Trans People are Not the Problem

Another Equality Rights Nightmare joins the Ring

On the 16th of April 2025, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex (Sim, P. 2025). 

According to live reporter Ben Hatton, the ruling decided that, “[T]he legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, in a decision which could have far-reaching implications for who can access single-sex services and spaces.

It came about after the Scottish government included transgender women in quotas to ensure gender balance on public sector boards. Campaign group “For Women Scotland” argued that sex-based protections should only apply to people born female.

The judges were tasked with deciding on the correct interpretation of “sex” and “woman” in the main piece of legislation setting out sex-based legal protections.

Specifically, they ruled that the definition of sex as used in the Equality Act 2010 is "binary" and decided by biology - a person who was not born as a biological female cannot obtain the legal protections the Act affords to women by changing their gender with a Gender Recognition Certificate.

It's important to note that the Act still provides transgender people with protections against discrimination, and that the judges said it was not their place to weigh in on those definitions in the wider public debate.” (2025)

The latter statement is particularly notable. Firstly, the suggestion that the Act will still protect transgender people from discrimination does not address the fact that this ruling provides TERFs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] and other transphobic people an even bigger megaphone to spew and act on their hatred towards trans people. 

Secondly, the fact that the judges said it wasn’t their place to weigh in on definitions when it comes to transgender people is laughable, considering they did make it their place and did weigh in on definitions. This ruling is the singular proof of this. By deciding that gender is defined as biologically connected to sex, it is weighing in on definitions in the wider public debate. And it is a bigoted one at that. 

Who is this going to impact? 

Everyone, in short. But to detail the extent to which this is a step backwards for all women and genders.

Transgender and non-binary people

Particularly trans women, an already heavily marginalized group of people are going to face ongoing discrimination. The law is simply being louder in its lack of nuance and protections for some of the most vulnerable people when it comes to gender equality. 

Intersex People

As mentioned by Cambridge UCU [trade union for academics], this ruling continues to treat Intersex people and their experiences as invisible, even though they are approximately 1.7-4% of the population, and “for whom biological sex could never be ‘self-explanatory and require no further explanation’” (2025). 

If 1.7-4% of the population may have had their gender assigned at birth with reproductive parts that do not conform to typically binary conventions of sex, and therefore Intersex people—whose sex characteristics don’t fit typical binary notions—are excluded from these legal conversations, even though they challenge the assumption that sex is binary and easily defined, are excluded from the conversation. 

Any scrutiny they have experienced before the ruling is going to increase. What may already be an invasive conversation will continue and exacerbate harassment. Suppose you consider the fact that intersex people, as newborn children, were not able to consent to the gender they have been assigned at birth. In that case, the judgments made by transphobic people about their gender will involve more scrutiny about body parts that no one has any business knowing about.

Cis-gender women

Imane Khelif is the primary example of recent history as to why cisgender women are not safe from discrimination and aggression against trans women, and it’s as if this period of global news was forgotten. Any cis women who do not present in traditionally feminine ways or do not conform to strict gender binary norms, such as masc presenting women, or women with athletic builds, or women that god forbid is not seen as conventionally attractive to the male gaze, they will be impacted. 

In 2021, Eloise Stonborough, Associate Director of Policy and Research at Stonewall, told the I that as a butch lesbian, “I think there’s been tens of times someone has questioned me using the women’s toilet, and ten of those experiences have been particularly frightening – and they’re just the ones I can remember,” and iterated that such harassment is going to be an increasing problem for all women that don’t present as feminine with this increasing level of transphobia in the general public and legislation. (Andersson, J. 2021)

Transphobes are single-minded in their bigotry. 

The reason that it is possible to list the different groups of people that are likely going to be adversely impacted by this ruling is the fact that transphobic people are single-minded when it comes to their prejudice and discrimination. 

Transphobes make rulings that don’t consider multiple scenarios because they can’t comprehend multiple scenarios that are outside of their preconceived judgments of who is supposedly a ‘threat’ to society and women’s safety.

A key example of this was when Labour Member of Parliament Dawn Butler questioned Tory (Conservative) Chief Secretary Simon Clarke on Sky News about this, particularly the ban on trans people entering bathrooms that are not the gender they were assigned at birth. 

Butler first introduced the problem with these debates is the exclusion of trans people in the debates themselves, displaying the reality that often cis people take over platforms where trans people would be most suited to have their voice amplified. She states that, 

“What we have to do now is talk about the protections of trans women and trans men who are often left out of the debate. And actually, I think within this debate, I actually think we shouldn’t have debates anymore without a trans man or a trans woman being included in the debate, because it’s always talking about them without them.” (2025). 

She continued to elaborate on an additional problem with the ban is how this can be manipulated by cis-men who want to enter women’s spaces by claiming to be trans men. She highlights with a personal anecdote that gender nonconformity is an existing issue for people such as masculine-presenting women in these spaces, stating that, 

“I do not police people in public toilets. And I think that’s where we’re getting to as a society in policing what a woman looks like. You know, I have a butch, lesbian friend who gets hounded out of women’s toilets, and it is heartbreaking [...] and what concerns me about the toilet debate is if trans men then have to use women’s toilets, that’s going to make women less safe. Because how are you going to stop a man, a ‘normal’ man, going in women’s toilets and saying I’m a trans man?” 

