The Trans Agenda: Supreme Court ruling sends papers into a frenzy

News you need, the perspective you won't find anywhere else. The trans community's guide to UK news, media and politics and our place in it.

Apr 20, 2025

The Trans Agenda

[20 April 2025]

One year ago, almost to the day, I had an idea. What if I stopped clipping articles at random and instead began collecting them in a more structured way? Thus, The Trans Agenda was born. This past week, I passed a full year of tracking how many articles appeared in each publication. You should have been able to read about that milestone in more detail in another post, but I haven’t quite finished it yet because, like every trans person I know, this week hit me like a train.

There is, of course, one story dominating The Trans Agenda in the UK right now: the appallingly bigoted ruling from the Supreme Court, which defines a person by biological sex. The judgment reads as though it were written by Sex Matters, and, indeed, they contributed to it significantly. No trans people were allowed to, however.

The gloating from the media and gender-critical figures in response to this ruling has been as vicious as the judgment itself is compromised. How can justice claim to speak in its own name when it explicitly excludes the minority it is set to impact, while eagerly accepting submissions from groups whose only purpose is to target that same minority? I will never understand.

In the wake of the ruling, gender-critical activists and their allies in the press have moved swiftly to pressure institutions into adopting their interpretation of the decision. Their urgency is telling. They are, as usual, aware that much of what they are saying does not stand up to scrutiny, but they are banking on intimidation and confusion to prevent others from realising it.

Due to the ruling this week and how much I’ve had to do, I had to cut a few sections but they will be back next week as usual.

Follow me on Bluesky - @HLeeHurley.substack.com

UK & IRELAND NEWS

For Women Scotland verdict shocks everyone who isn’t a bigot [QueerAF]

The UK Supreme Court has ruled that under the Equality Act 2010, the legal definition of sex refers exclusively to biological sex, effectively excluding trans people from legal recognition as their true gender. The judgment allows trans people to be excluded from single-sex spaces regardless of circumstance, significantly weakening existing protections. It also removes equal pay rights for trans women with Gender Recognition Certificates. The ruling relied heavily on submissions from gender-critical groups and excluded trans voices entirely. It enforces a legal limbo on trans people, contradicts European human rights law, and aims to erode our ability to participate in public life. I encourage you to read Jess O’Thomson’s coverage, linked above in the header, for a much better explainer.

Further reading

The overwhelming coverage of this, as you’d expect, has come from cis people who hate us. But, there are many brilliant trans writers out there working their arses off to bring clarity to a frightened community.

These are some of the best pieces you might have missed:

UK Supreme Court Rules That Trans Women Aren’t Women under the Equality Act 2010 - Jess O’Thomson
'Trans People Woke Up To A Bleak New World Today. How Did We Get Here?' - jane fae
It's not about defining Woman - Mallory Moore

Please tag me on Bluesky with others you have seen.

Thousands turn out across UK to support trans rights

Protests broke out across the UK over the weekend in defence of trans rights, with the largest taking place in London, drawing an estimated 25,000 people, not that you would know that from the lack of media coverage.

That number deserves a moment of reflection, especially considering it came just days after the Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday. Now, compare it to the largest gender-critical demonstration you’ve ever seen, one planned for months in advance. They can only dream of such numbers. Their power lies not in popular support, but in access. Their support comes from elite institutions, the media, and political networks. Ours comes from the people. Even those who do not actively support trans rights largely believe we should be left alone.

That is why we will win. The challenge is to survive and resist the damage they are determined to do in the meantime.

Labour Ministers co-ordinate response to protect trans rights

Following the UK Supreme Court ruling, leaked WhatsApp messages show Labour ministers privately discussing how to protect trans rights and counteract the judgment’s impact, according to the Mail on Sunday.

The ruling has been interpreted by some officials, including the EHRC chair Baroness Falkner, as justifying the exclusion of trans women from single-sex spaces and sports. Labour MPs, including Dame Angela Eagle and Sir Chris Bryant, expressed concern over how public bodies might overreact to the decision and agreed to meet to coordinate a response. Eagle emphasised continuing with Labour’s manifesto promises to protect gender identity and LGBTQ+ rights. Bless.

Wes Streeting’s office ‘egged’

Questions grow over withheld trans suicide data by NHS England and Wes Streeting

Jolyon Maugham has accused NHS England and Health Secretary Wes Streeting of politically motivated delays in releasing completed suicide data on trans youth. A 2024 analysis by the National Child Mortality Database was finished over a year ago, yet NHS England says it won’t be published until 2026. The delay, Maugham argues, prevents progress on suicide prevention and shields Streeting from political fallout, despite the lives at stake.

Petitions

I am not a debate design — Tshirts, stickers and more

SPORT

UK ice hockey clubs challenge new gender participation policy [source]

Six UK ice hockey clubs, including Streatham Storm and Caledonia Steel Queens, have issued a joint statement challenging the newly published Sex and Gender Participation Policy from Ice Hockey UK. The clubs raise “a number of concerns over the policy’s implications, design, implementation and legal permissibility,” and have formally requested an urgent meeting with Ice Hockey UK and England Ice Hockey. The statement is also signed by the Cambridge Kodiaks, Haringey Greyhounds, Lee Valley Vampires, and Solent Amazons and Valkyries.

Athletes to sue England Hockey over new participation ban [Pink News]

Three trans players will launch a legal challenge against England Hockey’s decision to exclude trans women and non-binary players from female teams. The new policy, effective from 1 September, places them in an "open" category, replacing the men's league. The rule is clearly discriminatory and unsupported by evidence. Legal experts say the case could set a UK precedent.

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

THE WEEK AHEAD

Full parliament business can be viewed here.

Tuesday 22 April

Report: Tesla results

Wednesday 23 April

Prime Minister’s Questions, House of Commons, 12pm
Sentencing of man who attempted to murder Salman Rushdie
20th anniversary of first YouTube clip being posted

Thursday 24 April

Westminster Hall debate, Lesbian Visibility Week, 1.30pm
Keir Starmer meets European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
Ofcom Protection of Children Codes guidance published

Friday 26 April

Former Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson in court on bribery charges.

Saturday 26 April

Just Stop Oil stage final action in London
White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner
World’s first sperm racing competition in Los Angeles

Sunday 27 April

Report due on Trump executive order on DEI programs in military

THE PAPERS

Well, that was a week, huh? In the year that I’ve been tracking the papers, there hasn’t been one like it for coverage in terms of numbers and there were even some months that had fewer. It was, in short, brutal.

As a result of the sheer volume, I have not read every piece and therefore not noted who was quoted. It looked to be mostly the same people over and over and over again.

So, what do you want first, the last year’s totals, or the week? Let’s do the year.

On 15 April, I finished a full year of tracking these papers. At the start I merely recorded numbers, so the data is a bit basic. Since the start of 2025 I have been recording bylines, sentiment, front pages and the GCs quoted, so more in-depth data will be along when I’ve got some more. I’ve also added Northern Ireland’s News Letter to my list since the start of the year.

Over the course of the first year of tracking there were 1,075 articles printed in the papers I monitor and I don’t remember a trans byline on any of them.

This breaks down as:

Telegraph/Sunday Telegraph 478
Times/Sunday Times 262
Mail/Mail on Sunday 256
Guardian/Observer 79

Over the course of the last week there were 79 articles printed, one of which had five bylines.

On Thursday, the day after the ruling, there were 28 in total with the Telegraph printing 11 of them.

The Telegraph, in total, printed 25, the Mail 22, Times 19 and Guardian/Observer 13, one of which was a full page covering the protests at the weekend which didn’t even quote a GC for balance. Instead, they printed two anti-trans opinion pieces.

This is the last edition of the Observer that will be printed under the Guardian’s banner and, you will all be delighted to know, Sonia Sodha managed to squeeze out her one column for the last time.

I knew she could do it!

Whose bylines were on all these articles? Aidan Radnedge, Albert Tait, Alyson Rudd, Amelia Gentleman, Amy Gibbons (2), Andrew Billen, Andrew Gregory, Aubrey Allegretti, Ben Rumsby, Blower, Cameron Charles, Caroline Davies (2), cartoonist, comment (5), Daisy Eastlake, Daniel Martin (3), Daniel Sanderson, Debbie Hayton, Dominc Hauschild, Elizabeth Haigh, Ethan Croft (2), Fiona Parker, Freya Barnes, Geraldine Scott (2), Gerladine Scott, Glen Owen (2), Hadley Freeman (2), Harriet Line (3), Harry Yorke, Hayley Dixon (3), Jacinta Taylor, Jack Hardy, Jada Bas, James Tapper, Janet Eastham (5), Janice Turner (2), Jessica Murray, Jo Phoenix, Joe Phoenix, Jonathan Ames, Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock, Kemi Badenoch, letters, Libby Brooks (3), Liz Hull, Lottie Hayton, Martin Evans, Michael Searles, Oliver Brown, Patrick Sawer, Paul Goodman, Peter Walker, Phoebe Hennell, Poppy Wood, Rajeev Syal, Rosamund Urwin, Ruth Hallows (2), Sam Merriman (5), Samuel Montgomery (2), Sanchez Manning (6), Sarah Vine, Severin Carrell (6), Shaun Wooller, Sonia Sodha, Suzanne Moore, Telegraph reporters (2), Tom Morgan, William Turvill.

Spotted or know something you think I should include in the Trans Agenda?

THE PAPERS Monday 14 April - Sunday 20 April

All article text is in the alt text. If it is not there, it is because the article text is in the image above.

Monday Total: 2

Daily Mail [1]

Telegraph [1]

GPS pressured ‘to prescribe trans drugs by rogue clinics’ NHS issues new guidance telling family doctors to refuse requests for puberty blockers for under-18s The Daily Telegraph14 Apr 2025By Michael Searles and Patrick Sawer TRANS activists and unregulated clinics are pressuring GPS into illegally prescribing puberty blockers, the NHS has said. Health leaders issued new guidance to GPS that orders them to stop prescribing trans drugs to children, after requests for clarification from doctors. GPS have been told that they “must refuse” requests to prescribe puberty blockers because it is a criminal offence and should refuse cross-sex hormone requests to children unless carefully considered. It is understood a number of GPS have felt pressured into prescribing the drugs to children or entering agreements to supply the drugs on behalf of transgender clinics. ‘This advice will give GPS much-needed support to refuse [to prescribe] in the interests of patient safety’ The NHS guidance specifically singles out two unregulated clinics to be avoided – Gendergp and Anne Transgender Healthcare Ltd – both of which have “published statements that oppose the restrictions that have been put in place” by the NHS and the Government. There is no suggestion either organisation has broken any laws. The clarification comes after The Telegraph disclosed GPS’ fears that they are caught in a battle over a condition they are not trained to treat. The guidance empowers GPS to turn away requests to prescribe the drugs to under 18s. Previously, GPS would enter “sharedcare agreements” and continue a regular prescription for a child taking the drugs after they had initially been given them by a transgender clinic. Last month, the Royal College of GPS updated its “position statement” to argue that the profession should not be prescribing gender-affirming hormones to anyone under 18 because they did not have the specialist skills needed for this group of patients. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, announced last year that a Uk-wide ban on puberty blockers would be made indefinite, outside of a clinical trial, although crosssex drugs are still available to 16 and 17-year-olds. The guidance from the NHS tells doctors they “must refuse” to prescribe puberty blockers to under-18s to treat gender dysphoria. It also states that “a GP should refuse to support an unregulated provider in the prescribing or supply of alternative medications that may be used to suppress pubertal development”. Regulated clinics are limited to those registered by a UK regulator, such as the Care Quality Commission and does not include any based abroad or online. The guidance stops short of telling GPS not to prescribe cross-sex hormones at all. The NHS says they should not be used in children under 16 but has resisted calls for a ban for under-18s. Dr Louise Irvine, a GP and co-chairman of the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, said, “the advice will give GPS much-needed support to refuse in the interests of patient safety”, but added that it did “not go far enough” and that some GPS are “operating outside NHS prescribing protocols”. The NHS said advice issued to pharmacists recently by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPC) was “equally relevant to GPS who are asked to agree a shared care arrangement”. The GPC had said: “It is not enough for a prescription to be legally valid; that is just one consideration alongside others, including judgement as to whether a prescription is clinically appropriate.” The Cass Review, led by paediatrician Baroness Cass, said cross-sex hormones should not be given to under-16s and only ever prescribed for 16 and 17-year-olds when the “clinician… can demonstrate extreme caution”. It comes amid various legal challenges attempting to ban the use of cross-sex drugs in children, including one led by Kiera Bell, a de-transitioner who regretted trans surgery. An NHS spokesman said: “In response to concerns put to NHS England by GPS about named unregulated providers who arrange for puberty blockers, hormone drugs and other medications to be given to children for gender incongruence, contrary to NHS policy, NHS England has advised GPS not to cooperate in this unsafe practice.” Article Name:GPS pressured ‘to prescribe trans drugs by rogue clinics’ Publication:The Daily Telegraph Author:By Michael Searles and Patrick Sawer Start Page:6 End Page:6

Tuesday Total: 1

Daily Mail [1]

Wednesday Total: 2

The Guardian [2]

Thursday Total: 28

The Guardian [3]

Legal definition of woman ‘is based on biological sex’ Supreme court ruling may have far-reaching impact on trans rights The Guardian17 Apr 2025Severin Carrell Scotland editor PHOTOGRAPH: ANDY RAIN/EPA ▲ Gender-critical campaigners celebrating outside the supreme court in London after the ruling was handed down The supreme court issued a historic and definitive ruling yesterday that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act referred only to a biological woman and biological sex. In a decision that delighted gender-critical activists, five judges ruled unanimously that the legal definition of a woman in the 2010 legislation did not include transgender women who held gender recognition certificates (GRCs). The judgment could have farreaching ramifications and lead to greater restrictions on the access for trans women to services and spaces reserved for women. It prompted calls for the UK’s laws on gender recognition to be rewritten. The UK government said the ruling brought “clarity and confidence” for women and those who ran hospitals, sports clubs and women’s refuges. A spokesperson said: “We have always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex. Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this government.” The case was brought to court by the gender-critical campaign group For Women Scotland, which is backed financially by JK Rowling, after two Scottish courts rejected its arguments that the Equality Act’s definition of a woman was limited to people born biologically female. Lord Hodge, the deputy president of the court, said the Equality Act was very clear that its provisions dealt with biological sex at birth, and not with a person’s acquired gender, regardless of whether they held a gender recognition certificate. That affected policymaking on gender in sports and the armed services, hospitals, as well as womenonly charities, and access to changing rooms and women-only spaces, he said. However, the judgment said trans women still had equal pay rights as women and could enjoy rights to be treated as women in some situations. In the 88-page judgment, the court said that while the word “biological” did not appear in the definition of man or woman in the Equality Act, “the ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words corresponds with the biological characteristics that make an individual a man or a woman”. If “sex” did not mean only biological sex in the 2010 legislation, providers of single-sex spaces including changing rooms, homeless hostels and medical services would face “practical difficulties”, it said. The justices added: “If as a matter of law, a service provider is required to provide services previously limited to women also to trans women with a GRC, even if they present as biological men, it is difficult to see how they can then justify refusing to provide those services also to biological men … “Read fairly and in context, the provisions relating to single-sex services can only be interpreted by reference to biological sex.” The ruling represents a significant defeat for the Scottish government. For Women Scotland had initially challenged legislation that allowed trans women with a GRC to sit on public boards in posts reserved for women. Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, said that his government accepted the court’s judgment. He said it clarified the limits of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which introduced gender recognition certificates for trans people. “We will now engage on the implications of the ruling,” he said. “Protecting the rights of all will underpin our actions.” The Scottish government defended its actions in the case, which it said were always guided by the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s advice. The Scottish government also said that it would now engage with UK ministers and with the EHRC to look at the ruling’s implications, since the legislation involved in the case was passed by Westminster. Trans rights campaigners urged trans people and their supporters to remain calm about the decision. The campaign group Scottish Trans said: “We are really shocked by today’s supreme court decision, which reverses 20 years of understanding of how the law recognises trans men and women with gender recognition certificates. “We will continue working for a world in which trans people can get on with their lives with privacy, dignity and safety. That is something we all deserve.” Sacha Deshmukh, the chief executive of the human rights group Amnesty International UK – which had joined with the Scottish government in the supreme court case – said the decision was “clearly disappointing”. He added: “There are potentially concerning consequences for trans people, but it is important to stress that the court has been clear that trans people are protected under the Equality Act against discrimination and harassment. “The ruling does not change the protection trans people are afforded under the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’, as well as other provisions under the Equality Act.” Susan Smith, a co-founder of For Women Scotland, said the legal action had been “a really, really long road”, adding: “Today the judges have said what we always believed to be the case, that women are protected by their biological sex. “Sex is real and women can now feel safe that services and spaces designated for women are for women and we are enormously grateful to the supreme court for this ruling.” In a social media post, Rowling said: “It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the supreme court,” adding: “I’m so proud to know you.” Hodge, the deputy president of the court, said it believed the position ‘The provisions relating to singlesex services can only be interpreted by reference to biological sex’ Supreme court ruling taken by the Scottish government and the EHRC that people with gender recognition certificates did qualify as women, while those without did not, created “two sub-groups” and this would confuse any organisations they were involved with. A public body could not know whether a trans woman did or did not have that certificate because the information was private and confidential. And allowing trans women the same legal status as biological women could also affect spaces and services designed specifically for lesbians, who had also suffered discrimination and abuse. Kishwer Falkner, the chair of the EHRC, said it was pleased the ruling had dealt with its concerns about the lack of clarity around single-sex and lesbian-only spaces but would need time to fully understand its implications. “We are pleased that this judgment addresses several of the difficulties we highlighted in our submission to the court, including the challenges faced by those seeking to maintain single-sex spaces, and the rights of same-sex attracted persons to form associations.” Article Name:Legal definition of woman ‘is based on biological sex’ Publication:The Guardian Author:Severin Carrell Scotland editor Start Page:1 End Page:1

‘Real issues now start’ New battle lines formed as judgment sinks in The Guardian17 Apr 2025Jessica Murray Social affairs correspondent PHOTOGRAPH: TAYFUN SALCI/SHUTTERSTOCK ▲ Susan Smith and Marion Calder of For Women Scotland. Smith said the judgment ‘felt like a massive relief ’ For gender-critical campaigners, the supreme court’s ruling on the definition of a woman in the Equality Act was a “huge reset” that left them feeling “vindicated and relieved”. For transgender rights campaigners, it was a “damaging attack on their rights”, signalling the start of “real issues” in their fight for legal recognition. “I think this will be the kicking off point for a very enhanced push for overt restrictions on the rights of trans people,” said Victoria McCloud, Britain’s first transgender judge. She applied as an intervener in the supreme court appeal but was refused. Last year, she quit her job as a judge, saying her position had become “untenable” because her trans identity was viewed as a “lifestyle choice or an ideology”. She now lives in Ireland. McCloud said the supreme court ruling came during “a scary time” for transgender people in Britain, and would mark the start of a more intense fight for rights. “The rest has been phoney war. The real issues now start,” she said. “If I was a trans person in the UK today, I would steer clear of using any loo in a public space unless it was a single-sex or combined-sex loo, because I personally cannot, as of this moment, judge whether I should use the male loo or the female loo,” she said. “I haven’t got my head around the complexities of the judgment, and its repercussions will be ongoing for some time. But I’m happy I live in the Republic of Ireland where this is not an issue. They know where I’m allowed to pee here.” Outside the supreme court on Wednesday morning, Susan Smith, a co-director of the gender-critical campaign group For Women Scotland, which brought the appeal, was one of several women jubilantly celebrating the result. “It was quite something to walk out into banks of photographers and loads of people cheering and clapping. It was very emotional,” she said. “We’ve all given up a lot to fight this and we’ve all had to put up with a lot of abuse, a lot of misrepresentation of our motives and our position and our beliefs. “We’ve finally got clarity on the law, and we know now that when spaces and services are provided under the Equality Act and they’re single-sex, it means exactly that. That feels like a massive relief.” Smith said the ruling would help women feel safe if there was a man in a female-only space – “they will know that they are well within their rights to object to that”. “Gender reassignment is a protected characteristic, and it is still protected,” she said. “But saying that women were just some amorphous collection of people and it was an identity anyone could have, it was really downplaying the very real and different issues that affect men and women.” Maya Forstater, who founded the campaign group Sex Matters after she won an employment tribunal that found she had been unfairly discriminated against because of her gender-critical beliefs, said the ruling brought “relief, vindication, happiness and pride”. “This judgment has been so clear and it’s from the highest court in the land,” she said. “There are dozens and dozens of women who have had to bring employment tribunal cases because they’ve been victimised for just saying what they think the law says. Now we know that we were right.” She said the judgment was about “recognising rules and reality”. “If you’re a man, you can call yourself what you like, you can dress how you like, but you cannot work in a rape crisis centre, you cannot go into a women’s changing room,” she said. McCloud said she shared concerns about protecting women’s spaces – “I don’t want men in the women’s loos myself, thank you”. But she said people with extreme views “regard someone like me as dangerous” simply because of her transgender identity. “Gender-critical ideology is on the ascendancy, and this is obviously a success for them,” McCloud said. “But the struggle starts now, both for them and for us, because they are going to want to enhance this success and we are going to want to clarify and protect the rights that we thought we had.” Ellie Gomersall, a trans woman and activist for the Scottish Greens, said she was “gutted” when she saw the news and described it as “yet another attack on the rights of trans people to live our lives in peace”. She said: “This will only impact trans people who have got a gender recognition certificate, which actually the vast majority of trans people don’t. But I don’t want to underplay how damaging it is. “It sets the idea that even if you jump through all of the hoops, you go through that dehumanising and stigmatising process to get a [gender recognition certificate], you’ll still never be recognised in law for who you truly are.” She added: “Some individuals and organisations will see this result and use it as justification or vindication to discriminate further against trans people and that makes me really worried for my community.” Article Name:‘Real issues now start’ Publication:The Guardian Author:Jessica Murray Social affairs correspondent Start Page:5 End Page:5Politicians may be breathing a sigh of relief as clear ruling lets them dodge difficult questions The Guardian17 Apr 2025Peter Walker and Severin Carrell For all the negative stereotypes, many politicians are thoughtful, diligent and caring. But they are also human, and it is their more self-serving instincts that may have caused some to breathe a sigh of relief at the supreme court ruling on gender recognition. After a challenge by the gender-critical group For Women Scotland – which started out as a dispute over Scottish government legislation about female representation on public boards – judges ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to biological women and biological sex. The verdict will be heavily contested, and could bring serious and perhaps unforeseen repercussions for transgender women. But such an unexpectedly definitive view allows leaders in both Scotland and Westminster to (and there is no gentle way of putting this) dodge responsibility over one of the most contentious and toxic debates of our age. The Scottish government’s response was particularly eloquent. While stressing that no one should see the ruling as cause for triumph, it otherwise talked blandly about “engaging with the UK government to understand the full implication of this ruling”. There is logic to this. The Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act, the legislative focus of the deliberations, are both UK-wide and thus not something the Holyrood administration can decide unilaterally. But beneath this reassuring constitutional hum lurks the sound of quiet footsteps, as the SNP’s first minister, John Swinney, shuffles his party away from an era when Nicola Sturgeon’s government was very proudly at the vanguard of transgender rights. It is little more than two years ago that Sturgeon’s government was openly seeking a battle with Westminster over a plan to make it easier for transgender people in Scotland to get gender recognition certificates – a move blocked by Rishi Sunak. We are in a very different political climate now, and not just with the open hostility of the Donald Trump administration, which is purging transgender people from the military on the stated basis that their very identity makes them unfit to serve. Scotland’s government has been on the receiving end of pushback from other controversies – for example, the decision to initially send Isla Bryson, a transgender woman convicted of double rape, to a women’s prison. To yet again frame it in slightly unpalatable political terms, this is no longer seen as a vote-winner for the SNP. For Keir Starmer and the Westminster administration, there had been an unspoken worry about a fudged or unclear court ruling, one that placed the impetus on politicians to decide. Instead, as a UK government spokesperson said, it gave “clarity and confidence”, both for women and for those who run single-sex spaces. Clarity and confidence, perhaps. Political cover? Most definitely. Starmer has spent his five years as Labour leader having TV and radio interviewers intermittently ask him to declare, yes or no, whether a woman can have a penis. Starmer’s standard dual response – under the law a tiny number of trans people are recognised as women but might not have completed gender reassignment surgery – prompted an inevitable and arguably damaging wave of attacks from political opponents. Kemi Badenoch has been relentless in this, despite having served as equalities minister in a government that did not amend or clarify the Equality Act to reflect her view that, as she tweeted on Wednesday, “saying ‘trans women are women’ was never true in fact”. This was not just a Conservative obsession. Starmer faced criticism from inside Labour– notably from the now-independent MP Rosie Duffield for, as she saw it, failing to stand up for women – as well as reproach from others who felt he was edging away from trans rights. From a nakedly political-management perspective, the court decision was ideal, making the decision judicial rather than political. No 10 officials believe there will be no need to tweak the Equality Act, leaving their role as little more than a neutral voice in helping organisations adjust to the new reality. Starmer’s aides deny he has been on a political journey from a few years ago, when as Labour leadership candidate he signed up to a pledge from the LGBT Labour group “that trans women are women, that trans men are men”, or 18 months later when he criticised Duffield for saying that only women could have a cervix. This is perhaps disingenuous. But in a debate where niceties and nuance are so often trampled on, Starmer is very much not the first politician to try to fudge things. Article Name:Politicians may be breathing a sigh of relief as clear ruling lets them dodge difficult questions Publication:The Guardian Author:Peter Walker and Severin Carrell Start Page:5 End Page:5

