Today, the UK government accepted guidance which excludes trans people from single sex spaces.
This is a change to the interpretation and implementation of the equalities act which legally prevents any trans person from using the correct changing rooms, toilets, or even attending gym classes.
It’s more than a bathroom ban. It’s something that will prevent us living our lives.
And, as it stands, the guidance is markedly worse for trans men than it is for trans women.
Taken from page 268 of the pdf linked above:
This guidance sets out, in a legally binding code, that trans men can be barred from both men’s and women’s facilities.
While it does go on to say that preventing us from accessing any services might be grounds for a discrimination claim, that’s in direct contradiction to the paragraphs shown above, and right now is purely hypothetical until tested in a court of law.
As the news of the government’s decision to enforce this guidance spreads, a lot is going to be said about the impact on trans women. That’s good, a lot needs to be said.
I doubt, though, that as much will be said about the impact on trans men. I doubt it because when this guidance was first released as a draft I saw dozens of not hundreds of comments talking about how the only impact was to trans women, joking that trans men should use the women’s toilets to make transphobes uncomfortable.
Please don’t fall into that pattern this time, not now this is really happening.
Protect trans women, please, but I am begging you, protect trans men, too.
This guidance systematically erases us from public life. It is deliberate. We are not collateral damage, we are the target.
Think of us in your anger.
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