NERVE ITCH

- taking your ally's weapon out of their scabard to use yourself

- using someone else's shoulder as a rifle stand

- nudging someone's chin up with the tip of your weapon

I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.

The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.

Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.

A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:

Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.

Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.

Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns

Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.

I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.

It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:

Throat Curtain?

Z1r1al

https://archiveofourown.org/works/75388256

Summary:

A missing tooth. A standard hockey emergency.

When a brutal elbow leaves Shane Hollander spitting blood on the ice, he lands immediately in the hands of the opposing team's dentist.

We're here, we're queer, we're really fucking tired so we're just gonna go straight to biting instead of feigning polite confusion if you're gonna be a bigot this time, just so you know.

Happy Pride!

Following up on this briefly now the guidance has been delivered. I have briefly looked through is and read analysis by legal experts. I am likely to follow up in more detail

As far as I can tell, it is an absolute dog's dinner, full of contradictory statements, ambiguous hedging (lots of may be/is likely/is unlikely) and is of almost no use to service providers wishing to ensure they are legally compliant.

Some language has softened, but it remains a lawfare bully's charter.

For example: 1) There are many references to the supreme court redefinition of terms in EA2010 to base "sex" on "biological sex" ("BS" which as far as I can tell is not the outcome of any specific scientific test, just observation, assignment and recording around birth or as near to that point where there is an external ambiguity - i.e. "administrative sex"). 1b) It then states that there is no document which categorically captures this information for an individual (13.197) and such relevant documents as there such as birth certificates or GRCs are cannot be demanded for privacy reasons 1c) It implicitly invalidates the solemn oath required by recipients of GRC documents "I _ do solemnly and sincerely declare that:

I am over 18 years of age.

I transitioned in DD/MM/YY I have lived as a (insert ‘male’ or ‘female’ as appropriate) throughout the period of years before the date of this statutory declaration and I intend to live in that gender until death." 1d) It also makes the lived experience requirements for new GRCs nigh-on impossible 2) It is simultaneously mandatory for trans men to be required to use female-designated spaces and possible to exclude them based on other users' sensitivities

3) Services covering multiple protected groups are declared possible. Providing a single-sex service may be mandatory and making it biological sex ("BS") only may be discriminatory to trans people unless proportional, but including trans people may be discriminatory to non-trans people. Litigation risk from all sides 4) There is an explicit example 4.100 that "GC" or religious-based beliefs about homosexuality should not be stereotypes as having negative attitudes to (respectively) trans or gay people (scope creep). This is a reworking of the "hate the sin, not the sinner" rationale used by some religious people. I cannot see how it has a place in equalities guidelines. Those beliefs are definitionally negative about the people embodying them. A similar statement would not be made about eugenicists or racial supremacists 5) Sex-specific medical services (gynecology, urology, mammography) can exclude trans people even when their bodies require attention from those services 13.147 elevates "discomfort" by an individual in a protected category to the level of justifying exclusion of one in another. This has nothing to do with "proportionality" and is an absolutely chilling precedent both in this case and for other categories 13.170 indicates "13.170 It is unlikely to be either practical or appropriate to approach any particular individual to make enquiries about their sex in relation to facilities, such as toilets, which are incidental to the primary service."

Are toilets part of the primary service of a pub, or restaurant or office? Are changing rooms part of the primary purpose of a gym? 6) This will inevitably result in service providers discontinuing sex-designated services and facilities or reworking to be unisex 7) The main outcome I foresee - beyond daily distress to several hundred thousand British people - will be years of legal threats and wranglings by those with the deepest pockets and a chilling effect on public life

8) There is a of handwaving based on assumed existence of segregated third spaces in addition to sex-designated. This is both unlikely to be represented by actal facilities on the ground, and is just an awful, dehumanising, othering approach 9) Enforcement is nigh-on impossible, equity is nil.

This could have been avoided with new legislation which reasserted the original spirit and intent of the earlier acts (as evidenced by the speeches in Hansard and surrounding commentary) to overturn this radical reinterpretation.

Worryingly, bad-faith or simply incorrect representations of rights are being trumped across media channels, including the national broadcaster.

This will devastate and victimise members of an already vulnerable group, as well as anyone who sufficiently motivated people decide may possibly be in those groups.

Horrific.

ALSO

Dear Clive,

Last time we met, we spoke about waiting for the guidance due to be published by the EHRC. That guidance has now been published and laid before Parliament. It will become law if not rejected by MPs.

It is now clear that this guidance is the bathroom ban trans people were fearing. Some features of older versions of the guidance have been watered down or removed, such as the unworkable advise about service providers asking for proof of “biological sex” by requesting identification (no form of identification records this information in the UK).

The updated guidance explicitly advises service providers enact a blanket ban on trans people using spaces according to their acquired gender by creating a catch-22 situation: that to include trans people in this way is discrimination against both cis women and cis men. To avoid being taken to court, service providers must enact a blanket ban on trans women using facilities according to their acquired gender.

This is a bathroom ban. Far from providing “clarity”, it pushes all responsibility for enacting the ban, and defending against nuisance litigation, onto service providers. It also explicitly points out there is no meaningful way to enforce such policies, because no forms of identification exist that record “biological sex”, or “sex at birth”.

This is a calamitous situation for trans people, service providers, and gender non-conforming cis people. In 2016, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office warned British LGBT people about travelling to the US in the wake of legislation in North Carolina that forced trans people to use toilets according to their sex at birth. What are we supposed to do when our own government issues legal guidance advising businesses to enact the same bathroom ban in our own country? This guidance must be debated by Parliament, and it must be rejected by MPs. Further, the Labour Government must legislate to make clear that trans women are afforded the same rights as cis women, and trans men are afforded the same rights as cis men in the Equality Act. It should also legislate to ensure that holders of gender recognition certificates are “for all intents and purposes” considered their acquired sex, as was written into the Gender Recognition Act in 2004. Anything less would be a permanent stain on the legacy of the Labour Party, and remembered long into the future in the same way as Section 28. It is my sincere belief that we are witnessing the systemic dismantling of the human rights of trans people under a Labour government. Regards, Katie Fenn

AND

(No alt text was provided for this one).

And this template letter:

take a mix-and-match approach and personalise it if you can. be polite and don't use language that will have your letter rejected, but don't shy away from describing the consequences.

You might want to reference:

"Like a snowball: the growth and impact of the gender critical movement in the UK", Amnesty International, published 21st May 2026.

Samaritans responds to EHRC guidance after 40% rise in calls following Supreme Court ruling, Samaritans, published 22nd May 2026

Press statement published 14th May 2026 by ILGA (prior to the EHRC guidance but relevant to the UK's piss-poor standing on trans and queer rights generally in Europe).

If you have a UK MP (and if you live in the UK you do have one) please do this and share it ASAP, there is a limited period of time before Parliament vote on the guidance.

If you don't have a UK MP please at least share this post.

POST DATE: 25th MAY 2026.