The Times [7]

Landmark ruling to affect work, sport, the NHS and education Sanchez Manning Susan Smith, left, and Marion Calder, centre, of the For Women Scotland campaign group, celebrate after the success of their long battle to show that only biological women can legally be women Next image › The Supreme Court has ruled that the legal definition of “woman” relies on biological sex. The decision has wide-ranging implications, from maternity care to competitive sport. SINGLE-SEX SERVICES The sex-based rights campaign group Sex Matters said that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission would be able to produce much “clearer, simpler” guidance on single-sex services as a result of the judgment. Naomi Cunningham, barrister and chairwoman of Sex Matters, said: “It is now clear that in any situation in which it is lawful to operate a single-sex or separate-sex service for women, it is not merely lawful but compulsory to exclude all men. “And ‘men’ for these purposes includes trans women, whether or not they hold gender recognition certificates [GRCs — a legal document that recognises an individual’s gender]. The same is true in reverse of single-sex or separate-sex services for men.” Jo Moseley, an employment law specialist at the law firm Irwin Mitchell, agreed that the decision would make it easier for employers to understand the rules on providing single-sex and separate-sex services. She said: “Ultimately this decision gives employers much needed legal certainty and will help them to make legally compliant decisions.” CLUBS AND ASSOCIATIONS Equally, Sex Matters believes that the judgment will allow single-sex clubs and associations to operate clearly and lawfully. Cunningham, who specialises in employment and discrimination law, said: “The judgment confirms that singlesex associations are lawful and must exclude everyone of the opposite sex whether or not they hold a GRC.” Bev Jackson, co-founder of LGB Alliance, said the ruling removed “any semblance” of doubt about whether men could enter women’s spaces and groups. She said: “The legal definition of ‘woman’ is clear now. This means that any club, association or other group of any size — for example, a lesbian social club — can now legally operate on a single-sex basis.” SEX DISCRIMINATION Sex Matters said that in the wake of the judgment “the comparators in sex discrimination will be clear” and the “definition of sexual orientation will make sense”. Moseley said that the potential impact was best explained using the example of a current tribunal — Peggie v Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton. In this case a female nurse objected to a biologically male doctor, who identified as female, using the female changing rooms and is suing her employer for sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief and indirect sex discrimination. Explaining how the judgment could affect this dispute, Moseley said: “The NHS’s arguments that the correct comparator for the indirect sex discrimination claim should be a woman — rather than a man — will no longer hold water. “The question in that case is how a biological man using the female changing rooms would be treated, not how another woman would be treated.” COMPETITIVE SPORT Campaigners for single-sex sport said that the judgment had made it “crystal clear” that males who identified as female — with or without a GRC — were not permitted in women’s sports. Su Wong, from Seen in Sport, said: “This applies to all women and girls, not just at elite level, so this should mark the end of ‘two-tier’ sports policies. This ruling means that women will no longer be sanctioned and punished if they raise concerns that there is a male in the female category.” DATA COLLECTION The legal opinion is that organisations will now be more likely to collect data on biological sex rather than “gender”, without fearing that this is unlawful. Professor Alice Sullivan, who recently led a review for the government of data on sex and gender, said: “The judgment provides absolute clarity for organisations collecting data to fulfil their public sector equality duty that they must collect data on biological sex.” SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES Sarah Phillimore, a barrister who has represented clients in a number of gender-critical legal cases, said that one important effect of the ruling would be that it would allow single sex schools to have a clear admissions policy. PREGNANCY AND MATERNITY Milli Hill, a childbirth campaigner and author, said that the ruling would help clarify women’s maternity rights. She said: “I think the judgment will make clear, for example, that pregnant women are entitled to care from a biological female not a male person with a GRC.” EQUAL PAY According to Sex Matters, in lieu of the judgment equal pay rules will now specifically track biological sex. Cunningham said: “The judgment means that employers can’t skew their gender pay gap figures by including some high-earning trans-identifying men as ‘women’, even if they have GRCs. It also means that a female employee can claim equal pay by reference to a higher-paid male comparator even if he has a GRC.” SEX-SPECIFIC EMPLOYMENT Legal experts said that the judgment would make it clearer and simpler for employers to advertise roles for people of one particular sex when that was a requirement of the job. Moseley said that the ruling would help remove the ambiguity of whether employers can exclude men, who identify as women with a GRC, from a list of candidates they wish to hire.

A political cartoon published in The Times on 17 April 2025 comments on the UK Supreme Court's ruling in the For Women Scotland case regarding legal definitions of sex and gender. The cartoon depicts a senior British judge in full ceremonial robes and white wig, holding a human skull in the manner of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Sanity Restored The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that the description ‘woman’ should be based on biological sex is a victory for truth over faddish, destructive radicalism After years of argument, ideological extremism and an outbreak of collective insanity across the public sector and in corporate boardrooms, the Supreme Court has finally proclaimed that a woman is an adult human female, and references to “sex” and “women” in the Equality Act refer to biological sex and biological women. The judgment, which the loudest and most unpleasant voices in this long-running campaign of misinformation against British feminists insisted would never come, was unanimous. All five justices agreed what millions of people know instinctively to be true: that biological sex, not the expression of a subjective gender identity, is the only meaningful qualification to womanhood. Such an elementary truth should never have been contested before the highest court. That it was — in a bitter dispute between the self-styled progressives of Scotland’s nationalist government and the women who dared to defy them — is testament to a political and cultural establishment that lost touch with reality. It was always absurd that the SNP, much of the Labour Party, prominent Conservatives and countless public bodies and universities insisted that men were able to simply speak themselves into female-only spaces, some of which women fought for years to establish. Redress and an end to the fear of persecution is finally coming for women who wish to protect their right to play sports against one another, and support victims of rape or male violence. Or in the case of lesbian groups specifically mentioned by the Supreme Court, gather together safe from discrimination. Until now these women were at risk of legal action by trans-identifying men citing the Equality Act, which the Scottish government insisted should treat the “sex” of a biological woman and a biological man armed with a gender recognition certificate as the same thing. That can never be the case, and women who lost their livelihoods and reputations in pointing out this scientific certainty should not have suffered for saying so. Women like Kathleen Stock, the academic hounded out of Sussex University, or Maya Forstater, sacked from a think tank for her gendercritical views, were failed by political cowardice. Trans people are a tiny minority in Britain but, like all minorities, they have the right to be treated with respect and compassion, and to live peacefully, free from discrimination. Indeed, gender reassignment is itself a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. Their cause was hijacked by those who sought to erode the rights of women by equating gender expression with the immutable facts of nature. Politicians, always susceptible to faddish radicalism, were willing dupes. So it came to pass that in 2021 Sir Keir Starmer, now prime minister, rebuked the then Labour MP Rosie Duffield for daring to say that only a woman could have a cervix. David Lammy, now foreign secretary, accused feminists challenging trans extremism of being “dinosaurs”. And Nicola Sturgeon’s political career was hastened to its end by her defence of the presence of a male rapist in a women’s prison. Thankfully, Sir Keir has abandoned these absurdities. His health secretary, Wes Streeting, has also apologised for telling women to “get over” their objections. Not before time. Hopefully, the ruling will bring an end to this bizarre culture war. Now is not the time for triumphalism or gloating but consensus around two truths: that trans people have the right to live their lives in dignity and that women’s rights are sacrosanct also. To that end ministers must now amend the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 which only perpetuates the misconception that a piece of paper can alter the facts of life. Public institutions and universities must now be held to account if they ignore the law. Women should never have had to fight this battle in defence of scientific truth. But at least it is now won. Sanity is restored.

Daily Mail [7]

HISTORIC VICTORY FOR WOMEN... AND COMMON SENSE As judges rule that women ARE defined by biological sex, will Labour finally act to protect their rights? Daily Mail17 Apr 2025By Sam Merriman and Harriet Line Campaigners: Susan Smith and Marion Calder outside the Supreme Court yesterday LABOUR was under intense pressure to protect single-sex spaces last night following a landmark ruling that transgender women are not legally women. Women’s rights groups and MPs celebrated the ‘victory for common sense’ and called on the Government to ensure that activist managers and civil servants abided by the ruling. It is hoped the Supreme Court judgment will lead to a pulping of protrans guidance in the likes of the NHS, police and women’s prisons. The ruling has sweeping implications for public bodies and businesses as the Equality and Human Rights Commission last night said it will ‘work at pace’ to amend workplace guidance. Governing sports bodies, including the Football Association and England and Wales Cricket Board, have also been warned the judgment opens the door to potential lawsuits from female athletes who have found themselves playing against competitors born male. The NHS was one of the first organisations to acknowledge the judgment last night, saying it would reconsider its same-sex ward policies, which currently allow self-identifying trans women to stay on single-sex female wards. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch welcomed the ‘victory for women’ but warned that Labour has ‘bent the knee’ to gender ideology. ‘Saying “trans women are women” was never true in fact, and now isn’t true in law either,’ she said, adding: ‘The era of Keir Starmer telling us women can have penises has come to an end.’ Former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies led calls from athletes demanding that women’s sports are for women only, saying: ‘Give back our women’s sport, free from any and all males.’ Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who donated to the seven-year court fight by gender-critical campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS), added: ‘Spare a thought today for the UK employers, government departments, health boards, academic institutions and sporting bodies who’ve been breaking equality law to appease activist groups. So many HR manuals to pulp. So many out-of-court settlements to pay.’ In an 88-page ruling yesterday, the justices said: ‘The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological woman and biological sex.’ The judgment added that the definition of woman ‘makes clear that the concept of sex is binary – a person is either a woman or a man’ and that any other interpretation would be ‘incoherent and impracticable’. The decision is the culmination of FWS’s battle against the Scottish government over whether trans women can be regarded as female for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. The case tested whether somebody with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), recognising their gender as female, should be legally treated as a woman. With its ruling, the UK’s highest court decided that the process of awarding a GRC does not turn a man into a woman for ‘all purposes’, meaning they do not also get specific protections for biological women contained in the Equality Act. Maya Forstater, chief executive of charity Sex Matters, which provided evidence in the case, said the ruling gave a powerful legal signal that policymakers and organisations need to recognise that sex was real and immutable. ‘Every employer, government body, service provider, police force, NHS trust, school and university that has adopted policies based on gender self-ID should spend the Easter holidays throwing them away,’ she said. ‘Single-sex services, from toilets and changing rooms to women’s refuges and groups such as the Girl Guides, can and should be provided based on the everyday understanding of male and female. ‘The Government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission should step up and issue straightforward back-of-a-postcard guidance so that all organisations follow the law and provide genuinely single-sex spaces and services.’ Outside the court, Susan Smith of FWS welcomed the result as a ‘really concrete basis for going forward’ but warned that ‘there is going to be an ongoing fight’. ‘What our politicians need to get their heads around is this is the law,’ she said. ‘They need to stop putting faulty guidance into schools and hospitals.’ Her comments were echoed by Ceri Williams, from Labour Women’s Declaration, who called on her party to stand by its manifesto commitment to protect single-sex exceptions for biological women. However, Labour’s uphill battle was immediately clear last night as domestic abuse charity Refuge was the first to state that the ruling ‘will not change the way Refuge operates’. Chief executive Gemma Sherrington said: ‘We remain firmly committed to supporting all survivors of domestic abuse, including trans women.’ A government spokesman said: ‘We have always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex. This ruling brings clarity and confidence.’ ‘So many HR manuals to pulp’ IT IS a testament to the insanity of the modern age that Britain has been fractiously debating the answer to an absurdly simple question: ‘What is a woman?’ Many will struggle to comprehend how this once-sensible country could fall so far as to require the highest court in the land to settle such an obvious matter of fact. But so powerful and pernicious has been the influence of trans activists on public policy, ruthlessly steamrolling women’s legal rights as a result, that our most senior judges have had to adjudicate. Yesterday, the Supreme Court gave its response. In a long-overdue victory for common sense, it ruled unanimously that sex as defined in the Equality Act is biological, immutable and cannot be altered. Put simply, trans women are, by definition, male (and vice versa). They cannot be deemed a member of the opposite sex – even if holding a gender recognition certificate. Trans people should of course be treated with respect. But as the judges noted, they’re protected from discrimination by the Equality Act and upholding women’s rights doesn’t strip them of a single one. The truth is, this judgment strikes a huge blow for women and for scientific fact over legal fiction. With luck, it will signal the end of an era of collective madness in which the trans lobby has sought to warp reality. This insidious cult has demanded we all obediently repeat their shibboleth – that ‘trans women are women’. It has attempted to convince us that rapists, such as Isla Bryson, belonged in female prisons. When women’s rights campaigners stood up for the truth, they were vilified – accused of encouraging hate crimes, forced out of their jobs and publicly cancelled. Yet these heroines – championed by JK Rowling – never gave up. They faced down this fringe ideology that erodes the basic tenets of equality law and undermines the well-established safeguarding principles. Yesterday, they got their reward. While this case involved a small feminist group taking the Scottish government to court, the ramifications of the judgment will affect the whole of the UK. It makes clear that trans women can be excluded from female-only environments such as changing rooms, toilets, medical settings, refuges and sports. This will protect women and girls’ dignity, privacy and safety. Sir Keir Starmer’s spin doctors insist the ruling validates his efforts to steer Labour towards a more ‘common sense’ approach on gender. Once again, the Prime Minister is taking the public for fools. Since becoming leader, he has dodged the simple question of what defines a woman. Indeed, not long ago he claimed 99.9 per cent of women don’t have penises – suggesting tens of thousands in Britain do. Of course, the road to Damascus is paved with strange changes of heart. So if Sir Keir genuinely has seen the light, he will clarify Government guidance to make sure that public bodies understand that sex means biological sex – no ifs, not buts. Then he must drain every last drop of gender poison – from our schools, our hospitals, our police, from every corner of public life. Will he be inclined to do so? While savouring yesterday’s victory, women’s groups should not rest upon their laurels. For trans zealots, with their indoctrinated supporters in the political mainstream, the battle is far from over. This shrill minority will not rest until the very basis of women’s rights is obliterated. The country owes the Supreme Court a debt of gratitude for its sensible judgment. But on this issue, lines of sanity need to be not drawn in the sand, but carved in stone. Article Name:HISTORIC VICTORY FOR WOMEN... AND COMMON SENSE Publication:Daily Mail Author:By Sam Merriman and Harriet Line Start Page:1 End Page:1

Far too many liberals jumped on the trans bandwagon and betrayed women Daily Mail17 Apr 2025By Julie Bindel HEADING to the Supreme Court in Parliament Square this morning, I couldn’t help but think back 21 years to January 2004, when my first column on the trans issue was published in a Left-wing newspaper. My editor, who has since favoured misogynistic trans activists over female writers, fully supported publishing the piece – in which I railed against the idea males can decide to be women because of some internal ‘feeling’. At the time, the trans rights movement was gathering pace – and this was long before the frenzy that came with social media and online forums. The years since I wrote that column have been life-changing and career-shaping, and I cannot pretend they have not had a profound effect on me as a person. For daring to state biological truth – that a man can never turn into a woman – I have been shunned from liberal society, mysteriously ‘disappeared’ from shortlists for journalism prizes and had invitations to events such as the Sydney Literary Festival rescinded after furious public backlash. I have been offered weekly columns – only to be told the decision had been put on hold. I have turned up to events at which I was billed to speak (pro bono) as a leading feminist activist about issues such as child sexual abuse, domestic violence, rape and all aspects of male violence against women – only to find a 200-strong, angry demonstration against me. I have been shouted at when sitting on panels. I have had crowds throw objects at me. The death and rape threats have come thick and fast. In 2019, I was attacked by a 6ft-tall, bearded man in a dress outside Edinburgh University, where I had been speaking, with other feminists, about the importance of single-sex spaces. I recount this not to elicit sympathy, but to outline the experience of a feminist like me who speaks out against the abuse of women. THAT toxic reality, I hope, is coming to an end. Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that, in the Equality Act 2010, ‘sex’ means biological sex – not legal sex as modified by a Gender Recognition Certificate. And ‘sexual orientation’ means attraction to the same sex, opposite sex, or both. Most importantly to me, a ‘lesbian’ is now officially defined as a biological female who is attracted to other biological females. Until now, the law absurdly counted trans women (who are biological males) as females. As Kate Barker of feminist group LGB Alliance said yesterday: ‘Men aren’t lesbians. Even if they really want to be. Even if it makes them sad when we say no. Even if they have cosmetic surgery and take hormones. Even if they have paid £5 for a certificate. Men aren’t lesbians. Not now. Not ever.’ The Supreme Court’s ruling has been a long time coming. Now increasing numbers of reasonable people are recognising what feminists like me have been saying for years. The problem with this terrible war (I can’t call it a debate, because the other, intolerant side refused to engage) is that many ‘liberals’ have found themselves championing the wrong side. These are not just militant activists. Sensible, intelligent people – most often on the Left, but not always – jumped on board the ‘trans train’, and betrayed women by failing to apply any critical thinking and refusing to acknowledge biological reality. These voices claimed our denial of self-identification was like ‘another Section 28’ – the cruel Thatcher-era law that stopped local authorities from ‘promoting’ or endorsing homosexuality. And they remained stubbornly ignorant of what trans activists were actually demanding. Trans women already had their own rights but they wanted to take rights from us biological women, demanding to invade the physical spaces we had carved out for ourselves precisely because a significant minority of men pose a danger to women and girls. I’m talking about rape crisis centres, domestic-violence shelters and single-sex hospital wards and prison wings. Women’s lives literally depend on those spaces, and always have. Two years ago, I co-founded The Lesbian Project with Kathleen Stock, the former philosophy professor at Sussex University who was hounded out of her job for holding perfectly reasonable (and factually correct) views on sex and gender. AT the time, we set up safe spaces dedicated to women who had suffered violence at the hands of abusive male partners. Tellingly, barely a peep was heard from men’s rights activists. They knew they had no credible argument against such facilities. Those men didn’t make a fuss because they knew they had the rest of the world as their playground. Trans activists, however, have posed as progressives, demanding that we lose all those spaces. Most galling to me now is that the liberal ‘intellects’ who amplified their sinister cause will still sit at dinner parties, their reputations intact. Most of them will never see for themselves the unspeakable harm that the trans moment – and its mania for gender re-assignment, genital mutilation and harmful hormone treatment – has done to women and young girls over the past decade. But I have, time and time again. So where do we go from here? Which institutions can we save, and which should be metaphorically burned to the ground? First on my list would be universities – which have promoted the trans cause and silenced those who challenge it, with reckless abandon. In this vein, police and prosecutors must also stop recording the preferred ‘gender identity’ of those arrested and charged – for every crime, not just crimes against females. Just take the shaven-headed thug Adam Graham who carried out two violent rapes between 2016 and 2019 and was allowed to appear in Glasgow High Court as a lipstick-smeared ‘woman’ who went by the name of Isla Bryson. This biological male was subsequently dispatched to an all-female Scottish prison – before public backlash saw him moved to an all-male jail. We must, too, ensure that newspapers report the sex of perpetrators of crime accurately. Many male criminals have been ludicrously described as ‘women’ after committing acts of violence and abuse – including downloading child abuse images. It is confusing and wrong. Employers must undergo proper training on the Equality Act and yesterday’s clarification of it, including on the law as it relates to biological sex and gender identity. Venues hosting feminists for events must stop caving into trans activists complaining about women daring to assemble without including males claiming to be women. They need to hold firm and defend free speech, not capitulate to bullies. There must be recognition and apologies for all who have lost jobs, been forced to endure expensive court cases, been gaslit or cancelled from events, and told we are bigots. The suffering has been horrendous – yet, in the spirit of feminist pride, we have soldiered on. It has taken its toll, but we have always known we are on the right side of history. JULIE Bindel is the UK’s leading feminist campaigner and has written Lesbians: Where Are We Now? n Article Name:Far too many liberals jumped on the trans bandwagon and betrayed women Publication:Daily Mail Author:By Julie Bindel Start Page:7 End Page:7

