Comment
JULIE BINDEL
I’ve suffered 20 years of hell fighting to prove trans women aren’t women & now I’m backed by the law – today, women won
If anyone is "on the right side of history", it's feminists like me
WOMEN have won. And trans women ARE men. At last, the law has clarified this
Something most have known all along is now legally established.
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It has come at the price of years of activism, of trial and error, of the torment and harassment many of us have faced for daring to demand women-only spaces and for our refusal to accept that men can be legally considered a subset of women.
Since I first dared to speak out about this in 2004, I have been through more than 20 years of hell from gender activists.
But now, the highest court in the land has confirmed that a woman is a biological female, and that the "certificated sex" of a man with a Gender Recognition Certificate is not the same thing.
KEY POINTS ABOUT RULING
- THE UK’s highest court unanimously ruled the terms “woman” and “sex” as set down in UK law “refer to a biological woman and biological sex”.
- Judges ruled having a
Gender Recognition Certificate stating a trans woman is female does not mean that person should be treated as a woman under the UK 2010 Equality Act. - This means trans women with a GRC can be excluded from single-sex spaces if “proportionate”.
- The ruling will apply to spaces such as changing rooms, homeless hostels or domestic violence refuges.
- NHS guidance on who can be placed on same-sex wards is also now likely to be changed. The current document, set out in 2019, states: “Trans people should be accommodated according to their presentation: the way they dress, and the name and pronouns they currently use.”
- One option is for transgender people to be placed in rooms on their own. Trans people still retain legal protections and cannot be discriminated against, but they cannot acquire protections reserved for women.
Back when we were first setting up women-only spaces, men's rights activists tended not to go berserk, because of the threat and reality of violence and sexual harassment.
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When we campaigned for single-sex spaces, such as hospital wards and prisons, it was understood why they were needed.
When feminists set up rape crisis centres and domestic violence shelters to keep women and their children safe from deadly male violence, the need for such provision was similarly understood.
Some men did get defensive when we said we could not share public bathrooms and changing rooms, telling us they felt labelled and were being assumed to be dangerous – but the vast majority of men understood that single-sex provision was necessary.
A sizeable minority of men do pose a very real threat, and because we can't tell by looking who those men are, women and girls have to have our own protected spaces.
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Yet trans activists have repeatedly accused feminists like me of being 'transphobic' and bigoted when we say we don't want men in our spaces.
Mermaids took LGB Alliance to court to try to get them stripped of their charitable status – a move that failed, but not before putting the organisation through hell, and significant expense.
Trans women are NOT women, Supreme Court rules in win for anti-woke campaigners after battle over female-only spaces
The Darlington nurses have been vilified for wanting to get changed before and after busy shifts in a space away from biological men.
Rosie Kay was booted out of her own dance company by blue-fringed social justice warriors because she argued that sex was biological – at a private dinner at her own home.
I have lost count of the times I've been booted out of events immediately before they were due to happen, because transactivists complained.
My friend Kathleen Stock was hounded by staff and students at the University of Sussex for refusing to let go of the correct definition of biological sex, as compared to gender identity.
What happens next for campaigners and female-only spaces?
- The Supreme Court ruling has clarified that organisations can lawfully exclude trans women from women-only spaces when it is necessary for safeguarding biological women.
- This decision provides a legal framework for institutions to create clearer, more defined policies regarding access to female-only spaces like domestic abuse shelters, gyms, changing rooms, and prisons.
- As a result, women’s rights groups are likely to push for stronger protections to maintain the integrity of female-only spaces, citing concerns over safety and fairness.
- Today's ruling could spark further legal challenges from trans rights activists, who may argue that the decision undermines their rights to access spaces in line with their gender identity.
- Public services like schools and hospitals will face pressure to reconsider how they handle access to gender-segregated facilities, potentially leading to the introduction of more detailed guidelines.
- The ruling also opens the door for more tailored safeguarding policies within women’s spaces, but these may lead to accusations of discrimination from trans activists if seen as overly restrictive.
- Women’s refuges and domestic violence shelters may introduce stricter policies to ensure that biological women’s safety is prioritised.
- Legal and public debates around the interpretation of "sex" vs. "gender" will intensify, with experts and lawmakers grappling to find a solution that satisfies both parties.
- The case is likely to set a precedent, influencing future legal decisions on the rights of trans people in relation to women-only spaces and potentially prompting more judicial reviews.
Professor Jo Phoenix was similarly put through hell by the Open University for the same reason and was even compared to a "racist Uncle" at a Christmas lunch.
I was banned from entering a public library in Nottingham that had been booked months beforehand, for a talk I was about to give to local working class women about how to challenge male violence and where to get support for domestic abuse.
The excuse for this was that I might "offend the trans community".
I legally challenged them and won – as did Kathleen Stock, Jo Phoenix, and numerous other women(and some men) who have dared speak out against this monstrosity of a belief system.
We have been physically attacked, vilified, bullied, silenced, and likened to Nazis. Well, no more.
Sense and justice has prevailed – but it has taken its toll on those who have fought against this doctrine.
There was never any real scrutiny of the ideas because Stonewall decreed, on behalf of trans activists, that there would be "no debate".
Understandably, because – as we heard in court earlier this year, when the Scottish Ministers argued its case – they have no lucid or coherent arguments.
Stonewall believes that children as young as two are aware of their "gender identity", and its former chief executive, Nancy Kelley, has likened lesbians like me, who do not wish to date a trans-identified man with a penis, to "sexual racists".
Of course the law should use biological sex to define "woman", rather than the words on a Gender Recognition Certificate.
Lesbians are the only sexual orientation that actively excludes men, and this is why we need our own bars, clubs, meetings and other spaces, where we are safe from prejudice and threats of violence.
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If anyone is "on the wrong side of history", it is the trans activists and the "social justice warriors" that have supported, defended and enabled them in their bullying of swathes of women, and some men.
And if anyone is "on the right side of history", it's feminists like me – and today, the highest court in the land has agreed with us.
Today's trans win is important but it hides a terrifying reality - for years, women have been demonised simply for pointing out biological fact
TODAY'S trans win is important but it hides a terrifying reality, a politician has declared.
Five Supreme Court justices unanimously decided that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act refer to a "biological woman and biological sex".
Former MEP for South East England Alex Phillips said the landmark judgement was a "common sense victory for women".
She said: "I think it's been a really hard campaign for women. They've been vilified and they have been demonised.
"They have been told that they are unpleasant or transphobic, simply by saying, 'look, we want to be able to be secure when we use changing rooms or bathroom facilities' and 'we want to be able to fight in sports with safety'.
"That to me should be paramount in any society. Most societies in the modern world in the West should be able to protect women and children.
"It's been a long, hard fight in many respects for equal rights, for equal pay for the right to vote, and the fact that this had to go all the way up to the Supreme Court to make a decision on whether a woman is, in fact, a woman to me is diabolical and alarming to me.
"It's sort of almost a patriarchal backstep where essentially men are fighting for the rights to be women and women have basically been silenced and vilified by saying 'well, hang on a bit. What about our safety?'"
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