Today the highest court in the land confirmed that the law recognises reality: women are adult human females, and men cannot become women.
It has taken five years, half a million pounds raised through small donations by women organising around their kitchen tables and on Mumsnet, and three rounds of court hearings. But finally common sense has prevailed.
The law is clear: public bodies, employers, business, schools and universities must return to recognising that there are two sexes and that sex matters. They cannot force women to share female changing rooms, showers or toilets with men masquerading as women. This is discrimination and harassment, and it’s unlawful under the Equality Act.
This ruling corrects fifteen years of misunderstanding of the Equality Act, which drove organisations to adopt nonsensical ideas such as “male lesbians” and “pregnant men”, and to allow men and boys to compete in women’s sports, receive women’s awards and volunteer as girl guide leaders. This is unfair and unsafe.
The judgment says clearly that when it comes to single-sex services for women, the Equality Act permits “the exclusion of all males including males living in the female gender” regardless of whether they have a Gender Recognition Certificate. This covers both specialist services like rape crisis centres and everyday services like changing rooms.
It also emphasises that organisations must collect clear data about the two sexes. This will put an end to organisations asking people to choose from 3, 12 or 56 genders when they fill in a form.
The judgment recognised that trans people are also vulnerable, but for different reasons than women. They too are protected by the Equality Act. The law protects them from losing their jobs or being paid less because they are trans. It doesn’t give them the right to demand entry to opposite sex spaces or to insist other people pretend not to notice their sex.
This judgment vindicates every woman and man who has faced complaints of “transphobia” at work for stating what was in the Equality Act all along. Hundreds of thousands of women have been harassed by their employers, and thousands – including me – have been investigated at work for simply stating biological reality. These witch trials have to end now.
The government must take this judgment to heart, and tear up years of bad guidance, bad policies, bad data and bad advice.