An era of collective madness is over. This is not a ‘defeat’ for trans women, it’s an accurate reflection of who we really are Daily Mail17 Apr 2025by Debbie Hayton THANK the Lord for some common sense. In this case, thank Lord Hodge, who yesterday delivered the UK Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that trans women are not biologically female. Extraordinary as it is that such an obvious statement requires an 88-page judgment, compiled over many months by the highest court of appeal in the country, this decision is crucial. It was a momentous day for women and for the law. An era of collective madness is over – though we must not be complacent, because the angry brigade are likely to continue their attempts to impose their demands through bullying. They will keep bellowing ‘trans women are women’ through their megaphones and hurling vile threats at anyone who dares oppose them. The war isn’t over, but the turning point has been reached. In most circumstances, at least, no longer will any man, whether he’s sporting a wig and make-up or a full beard, be able to wave a piece of paper headed ‘gender recognition certificate’ and insist the rest of us acknowledge his legal right to be recognised as female. Biology This represents a victory for women and girls everywhere, and a major step towards enhancing their safety. I’m especially grateful to the court for emphasising that the ruling does not represent a ‘defeat’ for trans women. On the contrary, it’s an accurate and reassuring reflection of who people like me really, biologically are. We all instinctively know the difference between men and women, despite the powerful lobby that has tried its damndest to deny it. I’m fortunate in being a science teacher with a thorough grasp of biology, so I’m well able to articulate the truth behind the common sense. Adults who, like me, need to change their appearance and even their physical shape, in order to feel comfortable in their own skin, should be able to do so safely. Everyone ought to respect that need. But it doesn’t alter the basic reality that, as the Supreme Court has ruled, ‘the concept of sex is binary’. The biology of sex is much more than just reproduction. It affects the development of our bodies, most obviously during puberty but quite profoundly from the moment of conception. Throughout the nine months before birth, human bodies develop according to their sex, and that continues to be true during each minute of childhood. Boys and girls develop along different paths. Social conditioning plays a part, naturally, but that only modifies the effects of biological sex. I have immense admiration for the campaign group For Women Scotland, who have fought fearlessly every step of the way. They’ve battled through the courts in Scotland and then England, through the High Court and the Court of Session, all the way to the Supreme Court. It’s due to their courage and tenacity that sanity has been restored to the law of the UK. Campaigners in other countries that are still living in a legal fantasy world of trans delusion will take great hope from this. Politicians of all parties have failed women during this long battle. Most egregiously, Sir Keir Starmer was spouting nonsense when he claimed some women had penises. He’s a lawyer, and I trust this ruling has helped him to remember the difference between men and women. We shall have to see how the government reacts to the ruling. Predictably, some Labour ministers are taking the line that this verdict just confirms what they’ve been saying all along – which is, of course, not true. I whole-heartedly challenge the line taken by MP Nadia Whittome who said yesterday: ‘I share the deep disappointment in today’s Supreme Court ruling, and the concerns about what this will mean for trans women going forward. ‘Today and every day, I stand in unwavering solidarity with the trans community. We must never stop fighting for trans rights.’ Labour should have offered support to biological women from the moment they came to power, since the law as it stood was incoherent. Confusion The blame for that falls on previous administrations, who allowed confusion and inconsistency to multiply because they were too intimidated by the trans lobbyists. Theresa May, when she was prime minister, pledged to usher in the crazy world of gender recognition certificates by self identification alone. We’ve seen male domestic abusers strong-arm their way into women’s spaces, male athletes using their masculine physiques to gain a biological advantage in women’s sports, and male voyeurs sidling into women’s changing rooms. All these outrageous and dangerous distortions of common sense were made possible by a Conservative administration that was too weak to act. But the scandal goes back further still, to the Blair era, when the Gender Recognition Act was introduced without sufficient regard for common sense. Politicians have had numerous opportunities to turn the tide, but lacked the willpower and the gumption shown by For Women Scotland. So I’m grateful to the Supreme Court for their decision. The judges could have copied the politicians and hidden behind a wall of excuses. They might, for instance, have claimed that, as the Equality Act doesn’t define what a woman is, the responsibility to clear up this mess lay with parliament. In that case, the controversy would have probably dragged on for years. Instead, the court took firm action. That’s a sharp admonition to the government, though I don’t expect Downing Street will admit it. Most of all, I welcome the ruling as a teacher, whose mission for nearly 30 years has been to guide and educate children. When I decided to transition, I was a full adult. I knew my own mind, whatever happened. That cannot be said of any teenager or pre-pubertal child. They are not old enough to make responsible decisions that will have drastic and lifelong consequences, such as altering their bodies with hormones and surgery. I only began ‘socially transitioning’ in 2012 – at the age of 44. I started to change my appearance and my wardrobe. I experimented with make-up and attempted to be seen as a woman. Other people responded by referring to me using female pronouns. A year later, I began hormone treatment provided by the NHS. Difficult though this was for my wife Stephanie and our three children, we all stayed together. And despite all the inevitable problems I faced at the school where I worked as a science teacher, the transition brought me huge relief. Turmoil I’d been secretly trying on women’s clothes since I was a small child, and began buying my own at 14. Decades of concealing my inner turmoil was coming to an end. In 2016, I took the ultimate step of undergoing gender realignment surgery on my genitals. My body is now female to all appearances, but I’m a trans woman, a man who has gone to great lengths to look female, and who ‘lives as a woman’. There’s a very significant difference – and one that the law now acknowledges. There are two sexes, male and female, and sex cannot be changed. Trans women certainly exist – I’m one of them. But trans women, however loudly the slogans blare, are not women. n Debbie Hayton is a transgender teacher and journalist. Article Name:An era of collective madness is over. This is not a ‘defeat’ for trans women, it’s an accurate reflection of who we really are Publication:Daily Mail Author:by Debbie Hayton Start Page:14 End Page:14

Telegraph [11]

Trans women are not women Supreme Court’s ruling will see huge changes to public and private sector gender guidance The Daily Telegraph17 Apr 2025By Daniel Martin, Janet Eastham and Hayley Dixon Susan Smith (left) and Marion Calder, co-directors of For Women Scotland, celebrate outside the Supreme Court after the verdict PUBLIC bodies are under pressure to tear up pro-trans guidance after a ruling that only biological women are women. The decision by the Supreme Court that laws against sex-based discrimination should only apply to biological women will lead to a raft of changes. They are expected to include who can access single-sex NHS wards, which police officers can carry out strip searches, and who can join female teams in elite sport. Previously, trans women were given the same rights as biological women, allowing them access to female-only spaces and groups. Although the judges said that trans women could not be discriminated against, the ruling means they will no longer be treated the same as people born female.last night, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the government watchdog, promised to rewrite its guidance to public bodies by the summer. The NHS, National Police Chief ’s Council and other bodies are also expected to update guidance soon. The Supreme Court’s judgment was welcomed by JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author and prominent women’s rights campaigner, who said it would “protect the rights of women and girls across the UK”. She added: “Spare a thought today for the UK employers, government departments, health boards, academic institutions and sporting bodies who’ve been breaking equality law to appease activist groups. So many HR manuals to pulp. So many outof-court settlements to pay.” Judges unanimously ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act referred to biological sex, not the gender with which a person identifies. The justices said that for the purpose of equality laws, transgender women were not legally women even if they have obtained a gender recognition certificate. They found that blurring the boundary of sex would also create “confusion and impracticability” around the provision of “single sex characteristic associations and charities, women’s fair participation in sport, the operation of the public sector equality duty, and the Armed Forces”. Judges also ruled that sex was binary, meaning that the central tenet of gender ideology – that there is a spectrum of gender identities – has no basis in law. The ruling means that people who were born male can lawfully be excluded from women’s sports, changing rooms, lavatories, women-only support groups and women-only shortlists. It will require a rewriting of rules across the public and private sectors. Handing down the court’s judgment on whether sex-based protections should only apply to people who were born female, Lord Hodge, the court’s deputy president, said: “The unanimous decision of this court is that the definition of the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex”. The justices made clear that their decision made no difference to protections against discrimination for transgender people, and insisted it should not be interpreted as “a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another”. Lord Hodge said: “Interpreting sex as certificated sex would cut across the definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in the [Equality Act 2010] – and thus the protected characteristic of sex – in an incoherent way.” It followed a years-long legal battle between For Women Scotland, a campaign group, and the Scottish Government over the definition of a woman. Rowling said yesterday: “It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they’ve protected the rights of women and girls across the UK.” Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, said the ruling meant that the “era of Keir Starmer telling us women can have penises has come to an end”. A government spokesman said: “We have always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex. This ruling brings clarity and confidence, for women and service providers such as hospitals, refuges, and sports clubs. Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this Government.” Labour Women’s Declaration, a gender-critical group, called on Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, to take concrete action to ensure the judgment is fully reflected in all public sector guidance. It said: “The Government now needs to instruct all government departments to bring their policies, training and guidance into line with the judgment. “The ‘clarity and confidence’ the ruling brings must also be applied to all positive action initiatives and associations for women within the Labour Party, such as women’s branches and committees.” In February, Wes Streeting told the Darlington nurses – eight nurses suing their trust after being forced to share a changing room with a transgender colleague – that he would wait until the Supreme Court ruling before issuing new guidance on single-sex spaces. In a letter to them, seen by The Telegraph, he said: “Given the sensitivity of the issue, it is important to me that any changes made are credible and enduring… When I have the benefit of the Supreme Court’s decision on this matter, I will consider what steps to take.” A Whitehall source said the Government’s legal department would now ‘We will work at pace to incorporate implications of this into the updated [human rights] code’ consider the ruling in full before publishing new guidance. It is understood that the NPCC will consider the ruling before bringing out new guidance for the police. It follows criticism that some forces are allowing trans women – that is biological men – to strip search vulnerable females. Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, said: “The Supreme Court rules that a woman is legally defined as a woman and that the concept of sex is binary… Yes, the science was settled in the Precambrian. Nice that the law has finally caught up.” Baroness Falkner of Margravine, the chairman of the EHRC, said: “We will take the outcome of this appeal into account in our ongoing work as the regulator of the Equality Act. That includes the development of our revised Code of Practice which, subject to ministerial approval, is expected to be laid before Parliament before the summer recess. “We will be working at pace to incorporate the implications of this judgment into the updated code, which supports service providers, public bodies and associations to understand their duties under the Equality Act and put them into practice. “Where this judgment impacts upon our other advice for duty-bearers, we will review it as a matter of urgency and alert users to where guidance has been withdrawn or needs to be updated.”

From lavatories to sports, this ruling is seismic for women Ministers poised to change the law after landmark judgment puts to bed years of fevered debate The Daily Telegraph17 Apr 2025By Haley Dixon For Women Scotland campaigners in London yesterday, above; Marion Calder, right, celebrates with champagne outside the Supreme Court; inset below, the writer JK Rowling THE Supreme Court ruling that only biological women are women will have wide-ranging implications on everything from female bathrooms to elite sport. The decision, in which some of the country’s most senior judges were forced to point out that “as a matter of biology, only biological women can become pregnant”, has been hailed as a victory for common sense. Campaigners have said it provides “clarity over what a woman means” under equality laws, and protects women’s rights. It is likely to prompt a slew of policy changes. The Telegraph has seen evidence that ministers were waiting for this ruling before issuing guidance on single-sex spaces. The judges said that allowing biological men to be legally considered women because they had obtained a certificate saying that they were female led to “incoherence and absurdity”. They concluded that in equality law “woman” “always and only means a biological female” and “to reach any other conclusion would turn the foundational definition of sex on its head”. The case centred on whether trans people who had legally changed their gender by obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) were classed as the opposite biological sex under the 2010 Equality Act. Confusion over the definition of sex in the Act has created issues and resulted in people being unwilling to exclude biological men from women-only spaces and services for fear of being accused of discrimination. But the Supreme Court’s 88-page unanimous judgement noted that “it makes no sense” for sex-based rights and protections to be regulated on the basis of whether someone has a GRC, which is confidential and does not “require any physiological change or even any change in outward appearance”. The judges pointed out that the ruling does not diminish protections for trans people, because gender reassignment is also a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. So, what does this ruling mean in practice? Toilets and changing rooms The Equality Act allows service providers to provide such single-sex spaces when it is a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim” including women’s safety, privacy and dignity. But trans rights campaigners have argued that those who change gender by obtaining a GRC could not be legally excluded from the facilities that matched their new gender. However, asking for a person’s certificate before they use a lavatory is both impractical and in itself could be a form of discrimination. Yesterday’s ruling clarified that sex means biological sex and that “provided it is proportionate, the female-only nature of the service... would permit the exclusion of all males, including males living in the female gender”. Judges described it as “fanciful (even perverse)” to think a certificate would make a difference to objections of men being in women’s spaces and “the provisions relating to single-sex services can only be interpreted by reference to biological sex”. Sport The inclusion of biological men in women-only categories has led to accusations of unfairness against female participants, who are at a physical disadvantage. Last week, there was backlash at the Ultimate Pool Women’s Pro Series Event 2 final in which two transgender players who were born male competed for the title. The Supreme Court said that sport is a “gender-affected activity” which “depends on a determination of whether the physical strength, stamina or physique of average persons of one sex would put them at a disadvantage as competitors in a particular sport when compared to average persons of the other sex”. Giving an example of boxing, in which it is “obvious” that women are at a disadvantage against men, they said by defining sex as biological sex it means “that a women’s boxing competition organiser could refuse to admit all men, including trans women, regardless of their GRC status”. The ruling therefore paves the way for trans women to be excluded from women’s sports provided there is a reason for doing so, such as men having a physical advantage. NHS While hospitals are required to provide female-only hospital wards, NHS England’s own guidance states that trans people should be accommodated according to their gender identity. Officials were already updating the guidance and have confirmed the ruling will be considered as they move forward. It could also pave the way for wider changes in the health service. Women-only shortlists and quotas The issue of using positive action to increase the representation of women in public life was at the centre of the Supreme Court case, which was a challenge JK Rowling on X (formerly Twitter) Winners today:  Women and girls, including trans-identified women (continue to benefit from maternity rights etc)  Gay people  Freedom of speech  Freedom of association  Those at risk of discrimination for a belief in the material reality of sex to statutory guidance passed by the Scottish Government in 2018. This guidance meant that trans women who had obtained a GRC counted as female in quotas for the representation of women on the boards of public authorities. The ruling said that the “purpose of addressing the particular needs, disadvantages or participation levels of women” is “undermined” if that group includes trans women, and they do not count toward women-only quotas. Single-sex support groups Single-sex support services, such as women-only rape counselling or refuges, have been one of the most sensitive areas of debate. A number of groups have said that they are “inclusive” of trans women and one – Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre – was found to have failed its service users by failing to provide female-only spaces. The Supreme Court judges highlighted the inconsistency in allowing an “inclusive” service, saying that “if, as a matter of law, a service-provider is required to provide services previously limited to women also to trans women with a GRC – even if they present as biological men – it is difficult to see how they can then justify refusing to provide those services also to biological men and who also look like biological men.” Lesbian social clubs The court heard evidence that the threat of having to include biological men in their social clubs “is having a chilling effect on lesbians who are no longer using lesbian-only spaces because of the presence of trans women (i.e. biological men who live in the female gender)”. In what has been hailed as a victory for LGB rights, the judges said that lesbians and gay men are by definition attracted to people of the same biological sex and that “people are not sexually oriented towards those in possession of a certificate”. Free speech The argument over the crossover between trans rights and women’s rights has long been marked by accusations of bigotry and a claim that there should be “no debate” over whether trans women are women. However, the considered judgment, which took into account years of legal hearings, highlighted that it was “incoherent” to class biological men as women. Article Name:From lavatories to sports, this ruling is seismic for women Publication:The Daily Telegraph Author:By Haley Dixon Start Page:4 End Page:4

A political cartoon by Blower published in The Telegraph on 17 April 2025 satirises the UK Supreme Court ruling in the For Women Scotland case. The central image is a large mock book cover titled “SUPREME COURT AND THE OUTBREAK OF COMMON SENSE,” stylised to resemble a fantasy novel, a likely allusion to the Harry Potter series. The book cover depicts a cheering crowd outside the Supreme Court holding placards with slogans such as “SEX IS BINARY,” “TRANSWOMEN ARE NOT WOMEN,” “ONLY WOMEN GET PREGNANT,” and “NO HUMAN BEING CAN CHANGE SEX.” The building and sky are drawn in dark blue, giving a dramatic and authoritative feel to the image. To the right of the mock book cover, two women are shown speaking. One of them says, “That could be J.K. Rowling’s next book...” referencing Rowling’s public views on gender identity and aligning her with the cartoon’s perspective.

At last, some legal common sense on gender The Government must now move to put the Supreme Court’s ruling into practical effect The Daily Telegraph17 Apr 2025KEMI BADENOCH Women are women. We didn’t need a court to tell us that. But here we are. It took a Supreme Court decision to confirm what we all know: that a piece of paper cannot make a man a woman. For too long the price has been paid by individual women taking action to uphold the law, at great personal cost. Just last month, we saw the extraordinary case of a nurse suspended from work for addressing a transgender paedophile as “Mister”. Separately, in East Fife, Sandie Peggie was suspended after she complained about a male doctor who identifies as a woman sharing the same communal changing room. A few weeks ago, I met the Darlington nurses forced to bring legal action after a male nurse started using their changing room. These nurses’ careers are threatened, but the man has the support of hospital managers who misunderstand the law. Nonetheless, it is a powerful victory for the determined women behind For Women Scotland (FWS) – and women all over the UK – that the Supreme Court has allowed their appeal. The protection of women’s spaces, services and associations will no longer be undermined by the ability of men to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate and change the sex on their birth certificate to female. My worry now is that we have a Labour Government that has bent the knee to this ideology. Keir Starmer believes that one in 1,000 women have penises. No one in the Cabinet can define what a woman is. I spent years battling abuse from Labour MPS as I fought to uphold biological sex in government and blocked the SNP from introducing their mad self-identity laws. Yet this Labour Government is not interested in bringing sanity and common sense. Instead, right now they are drafting yet more equality laws that will bring even more confusion. We shouldn’t need an Equality Act, workplace regulations and endless court cases to recognise that women need single-sex changing rooms and toilets. As the charity Sex Matters points out, the two most common sexual offences are indecent exposure and voyeurism. A subset of men will go to extreme lengths to prey on women who need protection. Sadly, a raft of foolish guidelines designed to signal organisational inclusivity have been embedded across the private and public sectors. That is why, although I welcome today’s judgment, I know too many organisations will still fail women. As Minister for Women and Equalities, I started a call for evidence to find such examples of bad guidance that is misinterpreting the law. The results were depressing. The Government needs to continue my work and ensure the dignity, privacy and safety of women and girls is protected. Litigation is stressful, costly and time-consuming. Now the Government must stop relying on brave women to do its job. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, says he is on the side of the Darlington nurses, but is prevaricating in the hope that this judgment will clear up any ambiguity. But it is already clear that single-sex changing rooms for women in workplaces are not just permitted, but required by law. Outrageously, in the Darlington and East Fife cases, the union that is supposed to represent nurses, the Royal College of Nurses, refused to represent the female nurses or provide legal assistance, instead saying it was “unwavering in our commitment to end transphobia in nursing”. It’s hard to believe that, with all the challenges facing the nursing profession in this country, the promotion of contested and damaging ideology can be a priority. But, sadly, this is a pattern we have seen across the public sector. Professor Alice Sullivan’s recent report into data and research in sex and gender spells out why, in healthcare in particular, using confusing terminology threatens not just the privacy and safety of women staff and patients, but can put lives at risk. Now that we have legal clarity on the foundational question of the definition of sex, Keir Starmer should show some courage and do the right thing. Across the public sector, managers must start to recognise that gender ideology is not an act of kindness to a perceived maligned minority. It is a very serious matter that can create risks and cause great discomfort to women and men, and children of both sexes. The Conservative Party under my leadership is the party of common sense. We will be holding the Government’s feet to the fire so that they do what is necessary, not what is trendy. Article Name:At last, some legal common sense on gender Publication:The Daily Telegraph Author:KEMI BADENOCH Start Page:14 End Page:14

Friday Total: 18

The Guardian [3]

NHS told it must act after ruling on gender The Guardian18 Apr 2025Andrew Gregory Severin Carrell Rajeev Syal NHS chiefs are working to overhaul guidelines for single-sex spaces in thousands of hospitals and GP surgeries after the equality watchdog warned they would be pursued if they failed to do so. The British Transport Police (BTP) became the first to change policies yesterday amid the fallout from the supreme court ruling on the legal definition of a woman, piling pressure on the health service and other organisations to revamp their guidance. Current NHS guidance in England says transgender people should be accommodated based on how they dress, their names and their pronouns. Under Wednesday’s ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex under the Equality Act 2010, this would be scrapped. Senior NHS legal officials and estates and facilities managers are now racing to draw up proposals for how hospitals, community care centres and GP practices should reflect the ruling, sources have told the Guardian. The judgment poses a challenge for the NHS, which has an estate spanning 25m sq metres in England alone, where infrastructure repair bills top £14bn. The issue is further complicated by the fact that health policy and spending are devolved in Wales and Scotland. Kishwer Falkner, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday: “They [the NHS] have to change it. They now have clarity. There is no confusion as of yesterday, at 10.30 in the morning, and they can start to implement the new legal reasoning and produce their exceptions forthwith, but they have to change it. We will be having conversations with them to update that guidance.” Asked if the EHRC would pursue the case if it did not, Lady Falkner replied: “Yes, we will.” An NHS England spokesperson said: “The NHS is currently reviewing guidance on same sex accommodation and as part of this process, will consider and take into account all relevant legislation and today’s ruling.” Meanwhile, the BTP, which patrols the railways in Great Britain, announced that male officers would conduct any intimate searches of trans women “in accordance with the biological birth sex of the detainee”, while trans men would be searched by female officers. Under the force’s previous policy, officers had been told that anyone in custody with a gender recognition certificate would be searched by an officer matching a detainee’s acquired gender. The update comes during a legal battle between gender-critical campaigners and the force over its guidance that allowed officers who are trans women to strip-search women, so long as the officer held a gender recognition certificate. The rapid change of approach came after Falkner said the ECHR would be issuing updated and legally binding codes of practice on singlesex spaces and services in the wake of the “enormously consequential” court ruling. “We are going to have a new statutory code of practice [meaning] it will be interpreted by courts as the law of the land. We’re hoping we’re going to have that by the summer,” she told Today. The judgment meant only biological women could use single-sex changing rooms and women’s toilets, or participate in women-only sporting events and teams, or be placed in women’s wards in hospitals. Even so, the commission would “not tolerate” discrimination or harassment of trans people, which remained unlawful under the Equality Act, and would support trans women taking out equal pay claims under sex discrimination laws. Falkner said the supreme court ruling was “a victory for common sense” but “only if you recognise that trans people exist, they have rights and their rights must be respected”. The UK government has avoided making any substantial comment on the ruling, but a strong indication of Labour’s approach came from Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, who swung the party behind the supreme court and ECHR’s stance. Previously a supporter of selfidentification for trans people, Sarwar said there was now a need for an “urgent” update of Scotland’s policies on single-sex spaces. Scottish ministers are expected to update Holyrood next week on their response to the ruling. Most of the reaction from Westminster politicians continued to be from the Conservatives. Speaking during a local elections campaign visit to Cambridgeshire, Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, said the court ruling was a vindication of the party’s stance. She said she would support changes to the Equality Act and Gender Recognition Act to cement the court’s view. “These laws were written 20 years ago plus, when the world was different,” she said. There was little sign of how ministers will help institutions navigate the new framework. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, speaking on a visit to Scunthorpe, dodged questions on the issue, saying only that more advice would come in “due course”. Among the issues that will need to be addressed is provision of toilet facilities for trans people, given the EHRC said the ruling means they will not be able to use single-sex toilets. ‘They [the NHS] have to change it. We will be having conversations with them to update that guidance’ Kishwer Falkner EHRC chair Article Name:NHS told it must act after ruling on gender Publication:The Guardian Author:Andrew Gregory Severin Carrell Rajeev Syal Start Page:1 End Page:1