This is where Clarke interrupts Butler a second time in this particular clip about the debate, simply stating, “I don’t follow that logic.” Butler asked, “Why?” to which Clarke answered, 

“Well, look, the point is that we’re saying that people who are biologically men shouldn’t be using women’s toilets. That’s the point of this ruling, among other things.” 

This is where we see the single-mindedness first present, the lack of more than one scenario for possibly many transphobes. To have Clarke catch up with Butler’s argument, she has to elaborate, “But a trans man is biologically a woman, [someone] who is transitioning from a woman to a man. And so they would then have to use women’s toilets.” 

This is followed by deafening silence as Clarke blankly stares upward, trying to crank the dial-up in his thought process, which extends the silence into an answer of its own, one of blistering stupidity. The ongoing exclusion of multiple groups of people, such as trans men in a debate about trans people, continues to demonstrate that single-mindedness in transphobia in itself lacks nuance and is never about women’s safety. 

As somewhat mentioned by Dawn Butler, it is a tactless way of platforming transphobic ideology that makes (a worringly high amount of) cis women become on board with the policing of women’s bodies and the reproductive parts as a way to define women – something that Feminism was built to dismantle in the first place. 

And yet it is being platformed and funded on a large enough scale to infiltrate and infest legislation – J.K. Rowling being notable for this. 

Stop funding bigotry. Stop funding transphobia. 

As a result of many people either a) not knowing of Rowling’s transphobic remarks and attitude, b) knowing but choosing to ignore that because they agree, or c) knowing but choosing to ignore because they wanted to buy Hogwarts Legacy, J.K. Rowling has managed to essentially crowdfund her transphobia into £70,000 for this ruling. 

As reported by Kately Burns,

“J.K. Rowling, author of the ‘Harry Potter’ series and notorious anti-trans advocate, posted a photo of herself smoking a cigar and holding a glass of wine on her yacht. ‘I love it when a plan comes together,’ the caption reads. [...] [T]he “plan” Rowling was referencing was a U.K. Supreme Court judgment that ruled trans women should not be considered women, essentially wiping out decades of civil rights advances for British transgender people. [...] There’s also a significant financial component, with Rowling reportedly donating £70,000 to For Scotland Women, the organization that brought the original suit.” (2025). 

Bluntly, the money J.K.Rowling has earned from people’s fantastical nostalgia directly funded a major backstep in trans rights, women's rights, and human rights. The choice to purchase merchandise from a two-decade-old franchise over the choice to protect trans women is passive and active. One that Avada Kedavra’d decades of progress that Feminists such as Judith Butler have set the groundwork for. 

TERFs, you are not safe from transphobia having an impact on you. 

If you do not fit the ‘conventions’ of presenting as a woman, you will be harassed. That is the simple truth of it. You are not safe from bigotry and harassment. Trans people are not the problem.

Do you know who they are? Cis Men. Always have, always will be. And your bigotry against trans people fueled their bigotry towards you. 

Cis men did not need to lie about being trans men to access women's spaces. They already do, and have few repercussions that are proportionate to the harassment women have experienced as a result of cis men having little to no respect for genders outside of their own. 

In the Summer of 2024, it was reported that violence against women became a national emergency in England and Wales, that an estimated two million women a year are victims of male violence (Dodd, V. 2024).

The Guardian dedicated a ‘Killed women count’ in 2024. By the 31st December that year, they counted 80 women who were killed by men in the UK (Topping, A., Banfield-Nwachi, M., Abdul, G. & Rachel Hall, R. 2024). That is 80 too many.

Men do not need to pretend to be trans to be violent to women. They already are and get away with it.

Trans people are not the problem. 

Male violence against women is in itself a large and nuanced topic that is a separate conversation, but the aforementioned national emergency in Britain is important to recognise because any TERF that blames trans people for women’s lack of safety contributes to the problem of women’s safety, rather than counteracting it. 

It persists with the ongoing oppression and marginalisation of trans people, whilst not appropriately holding cis men accountable for their statistically and anecdotally documented actions of violence against women. 

Being an ally to trans people by respecting their existence in any space is the minimum we can accomplish as an individual and a collective. Support local trans spaces. Financially support trans-owned businesses. Join rallies. Attend trans-centred events: joy-filled gigs, art shows, and community gatherings. Write to your local representatives. Use whatever platform or privilege you have to uplift trans voices. Trans people deserve safe spaces. Let trans people know they aren’t alone in achieving liberation and joy. 

Liberation for women can only be wholly achieved when there is liberation for trans women. Trans rights are women's rights. Trans rights are human rights. 

Trans people are not the problem. 

Author: Hannah Govan

Editors: Blenda Y., Alisha B.

Image source: Samuel Regan-Asante, Unsplash