. Ten councils across England have been banned from flying the Pride flag. Library staff in Essex have been told not to promote events like Pride and Black History Month, and in Warwickshire the policing of library books has begun if they are too 'woke' (a political slogan to smear people with socially liberal views).

We see the direction of things in some parts of the USA, where 'anti-woke' propaganda has gone even further. Inclusion is slipping backwards and true to the playbook, division is used to politicise ordinary people's lives. Minorities get 'othered' for being 'woke' or 'alien to us' and ordinary LBGT people get framed as perverts and predators. Some Christian nationalists seek the return of women to domestic roles with husbands as their 'heads'. Gay sex is branded sin by fundamentalists. And it's happening in the UK as well.

Because other political parties are scared of losing ground to their right-wing rivals, they seem too ready to let things slip as the country is fuelled by hate speech and descends toward further hatred. The assault on the very reality of trans people is a canary in the coalmine, an early sign of a deteriorating society, appealing to some of the worst instincts of human nature. It may begin with trans people, but that doesn't mean it will end there. Money is channelled to help continue a roll-back of inclusive values.