‘It does bring clarity’ What decision means for public organisations The Guardian18 Apr 2025Amelia Gentleman Wednesday’s supreme court judgment on the legal definition of a woman will have significant implications across policy areas from sport, to prisons and the NHS. It will also impact how smaller organisations manage single-sex spaces and services. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has said it will publish a new statutory code of practice by the summer so that it can offer advice to public bodies and organisations about how they may need to revise their policies. The supreme court was asked to decide on the proper interpretation of the 2010 Equality Act, which applies across Britain. The unanimous judgment that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law should add clarity to a number of ongoing disputes over single-sex spaces. Sport Kishwer Falkner, a member of the House of Lords and the chair of the EHRC, said the impact of the ruling on sport was “enormously consequential” and confirmed that it was the “correct interpretation” to conclude that those born as men could not take part in women’s sport. She said sports organisations should read the judgment. “It does bring clarity, and helps them decide what they should do,” she said. Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, welcomed the ruling, adding that it removed legal uncertainty. “It protects women in places that really matter in sport, whether it’s safe spaces, changing rooms or conduct in and around the field of play,” Lord Coe said. In the ruling, Lord Hodge, the deputy president of the court, made it clear that some of Equality Act’s provisions would only function properly if sex is interpreted as biological sex, and he named “women’s fair participation” in sport as one relevant area. The use of people’s “certificated sex”, acquired by a gender recognition certificate (GRC), rather than their biological sex in sport had led to an “absence of coherence”, he said. The ruling looked at how women would be disadvantaged because of their sex in a sport that is “gender affected”, such as boxing, if they found themselves competing against biological males. “Women’s average physical strength, stamina and/or physique will disadvantage them as competitors against average men in a boxing match,” the judgment noted. Many UK sport governing bodies have adopted clear policies banning athletes who were born male from participating in female events. But some sports, including football, allow trans women to compete against and alongside biological women if they meet reduced testosterone level requirements. Refuges and rape crisis centres Elizabeth McGlone, an employment discrimination solicitor at didlaw, said refuges would have to review their policies if they wanted to state that they were offering single-sex services and spaces to clients. “There has been a dilution of single-sex services by virtue of organisations having trans inclusion policies. This ruling will give organisations the confidence to say that we are offering this service only to biological women,” McGlone said. The charity Refuge said it would not be changing its policies. “We remain firmly committed to supporting all survivors of domestic abuse, including trans women,” Gemma Sherrington, Refuge’s CEO, said in a statement. NHS A review of NHS services will be required because previous guidance advised that trans patients should be accommodated according to their gender identity. NHS managers will now need to ensure they are recording patients’ biological sex. Lady Falkner expressed impatience at the NHS’s sluggish response. “We’ve been talking to the health service for an inordinately long time, and they keep telling us they’re going to produce new guidance. We will now be asking them when they expect to produce that new guidance,” she said. “They now have clarity.” The health minister Karin Smyth said trans patients should feel reassured that their rights “remain enshrined in the Equality Act” and that they would “have their dignity and privacy respected” in healthcare settings, but she added: “This law was about women’s rights and rights under the Equality Act for sex and for service providers making sure they are compliant with that.” An NHS spokesperson said: “The NHS is currently reviewing guidance on same-sex accommodation and as part of this process will consider and take into account all relevant legislation and today’s ruling.” Changing rooms Falkner said the ruling made it clear that single-sex services such as changing rooms must be based on biological sex but that there was no legal requirement for organisations to provide single-sex services. “If a male person is allowed to use a women-only service or facility, it isn’t any longer single sex, then it becomes a mixed-sex space. But there’s no law that forces organisations and service providers to provide a single-sex space, and there is no law against them providing a third, additional space, such as unisex toilets, for example, or changing rooms.” Sandie Peggie, a nurse working for NHS Fife, is taking legal action against her employers, saying she was subject to unlawful harassment under the Equality Act when she was expected to share a changing room with a trans woman. A Newcastle employment tribunal is currently examining a claim filed by five nurses at Darlington Memorial hospital who have complained about the use of a single-sex changing room by a trans colleague. It is not clear whether the supreme court ruling will have an impact on either case. Michael Foran, a lecturer in public law at Glasgow University, said that although the supreme court ruling had no direct legal bearing on the case, it might encourage NHS Fife to consider settling the claim. Toilets Falkner said: “I think the law is quite clear that if a service provider says ‘we’re offering a women’s toilet’, trans [women] should not be using that single-sex facility.” Peter Byrne, the head of employment law at Slater and Gordon, said trans employees might now find that they were asked to use disabled toilets in organisations where there were no gender-neutral facilities. He said that while previously an employee might have been asked which toilet they felt comfortable using, “that option is probably going to disappear”. Emma Bartlett, a partner and diversity, equality and inclusion lead at law firm CM Murray, said many organisations had been guided by the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall on being trans inclusive and might now have to revisit their policies. In business settings there is no legislative framework dictating how toilets should be organised, she added. “It’s about common sense and politeness. There’s nothing that now requires an employer to say: ‘only women can use that toilet, and only men can use this toilet, and trans people cannot use either of those toilets,’” she said. But she acknowledged that trans women might worry that they could be challenged. “You might find people who are against trans women using a female designated toilet in public places being emboldened by the decision of the supreme court to speak out, and that will create a very difficult situation for a trans woman.” Lesbian-only organisations Hodge said the judgment recognised the concerns of lesbian women who he said “have historically suffered marginalisation because of their sexual orientation”, and who had highlighted the anomalies that would adversely affect them if the word sex was “interpreted as certificated sex rather than biological sex”. Kate Barker, the chief executive of the LGB Alliance, a charity for same-sex attracted people, which intervened in the case, said the ruling marked a “watershed for women and, in particular, lesbians who have seen their rights and identities steadily stolen from them over the last decade”. She added: “The ruling confirms the words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ refer to same-sex sexual orientation and makes it absolutely clear that lesbians wishing to form associations of any size are lawfully entitled to exclude men – whether or not they possess a GRC.”. Prisons Prison services will have to revise their policies on where trans prisoners are held as a result of the supreme court ruling. In recent decades, prison policy has evolved in recognition that some trans prisoners who present as women can be vulnerable when they are held in male prisons. Some feminist campaigners have argued that the parallel vulnerability of women in prisons has not been prioritised. In some cases, prisons have allowed inmates to self-identify their gender without requiring a GRC, opening up the potential for exploitation of the system. Decisions to house violent sex offenders in the female estate have periodically sparked national debate. In 2018 the convicted paedophile and rapist Karen White, a 52-year-old trans woman, sexually assaulted two inmates at the female prison where she was being held. In 2023 Isla Bryson, a transgender double rapist, was initially sent to a female prison in Scotland before being moved to a male facility less than 72 hours later. Last week it was reported a trans prisoner, Paris Green, who is serving a life sentence for murder, was still being housed in the women’s wing at Polmont jail in Falkirk after admitting assaulting a female officer. A Scottish Prison Service spokesperson said: “We have received the supreme court’s judgment and are considering any potential impact it may have.” Prison policy is different in England and Wales. Sources said that Ministry of Justice officials were still digesting the judgment. A solution may be to house particularly vulnerable trans identifying prisoners separately from the general prison population. Article Name:‘It does bring clarity’ Publication:The Guardian Author:Amelia Gentleman Start Page:6 End Page:6

The Times [4]

‘Third spaces’ could be needed for trans people Proposal after equalities watchdog inundated with calls about definition of a woman ruling Geraldine Scott - Senior Political Correspondent, Sanchez Manning, Aubrey Allegretti The equalities watchdog has been inundated with calls from organisations seeking clarity on how to enforce the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman, The Times understands. Businesses and public bodies may need to provide neutral “third spaces” for trans people, Baroness Falkner of Margravine, chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said after Wednesday’s ruling that trans women were not legally women. Falkner said the judgment had brought clarity and meant that trans women could not take part in women’s sport or be on single-sex hospital wards, and that changing rooms “must be based on biological sex”. However, Karin Smyth, a health minister, was unable to say yesterday which changing rooms could be used by trans people. She was asked on Times Radio which changing room a trans woman should use, if they had in the past used women’s changing rooms. “A female changing room should be used by women,” she said. Pressed again on the question, Smyth said it was “important that a trans woman or a trans man also has dignity in their use of public spaces”. She added: “We need to make sure that in this discussion we are following the law — so that is clear for women and service providers. This varies [depending] upon what the provision of those service providers are — large organisations, small organisations.” Employment lawyers have said that organisations are grappling with the ruling’s implications and that trans employees could be asked to use disabled lavatories. Education unions said that teachers were “concerned” about the implications. An audit by The Times found that a significant number of organisations, including NHS trusts, FTSE 100 companies and women’s charities, appeared to be reaffirming their commitments to transgender rights after the judgment. Others, such as the British Transport Police, confirmed that their policies had changed. It said that strip searches would be done in accordance with detainees’ biological sex. Most organisations have not yet committed to concrete changes but have pledged to review the judgement. Falkner said that the EHRC would enforce the ruling where there were breaches, and suggested that organisations may need to provide a “third space” for trans customers or employees. She told Today on BBC Radio 4: “There isn’t any law saying that you cannot use a neutral third space, and they should be using their powers of advocacy to ask for those third spaces.” The “efficacy” of gender recognition certificates (GRCs), which legally change someone’s gender, would also need to be re-examined, Falkner said, after calls for all policies on equality to face a parliamentary overhaul. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said yesterday that the Gender Recognition Act, the law under which GRCs are granted, should be reviewed. A GRC allows a person to change their sex on their birth certificate but after the Supreme Court’s ruling is relevant only in terms of births, deaths, marriages and pensions. More than 8,000 GRCs have been granted since their introduction 20 years ago. The government has no immediate plans to reform the act, but its reaction to the ruling has caused divisions within Labour. A party source said: “People are saying they are glad they resigned their membership, saying that we are institutionally transphobic.” The court’s decision was hailed as a victory by women’s rights campaigners, but the LGBT charity Stonewall described the judgment as “incredibly worrying for the trans community”.

From high finance to health, trans rules don’t change Sanchez Manning, Daisy Eastlake Phoebe Hennell JK Rowling celebrated the Supreme Court gender ruling with a cigar, tweeting that she loved it “when a plan comes together” Next image › In recent times it has been par for the course for all manner of organisations, public bodies, private companies, restaurants, retailers or NHS trusts, to vaunt their trans-inclusive credentials. But this week they scrambled to reassess those once-prized policies as the Supreme Court ruled a woman is not defined by their acquired gender, but by their biological sex. The question over whether those policies were now lawful became more urgent when the head of the equality watchdog, Baroness Falkner of Margravine, made it clear yesterday that anyone born male did not have a right to use female lavatories and changing rooms. But even with the concern that many trans policies may now be breaking the law in their application, the response from both the public and private sector has been notably varied. An audit by The Times has found that many, including NHS trusts, big companies and women’s charities, appear to be reaffirming their commitment to transgender people rather than changing their policies. Gemma Sherrington, chief executive of the women’s domestic abuse charity Refuge, said on Wednesday: “Today’s ruling by the Supreme Court will not change the way Refuge operates. We remain firmly committed to supporting all survivors of domestic abuse, including trans women.” The chief corporate affairs officer of Lloyds Banking Group, Andrew Walton, said on LinkedIn on Wednesday, that he wanted to show “support” for the company’s trans and non-binary employees on an “unsettling day”. An internal communication from the group chief people officer at University Hospitals Tees, which runs hospitals in Hartlepool and Stockton, told staff: “I want to reach out to let you know that all members of the LGBTQ community have our support, and today in particular our trans colleagues are in our thoughts. We will urgently be working with our estates colleagues to work on solutions for unisex facilities across all our sites.” Some organisations such as the British Transport Police took immediate action in response to the judgment. It had been criticised by women’s rights groups when it issued guidance allowing transgender officers, specifically men who identify as women, to strip search women providing they have a gender recognition certificate. Yesterday, however, it said any samesex searches must be undertaken with the biological sex of the detainee. Last night Cathy Larkman, a retired police superintendent and the national policing lead for the Women’s Rights Network, was “very pleased that British Transport Police have withdrawn their disgraceful policy that allowed male officers to strip search women”. Larkman said she had received reports that in the aftermath of the Supreme Court result there had been “panic behind the scenes” at a number of police forces. “Urgent meetings have taken place at senior levels to discuss the implications of the judgment,” she said. “They have policies that effectively adopt a self ID approach to sex, that allow male officers into female changing rooms, toilets and showers, all of which will now need to be addressed.” Larkman said that at the same time a number of forces had focused on “reassuring” trans staff, giving them welfare support. “It speaks volumes that they did not consult with, or put in place any support for the female officers and staff impacted by their misogynistic polices, but instead put them in fear of losing their jobs if they dared object,” she added. Acas, which advises employers and employees on behaviour at work, also appears to be making moves to update its guidance. Julie Dennis, its head of inclusive workplace policies, said: “We will be working at pace with partners such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the government to reflect the court’s ruling in our advice.” However, the large majority are yet to commit themselves to definite changes, saying they are reviewing their policies in light of the judgment. The National Police Chiefs’ Council, which has previously withdrawn guidance on strip searching which echoed the BTP approach, said it was reviewing its policies and procedures. But it insisted that it would “need time to consider the full implications of the court’s decision, as will many other public bodies”. The College of Policing, which issues guidance to forces, said that it would ensure all its guidelines for officers were “up to date”. The NHS has been equally reticent about making any major announcements regarding trans policies. NHS England is “currently reviewing guidance on same sex accommodation” and will take into account the ruling. The General Medical Council will “review the judgment in full and carefully consider its relevance to our policies and processes”. NHS Fife, which is embroiled in a tribunal dispute with a nurse suing the trust for harassment for having to share a changing room with a doctor who identifies as female, said it would “carefully consider the judgment and its implications.” In sport, one of most controversial areas of trans policy, the approach appears to be one of caution. Sport England said it was “now considering what the ruling means for grassroots sports and clubs”. The Football Association and the England and Wales Cricket Board declined to comment on the implications for their trans policies.

Court ruling on the definition of a woman Sir, The Supreme Court ruling made me happy and angry in equal measure, as someone who was constructively dismissed by the Open University for asserting that men cannot be women (“Equality policies in chaos as court defines a woman”, Apr 17). It beggars belief that so many organisations bought into the silly and solipsistic logic of Stonewall’s vision of transgender rights — that people who believe they can change sex are discriminated against or harassed if we reject their belief or if we say “no” to allowing them into our single-sex spaces. I hope that this ruling will lead, immediately, to the removal of male prisoners – even those with a gender recognition certificate — from the female prison estate. Is this an attack on trans rights? No. Women have been an historically abused and subjugated class of people. Enforcing our rights to privacy, dignity and protection from male violence is not discriminatory, it is common sense and is in keeping with the law. Jo Phoenix Professor of Criminology, University of Reading; advisory group member, Sex Matters Sir, One of the most puzzling aspects of the Supreme Court’s judgment is that a scientifically illiterate ideology became so entrenched it needed our highest court to state the obvious. If you are born with a Y (male) chromosome you will carry it with you all your days. No amount of surgery, drug treatment, selfidentification, wishful thinking or shutting down of reasoned argument will change that settled biological fact. To claim otherwise is flat-Earth territory, but many organisations went along with the fantasy all the same. How someone chooses to live their life and present themselves to the outside world is a personal decision that should be met with understanding, tolerance and respect, but not at the expense of common sense. Sir Peter Rubin Retired professor of medicine, London SW1 Sir, Your editorial (“Sanity Restored”, Apr 17) asserts the rights of trans people to live their lives in dignity. But that is now as meaningless in reality as the Supreme Court’s statement that its ruling does not diminish trans women’s protection against discrimination. Much of the exultant reaction to the ruling reminds me painfully of the homophobia that cowed me for much of my adult life. What trans person will now use a public lavatory without fear of abuse, or worse? If the government is serious about human rights it should mandate the provision of gender-neutral facilities wherever separate provision is at present made for men and women. Sir Stephen Wall London SW18 Sir, I am delighted to see that the Supreme Court has applied the test of common sense. I was horrified when it was decreed that pre-operative male offenders with a gender recognition certificate could be held in female prisons. A high percentage of these prisoners were convicted of sex offences against women, and the reality was that it was not possible to guarantee that female prisoners — many of whom had suffered abuse — could be kept safe Nick Pascoe Former Prison Service area manager; Sherborne, Dorset Sir, We told you so. Kathleen Stock Professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex 2003-21

Forward Thinking After the Supreme Court judgment defending the right of women to single-sex spaces, the effects of gender ideology in institutions must be reversed The Supreme Court judgment on the definition of a woman under the Equality Act was clear and unequivocal: it is based solely on biological sex. With that single ruling, it cut through years of confected confusion, heated accusation and bureaucratic bullying from many activists who backed self-ID for trans people. They insisted that sex — and whatever rights it conferred — was something one could identify into by choice, overriding all other considerations. The court disagreed. What the ruling could not do, however, is unpick in a single day the complex web of official guidance that has grown up around that activist-driven fiction. This was enabled by the message, widely and wrongly disseminated, that women insisting on single-sex spaces based on biological sex were simply bigots. That was not a view shared by the UK’s highest court, which has effectively given its legal backing to those who argue for keeping biological men out of single-sex spaces such as changing rooms, lavatories and women’s shelters. This decisive legal halt to a trend that has dominated so much recent policy will have profound implications throughout the public sphere, not least for hospitals, prisons and sporting bodies. But for now, politicians are still struggling to articulate precisely what those implications are. When Ka- rin Smyth, the Labour health minister, was asked on Times Radio yesterday which changing room transgender women should use following the ruling, she replied bemusingly: “We need to make sure that in this discussion we are following both the law so that it is clear for women and for service providers ... this varies upon what the provision of those service providers are.” A little more clarity crept in when she was questioned elsewhere on its meaning for NHS single-sex wards: “The ruling is very clear that sex means biological sex, and ... the NHS will obviously be complying with that as every other public body will.” That will require an explicit reversal of current NHS England guidance which says that “trans people should be accommodated according to their presentation: the way they dress, and the name and pronouns they currently use”. Baroness Falkner of Margravine, the chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has vowed to pursue organisations that do not update their policies in the light of this “very readable” judgment. The task for the authorities now is to formulate fresh policies which not only safeguard women’s rights but simultaneously protect transgender people from discrimination and harassment, as is also their right under the Equality Act. While this will be a delicate mission, the government must at least be breathing a sigh of relief that the clarity offered by the court has delivered it from arbitrating an increasingly messy argument in the public space. Politicians must not be allowed to consign their own part in this fiasco to the memory-hole, however. On both right and left, they failed to understand the broader implications of the demand for self-ID, so vociferously promoted by the Stonewall lobby group. While it was the former Conservative equalities minister Justine Greening who in 2017 first announced proposals to make it faster and easier to change gender, the Labour party proved particularly susceptible to the dictates of ideology over common sense. That resulted in surreal situations such as the hounding of the former Labour MP Rosie Duffield for stating biological reality, while a nervous Sir Keir Starmer declared it “not right” to say that only women have a cervix. Stonewall has spoken of “deep concern” at the court ruling. It would do better to examine the bitterly polarising role which it has played in this debate, damaging the interests of women and trans people alike. Yet irrationality has run its course: work must now begin to find pragmatic solutions, within the boundaries reasserted by the courts.

Daily Mail [5]

LABOUR TURMOIL ON TRANS RULING As party faces pressure to rip up gender laws, ministers are STILL in a muddle on protecting women-only spaces Daily Mail18 Apr 2025By Sam Merriman and Harriet Line LABOUR’S stance on women’s rights descended into farce last night as a minister failed to back single-sex spaces and its union paymaster said it will ignore the Supreme Court judgment. A health minister refused four times to say which changing room transgender women should use – despite the unanimous ruling that they are not legally women. And the president of one of Britain’s largest unions – which gives Labour millions of pounds a year – said the historic decision ‘does not change’ its pro-trans policy. It came as Left-wing Labour MPs and the party’s LGBT+ groups criticised the findings of the country’s highest court, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves squirmed when asked if Keir Starmer should apologise to an MP for criticising her assertion that only women have a cervix. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said Labour’s failure to back single-sex spaces and its union paymaster’s ‘open hostility’ to the ruling show that claims it was pro-women’s rights were ‘completely false’. She told the Mail: ‘Women and girls will be failed by Labour again and again, as they always have been.’ Health minister Karin Smyth failed four times to clarify which changing room trans women should use in light of the Supreme Court judgment. Ms Smyth said it was ‘important that a trans woman or a trans man also has dignity in their use of public spaces’. Asked again, she told Times Radio: ‘This varies [depending] upon what the provision of those service providers are – large organisations, small organisations.’ Her comments contrasted sharply with those from the head of the equalities watchdog, who said in no uncertain terms that trans women now cannot use single-sex female facilities or compete in women’s sports. Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) chairman Baroness Falkner said the ruling ‘does bring clarity’ for organisations on their single-sex policies and vowed to pursue those that do not enforce women-only spaces. She added: ‘Single-sex services like changing rooms must be based on biological sex. If a male person is allowed to use a women-only service or facility, it isn’t any longer single-sex, then it becomes a mixed-sex space.’ And asked if it was now straightforward that trans women cannot take part in women’s sport, she told BBC Radio 4: ‘Yes, it is.’ But Steve North, president of the Unison union which gave Labour more than £4 million last year said on X: ‘I want to restate my solidarity with our trans members. This judgment does not change Unison policy in support of trans rights.’ He also shared a post from one of the union’s branches that stated ‘trans women are women’ and added that any Unison members – who predominantly work in local government, education and the NHS – affected by the ruling should reach out ‘for support’. Mrs Badenoch said: ‘The flailing of Karin Smyth on the radio and the open hostility to the Supreme Court judgment from Unison, one of the Labour Party’s biggest donors, just shows that Labour’s position on this is completely false. ‘Labour doesn’t support single-sex spaces and they don’t understand the principle.’ A Labour source hit back, saying: ‘After 14 years of Tory failure to act, it’s Labour who will protect women’s spaces. We have always been crystal clear that single-sex spaces are important and that biology matters.’ It came as the Government was under growing pressure to overhaul the Equalities Act to enshrine biological sex in law. Mrs Badenoch said that ‘Labour are trying to gaslight the public and rewrite history on the Supreme Court judgment’ and called for equality laws to be rewritten to prevent this. Ms Reeves dodged questions about the court ruling and whether the Prime Minister should apologise to MP Rosie Duffield, who has said she was ‘isolated, hounded and harassed’ out of Labour for her gender-critical views. Asked whether Sir Keir should say sorry, Ms Reeves said: ‘Well, the most important thing is that we now have that clarity that is needed, so we welcome that Supreme Court ruling and the clarity that it gives to service providers and also to women.’ But Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters which provided evidence in the landmark case, said: ‘There really is no room for equivocation on this – it’s the law of the land. ‘Every government minister – and every politician from all parties – needs to understand this.’ And Caroline Ffiske, from Conservatives for Women, added: ‘It is hugely disappointing and an abdication of responsibility that the Labour Government appears to want to continue to pretend that the situation is complex.’ Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling said: ‘The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological woman and biological sex.’ The decision was the culmination of a seven-year legal fight brought by gender-critical campaign group For Women Scotland against the Scottish government. The court ruled that the process of awarding of a £6 Gender Recognition Certificate does not turn a biological man into a woman, meaning trans people do not get specific protections for biological women contained in the Equality Act. A Unison spokesman said: ‘The union is going through the judgment and will consider its implications for any guidance that is provided to members.’ Article Name:LABOUR TURMOIL ON TRANS RULING Publication:Daily Mail Author:By Sam Merriman and Harriet Line Start Page:1 End Page:1

