Trans people are sickened and scared by new government guidance

As stupid as it is sickening. 

That was my only response this morning to reports in the Times that transgender people like me could soon be excluded from certain spaces purely based on what we look like. 

It quoted leaked guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) advising ministers on how best to respond to April’s Supreme Court ruling that the definition of the protected characteristic of ‘sex’ under the Equality Act refers to sex assigned at birth. 

Ever since the ruling, it has seemed like institutions have been vying to see who can interpret the ruling in the most exclusionary, invasive and cruel way possible. 

The latest step in this rate to the bottom – that trans people could be excluded from single sex spaces simply on suspicion or on the basis of ‘looks’ – is absurd, exclusionary, and in my view, potentially dangerous. 

The new guidance says that places such as hospital wards and gyms can question and even ban transgender people based on their looks, behaviour, and concerns raised by others. 

As I’ve warned in numerous columns, I now face the prospect of having to convince total strangers that I’m sufficiently a woman for them.  

Crucially, it won’t just be trans people who suffer. In my experience, the women who are most likely to be confronted under guidance like this are masculine-presenting cisgender women – those who don’t fit society’s narrow, outdated ideas of femininity.

I’ve seen countless examples of women being harassed – lesbian friends of mine, butch-presenting women, sporty girls in hoodies, women with short hair, women who are tall, women who simply ‘look wrong’ to someone’s bigoted eye. 

I know cis women who’ve even been followed into bathrooms, shouted at, and even physically blocked from entering because someone decided they ‘looked trans’.

This has left them worried about using public spaces — a fear which trans people know all too well.

It shouldn’t require saying, but no one has the right to decide what a woman looks like.

The Times reports that the new guidance no longer says a person can be asked to produce a birth certificate, or identity of any kind.

That might sound positive for trans people, but the quotes make clear it is only being ruled out because trans people can change their sex on passports and driving licences.

I’m worried that right is at risk too.

This is the continuation of a slippery slope that more and more trans people are worried ends in invasive physical inspection. 

I want to know at what point would this be governed? What would stop people from asking for ID evidence? I fear we are one step away from physical inspections.

Questioned about the reports this morning, government minister Josh MacAllister said Labour is waiting to act on the guidance because they ‘want to get it right.’

Well if they do, they will reject this advice outright. 

Otherwise, the government risks entertaining a twisted fantasy that has no basis in the way humans live.

Hundreds of service providers and companies have already raised concerns and at least one legal challenge is underway.

International human rights bodies, such as the Council of Europe and UN experts, have warned the UK that this anti-trans direction breaches long-established rights and protections.  

And the thing is, myself and other activists, alongside many human rights and LGBT+ charities have been warning about exactly this outcome for years. 

Every time we raised concerns about where this constant drip-feed of transphobia and misinformation would take us, we were accused of exaggerating, scaremongering, being hysterical – being ‘too sensitive’. 

Yet here we are – in a system where no one wins. Institutional transphobia like this interrogates the bodies of cis women and trans people. It feels like no-one is given any safety here.

For Labour, adopting this extreme guidance might seem like an easy political win. But with polling showing 91% trans people saying they distrust the current government on their rights, they should tread carefully. 

And the public don’t appear to be agitating en masse for witch hunts in toilets – they’re asking for functioning services, a stable economy, and leadership rooted in reality, not moral panic.

The truth is simple, trans people have been using these single-sex spaces for decades without incident. The crisis isn’t about us, it is about bad faith actors manufacturing a panic.

If this sickening guidance ever sees the light of day, it won’t just harm trans people, it will harm every woman who doesn’t fit a neatly packaged stereotype. 

And that should terrify us.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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