jane fae, a director of TransActual, writes on the eve of launching a new campaign to get MPs to reject the Equality & Human Rights Commission's (EHRC) bathroom ban. 

Scrap the Bathroom Ban
🚨This is urgent🚨 Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities, has a decision to make. The EHRC, a regulator mired in controversy over anti-trans views, has sent a new draft Code of Practice to our Equality Act which would lead to the exclusion of trans people from public life. Act now. Ask your MP to urge the government to scrap the bathroom ban and demand any new Code of Practice ensures providers can lawfully include trans people in their services. Pressure is building. Every voice matters here.
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Once upon a time, it was de rigueur for newspapers to spill the beans on the summer holiday adventures of our political masters and mistresses. This year, though, the silence on this topic has been near universal.  Well, apart from tales of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper interrailing round Europe; and the utterly implausible suggestion that Chancellor Rachel Reeves spent at least one night of her hard-earned break shacked up in a caravan park!

No matter. Because whatever they were up to, it had to be better than the nightmare that trans people - and anyone ‘suspected’ of being trans - has been living since April. For that was the month the Supreme Court delivered a somewhat nuanced opinion on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act. Nuanced, it may have been. However, the way that the EHRC has since gleefully weaponised it has been devastating for trans people across the UK.

They are aiming to impose sexual segregation of the sort rarely seen outside of extremely religious, fundamentalist regimes.

So, while politicians may have been living it up on the QT, it is unlikely they are facing problems comparable to those now hitting trans people (and anyone suspected of being trans) across the board. They won’t be facing challenges like the trans teenager fighting with his (Ofsted ‘Outstanding’) school to be allowed to share a tent. Like any other kid doing Duke of Edinburgh. Because as far as his school are concerned, he is “no longer a child with rights but a risk to be managed.” (reported in TransActual’s A community living in fear).

They may travel at will. Unlike the trans woman desperate to leave the country; to “just go somewhere else,” but just “not wealthy enough.”

Nor, when they finally reach their destination, are they shooed away. Like some creep or ne’er-do-well. Unlike the 47-year-old butch cis lesbian shouted at and told “you’re not allowed in here.” Just for using the ladies' loo.

No. This is not all on the Supreme Court. Because, as countless lawyers - including former Supreme Court judges Lords Hale and Sumption - have pointed out since: it merely defined terms in the Equality Act. What society, in the shape of the EHRC, did with that definition was then… up to society. And, sadly, the EHRC is a body widely believed to have been stuffed with anti-trans ideologues by the last Government - and pointedly, not reformed by the current one. 

So, now, the big battle is over a Code of Practice that the EHRC has prepared and submitted to government Equalities Minister, Bridget Phillipson. This, predictably, would exclude and segregate trans people from public life for a generation. 

Worse. It would impose upon UK society, a radical new approach, which would make sex assigned at birth a fundamental organising principle in all our lives. No more, the relatively laid-back approach to matters of social organisation that have emerged since the war. No more women nipping into the men’s loos in the intervals at the theatre; or mums and dads accompanying opposite sex children into changing rooms at the weekend.

Nah. They are aiming to impose sexual segregation of the sort rarely seen outside of extremely religious, fundamentalist regimes. Their primary target, of course, is trans people. In the end, though, we all lose: especially anyone who fails to fit inside accepted gender norms.

The proposed Code of Practice is discriminatory and unworkable. It would lead to segregation, harassment and exclusion of trans and gender non-conforming people. It would be a Bathroom Ban. 

It would align the UK’s approach with that of US Republican States’ so-called “bathroom bills” and likely would conflict with our human rights obligations under the European Court of Human Rights. 

It would define Labour’s legacy on LGBTQ+ rights. Forever.

So that’s it? Not quite. There is still time to stop this madness. The Equalities Minister can delay approving the code. Not unreasonable, given that there are multiple legal challenges now about to land.

She can send it back to the EHRC and ask them to produce a code that does not just - as this one does - explain how to exclude trans people. But also, how to include us.

There are hundreds of thousands of us, even more people who love us, and millions of LGBTQ+ allies who know the importance of solidarity.

And everyone, from the least to the most activist can get involved. Writing letters, taking part in parliamentary lobbies, talking to your MP. 

We are all understandably tired of doing this and often getting the same empty platitudes about ‘dignity and compassion’ back. But right now, the only thing standing between the government and their desire to pass a bathroom ban quickly and quietly are MPs, who are currently more afraid of being shouted at by so-called women’s rights campaigners than they are of us.

But that tide is turning. There are hundreds of thousands of us, even more people who love us, and millions of LGBTQ+ allies who know the importance of solidarity. Far more than there are ‘gender critical’ campaigners. Though you wouldn’t know it from the news. We are making it clear to all these old and new MPs that this is a red line for all of us. That they cannot get away with saying they care about our dignity while they strip away our rights. That they won't be going back to parliament next time if they let this happen.

Most MPs we talk to are privately supportive but scared to speak out. And increasingly the postbags full of letters from us are giving them the courage to. Things you can do include:

The current outlook is bleak. Right now, I have a headache, which is only getting worse for thinking about this nonsense. 

Unlike government Ministers, I do not have the luxury of taking a break from it all.

But there is still time. There is still hope.

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