You MUST follow the new rules, NHS told ... and we’ll take action if you do nothing, warns equalities chief Daily Mail18 Apr 2025By Shaun Wooller Health Editor THE NHS will be pursued if it does not follow new guidance on single-sex spaces, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has warned. Baroness Falkner, the commission’s chairman, said the health service will be receiving guidelines after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law. She said: ‘We’ve been speaking to the health service for an inordinately long time – we will now be asking them when they will be updating their advice.’ The ‘Darlington Nurses’, who are taking legal action after being forced to undress in front of a transgender colleague in their hospital changing room, have also piled pressure on the NHS, saying: ‘We now need ‘We now need swift and clear action’ swift and clear action.’ Currently NHS guidance says trans people should be accommodated according to the way they dress, their name and pronouns. But this is likely to be scrapped following the landmark ruling. The national NHS guidance on same-sex accommodation, published in September 2019, says: ‘Good practice requires that clinical responses be patient-centred, respectful and flexible towards all transgender people whether they live continuously or temporarily in a gender role that does not conform to their natal sex.’ It adds: ‘Trans people should be accommodated according to their presentation: the way they dress, and the name and pronouns they currently use. ‘This may not always accord with the physical sex appearance of the chest or genitalia.’ The guidance applies to wards, toilets and bathing facilities, it says. The EHRC says it is ‘working at pace’ to provide an updated code of conduct for services, including the NHS and prisons, and it expects the updated guidance to be in place by the summer. Asked on the BBC’s Today programme whether the EHRC would pursue the NHS if it doesn’t change, Baroness Falkner said: ‘Yes, we will. We will be having those conversations with them to update that guidance.’ An NHS England spokesman said: ‘The NHS is working through the implications of the Supreme Court ruling and appreciates the need for revised guidance on samesex accommodation. While we don’t have an exact timeframe established yet, we are working closely with government to provide any further guidance for the health service as soon as possible.’ However, policies on same-sex staff changing facilities are a matter for individual trusts, which will be instructed to review their position in light of the ruling. This could have an impact on the case of the ‘Darlington Nurses’, who have taken legal action against County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust on the grounds of sexual harassment and discrimination, after they were forced to undress in front of a male colleague who identifies as a woman. They say the colleague, named ‘Rose’, began using the female staff changing room at Darlington Memorial Hospital, without consultation or warning. One nurse, who experienced sexual abuse as a child, said she suffered panic attacks after Rose repeatedly asked her: ‘Are you getting changed yet?’ After 26 nurses raised concerns with HR, they were told they needed to ‘be more inclusive’, ‘compromise’, ‘broaden their mindset’ and get ‘re-educated’. They have now launched the Darlington Nursing Union, which is ‘dedicated to women’s dignity in the workplace’. Responding to Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, Bethany Hutchison, Darlington nurse and president of the nursing union, said: ‘We are delighted by the result and the clarity it brings to the Equality Act. ‘We now need swift and clear action from (Health Secretary) Wes Streeting and the NHS to implement the Supreme Court’s ruling. Front-line nurses like ourselves have been dealing with this for too long and should not have had to take the action and risks that we have. She added: ‘Illegal Stonewall-inspired policies that have allowed men to access women’s changing rooms in the NHS need to be urgently overhauled.’ Article Name:You MUST follow the new rules, NHS told Publication:Daily Mail Author:By Shaun Wooller Health Editor Start Page:6 End Page:6

Will Sir Keir end this toxic war on women? Daily Mail18 Apr 2025 THE ink is barely dry on the Supreme Court’s historic ruling that under equality law being a woman is defined by biological sex – and not a person’s subjective gender identity. That, though, should not stop the Government issuing new guidance making clear to public bodies and businesses that female-only spaces, such as changing rooms and hospital wards, must not be used by those born male – however they identify. The key question is, will Sir Keir Starmer act to make sure women are protected? Certainly, the Prime Minister now claims to be a staunch advocate of single-sex provision, but that was not always the case. It’s also troubling that some Labour MPs and the union paymasters are already muddying the waters on what is an unambiguous ruling. Indeed, one minister refused to say if female-only facilities should be out of bounds to trans women. The fact is, there are a great many people and organisations for whom trans ideology has become an article of faith. Having denounced objectors as ‘transphobes’, many will fight tooth and nail to avoiding accepting basic biological reality. To this end, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is right to call for a review of the Equality Act and Gender Recognition Act. These contradictory pieces of New Labour legislation bear huge responsibility for Britain becoming embroiled in this toxic culture war. As it stands, we are not out of the woods. Trans activists have vowed to fight on. But by acting decisively and quickly, Sir Keir could do the nation a great service by bringing this era of woke insanity to a close. Article Name:Will Sir Keir end this toxic war on women? Publication:Daily Mail Start Page:14 End Page:14

Telegraph [6]

UK’S biggest bank vows ‘solidarity’ with trans workers Lloyds says it will continue to give support to those affected by Supreme Court ruling The Daily Telegraph18 Apr 2025By Samuel Montgomery and Janet Eastham BRITAIN’S biggest bank has pledged “solidarity” with transgender staff after women’s rights campaigners scored a landmark victory in the Supreme Court. Executives at Lloyds Bank, which counts one in two British adults as a customer, backed affected employees “at this very tough time” after the court this week said that trans women are not legally women under equalities law. Businesses and public bodies across Britain have to grapple with the implications of the ruling, which means trans women will no longer be granted access to female-only spaces such as women’s bathrooms. The judgment is expected to lead to thousands of unisex lavatories being introduced in buildings across Britain, under proposed guidance considered by the Government’s Equality and Human Rights Commission watchdog (EHRC). Baroness Falkner, the chairman of the EHRC, said yesterday that trans groups “should be using their powers of advocacy to ask for those third spaces”. The Lloyds comments risk drawing the bank into the row over the court’s decision, which was cheered by gender -critical activists who feared women’s rights were being eroded. Andrew Walton, the chief corporate affairs director at Lloyds, posted on the bank’s internal LGBTQ+ Rainbow network messaging board hours after the judgment. He said: “Thought I would come on here today with a note of support for our trans and non-binary colleagues on what I know will be an unsettling day following the UK Supreme Court decision. Please know that we cherish and celebrate you and we remain committed to inclusivity. “If you’re a line manager, please be mindful of the potential impact on members of your team and be available to them. We are here to listen and support.” Sharon Doherty, the chief people and places officer at Lloyds, said in response to Mr Walton’s post: “Very well said… standing in solidarity at this very tough time.” Both Mr Walton and Ms Doherty are among the most senior leaders at the bank, sitting on a 14-person executive committee. Their comments come as businesses await the EHRC’S updated code of practice for further guidance on how to respond to the judgment. Yesterday, leading barristers told The Telegraph that introducing a third, unisex lavatory is expected to be the most practical way to respect trans preferences while staying within the law. This option has now been endorsed by Sir Trevor Phillips, the former equalities watchdog chairman, who said that healthcare services should “stop whining about how difficult it is” and comply with the law. Speaking on The Daily T podcast, Sir Trevor said: “It’s very, very straightforward. They have to provide facilities for people of different sexes and those facilities have to protect people of different sexes according to biology.” However, adding a requirement to install unisex lavatories risks heaping pressure on businesses already grappling with high interest rates and looming legal threats under Labour’s planned worker protections. Lloyds Bank declined to comment. ‘Please know that we cherish and celebrate you and we remain committed to inclusivity’ FOR decades, influential charity Stonewall was widely regarded as a champion for equal rights – winning over the most powerful businesses and politicians. Its influence was such that hundreds of Britain’s largest organisations battled for top spot on its equality leader board, handing millions of pounds to the charity in the process. But much has changed. The 36-year-old organisation now facing a crisis that has prompted even one of its founders to turn against it. In the wake of Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling that only biological women are women, Simon Fanshawe urged bosses to abandon Stonewall, which has long championed trans rights. “Employers can now take advice from the highest court in the land rather than from Stonewall and other lobby groups,” said Fanshawe, who was one of six activists to help set up the organisation. “Previously, in trying to become a Stonewall ‘Diversity Champion’, businesses have often gone beyond the law. “I would say that businesses should now ignore Stonewall, focus on the judgment, and that way be absolutely clear that their policies are in line with the Equality Act. “Businesses have been thinking they’ve been doing the right thing, and it transpires they haven’t. They should stop listening to lobby groups.” Scrutiny of Stonewall has been building for years, even garnering disapproval from former supporter Sir Stephen Fry, who in December branded its trans activism “nonsensical” and warned it has “got stuck in a terrible, terrible quagmire”. In particular, critics have argued that Stonewall was using corporate schemes to stifle free speech. One HR veteran, who did not want to be named, believes too many bosses leant on the charity out of fear of “holding a different position to other organisations”. “I’m surprised that any major organisation still has a relationship with them. That’s not because they haven’t done good things in the past, but they’re driving a political agenda with a small P,” they said. “From a business point of view, people will now be taking stock and saying, ‘Hang on a second, the highest court has made a decision [on the legal definition of a woman] and this organisation is disagreeing – do we want to be aligned with an organisation which is taking that stance?’” They added that HR leaders who disagree with the Supreme Court need to ask themselves how they’ve been running their businesses. “If you don’t believe the law trumps all, then you’ve essentially been running your business based on an agenda, not on the law.” Fanshawe argued last year that there had been a shift in attitude, with companies saying to themselves: “Actually, I’m not convinced that a high-street retailer should take a position on anticonversion therapy.” Concerns over Stonewall in corporate circles have grown increasingly prominent in recent years, as some of its most controversial advice came to light. For example, the charity reportedly told employers to use “parent who has given birth” instead of the word mother, while it also questioned whether private health insurance covered transition-related treatments. Stonewall has since watered down its policies, admitting last year that “mother” is a “powerful and important word”. But for many bosses the damage was already done. In 2022, Stonewall was criticised for suggesting that nurseries were not doing enough to help children as young as two “recognise their trans identity”, while last year its support of puberty blockers came under fire following a review by paediatrician Baroness Cass. The review, which warned there was a lack of established medical evidence for the use of puberty blockers for children, triggered a petition calling for Stonewall’s former chief, who advised schools to “shred” a research pack highlighting the dangers of the treatment, to lose her peerage. Yet Stonewall itself acknowledges that change may be on the cards, particularly in light of the latest Supreme Court decision. A spokesman for the charity said that many organisations, including Stonewall, will be reviewing their policies and guidance. “Stonewall regularly reviews its guidance and works with legal experts to ensure that it reflects the latest legal developments – we will continue to do so.” Emilie Cole, the founding partner of law firm Cole Khan, said: “The decision recognises that women now means biological women. So women are going to be protected in terms of having their spaces. It’s been so hard fought on both sides of the spectrum, but this judgment is welcomed because this has… got real-world consequences for people working in businesses, and clarity in this area is welcomed.” But others are not as conciliatory. As one barrister puts it: “Those who follow Stonewall should stop doing so immediately and seek counsel elsewhere. You have been led up the garden path and now have a huge task untangling the mess.” ‘If you don’t believe the law trumps all, you’ve been running your business on an agenda’ ‘You have been led up the garden path and now have a huge task untangling the mess’ Article Name:UK’S biggest bank vows ‘solidarity’ with trans workers Publication:The Daily Telegraph Author:By Samuel Montgomery and Janet Eastham Start Page:1 End Page:1

The cancelled gender-critical women owed an apology The Daily Telegraph18 Apr 2025By Fiona Parker SENIOR NEWS REPORTER FOR years, those who stood up to the mob and criticised transgender ideology risked cancellation. None who dared to voice their doubts about the Left-wing dogma were safe from the fury of the trans lobby. From best-selling authors such as JK Rowling, to world-class athletes like Martina Navratilova and academics like Prof Kathleen Stock, those who spoke out risked their reputations and their careers. But following the Supreme Court ruling that sex is rooted in biology and that trans women are legally not women, many are likely to feel that they are owed an apology. Rowling’s 2020 essay criticised an article with a headline saying “people who menstruate” provoking a fierce debate on sex and gender. On Wednesday, she shared a photograph of herself enjoying a cigar on her superyacht with the caption: “I love it when a plan comes together.” Prof Stock was hounded out of her job in the philosophy department at the University of Sussex in 2021 after making statements such as “‘trans women are women’ is fiction, not literally true”. The university was fined £585,000 for failing to uphold free speech. Sharron Davies, a former British swimmer, said she had been dropped by charities and agents as a result of her insistence that trans women should not be allowed to compete in female categories. Navratilova, an 18-time Grand Slam winner, was dropped by LGBT group Athlete Ally after she criticised The New York Times for using the term “non-transgender women” to describe biological women. In the world of politics, Rosie Duffield, the former Labour MP, faced violent death threats for her gender views. Internet troll Glenn Mullen walked free with two suspended sentences after posting messages in which he threatened to kill Rowling and Duffield. Lord Young, of the Free Speech Union (FSU), said few of those who speak out are public figures. “Nearly all are just ordinary women.” Sharron Davies If based on the IOC guidelines, the sporting world changes its rules prematurely and transwomen are found to unfairly dominate, it will be to the detriment of sport, women and the Olympics Article Name:The cancelled gender-critical women owed an apology Publication:The Daily Telegraph Author:By Fiona Parker SENIOR NEWS REPORTER Start Page:5 End Page:5

Labour trans school rule thrown into chaos The Daily Telegraph18 Apr 2025By Poppy Wood EDUCATION EDITOR THE Government has been urged to clarify how this week’s Supreme Court ruling will affect single-sex schools as ministers were accused of “ducking the issue”. The UK’S highest court ruled on Wednesday that the terms woman and sex in the 2010 Equality Act “refer to a biological woman and biological sex”. This means that transgender women with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) can be excluded from single-sex spaces if “proportionate”. The ruling does not directly impact pupils, since GRCS are only available to people aged 18 and over, but experts said it was likely to have consequences for school admissions policies. Philip Wood, a specialist in education law at Browne Jacobson, said the ruling confirmed the laws around “direct discrimination as well as indirect discrimination, which is helpful to single-sex schools”. Under current laws, single-sex schools have a specific exemption in the Equality Act relating to sex, but that exemption doesn’t cover gender reassignment, according to Mr Wood. It has resulted in a grey area around whether an all-girls school, for example, would be able to turn down a transgender teenager who was born a boy. Mr Wood said that while the Supreme Court decision did not directly impact single-sex school admissions, it still meant that if “a transgender male (but biologically female) pupil who was seeking admission to a boys’ school but was refused,” they would be treated the same in any direct discrimination claim as “a female pupil who was not trans”. “Assuming the reason for the school’s refusal was not about gender reassignment, but instead the sex of the pupil, we cannot see that a claim would succeed,” he said. But the education lawyer added it was “an untested area of law,” and Government guidance would need to spell out how admissions policies would work in practice. The Tories unveiled draft guidance in October 2023 that aimed to clear up the law around admissions policies for transgender pupils, but Labour is still deciding whether to implement it. The proposed Department for Education (DFE) guidance said “single-sex schools … can refuse to admit pupils of the other biological sex, regardless of whether the child is questioning their gender”. It added that “a school cannot… refuse to admit a child of the same biological sex on the basis that they are questioning their gender”. Labour is widely expected to water down the proposed guidance after Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, refused to commit to implementing it. It is unclear whether this week’s Supreme Court decision will prompt a rethink, or if it will affect the Government’s promise to unveil guidance before the summer holidays. Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, said: “Yesterday’s ruling makes it clear, biological sex matters in law. The Conservatives have always defended this principle, while Labour has ducked the issue. “The Government must now stop dragging their feet and get on with delivering clear, firm guidance for schools, particularly single-sex schools, involving parents fully in decisions affecting their children and putting facts and children’s safeguarding first.” A number of private girls’ schools said they would be consulting lawyers over the changes when they return from the Easter holidays next week. Leading education figures called for transparency over how the Supreme Court ruling would affect issues such as transgender pupils’ participation in sports. Patrick Roach, the general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said the organisation “has been contacted by teachers concerned about the implications for them and for the pupils they teach” since Wednesday’s ruling. “The implications of the legal judgment will need to be considered carefully, and it is vital that the Government provides clarity and guidance to schools and colleges as quickly as possible,” he said. Schools are legally required to provide sex-separated toilets for pupils aged 8 or over and suitable changing rooms and showers for those aged 11 years or over. But their other legal obligations are unclear. As part of their proposed guidance for gender-questioning children, the previous government called for a ban on pupils being taught about gender identity in schools. Ms Phillipson declined to answer whether she would keep or rip up the Tories’ guidance when asked about it ahead of the general election last year, and said parts of it “drifted far too much into partisan and unnecessary language”. A government spokesman said: “It’s vital that we ensure young people, no matter their background, can access the opportunities to thrive. “That’s why schools are required to comply with their safeguarding duties and make arrangements which protect the privacy, dignity and safety of all pupils.” ‘The Conservatives have always defended this principle, while Labour has ducked the issue’ Article Name:Labour trans school rule thrown into chaos Publication:The Daily Telegraph Author:By Poppy Wood EDUCATION EDITOR Start Page:5 End Page:5

Labour must not bow to trans activists The Daily Telegraph18 Apr 2025 The Supreme Court’s ruling that trans women are not legally women has saved British lawmakers a great deal of embarrassment. The alternative would have left our state amid the ignominious ranks of those authorities which have attempted to redefine reality by fiat, including the Indiana General Assembly which once considered passing a bill implying the value of pi to be 3.2. Naturally, however, this brief outbreak of common sense is already meeting with fierce resistance from the trans lobbyists who wish to dictate to the rest of society the manner in which they should be treated, and there appears to be a real risk that what should be a victory for women’s rights will be squandered by the Labour Party. When questioned about the implications of the judgment, a Government minister was willing to state that “female changing rooms should be used by women”, but was unable to then state which facilities would be appropriate for trans women. Baroness Falkner, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), meanwhile, was clear that access to single-sex spaces should be determined on biological grounds. There is, however, every possibility that this will simply result in a further absurd shuffling of requirements as organisations seek to avoid the ire of vocally unpleasant trans activists. One way to square the circle, for instance, would be to simply do away with female facilities entirely, providing gender neutral ones as a default. While Labour sources insist that Sir Keir Starmer has “moved the party” to a “serious, sensible” position that “protected women’s spaces while allowing for respectful debate”, those who have followed the tone and volume of that debate will be aware of just how much this statement omits. It seems eminently possible that attempts by activists to exert pressure on the Labour Party will once again bear fruit. As things stand, the EHRC has already submitted a revised code of conduct for the public sector which will protect single-sex spaces and update the law to reflect more than a decade’s worth of legal argument. This will now become an early test for the Government: will Sir Keir and his colleagues assent to these changes, or seek to muddy the waters? It does not take a great leap of imagination to see the Labour Party making poorly thought-out additions which would partly unwind the effects of this ruling. This outcome must be avoided, and this rare piece of judicial sanity preserved. Article Name:Labour must not bow to trans activists Publication:The Daily Telegraph Start Page:17 End Page:17

Saturday Total: 14

The Guardian [2]

JK Rowling How author became campaign’s most vocal supporter The Guardian19 Apr 2025Caroline Davies JK Rowling PHOTOGRAPH: JONNY BIRCH/GETTY IMAGES ‘Erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of so many to meaningfully discuss their lives’ JK Rowling at the Baftas in 2017, two years before she went public with her gender-critical views, to the dismay of some Cocktail in hand and puffing on a celebratory cigar onboard her superyacht, reportedly somewhere in the Bahamas, JK Rowling greeted this week’s supreme court ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, by taking to social media. “I love it when a plan comes together,” she posted on X, borrowing the famous catchphrase from the popular 1980s TV series, The A-Team. She added, referencing the bitter and polarised gender identification debate: “To those celebrating the fact that I’m smoking a blunt [a type of joint]: it’s a cigar. Even if it decided to identify as a blunt for the purposes of this celebration, it would remain objectively, provably and demonstratively a cigar.” It was a typical response from the 59-year-old multi-millionaire creator of the iconic Harry Potter franchise, who has over recent years regularly utilised social media in her support of womenonly spaces, and who has been a vocal and financial supporter of For Women Scotland, having donated £70,000 to the group’s crowdfunding for the legal challenge that culminated in Wednesday’s ruling. The journey has seen her publicly evolve into a fearless figurehead for gender-critical campaigners; someone willing to have battles on X in particular, where she fights fire with fire, and seemingly cannot be cowed. Supporters will say Rowling’s financial contribution has been important, though point out the lesser sums donated by hundreds of other women to the crowdfunding were equally so. Her vocal support, however, has been of even greater consequence. They praise her doggedness, her clear-sightedness as an uncompromising feminist. She is, they believe, strategic. Detractors are highly vocal in accusing her of transphobia, of using provocative language. They question her claims about numbers of people detransitioning. She has been labelled a Terf (trans– exclusionary radical feminist). She denies she is transphobic, having said she respects “every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them”. Rowling’s first public foray came in December 2019 when she tweeted support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who lost her job at a thinktank after tweeting that transgender women could not change their biological sex. Then, in June 2020, Rowling posted a link to an article headlined “Creating a more equal post-Covid-19 world for people who menstruate”, to which she commented: “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” She added: “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of so many to meaningfully discuss their lives.” The furore that followed led her to post an essay on her website outlining her concerns over “the new trans activism”. She described herself as a “domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor” who had been “triggered” by learning the Scottish government was “proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans”. She said she had spoken up about the importance of sex “and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death.” The backlash against her included Harry Potter actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, making public their support for transgender rights. There were reports of bookburnings. Rowling returned her Ripple of Hope award given to her by the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights organisation after its president, Kennedy’s daughter, criticised her transgender views. Quidditch, the actual sport inspired by the fictional Harry Potter announced in 2022 it was changing its name to Quadball, with one of several reasons being that Rowling had “increasingly come under scrutiny for her antitrans positions”, the International Quidditch Association said. Rowling is a serious philanthropist. She supports a wide range of humanitarian causes through her charitable trust Volant, including charities working with women and children, and donated £10m to set up a world-leading research and treatment centre for multiple sclerosis in Scotland founded in the name of her mother, who died from the disease. In 2022, she funded and co-founded Beria’s Place, a sexual violence support service for women in Edinburgh. If she has had concerns of any impact on her commercial success, she has not expressed them. She bats off any suggestions from fans that she has “ruined” her legacy, telling one podcast they “could not have misunderstood me more profoundly”. “What a pompous way to live your life, walking around thinking, what will my legacy be? I’ll be dead. I care about now. I care about the living.” Article Name:JK Rowling Publication:The Guardian Author:Caroline Davies Start Page:9 End Page:9

The Times [4]

Trans runners in Parkrun ‘not fair to women’ Sanchez Manning Claire Hallissey, an Olympian, was beaten by a transgender woman in a Parkrun. Next image › Campaigners have called on Parkrun to scrap its “unfair” transgender policy, which allowed a trans woman to finish first in the female category in nearly 60 of its Saturday-morning 5km runs. The same trans woman once finished ahead of a former British Olympian. Women’s rights groups say that the organisers must take action to comply with this week’s Supreme Court ruling, which said that women were defined by their biological sex and not an “acquired gender”. Parkrun participants can take part as the gender they identify as rather than as their biological sex. As a result men who self-identify as women, regardless of whether they have had any physical changes, are allowed to take part as women. This policy has caused controversy as critics say trans women have been allowed to “smash” female records and push women down the rankings. Activists were outraged in 2023 when it emerged that Parkrun’s women’s record in Wales was held by Lauren Jeska, a trans woman who had been jailed in 2017 for attempting to murder a UK Athletics official. Jeska’s time of 17 minutes 38 seconds at the Aberystwyth Parkrun in 2012 was two and a half minutes slower than the first male finisher at that event. Mara Yamauchi, a former Olympic marathon runner, said that in 2023 another trans runner, Sian Longthorpe, “smashed to smithereens” by one minute and 13 seconds a women’s Parkrun record in the age 45-49 category. Yamauchi tweeted that a third trans woman had finished first in the female category almost 60 times in the past 18 months. She said that the participant, who she chose not to name, had previously been registered with Parkrun as a man, but had finished first in 56 events in the women’s category. Records show that this year Claire Hallissey, a marathon runner who was a member of the GB squad for the London Olympics alongside Yamauchi and Paula Radcliffe, finished after the trans athlete at a Parkrun. Yamauchi said: “The Supreme Court ruling is unequivocal and unanimous in stating that women are defined by their biological sex. Currently Parkrun allows males in the female category. This is unfair against women and girls and Parkrun will be the first experience of organised sport for many women and girls. To be bumped down the finish order and told to make way for males is a terrible message.” Fiona McAnena, the director of Sex Matters, a campaign group, said: “It’s never been ‘inclusive’ to allow male runners to claim women’s places and records. Now Parkrun has no excuse to continue to discriminate against women by letting men register as female.” UK Athletics has moved to ban trans women from competing in female categories after the UK’s four sports councils published guidance that concluded it was impossible to balance “transgender inclusion, fairness and safety in gender-affected sport where there is meaningful competition”. Parkrun has so far refused to follow the sports governing body’s lead, insisting that its focus is participation rather than competition. Its guidance states that categorising people based on gender rather than sex “is aligned with us as a health and wellbeing charity that provides non-competitive socially focused physical activity, and allows people to identify in the way they feel most appropriate and comfortable”. Parkrun was approached for comment.

