THE fallout from the Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of a “woman” has been swift with its impact on the lives of transgender people.
It has been just over three weeks since the UK’s highest court ruled that under the Equality Act 2010 a woman is defined by “biological sex”, and does not include a transgender woman with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) – as has been the interpretation of the law, across public and private bodies in the UK, for the past 20 years.
In that short period, the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) interim guidance has banned trans men and women from toilets and other single-sex spaces, an approach dubbed “authoritarian” and segregation.
On Thursday, the Scottish Football Association, and England’s, announced that transgender women were now banned from playing the women’s game. The English FA then admitted this impacted fewer than 30 transgender players registered among millions of amateur players.
By Friday, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) announced that transgender women would no longer be able to play in competitive women’s and girl’s cricket.
The Scottish Government also revealed on Friday that plans to introduce a bill to criminalise misogyny would be parked until after the Holyrood election, citing the “implications” of the Supreme Court ruling.
Its plans to ban conversion practices for LGBT+ Scots were also dropped.
End Conversion Therapy, a campaign group who have pushed for the legislation to be brought to Holyrood, said it was the “latest betrayal” by the Scottish Government against the LGBT+ community. Humanist Society Scotland also accused ministers of “taking the easy option” to avoid negative press.
Hundreds of campaigners took to the EHRC’s Glasgow offices on Friday to protest the interim guidance and called for it to be scrapped. The strength of feeling was clear, with loud chanting reverberating around the city centre as the protesters called for the chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner to be removed from her role.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Government also came under fire from the speakers.
One of the organisers Dr Kirstie Ken English told The National that the Scottish Government had “kicked our rights into the long grass”. Asked if they thought that the Scottish Government would stand up for the push against transgender rights, they said ministers should “do better”.
“You should be defending those who are most at risk, and that means coming out [in support of] trans people,” they added.
The impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling has been likened to Section 28, the infamous part of the Local Government Act 1988 brought in by then-Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher, that prohibited local authorities from “promoting homosexuality”.
While the scope of this part of legislation was legally relatively small, its cultural impact was much wider. The legislation was not repealed until 2000 in Scotland, and 2003 in England and Wales.
While many beeped their horns in support of the Glasgow protesters, many passerbys could be heard shouting obscenities, one telling campaigners to “f*** off”.
“They don’t have any rights apparently,” another could be heard saying scornfully.