Mumsnet ‘put in danger by bigotry claim’ Sanchez Manning - Social Affairs Correspondent The founder of Mumsnet said she feared for the parenting site’s survival after it was branded “bigoted” and blacklisted by major businesses over its stance on trans issues. Justine Roberts spoke out after Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling that the legal definition of a “woman” relates to biological sex, in a challenge brought by For Women Scotland. In an online post on Thursday, Roberts said Mumsnet had been through “severely testing times” and faced accusations it was “on the wrong side of history” over views expressed on trans issues on the site. She said Barclays and Ocado had refused to advertise or partner with the online forum after it called on the government to clarify the definition of a woman in equality legislation. Yesterday a spokeswoman for Ocado apologised “unreservedly” to Mumsnet. Roberts said that despite the intense pressure from activists, she never thought of banning discussions on the controversial issue. She wrote: “A fair number of organisations pulled their advertising under pressure from activists — both internal and external. I’m sure there were many more we never heard from who simply steered clear. “Commercial partnerships became noticeably harder to secure.” She added: “Nonetheless, even in the darkest moments, when I feared the site might not survive, we never considered banning discussion of this issue altogether.” A spokeswoman for Ocado said: “These comments are not representative of us as a company, and we believe they were made by a temporary contractor who is no longer with the business.” Barclays was contacted for comment.

Let’s not downplay this triumph for women Fight for ‘woman’ to be ruled biological has been long and bitter: we won’t forget our allies and opponents along the way Janice Turner @victoriapeckham Janice Turner Don’t be triumphalist, stay magnanimous in victory, be kind. It took a decade for women to reverse an illegal land grab of our rights. Ten years during which every civil society group turned its back, women lost jobs and livelihoods, were vilified, ostracised and risked violence. Now we’re just supposed to move on? We will, of course. Because the women outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday never sought this fight. They were human rights lawyers, feminists, leftie journalists, charity stalwarts or family carers used to putting others first. They were neither driven by animus against LGBTQ+ people — many are lesbians — nor on a moral quest. We had a billion better things to do but just could not stay silent when so much was at stake. So yes, we will move on. Gladly! But before the memory hole sucks away a time of collective madness, when lesbians had penises, rapists were banged up in women’s jails, disabled women were bigots for wanting samesex intimate care, when we were expected to applaud men who stole our sports and welcome bearded dudes “expanding the bandwidth of womanhood” into our changing rooms, let’s set the record straight. First, the cowards. After the Supreme Court ruled that “sex” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 were biological terms, up pops Harriet Harman, architect of that very law to say, of course, that’s what she always meant. Well, Harriet, why didn’t you say so before, when Stonewall, having failed to rewrite the law, tried to change the meaning of words? But I suppose you risked being branded a “Terf”. Best wait until the dust settles, and you’re safely Baroness Harman of Peckham, chair of the Fawcett Society, that meltiest chocolate teapot. Yes, Yvette Cooper, I recall your frozen terror when I suggested, years ago, you make public your concerns about child medical transition. Angela Rayner, Lisa Nandy, we can’t forget — whatever you say now — that in 2020 you signed a 12-point pledge promising to boot out Labour members who believed sex is real. As for the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, who has “always” supported single-sex spaces, you whipped your party to support self-ID in the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which would have erased every one. Then there are the pontificating men who, never listening much to women, naturally sympathised with the male-born and relished our witch trials. Men who had nothing — nothing! — to lose yet never once tried to understand our plight. Rory Stewart, Alastair Campbell, David Lammy, James O’Brien, Billy Bragg, David Tennant, John Oliver, or those who, watching the Paris Olympics, thought a male boxer punching women was less hurtful than calling him a man. Next, the fools, the Tory women fleeing the “nasty party” taint. Caroline Nokes, who voted against same-sex marriage; Theresa May, who abstained; and the expenses scandal pariah Maria Miller, who saw in uncritical, unthinking support for Stonewall’s self-ID plan the hope of easy applause. Thus sparking the war of rights that has left us here with hard new lines drawn, back talking about toilets when — apart from in schools — it was never about that. Supreme Court has finally clarified what we all knew all along For decades, women had no issue with trans women, who’d mainly undergone full surgical transition, using the ladies. We saw them and said nothing, because we are indeed kind and knew they were just quietly living their lives. But self-ID and Stonewall’s “acceptance without exception” campaign demanded anyone in their “trans umbrella”, including male fetishists who filmed themselves masturbating at the mirrors, had a right to be there. And we had no right to object because, as Stonewall’s then CEO, Ruth Hunt, put it, “men will always rape women”, so why fuss about safeguards? A delicate rights ecosystem, a benign rubbing along, the natural empathy between feminists and gender non-conforming men, were all smashed. Women asking to discuss how self-ID would affect their rights were screamed down, meetings attacked by violent, balaclava-clad protesters, bashing windows and letting off smoke bombs. Meanwhile, on the BBC and elsewhere, trans activists were fêted as saints. Now the Supreme Court has done what politicians dared not, clarifying what we all knew all along: sex means biology. Women’s stolen rights must be returned. The NHS must settle disgraceful cases in Darlington and Fife of female nurses forced to undress with biological men. The FA, the England and Wales Cricket Board and even community sporting bodies such as Parkrun will have to keep all males out of female categories. (Because amateur women deserve their records and victories, as much as men.) Police and the media can stop referring to stubbly “trans” sex offenders as women. Yes, there is a mess and as always women are expected to clear it up, even though we proposed the compromise solutions — third spaces in loos and changing rooms, open sporting categories — a decade ago. Trans activists rejected them then because they flouted their mantra that trans women are women. They wasted millions in public funds trying to destroy female spaces and services rather than create their own. Maybe Stonewall, which didn’t even bother to intervene on behalf of trans people in the Supreme Court, will do some actual work. Meanwhile, those who risked everything to say women are adult human females can read this irreducible, scientific truth in an 88-page court judgment and on every front page. Corporations and government bodies will gratefully return to normality, though the Japanese knotweed of gender ideology is deep in their foundations. Soon the collective memory of this crazy, unnecessary, painful struggle will fade. Women aren’t expecting apologies, though many are deserved, or gratitude for saving basic rights for our granddaughters. Yes, we’ll be kind — we always were — but, cheers! We won — deal with it.

‘It will take decades to undo the damage from the trans movement’ The legal ruling on the meaning of ‘woman’ was a vindication for Graham Linehan, the comedy writer, but the scars persist, he tells Andrew Billen Susan Smith and Marion Calder of For Women Scotland, which brought the case, outside the Supreme Court. Next image › It was when Lord Hodge explained that the Supreme Court had used biology to assemble its legal definition of what a woman was that Graham Linehan dared to hope victory might be coming to the cause that had cost him his family and career. “You could feel a crackle around the room,” says the Father Ted co-creator turned anti-trans activist, who was in the public gallery for Wednesday’s epic ruling. “It was a lovely thing to experience. And then, as soon as the judges left, the whole place just broke out in applause.” Shortly after 10am the former stand-up whose savage wit as directed towards trans activists had alienated many even on his side (was this, feminists asked, his battle to fight?) emerged into Parliament Square to the cheers of women. “It was,” he says from a friend’s house the next day, “one of the nicest things that’s ever happened to me.” On Thursday one front-page headline read simply “Trans women are not women”, the exact phrase that had got Linehan banned from Twitter, further, he says, destroying his reputation. “To see it on a newspaper headline — it felt like reality was breaking out.” Afterwards he celebrated with fellow campaigners. A photo on X, to which — under Elon Musk’s management — he had been restored, showed him raising a glass with Venice Allan, a campaigner against trans women swimming in the Ladies’ Pond on Hampstead Heath. Jet-lagged from travelling from the United States, where he is relocating, he went to bed at a reasonable hour but got up at 2am. By noon on Zoom he is a little blurry, but not so blurry that he cannot focus on the clarity of the Supreme Court ruling. He compares it to the murky language of the trans debate, where the very words “trans woman” could baffle. “A good way of understanding the word ‘trans’ is taking it to mean opposite. So ‘trans woman’ means man and ‘trans man’ means woman. That kind of oppositional language has been a major weapon for trans activists. They used language in such a way that people felt they were on unsteady ground. They couldn’t argue their points. The language was just so corrupted.” He compares the huge increase in numbers of transgender people with the epidemic of anorexia after the singer Karen Carpenter died of it in 1983. “It just spread like wildfire, most particularly amongst young girls who are particularly susceptible to this kind of obsessive, harmful thinking about their own bodies. I think that the trans movement for young girls has been a kind of anorexia 2.0. But the difference is that in the Seventies and Eighties people were very rightly saying, ‘No, you’re not fat. This is just a thought in your head and we need to work on that.’ But with the trans issue, the whole of society was saying [the equivalent of], ‘Yes, you are fat. It’s a problem.’ Everyone was saying this, from celebrities to the NHS. And, of course, the internet spread it like Covid. It’s been ten years really, trying to get back to a place of normalcy in regards to women’s rights and it’s going to take decades to undo the damage.” He does think the fight to preserve women’s singlesex spaces in public lavatories, changing rooms and women’s sport is probably won but argues that the toll on the health of biological girls who took gender-altering hormones and on biological boys prescribed oestrogen will persist. While fewer people will be fired for holding gendercritical views, the protrans bias will persist in television, theatre and publishing “because those areas are heavily captured”. On this he is an expert witness. In 2018, coming round in hospital from an operation for testicular cancer, he woozily tweeted something he cannot quite recall about transgender people. Someone immediately responded that they wished the cancer had won. Within months, the Irish-born scriptwriter responsible for The IT Crowd and co-creator of Black Books could no longer get work. A stage musical of Father Ted, his surrealist 1995 sitcom co-created with Arthur Matthews about priests on an Irish island, stalled, its producers suggesting he quit the trans wars. When he refused, explaining he was fighting to defend his teenage daughter, they offered him £200,000 to walk away, conditional on removing his name from the project (aside from a credit as the sitcom’s co-creator). The show was abandoned. By then he had attracted legal threats from trans activists and a visit from the police warning him not to contact a pro-trans GP. He was prescribed anti-anxiety drugs; his hands developed a shake. In 2020 his 16-year marriage to the comedy writer Helen Serafinowicz ended. He said the pressure — the legal threats, the money worries — simply got too much for her. From the family home in Norwich he moved to a flat in the London docklands, from where he reverted to his original profession, journalism. His Glinner Update on Substack reported the trans wars but with only 3,000 subscribers made a loss. “I think,” he says, “this whole thing has been a failure of the celebrity class. They didn’t even have to defend me. They only had to defend their daughters, and they never did. “I just don’t understand how friends could allow another friend to lose all his income, all his friends and then just forget about him.” Naturally, he blames the “toxicity” of the debate on the pro-trans lobby, its “violent” reaction to scrutiny. However, his own social media contributions are incendiary. He confesses he has even been “a bit bad” over the past few days. On the other hand, if someone posts “how’s the wife?” and it is a “young girl with a beard”, he lets it go because he knows what medically is in store for them. “It’s not trans people I have a problem with. It’s trans activists.” But does he feel any sympathy for a trans person who had undergone treatment, and perhaps surgery, only now to find their gender recognition certificate effectively worthless? “Well, I guess so but it’s just one of those things that should never have happened in the first place,” he replies, reciting the dangers of hormone therapy and the “lie” that puberty blockers are reversible. “I do have sympathy for them but I don’t have sympathy for the people who lied to them. They’re the ones who I really, really hate.” Two years ago, in the depths of his war, I interviewed Linehan near his London home. He says now that his years there were not as depressing as I imagined them. A neighbour, the writer Polly Clark, befriended him and “saved my life”. Getting to know doctors, nurses and social workers broadened his world. But although Nicola Sturgeon’s policy of locking Scottish trans women in women’s jails was already falling apart in early 2023, he was gloomy when I suggested the tide was turning. A year later the Cass review on children’s gender identity services recommended extreme caution in using hormone treatment on under- 18s, and the Tavistock Clinic’s gender and identity service closed. Now comes the Supreme Court judgment. He agrees there is a sea change, but says that the media is still “captured”. For him too life has changed, and for the better. There remain worries: he is crowdfunding a defence to a libel action and was recently interviewed under caution by police after a skirmish with a trans activist who he claims was harassing him. But he gets on “great” with his children, and his Substack now makes him “a fair living”. Visas permitting, he has a job in Phoenix, Arizona — where he is starting a production company with the Northern Irish satirist and journalist Andrew Doyle and the Saturday Night Live alumnus Rob Schneider. Both are antiwoke warriors, but he promises that the sitcom they are working on will be merely “unwoke”. “I don’t want to do antiwoke comedy because I think it will age just as badly as the woke movement. I think that in a few years, phrases like ‘trans women are women’ are going to go the same way as ‘groovy’ you know?” What if Jimmy Mulville of Hat Trick Productions, which made Father Ted, now rang and said the musical could go ahead with his name on it? Linehan says he would also need a public apology for what he was put through: “It was inexcusable.”

Daily Mail [4]

THIS week’s Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of a woman is the perfect opportunity to stop and take stock of the mad culture war that has been raging around this issue for the past decade or so. In the battle of Trans v Terfs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), it would appear for now, at least that the Terfs have scored a definitive victory. The judges have ruled that when the term ‘woman’ is used in the context of the 2010 Equality Act, it means a biological woman, and that ‘sex’ denotes biological sex. This means that biological males – including physically intact ones – who ‘identify’ as female can no longer claim automatic entry to women-only spaces such as changing rooms, toilets and prisons. It also means that they cannot now participate in women’s sports, something that many (including myself) have long argued gives them an unfair physical advantage. Needless to say, this has prompted outrage, especially on social media, from LGBTQ-etc campaigners, who see it as a blow to their rights by a reactionary and bigoted judiciary and by a group of hardline Terfs who want to deny them their right to exist. This is not the case. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being a trans woman. Or, for that matter a trans man, though this ruling will mainly affect trans women since trans men don’t statistically pose a threat to biological males, whereas the same has not proven true of trans women. Trans people – or those who feel themselves to be a different gender from their biological sex – have a history stretching back centuries and spanning many cultures. They are a small but steadfast minority, often vulnerable to the judgement of the mainstream. The vast majority pose no threat to anyone, and just want to get on with their lives like the rest of us. ONE thinks of the late author and travel writer Jan Morris, the Olympian Caitlyn Jenner – even Armistead Maupin’s wonderful fictional character, Anna Madrigal. All authentic, complex characters whose desire to live as women has no bearing on the dignity, safety and rights of biological females. Trans women like these have always been welcome alongside biological women as far as I’m concerned, provided everyone concerned is comfortable with it. I, certainly, have never felt threatened by any of the trans ladies I occasionally sit next to or share a bathroom with at my hairdresser, which specialises in hair loss (a problem I share with many trans women). But this week’s ruling has not been made necessary by these sorts of trans women. Instead, it is the result of the actions and aggressions of a different type of trans woman: those who claim to live as women but who in reality act like the worst kind of male bully, imposing their bodies and their sex on females. Who merely wear the mask of womanhood, not necessarily because that is who they want to be but because it suits their purpose, which has been shown, on occasion, to be criminal. Some seem to delight in imposing their maleness on women in women-only spaces, others are clearly there for voyeuristic purposes. It is neither the fault of trans women nor biological women that these people exist. But exist they do, and in recent years, as being trans has become a cause celebre, they have been able to take advantage. Biological women – always the first to bear the brunt of society’s ills – have found their hard-won rights being whittled away and handed to a group of people – many of them, as I say, not truly trans women at all – who don’t respect theirs. There are countless examples of this. We simply cannot have a situation where a man accused of multiple rapes (Adam Graham) dons a wig and declares himself a woman (Isla Bryson) while awaiting trial and is indulged by the court, even serving part of his sentence in a women’s prison. Nor is it acceptable to have mediocre male athletes who possess all the inherent physical advantages of an adult male – superior strength and stamina – re-invent themselves as females to win women’s medals. Nor is it OK that women should have their jobs and livelihoods threatened – such as the nurse Sandie Peggie, suspended for refusing to share a room with a trans-identifying male doctor, or the eight Darlington nurses uncomfortable about sharing their changing room with a male-bodied colleague. WOMEN need private safe spaces in a way that men don’t – because, simply, a man is far more likely to physically harm or take advantage of a woman than the other way round. Even if the male-bodied individuals involved have no bad intentions, some women just find that masculine energy oppressive and intimidating. And with good reason. More than nine out of ten female murder victims are killed by men; and a woman is killed every three days by a man in the UK. Everywhere you look in the world, men are harming women. We are not making this up. It’s because of these men that women needed this Supreme Court ruling. Malicious individuals and all those who, for whatever reason – tribal politics, moral weakness, cowardice, laziness, deep-seated misogyny – have put the rights of male-bodied trans women above those of biological women. It’s these rogue elements who have pushed our patience, kindness and tolerance to its limits and left us biological women – as defined by the highest court in the land – with no choice but to defend ourselves. True trans women understand this, or at least they ought to. For what else is a trans woman but a male who has rejected masculinity and embraced her feminine side? Like biological women, trans women often face daily prejudice, and are frequent victims of male violence – including or even especially sexual violence. And yet somehow the one-dimensional dogma of trans ideology – trans women ARE women, and anyone who questions that is evil – has pitted them against their sisters – when in fact all women, trans and biological, should be united against the same adversary. Put bluntly, you can’t identify as a woman and be on the side of opportunistic male abusers. And yet that’s all too often the case. Trans women will defend all biological males seeking to enter women’s spaces – even when it’s patently obvious that they’re fakes. And it’s in part this stubborn intransigence that has led us to this point – and now they stand to lose out. Many trans celebrities – such as Married at First Sight star Ella Morgan, Ant Lexa from Sex Education and Bel Priestley, who has 1.4million followers on social media – have spoken out furiously against this ruling. Their anger is perfectly understandable. If I were in their position, I too would be upset. But they’re directing their rage at the wrong people. It’s not the judges, JK Rowling or the campaigners from For Women Scotland (who took their case to the Supreme Court) who are the real enemy here. IT’S the zealots on their own side and the lazy, opportunistic politicians, institutions and commentators who allowed this to happen, who overstepped all reasonable and safe boundaries in a pathetic and cowardly attempt to paint themselves as ‘progressive’. Instead of pushing back when they should have done, and advocating for a more flexible, common-sense approach, these guilty parties doubled down on the side of the hardliners. In Scotland particularly, where the now-discredited Nicola Sturgeon was in thrall to this toxic ideology, women were left with very little choice but to fight back. If not for themselves, then for their daughters. With this ruling, these knee-benders find themselves in a right old pickle. Labour’s whole stance on women’s rights seems to have descended into farce, with ministers seemingly unable to compute the result. Health minister Karin Smyth struggled to clarify which changing room trans women should now use, saying only that it ‘was important that a trans man or a trans woman also has dignity in their use of public spaces’. Chancellor Rachel Reeves avoided giving a straightforward answer to the question of whether the Prime Minister should apologise to MP Rosie Duffield, who was hounded out of the party for her gender-critical views. Meanwhile Steve North, president of the Unison union (which bankrolled Labour to the tune of more than £4million last year) said: ‘I want to restate my solidarity with our trans members. This judgment does not change Unison policy in support of trans rights.’ So: denial, then, and plenty of it. In the same way that Labour refuses to instigate a national inquiry into the paedophile Pakistani rape gangs who destroyed the lives of thousands of young girls and their families in Labourrun councils, now they refuse to accept a Supreme Court ruling that will ensure the safety of similarly vulnerable women against similarly opportunistic and predatory men. That is Labour for you. That is the woke Left, which cares only about people-pleasing, and not about what’s right or wrong. DAVID Lammy saying that ‘a man can grow a cervix’ and our Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, saying that some women have penises: they are as much a part of the problem as biological males who cheat female athletes out of their achievements, or insert themselves into women’s spaces for all the wrong reasons. The sheer mendacity of Labour in the wake of this ruling is breathtaking. Rather than accept they made mistakes, they are trying to gaslight us all – when what they should really do is apologise, not just to women but to all those who have, like Duffield, been defenestrated for daring to speak out. Women like Maggie Oliver – the whistleblowing former detective with Greater Manchester Police now leading the charge for a rapegang inquiry – together with Trina Budge, Susan Smith and Marion Calder, directors of For Women Scotland, are cut from the same cloth. They are not afraid to make the difficult, unfashionable argument, they will not make excuses for bad people just because they happen to be minorities. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, too, belongs in that category. She has advocated for protecting women’s spaces long before it became semi-acceptable to do so. But it doesn’t end here. There is one final frontier in the fightback against this dogma, and it affects both sexes. That is the scandal of children and young people being coerced into permanently altering their bodies via drugs or surgery by zealots posing as medical professionals. Gender ideology is rife in schools. Kids are not being made aware – nor equipped to understand – the long-term repercussions of the choices they are being guided towards making. They don’t understand that transitioning is a serious, life-long commitment that requires permanent medication and may well lead to serious complications, from permanent infertility to weakened bones and cancer. They find themselves unhappy or confused about life, and instead of being encouraged to explore their emotions, they are being told that the problem lies in the very essence of who they are. The Cass review into gender services for children and young people in Britain has already led to an indefinite ban on the sale and supply of puberty blockers via private prescription in the UK – but even the most cursory glance at social media will reveal how far the rot has already spread. And this time it’s not just about protecting women, it’s about protecting the next generation. That, sadly, is a battle that has yet to be won. Article Name:The 51 gender identities criminals allowed to use Publication:Daily Mail Author:By Sam Merriman Social Affairs Correspondent SARAH VINE Start Page:16 End Page:16

Telegraph [4]

Rapists no longer able to identify as female Police forces expected to record sexual offenders by their sex and not preferred gender after court ruling The Daily Telegraph - Saturday19 Apr 2025By Martin Evans CRIME EDITOR Rapists will no longer be able to identify as women following a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court. Forces are now expected to begin recording criminals’ birth sex rather than preferred gender in official statistics following the ruling, which stated trans women are not the same as biological women. It will end a situation where some police forces record rapists as being women, even though the legal definition of the crime requires a penis. RAPISTS will no longer be able to identify as women following a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court. Forces are now expected to begin recording criminals’ birth sex rather than preferred gender in official crime statistics following the ruling, which stated trans women are not the same as biological women under equality laws. It will end a situation where some police forces record rapists as being women, even though the legal definition of the crime requires a penis. Campaigners, including gender critical police officers, have hailed the move as a victory for common sense and have said it will help restore public confidence in policing. Current guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) recommends forces ask suspects if they are “male”, “female” or “intersex”. But it goes on to state that: “Using the term ‘gender’ as a substitute for the term ‘sex’ is not appropriate as gender is not a protected characteristic. “Gender is a social construction relating to behaviours and attributes based on labels of masculinity and femininity.” However, not all forces follow the guidance and a recent report into the way public bodies collect data on sex and gender revealed that at least 12 police forces allowed rape suspects and other sexual offenders to self-declare their preferred gender identity. This means men arrested on suspicion of violent sexual attacks can self-identify as a woman and be recorded as such on official statistics. The records form part of the annual data requirement (ADR), submitted by every police force in England and Wales to the Home Office. Last year, in a change of policy, Police Scotland announced that rape suspects would no longer be able to self identify as female. It followed controversy over the case of Adam Graham who began identifying as a woman named Isla Bryson while awaiting trial accused of two rapes. After being convicted and jailed for eight years, Bryson was initially sent to a women’s prison, but he was subsequently moved following a public outcry. Following the scandal, the NPCC announced a review into the issue in England and Wales, but it has yet to report. Police sources who have examined the Supreme Court ruling in detail believe it will sweep away the current confusion around transgender sex offenders. David Spencer, head of crime and justice at the Policy Exchange, said it was time for policing to adopt a common sense approach. He said: “This week’s judgment by the UK Supreme Court shines a light on policies across the public sector. “An independent review this year found police forces do not consistently record the natal sex of alleged sex offenders – meaning suspected rapists may not be accurately recorded in police records. “This could have grave consequences for whether the police are able to effectively investigate sexual offences. “This is the sort of nonsense which leads to the public losing confidence in the police. “As Policy Exchange has repeatedly made clear – it is long past time for police chiefs to adopt a common-sense approach to their work.” A spokesman for the group SEEN UK, a network of serving officers who hold gender-critical beliefs, also welcomed the ruling and urged all forces to ensure full compliance with the Equality Act 2010, as clarified by the court. He said: “The police service is bound by a duty to uphold the law impartially and without fear or favour. That duty must not be compromised by political or ideological pressures. “The rights of women and girls, especially those enshrined in sex-based protections, are a matter of law, not preference. “The Supreme Court has now spoken with clarity. The responsibility to act in accordance with that ruling rests squarely with those entrusted to enforce the law.” Chief Constable Rachel Swann, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s diversity, equality and inclusion committee, said: “I welcome the clarity that the decision at the Supreme Court has provided and we will be reviewing our policies and procedures in accordance with the outcome. “We will need time to consider the full implications of the court’s decision, as will many other public bodies.” ‘It is long past time for police chiefs to adopt a common-sense approach to their work’ Article Name:Rapists no longer able to identify as female Publication:The Daily Telegraph - Saturday Author:By Martin Evans CRIME EDITOR Start Page:1 End Page:1 — Telegraph front page

Gender rules mean passports ‘unreliable’ The Daily Telegraph - Saturday19 Apr 2025By Amy Gibbons ALLOWING transgender people to change their gender on official documents has made passports unreliable, a Tory peer has said. Lord Arbuthnot, a former Conservative MP, warned there was no way to prove someone’s biological sex from their documents, creating a “real problem” for women’s safety. Trans people are able to change their gender on official documents by providing proof of their transition, such as a gender recognition certificate or letter from their doctor. On passports, this will override the marker for sex at birth with the person’s preferred gender. Lord Arbuthnot, who has previously warned about the risks of relying on self-identification, said the rules had made it impossible to ascertain someone’s biological sex from their government documents. It follows the Supreme Court’s ruling that only biological women are women, ending years of confusion over trans people’s access to single-sex spaces. The ruling is expected to lead to a series of changes, including who can use single-sex NHS wards, which police officers can carry out strip searches, and who can join female teams in elite sport. Ministers have so far sidestepped questions on what the ruling will mean in practice. Lord Arbuthnot told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme on Thursday: “The problem is that no government-issued document at the moment is reliable in terms of the sex at birth of a person whose document it is. “The passport is often treated as being the gold standard for whether you are male or female, but it’s not the case. The same is true of the driver’s licence.” He said there were around 100,000 people who had different sexes recorded on different documents. “There is a real problem if, say, a person who identifies as female but was male at birth is sent to give intimate care to a woman in a nursing home who has asked for only women to look after her.” Article Name:Gender rules mean passports ‘unreliable’ Publication:The Daily Telegraph - Saturday Author:By Amy Gibbons Start Page:11 End Page:11

Sunday Total: 14

The Observer [3]

United, undeterred and unafraid, trans people rally over court ruling Thousands gather in London’s Parliament Square to protest at judges’ decision The Observer20 Apr 2025James Tapper Stephen Chung/ LNP LEFT Crowds gather outside Parliament in a huge show of unity and solidarity. After last week’s supreme court decision, activists had been worried trans people might become fearful of going out in public in case they were abused. They weren’t afraid in London yesterday. Thousands of trans and nonbinary people thronged Parliament Square, alongside families and supporters waving baby blue, white and pink flags to demonstrate their anger at the judges’ ruling. The numbers seemed to take the organisers and police by surprise. Protesters from a hastily assembled coalition of 24 groups gathered in a ring against the barriers surrounding the grass and began speeches. But after the roads became clogged with people, a woman wearing a “Nobody knows I’m a lesbian” top ran across with her dog and soon the square was full. “It’s one hell of a turnout and there is a really strong sense of unity and solidarity,” said Jamie Strudwick, one of the organisers. “I think it’s impossible to compare it – it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” Last Wednesday, the supreme court ruled that when the Equality Act 2010 referred to women, it referred only to biological sex and did not include transgender women who hold a gender recognition certificate (GRC). The judgment was celebrated by groups including For Women Scotland, a gender-critical campaign group backed by JK Rowling, which says that women’s safety is threatened by allowing transgender women into single-sex spaces. In his judgment, Lord Hodge said that trans people were still protected from discrimination and harassment under the Equality Act. But some trans people say they have felt confusion, fear and anger, with many believing they will find it harder to challenge unfair treatment and receive support from authorities that should be helping them. After the ruling, the Equality and Human Rights Commission chair, Kishwer Falkner, said that it would create a new statutory code of practice by the summer, giving guidance to public bodies on how they should change their treatment of women and trans people. She said the NHS would need to change its rules on single-sex wards and her organisation would pursue the matter if it did not. Other organisations have already acted. British Transport Police said same-sex searches in custody would be conducted “in accordance with the biological birth sex of the detainee”. “In the last week, I’ve had to ‘It’s like we’re going back in time. It feels like we’re not protected by the law any more’ A trans woman protester respond to four suicide attempts or threats from young people,” said Oscar Hoyle, who founded the Blossom LGBT community interest group in 2018. “The most significant one, I was on the phone for three hours to a transgender girl, 18 years old. It took three hours for police to come.” Blossom works with about 400 16 to 30-year-olds from across the LGBTQ community to support them into adulthood, and about twothirds identify as trans or non-binary. “Regardless of where you sit , nobody should be in a position where they feel like life isn’t worth living just because they fall within a marginalised group,” Hoyle said. Among the crowds outside parliament were Awsten Atkinson, a 23-year-old trans man and their partner, Daisy Watt, a 19-year-old trans woman. “My first reaction to the ruling was absolute horror,” Watt said. “I remember looking at the news and thinking, how on earth have we fallen this far? Not even 10 years ago we were making incredible progress but we just seemed to backslide so severely.” Atkinson was “in disbelief”: “Why do people care so much about what we do with our lives when it doesn’t actually affect them? This is being framed as a feminist movement but the criteria they’re using to decide who is a woman brings the focus back to women as objects, as the sum of their body parts.” Watt was “reassured that we have a community around us that is willing to stand up and speak truth to power”. Atkinson added: “As we were coming along, I started smiling and I said to them [Watt and her friends] ‘wow look at everybody’. What you can count on in this community is that people will rally round.” Near Mahatma Gandhi’s statue, two trans women in their 20s said they were worried that the UK was becoming more like the US. “When they instituted the bathroom bans there, you saw that it wasn’t just trans people, it was also cis people getting accused and being forced out,” one said. The other said: “What I see is trans misogyny that women legally can’t be women, whereas men will always be men. I find it very scary. “In public spaces I have a different vibe. It’s like we’re going back in time. It feels like we’re not protected by the law any more.” Ann-Marie Still was there with her sister and niece. When she heard the news she was disappointed. “I immediately reached out to trans friends, family, with a simple message: ‘you are loved, you are valid’.” “Most people disregard the young,” said Dani, who was there representing her trans sister. “Parents, children, elderly people – they can’t live their lives as they actually want to.” Police later launched an investigation after seven statues were daubed with graffiti, among them that of the suffragette Millicent Fawcett. Scotland Yard said its officers were in Parliament Square at the time, but did not witness the “criminal damage” take place. No arrests had been made, but officers were investigating, said Ch Supt Stuart Bell, leading the protest policing operation. Article Name:United, undeterred and unafraid, trans people rally over court ruling Publication:The Observer Author:James Tapper Start Page:15 End Page:15

The supreme court carefully ringfenced protections for women. That’s all we wanted Last week’s ruling clarified the legal safeguards of the Equality Act. However, it was a travesty that the battle needed to be fought at all The Observer20 Apr 2025Sonia Sodha Andy Rain/EPA Susan Smith and Marion Calder of For Women Scotland after the supreme court ruling. Middle-aged women are expected to fade into the background, to be apologetic for their existence, to quietly accept their lot. They’re not supposed to stick up for themselves, to enforce their boundaries, to say no. As a woman, these societal expectations have been drummed into me from day one. But still. The swell of anger and disgust that rose in response to the supreme court judgment last week that made clear women’s rights are not for dismantling – rights already won, that were supposed to be ours all along – has taken my breath away. I was in court last Wednesday to hear Lord Hodge confirm that the Equality Act’s legal protections that were always intended for women are, indeed, reserved for women. He reiterated that trans people continue to have the same robust legal protections against discrimination and harassment as any other protected group, something I’ve always emphasised in my own writing. But men who identify as female – whether or not they have a legal certificate – are not to be treated as though female for the purposes of equalities law. This is a hugely consequential clarification because for the past 10 years lobby groups such as Stonewall have misrepresented the law, telling public sector organisations, charities and companies that they must treat trans women as women. Now the supreme court has made it clear: female-only services, spaces and sports cannot admit males, however they identify. Workplaces and schools must offer singlesex facilities; service providers do not always have to, though it may be unlawful sex discrimination for them not to do so. This means it is never lawful to expect a female nurse to share changing facilities with a male colleague. It’s not lawful to tell a distressed female patient that the obviously male patient next to her in the female-only ward is, in fact, a woman and she is transphobic to question it. It’s not lawful to expect a female rape victim to take or leave a female-only support group that includes men. It’s not lawful to tell a woman required to undergo a strip-search that the male police officer doing it is actually female. It’s not lawful to expect teenage girls to play women’s football on a team with male players, or female boxers to box against men. Lesbians can have their own groups and associations without being bullied into admitting straight male members who – in an act of gross homophobia – self-identify as “lesbian”. Why does this matter? Because this unlawful activity has all been happening in recent years, to the detriment not just of women’s safety, but our privacy and dignity. The judgment could not be clearer on the above, though that has not stopped a former supreme court justice, Jonathan Sumption, and a former cabinet minister, Harriet Harman, from taking to the airwaves to interpret the law incorrectly. In his remarks, Hodge cautioned against reading the judgment as a triumph of one group over another. That is entirely correct: the Equality Act balances conflicting rights, and the supreme court has simply restored the balance to where the law said it was supposed to be. Trans people have their protections, but now women’s protections, too, have been clearly ringfenced on the same basis – all that leftwing feminists ever asked for. But many pundits have misinterpreted this as meaning women should not celebrate a landmark legal victory in a case it was a travesty they ever had to fight. It’s a product of the rank misogyny embedded everywhere, from right to left. Can you imagine angry leftwing men railing against any other group that’s managed to secure their rights? Chastising them for not being gracious enough in victory? Me neither. The reaction to the judgment serves as an important reminder that, while the law is the law, our culture remains dead-set against women who say no to men. It’s how women’s and lesbians’ rights were so rapidly eroded by Stonewall and its allies in the first place, and why women have been bullied, hounded and sacked simply for trying to assert their legal protections. The same people are ignoring the supreme court’s emphasis that none of this takes away from trans people’s existing rights, and are scaremongering and infantilising trans people as victims. Lloyds Bank wrote to all its employees to say it “stood by” and “cherished” all its trans employees. Several unions have organised an emergency demo in support of trans rights, giving the impression they are being rolled back. It’s easy to forget that all that has happened is that the supreme court has been clear that a male desire for validation does not trump women’s rights to single-sex spaces and services. That if you are a male police officer or nurse demanding to strip-search or carry out a smear test on a woman, the answer is no. Part of being a grownup is understanding that the world cannot always be structured around your own wants and needs. It’s not kind, compassionate or healthy to indulge a failure to accept that. The judgment means trans rights activists are at a crossroads. Do they double down and try to argue that MPs must respond by dismantling women’s legal protections? Or do they put a stop to an ideological crusade that’s harmed not just women and lesbians, but the many trans people who aren’t dogmatic about gender ideology, and instead advocate for gender-neutral third spaces, open and female categories in sports, and specialist services for trans people, and against discrimination based on gender non-conformity? If they pick the latter path, they’ll find willing allies in women like me. And finally, to the countless women who lost so much in fighting to re-establish what was supposed to be ours all along, there could be no happier way for me to round off my last regular column for the Observer than by saying: you are heroes. Pop those champagne corks. Celebrate as hard as you like. You deserve it. Article Name:The supreme court carefully ringfenced protections for women. That’s all we wanted Publication:The Observer Author:Sonia Sodha Start Page:41 End Page:41

Not a rollback: the dignified compromise that respects everyone’s rights The Observer20 Apr 2025 The meaning of “woman” and “female” in the Equality Act has become one of the most contested questions of recent years. Last week the supreme court settled it, in a landmark legal judgment that affirms the rights of women to the same level of legal protection afforded to other groups. The Equality Act protects people against discrimination on the basis of nine protected characteristics, including their sex, race, sexual orientation and gender reassignment. The question at stake was whether “sex” means someone’s biological sex, or their “certificated sex”; in other words, should those who are male but who have a gender recognition certificate (GRC) be treated as a woman under equalities law? The answer that the supreme court produced is no: because to do so would be to drive a coach and horses through Equality Act provisions aimed at protecting women, lesbians and gay men. The law is now clear: it is not lawful to allow anyone male, including trans women, to take part in femaleonly sports affected by average differences in strength and stamina between the sexes. It is unlawful to operate singlesex services, hospital wards, changing rooms and toilets that are open to trans members of the opposite sex. Workplaces and schools must always provide single-sex facilities; other service providers can choose whether to, but not doing so might be sex discrimination. A hospital or care provider cannot honour a woman’s request to have intimate care provided by a female with a male professional who identifies as female. Lesbians and gay men can now run membership associations without being obliged to admit heterosexual members of the opposite sex who have a GRC. And trans men remain entitled to the same protections against pregnancy and maternity discrimination as other members of their sex, regardless of whether or not they have a GRC. The judgment is also clear that trans people have exactly the same level of protection against discrimination, harassment and victimisation as other groups, which is exactly as it should be. It cannot therefore be represented as the rollback of rights that some have sought to do. Instead, the supreme court has emphasised the balancing nature of the Equality Act, which adjudicates between the rights of different groups. The reason this was needed is because in practice the balance of rights had been pushed off kilter by campaigners insisting that trans women must be treated as though they are female under equalities law. Right across society, from the NHS, to the police, to prisons, to workplaces: the law has in effect been rewritten by leaders and HR managers in response to activist demands, and in a way that unlawfully discriminates against women. Politicians from all parties have refused to grapple with this conundrum. This could not contrast more sharply with the bravery and resilience of the three grassroots feminists who set up For Women Scotland and forced this issue in front of the highest court in the land. Their fortitude has paved the way for judges to provide this important reset that reminds organisations that their legal obligations are not just to one group, and they must take their legal duties to women as seriously as they do their duties to trans people. It was never for the supreme court to set out the policy solutions that accommodate everyone’s rights, but it is fairly evident what they should be. Service providers should provide gender-neutral changing rooms and toilets alongside single sex and accessible facilities to ensure trans people have spaces they can feel comfortable using. Sporting bodies should adopt a fully-inclusive open category, which anyone can enter, alongside the female-only category necessary to protect fairness and safety in women’s sports. This is the dignified compromise that respects the rights of everyone. Article Name:Not a rollback: the dignified compromise that respects everyone’s rights Publication:The Observer Start Page:42 End Page:42

The Sunday Times [0]

Supreme Court victors tell of hate mail — as Mumsnet boss says site was ‘blacklisted’ from having government ads Hadley Freeman, Rosamund Urwin, Harry Yorke, William Turvill and Dominic Hauschild Susan Smith, left, and Marion Calder are two of the founders of For Women Scotland, which brought last week’s Supreme Court challenge on the legal definition of a woman under the Equality Act Next image › The campaigners who won the Supreme Court battle over the legal definition of a woman have been inundated with death threats and misogynistic abuse since the landmark judgment. On Wednesday five judges sided with For Women Scotland (FWS), which argued that single-sex spaces and protections should apply only to people born female. It marked the end of a long-running legal battle and is expected to have big implications for how transgender issues and sex-based rights are applied across Britain. The public response has been highly polarised. The three women behind FWS’s campaign revealed they have since been subjected to an outpouring of hatred online. They also talked about how their opinions damaged their employment and business interests. Messages sent to the organisation’s email address included one received hours after the ruling that said: “You’re a group of disgusting murderers and deserve death. God will rip you from your family one day and nobody will mourn you.” Another read: “Your inhumanity makes me vomit. You stupid women should feel deeply ashamed for being so stupid.” Susan Smith, one of the FWS campaigners, said: “It would never occur to us to send messages like this or to call our opponents ugly. But we get this every day.” Another, Marion Calder, added: “Sadly, it is almost inevitable that women who speak up for our rights will be threatened by angry men. It’s a tale as old as the hills. “Ironically, this lot think they are on the side of ‘progress’, ‘kindness’ and ‘human rights’, but they have no issue using the most dehumanising, sexist abuse or threatening the most extreme violence. “Thankfully, the nastiness is dwarfed by messages of love and support, many of which have brought us to tears.” The women have not reported the threats to Police Scotland, who would need this to investigate. On Saturday several thousand protesters gathered in central London to demonstrate against the ruling. In Parliament Square, close to the Supreme Court building, many waved the trans Pride flag and held placards that criticised the government, particularly the health secretary, Wes Streeting. Statues including that of Winston Churchill had Pride flags taped to their hands, and one of the suffragist Millicent Fawcett was defaced with a slogan. The Metropolitan Police said they were investigating acts of vandalism. At mid-afternoon the crowd began an impromptu march, seemingly unhindered by the police and bringing traffic to a standstill. Demonstrators chanted slogans including “Wes Streeting, blood on your hands” and “F*** the judges, burn the courts”. Others chanted: “Trans liberation, no assimilation.” The founder of Mumsnet claimed the site had previously been “blacklisted” from hosting government advertising because of its stance on transgender issues. Justine Roberts said the company discovered in early 2022 that the media agency that buys adverts for the government was no longer placing them on the site. Roberts, who believes the decision was overturned by officials working for Boris Johnson, the prime minister at the time, said: “We’re not antitrans. But we believe women have a right to raise concerns about their sex-based rights.” Last year Mumsnet called for reform of the Equality Act to ensure biological women have access to single-sex spaces. Roberts said last week she feared for the company’s survival after it was branded “bigoted” and blacklisted by advertisers including Barclays and Ocado over allowing debate on trans issues on the site. She said yesterday she believed its problems extended to the government. “We were on a blacklist with Omnigov, the media buying agency that does all the government’s advertising,” Roberts said. “I spoke to [Johnson’s] team about this in May 2022 when I interviewed him for Mumsnet and they were really shocked and seemed to unlock the situation, as government spending with us started up again.” Omnigov, a division of the advertising giant MG OMD, buys advertising space for the government, although strategic decisions are taken by the Cabinet Office. A Cabinet Office spokesman said: “We have never blacklisted any outlet for gender-critical views. Mumsnet has continued to be used for advertising and partnerships, including in 2022. We follow transparent criteria for where we place advertising in our ‘Safe’ framework [for ethical decision-making] published online.” A senior civil servant who was familiar with the discussions at the time said: “[The government] got very wokey. The ‘woke mind virus’ did infect government advertising after 2022.” Trans activists targeted brands on social media, telling them not to advertise with Mumsnet, and tried to press the platform to “shut down” conversations about issues such as safeguarding of single-sex spaces. “Things got particularly tough during Covid. We had to make some difficult decisions, including redundancies,” Roberts said. “We’d gone almost overnight from a world where saying there are two sexes was a commonplace view to one where stating that belief could be labelled as hateful. That kind of climate understandably made risk-averse companies jumpy ... These days, advertisers rarely raise it.” Roberts believes attitudes in businesses have since shifted dramatically. “The lazy and ... misogynistic narrative that this was simply ‘mums in a moral panic’ has been challenged,” she said. “I think some organisations rushed to adopt guidance from groups like Stonewall without fully interrogating how extreme some of those positions had become.” Ocado, which last year pulled out of a partnership with Mumsnet, citing its “hateful political views”, apologised “unreservedly” on Friday. Roberts said Mumsnet was open to working with the grocery delivery service again. Although sex and gender topics account for only about 5 per cent of conversations on the forum, Roberts said they required a disproportionate amount of moderation, “often due to attempts to inflame or derail discussion”. Government departments are hurrying to work out what the Supreme Court ruling, which centred on whether trans women could take seats on boards reserved for women, means for policy. Employers are being advised to review all policies on dress codes, single-sex spaces and parental leave in a scramble to avoid legal problems. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has issued guidance to its 160,000 members, representing small and large businesses across the UK, advising them to “audit” internal guidelines to ensure “language reflects the legal definition of sex”. Corporate leaders are preparing to formulate new workplace rules to avoid legal problems. Alex Mahon, Channel 4’s chief executive, said: “The impact is pretty unclear at this time for companies. We will all need to take legal advice and that will take time.”

I lost friends and a job in the trans witch-hunt Hordes of cowards caved in to the fantasy. A few brave women did not Hadley Freeman Hadley Freeman ‘We don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.” The first time I heard that sentence was in August 2015: I was meeting one of my editors at The Guardian, where I then worked, before going on maternity leave. Along with the usual banal pregnancy chat — did I feel ready? Of course not, you never do! Etc etc — I suggested that maybe the paper should be careful about running too many columns by male writers insisting “trans women are women”. Should men define what a woman is, I asked, especially in a newspaper that prides itself on its feminist bona fides? That’s when I got hit with the wrong-side-ofhistory smackdown for what would be far from the last time. “The wrong side of history”: it’s how Mridul Wadhwa, then chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC), justified describing female rape victims as “bigoted” in 2021 if they asked for a female counsellor rather than a male one who identified as a woman (like Wadhwa). And it’s why advertisers including Barclays pulled their money out of Mumsnet when the women’s website dared to allow its users to discuss their concerns about how trans rights were conflicting with women’s rights. Last week the Supreme Court ruled that the wrong side of history is not where a lot of people believed it to be, when it came to the unanimous verdict that a woman is a biological fact, not a fantastical feeling. Whither the wrong-side-of-history folk now? Well, Wadhwa resigned last year from ERCC after an investigation found he failed to prioritise the needs of rape victims, despite that being his literal job. Only weeks after Mumsnet’s founder, Justine Roberts, learnt her site had been blacklisted “by Barclays’ top brass” for committing crimes of feminism, the bank’s then boss, Jes Staley, resigned following an investigation into his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. It is entirely unsurprising to me that so many of those who signed up to this flat-Earth ideology and insisted women should shut up and let men do whatever they wanted should turn out to be so morally bankrupt. Because who else would take such a stance? What kind of man would insist on competing in a sports match against women, despite their obvious discomfort, or tell women they knew what a woman was better than them? To give in to the activists’ demands was no big deal, women were told, but to refuse was fascism. I’ve been writing about the effects of gender ideology for more than a decade, and in that time I’ve had to leave a job I thought I’d have for ever, I’ve been publicly denounced by people I thought were friends and I’ve been blacklisted from more events than I can count. Of course there are lovely trans people, but the activists who have dominated this discussion for the past decade are bullies. Those who caved in to them — politicians, the NHS, the liberal media, the police, schools, publishers, journalists too scared to cover this issue properly — are cowards and stooges. In their absence, extraordinary women such as Susan Smith, Trina Budge and Marion Calder, better known as For Women Scotland, whom I have interviewed this week for The Sunday Times, stepped in to stop the wholescale theft of women’s rights. And what did they get for their trouble? A lot of abuse. From David Lammy to David Tennant, the roll-call of right-side-of-history men who enthusiastically denigrated women for saying primary school-level scientific truths could fill a phone book. The LBC radio presenter James O’Brien couldn’t even grasp why women would be happy about Wednesday’s ruling: “Do you pause and ask yourself, how did I end up on the same team as [Trump]?” he smirked, his brain audibly leaking out of his ears. Well, James, how’d you end up on the side that accuses rape victims of bigotry when they ask for a female counsellor? A roll-call of men enthusiastically denigrated women Trans people are still protected from discrimination by the Gender Recognition Act 2004, but the ludicrous era of self-ID and male “lesbians” and “trans women are women” is over. Activists insist — with no evidence — the verdict makes trans women “unsafe” and their “existence is threatened”. Women who have been in abusive relationships will recognise the tactics: say what I want or I will hurt myself, or you. They claim the result is “an overreach”, but if those same activists hadn’t overreached themselves and insisted biological sex is irrelevant, and any woman who disagreed should be screamed at, cancelled and pushed out on an ice floe, none of this would have happened. Their tactics have hurt women, children and trans people. No wonder the formerly ubiquitous Stonewall and Mermaids are now noticeable only by their absence. So now it’s April 2025, and what we knew 10, 20, 1,000 years ago has been confirmed: a woman is a woman. What a terrible waste of time, money and energy this has all been. On the other hand, how clarifying: now we know who believes in reality and who doesn’t. Who is brave and who isn’t. Who thinks men can magically become women and children can be born in the wrong body, and who doesn’t. Maybe every generation has its witch-hunt, its Joe McCarthy era, when innocent people are denounced for unimaginably bizarre reasons, and we’ve now lived through ours. I’ve lost friends but I’ve gained so many funnier, smarter ones, women — gay and straight — I never would have met were it not for all the men screaming that trans women are women. That’s how I explain the past decade to myself: this was a test. Some passed. A lot more failed.

I’ve felt unsafe on pitch — trans ruling helps to protect women Alyson Rudd Alyson Rudd Next image › There was a malicious glint in his eye and the first thing I thought was: “Where did he come from?” The second thing I thought was: “He’s bloody broken my wrist.” Until that moment I had been very lucky indeed that the men’s team I played for usually faced opposition that either did not mind there was a woman involved or, if they did, had the good sense to take advantage of my relative lack of physical strength without trying to injure me in the process. I had to argue to be included to start with. One or two chaps felt uncomfortable about the prospect of me being injured just by being dispossessed but once we established that what we all really had in common was a love for the beautiful side of the game; the patterns, the passing, the crossing, the volleys, the side-foot finishes and not the two-footed tackles or elbows in the face, then we found a heartening equilibrium. I really loved those matches. We played in the park in the summer and under the floodlights on concrete in the winter. I once skidded on my face across the hard surface a few weeks before my wedding day and some gravel became embedded in my bottom lip and made it swell, and everyone joked it was the best sort of injury to get before my big day because some girls would have paid good money for pumped-up lips. It was my choice to play with and against men. OK, it did not feel like a choice because there were no casual midweek teams comprised of women playing against women, but still, there were no blurred lines. I was female, the rest were male and I took on the risks knowingly. The growth of women’s football meant it became possible for women to seek out women and play only against women. Unless, of course, a man who identified as female was involved. The lines became blurred, so blurred that we ended up in a society where a 17- year-old girl was suspended from playing for six games for asking a player on a women’s team if they were a man when he was clearly not a biological woman. The teenager’s safety or perplexity were not important to anyone, bizarrely, and rather the feelings of the man took precedence. There followed some woolly guidance from the FA involving case-by-case basis reviews and testosterone levels but, as I found to my cost, men can hurt women on the pitch without doing anything illegal. My assailant simply aimed very hard indeed straight at my face. I was taking my turn in goal and instinctively lifted my hands to block the shot that was intended, I have no doubt, to hurt me. The whistle had gone, most other players were looking down the pitch and in that brief second I felt as exposed as if I had been in a dark alley facing a violent mugger. I felt my wrist snap and then turn to jelly. The bloke disappeared, no one claimed to even know who he was. He was small and wiry and young but he knew I was the fragile one and that he had the advantage of being male. Those blurred lines can now be resolved thanks to the UK Supreme Court ruling which came to the notso-illogical conclusion that women are defined by their biological sex. And yet, rather than this be celebrated as the triumph of common sense, as a ruling which supports women’s lives and rights, there has been so much hand-wringing that I fear the trans lobby will become even more aggressive but with an added dash of martyrdom. “ I felt as exposed as if I had been in a dark alley facing a violent mugger. I felt my wrist snap and turn to jelly The manner in which the news was handled by the BBC was, frankly, grim. Some of the interviews did not even try to be balanced. Female campaigners were accused of ignoring trans women who needed female spaces. On Radio 5 Live an otherwise excellent breakfast host had to be calmly reprimanded by Helen Joyce, the author and gendercritical activist, for jumping straight to what the ruling meant for devastated trans women instead of asking what it meant for half the population. It felt as if the Beeb had sat staff down fresh from a meeting with Stonewall and told them something very unpleasant had just happened in the Supreme Court. Nothing unpleasant happened. Women are being given the chance to make real choices, to be protected, to feel safe where they need to feel safe. Football finally found women and women at last found their way back to football only for that glorious state of affairs to be undermined by rule-makers who simply did not care what was best for them. The highest court in the land does not support them to do that any more and this should be a cause for relief, not continued vitriol.

Mail on Sunday [4]

MINISTERS IN WHATSAPP PLOT TO DEFY TRANS RULING As Supreme Court judgment piles pressure on Starmer to protect women-only spaces, leaked messages reveal revolt on frontbench The Mail on Sunday20 Apr 2025By Glen Owen POLITICAL EDITOR PROTEST: Transrights activists on the Churchill statue in Parliament Square yesterday LABOUR ministers are secretly plotting to defy the landmark court ruling that men who change gender are not legally women, leaked WhatsApp messages obtained by The Mail on Sunday have revealed. The Government claimed to welcome the Supreme Court judgment – but the exchanges reveal the private fury on Sir Keir Starmer’s frontbench, with ministers planning to hold a meeting this week to ‘decide a way forwards’ and ‘organise’. In the messages, sent on Thursday evening, Culture Minister Sir Chris Bryant joined an attack on Baroness Falkner, chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), who earlier that day had said that the ruling – that a woman is defined by biological sex – clearly meant trans women could not use single-sex female facilities or compete in women’s sports. When an MP said that Lady Falkner’s words were ‘pretty appalling’, Mr Bryant wrote: ‘Agreeed [sic].’ Last night, with the Government in turmoil, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch wrote to the Cabinet Secretary calling for an investigation into a statement by Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson, who reacted to the judgment by saying: ‘We have always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex.’ In her letter to Sir Chris Wormald, who is also the Head of the Civil Service, Ms Badenoch argued that it could constitute a ‘false public statement’ – because last June Ms Phillipson declared that trans women with penises should be able to use single-sex spaces. Writing on the WhatsApp group of LGBT+ Labour MPs, Home Office Minister Dame Angela Eagle said: ‘The ruling is not as catastrophic as it seems but the EHRC guidance might be and there are already signs that some public bodies are overreacting’ – a possible reference to the British Transport Police’s interim announcement that strip searches of trans women would now be done by male officers, not female. Dame Angela added that ‘we have to get on with doing the stuff we said we’d do in the manifesto’, which included a pledge to protect ‘the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity’. Another MP on the WhatsApp group wrote that it was ‘sad to see some institutions choose to ignore the Supreme Court’s very strong line that trans people are protected by the Equality Act too’. Dame Angela replied: ‘They won’t be feeling that way now and we need to remember that and organise.’ MPs agreed with her suggestion that they should seek a meeting ‘ASAP with [the] relevant Equality Minister’ after the Commons returns from Easter recess this week. News of the WhatsApp messages came as thousands of trans rights campaigners descended on central London yesterday to rally against the landmark ruling. The ‘emergency demonstration’ ended with at least two statues in Parliament Square daubed with graffiti, with ‘fag rights’ and a heart painted on the banner held by suffragist Millicent Fawcett. ‘Trans rights are human rights’ was also sprayed on the pedestal bearing a memorial to South African military leader Jan Christian Smuts. Yesterday, other bodies vowed to challenge the ruling, with teachers voting at a conference in Liverpool to stop schools making ‘kneejerk’ changes to their trans policies until the government issues further guidance. The NASUWT union claimed the judgment could lead schools to make rules which put transgender teachers ‘at risk of harm’. Labour has come under fire over its response to last Wednesday’s unanimous verdict. Health Minis Dame Angela Eagle Let’s meet about this when we get back from Easter recess to decide a way forwards – the ruling is not as catastrophic as it seems but the EHRC [Equality and Human Rights Commission] guidance might be & there are already signs that some public bodies are overreacting Chris Murray Definitely agree, a meeting early next week would be good Steve Race I thought that the EHRC Chair on Today [saying the ruling meant trans women could not use single-sex female facilities or compete in women’s sports] was pretty appalling this morning Sir Chris Bryant Agreeed [sic] ter Karin Smyth failed four times to clarify which changing room trans women should now use. In contrast, Lady Falkner – who hailed the ruling for bringing ‘clarity’ – told the BBC: ‘Single-sex services like changing rooms must be based on biological sex. ‘If a male person is allowed to use a women-only service or facility, it isn’t any longer single-sex.’ She also agreed that the ‘enormously consequential’ court decision also meant trans women could not take part in female sports. Lady Falkner, whose watchdog is working on an updated code of conduct for public services, said the NHS would now be pursued if it did not follow new guidelines on single-sex spaces. Current guidance says trans people should be ‘accommodated’ according to how they ‘identify’. In 2023, Lady Falkner survived attempts to oust her from her job because of her staunch defence of women’s rights after the Mail exposed claims of an ‘ideologically motivated witch-hunt’ against her. Interviewing her on the BBC’s Today programme last week, Nick Robinson said her position ‘has brought you extraordinary levels of personal grief’ – including once being described as a ‘Nazi who ‘Terrible abuse for standing up for women’ wants to dehumanise trans people’. Mims Davies, Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, said: ‘In public Keir Starmer and his Cabinet pretended they supported the Supreme Court judgment. But in private we know Labour are seething, as these texts prove. ‘Like so many brave women, Baroness Falkner has suffered terrible abuse for standing up for the rights of women and girls. Now we know Labour will do all they can to undermine her work. ‘The Prime Minister needs to come out and say he will support the EHRC guidance when it comes out. Anything less will be Labour betraying the rights of women once again.’ Pressed on the issue last year, Ms Phillipson said: ‘If you were someone that had gone through that formal process of recognition you are, to all intents and purposes, for legal purposes, regarded as being in a different gender regardless of the sex into which you were born... I would think that in those cases people would be using female toilets.’ In her letter to Sir Chris about Ms Phillipson’s apparent new stance, Ms Badenoch said: ‘If ministers or advisers are found to have instructed civil servants to issue misleading material, then there is a clear route to resolve through resignation.’ Sir Chris and Dame Angela declined to comment. MAC IS AWAY Article Name:MINISTERS IN WHATSAPP PLOT TO DEFY TRANS RULING Publication:The Mail on Sunday Author:By Glen Owen POLITICAL EDITOR Start Page:1 End Page:1

Final proof that party I once loved is hopelessly out of touch The Mail on Sunday20 Apr 2025By PROFESSOR JO PHOENIX ● Jo Phoenix is a professor of criminology and co-founder of Open University’s Gender Critical Research Network. IWAS once a member of the Labour Party – but not any more. I left in 2021, the day that David Lammy dismissed women’s rights campaigners like me as ‘dinosaurs... hoarding their rights’. For good measure, he claimed that men can grow a cervix. I could see then that, on the issue of trans rights, my party had lost the plot. It had veered so wildly from what I felt was right – and frankly what the vast majority of the public feels is right – that I could no longer support it. The Supreme Court ruling should have been a wake-up call for Labour but the party has shown itself to be hopelessly out of touch once again. The silence from the PM on such a socially transformative ruling is tin-eared enough. But now the likes of Home Office Minister Dame Angela Eagle are plotting to thwart the judgment in a cowardly WhatsApp group of Labour MPs. Comments like hers that ‘some public bodies are overreacting’ to the ruling are dangerous, particularly for organisations having to implement the court’s findings. Has the British Transport Police, in announcing it would amend its strip-search guidelines, ‘overreacted’? Of course not, and to say so is deliberately misleading, but it shows how deep the rot has set in. On and on this WhatsApp group goes, its members burying their heads deeper and deeper in the sand. The Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Baroness Falkner, is branded ‘appalling’ after she welcomed the ruling’s ‘clarity’ in a radio interview. Are these politicians saying that they are going to ignore what the law says? You either act according to the law or you break the law. Even after the ruling, Health Minister Karin Smyth struggled to answer when asked whether trans women should be able to use female-only changing rooms. Women’s Minister Bridget Phillipson may have said that the ruling brings ‘clarity and confidence’, but her disingenuous comment that Labour has ‘always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex’ is nothing short of gaslighting. Labour peer Harriet Harman, herself one of the architects of the Equality Act, high-handedly declared the verdict ‘correctly interprets’ current legislation – as if to say that the ruling was what Labour had always meant. This is the party that pledged at the election to halve violence against women, but how – if it cannot still define what a woman is? It’s insulting to those, like me, who have spent years caught up in this Kafkaesque debate – and suffered for it. As an academic accused of transphobia and hounded out of my job with the Open University, I have suffered death threats and online harassment. Last year, I successfully sued my former employers but not before I’d been driven to breaking point. So to be in the public gallery at the Supreme Court last week was utterly electrifying. The ruling was simple: that women are a category of people who deserve respect and dignity, and trans people are a category who deserve respect and dignity. But Labour didn’t get the memo. One day, if and when the party gets itself out of this mess, I may rejoin. But, by failing to keep up with the law, they are the ones in danger of being branded dinosaurs. Article Name:Final proof that party I once loved is hopelessly out of touch Publication:The Mail on Sunday Author:By PROFESSOR JO PHOENIX ● Jo Phoenix is a professor of criminology and co-founder of Open University’s Gender Critical Research Network. Start Page:5 End Page:5

Zealots will never admit they’re wrong The Mail on Sunday20 Apr 2025 FANATICS never give up. They are so convinced that they are right and good, and that everyone else is wrong and bad, that a mere Supreme Court ruling against them barely gives them pause. This is so with the transgender rights enthusiasts who are still numerous and influential in the upper levels of the Labour Party and the radical movement it supports. As The Mail on Sunday reports today, actual ministers are openly organising a hostile response to the court decision that a woman must be defined by objective biology, not by a subjective judgment. It is women, including many radical and Left-wing women, who have been the fiercest opponents of the trans campaign. One of the militants’ main targets is the commendably rational Baroness Falkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Lady Falkner is hardly a crusted reactionary from Tory Clubland. She is a former Liberal Democrat with impeccably radical credentials. But transgender rights militants were appalled by her swift, sensible acceptance that the court ruling means trans women may not use single-sex female facilities or compete in women’s sports. There are parts of the Labour manifesto which might be read to suggest that the court had gone too far. But few of Labour’s actual voters can actually think so. The general delight with which the judgment was received reflected a growing public exasperation with the transgender rights cause. This movement is incomprehensible to millions, and disliked by most of those who do understand it. What sort of world do these zealots live in, where it is necessary to deny the blazingly obvious, and to fight against what is reasonable? They should recognise that they have been fairly defeated, and find a better cause to fight for. Article Name:Zealots will never admit they’re wrong Publication:The Mail on Sunday Start Page:20 End Page:20

Sunday Telegraph [3]

Bridgerton star chides ‘new low’ Rowling The Sunday Telegraph20 Apr 2025By Ruth Hallows A BRIDGERTON actress has attacked JK Rowling over her views on the Supreme Court’s transgender ruling. Nicola Coughlan criticised the Harry Potter author and vocal gender-critical campaigner after she posted a celebratory photo on X on Wednesday following the landmark court decision, showing her smoking a cigar and holding up a drink. In response, Coughlan shared a post on Instagram linking to an article headlined: “This is a new low for JK Rowling.” Underneath, she referred to HBO’s new Harry Potter series, writing: “Keep your new Harry Potter lads. Wouldn’t touch it with a 10ft pole.” Coughlan, 38, who also starred in Derry Girls, later uploaded a video to her Instagram saying that she was “completely horrified” by the court ruling, and encouraged her followers to donate to her fundraiser for Not A Phase, a trans charity. The Irish actress added that she would match donations up to €10,000 (£8,565), and has since raised nearly £100,000. The Supreme Court’s ruling was hailed as a victory by gender-critical campaigners and politicians. It followed a years-long legal battle between the campaign group For Women Scotland and the Scottish Government over the definition of a woman, and has provided much greater clarity than many expected. Rowling, a financial supporter of For Women Scotland, wrote on X: “It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they’ve protected the rights of women and girls across the UK.” The announcement coincided with the news that Severus Snape, the professor played by Alan Rickman in the film series, would be played by Paapa Essiedu, the 34-year-old British actor, in the HBO adaption, of which Rowling is an executive producer. The series has been plagued with controversy as a result of Rowling’s gender-critical stance. In October, industry sources told The Times that some people were reluctant to work with the author because they did not support her views, or feared abuse from those who disagree with her. A month later, HBO was forced to defend its decision to work with the writer, reminding the public that the author had a right to her “personal views”. The company said: “[Warner Bros has] been working with JK Rowling and in the Harry Potter business for over 20 years and called her contribution ‘invaluable’. “We are proud to once again tell the story of Harry Potter – the heart-warming books that speak to the power of friendship, resolve and acceptance. “JK Rowling has a right to express her personal views. We will remain focused on the development of the new series, which will only benefit from her involvement.” Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who played the lead roles in the films, have all distanced themselves from the author’s beliefs following her 2020 essay in which she argued “transgender women are women”. Article Name:Bridgerton star chides ‘new low’ Rowling Publication:The Sunday Telegraph Author:By Ruth Hallows Start Page:5 End Page:5

TRANSWRITES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

Judge Tinnion should be ashamed of allowing tribunal to become a circus of harassment, by Gemma Stone
Calls for boycott as Oxford Literary Festival continually promotes bigotry, by Gemma Stone
My doctor emailed me back, by Abigail Thorn
The Rainbow Laces campaign isn't enough, by Arthur Webber
How Erika Hilton - a Black travesti trans woman - is changing Brasil, by Lis Welch
When was the T added to LGBT? A quick history, by Sarah Clarke
Trans people are the greatest assault on women in JK Rowling’s life time, apparently, by Gemma Stone
NHS & puberty blockers: Former GIDS patients reflect on long wait times, invasive assessments, by Sasha Baker.

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The Trans Agenda: Supreme Court ruling sends papers into a frenzy

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THE WEEK AHEAD

THE PAPERS

THE PAPERS Monday 14 April - Sunday 20 April

Monday Total: 2

Daily Mail [1]

Telegraph [1]

Tuesday Total: 1

Daily Mail [1]

Wednesday Total: 2

The Guardian [2]

Thursday Total: 28

The Guardian [3]

The Times [7]

Daily Mail [7]

Telegraph [11]

Friday Total: 18

The Guardian [3]

The Times [4]

Daily Mail [5]

Telegraph [6]

Saturday Total: 14

The Guardian [2]

The Times [4]

Daily Mail [4]

Telegraph [4]

Sunday Total: 14

The Observer [3]

The Sunday Times [0]

Mail on Sunday [4]

Sunday Telegraph [3]

TRANSWRITES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

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