Why supporting the UK Supreme Court Ruling is a betrayal of women

I am not sure that my readers over the years have bargained for such a never-ending flow of “feminist” writing.  But I simply cannot help it.  I just write about what is going on in my life.  We live in unusual times, when the political class is waging war against its own citizens.  Women are under assault, anyone who is “other” is under-assault, the Queer community has a target on its back…and woe to be transgender or intersex when the puff-chested bigots stride the aisles taking up space and are not only proud of who and what they are, but are being lauded for “speaking up”.  It is hard to live in a world where you are being erased.

I have taken refuge with enlightened women, a smaller and smaller group of male friends, and with my colleagues in Sex Work.   Sex Workers have been critical and important allies, providing me true succour.  So, imagine my profound sense of betrayal to find that people I consider mentors and friends hold gender critical views.  

After the Supreme Court ruling, like many of my trans and intersex sisters and brothers, I was suicidal and lived under a veil of tears.  The emotional shock of the ruling, one which erases my personhood, lingers on in my body.   Some of my trans allies un-alived themselves—all of us have felt profoundly betrayed by society.  It is not nice to feel hated, even worse to be accused of the most heinous things: groomers or predators.  How men and their women apologists turned the conversation from the true predators and blamed the victims is an object-lesson in toxic patriarchy.  And such a repeat of what the Queer community has been through before.  To spend my life working against such labels or people, only to be called one myself for simply expressing my vulnerability.

And people wonder why we become enraged.  Some resort to violence.  And of course, that just becomes an “I-told-you-so” moment.  But what does a gender outlaw do at this point?  I have listened to Donald ‘shit-pants” Trump and accepted, at least for me, that there are only two genders, meaning I am only a woman, just a woman, never was anything else.   My non-binary nature is asleep.

The UK Supreme Court Ruling said that we do not exist.  Transgender people are not a “class” and therefore cannot be protected.  The Gender Recognition Certificate has been neutered, turning it from a gate-kept passage to “other” as a tool to track and repress us.  We have been ruled out of public life.  My civil disobedience will be public toplessness and pissing on the floor outside of any women’s restroom I am denied access to.  That will cure my phobia of peeing in front of others faster than any dungeon session ever will.

I can only surmise that the need to erase our existence stems from the idea that people with ambiguous connections between sex and gender make men feel uncomfortable in their roles as men—I mean, what if they are attracted to us?!  Because the “facts” that the gender critical movement is founded on are non-sequiturs, gaslighting in the extreme:

• That trans people are the source of violence against women, not cis men;
• That trans people are groomers and pedophiles despite 97% of such being cis men;

Is this all about the male obsession with “traps”: people who appear to be female but who still have dicks?

I can be confident that one day, as it always seems to happen, that the bigots never get the last word, and that their epitaph will name for what they are.  But at what cost?  How many of my brothers and sisters will be dead?  Will I still be here?  The weight is real.

So, I will say it plain and simple.  Fuck you.  Fuck you if you think the Supreme Court ruling was anything other than a vile exercise of patriarchal power, one which didn’t even masquerade as decent or balanced.  And shame on you if you are a woman and support the ruling as many do.  You are either stupid or so privileged that you have no connection with the lived experience of women, of minorities, of queer people.  Indeed, you are a dupe, an apologist for the enemies of women, anyone who is an ‘other’.  In short, you are a bigot, and the tool of bigots.  Congratulations.

Since my existence has been put into question, there is not much room in my writing for anything other than railing against this.  People ‘like me’ don’t exist, that we have to make room for others, that we cannot have dignity.  And when you say, “it isn’t about people like you,” to me, or “I’ll go to the bathroom with you,” I don’t know where to start.  What are you going to do when some random man shouts at me that I’m not feminine enough, or some misguided woman in the bathroom, a JK Rowling acolyte who takes out her phone to film me because she just “knows” I’m not a ’real’ woman.   Or does that to any number of cis women who don’t look ‘right’?  You cannot support the Gender Critical movement and be a friend, let alone a feminist.

I am a white witch.  I do not do harm or seek to harm, but when those act us, against me, karma has a beautiful symmetry in returning the favour.  You are cursed.  May it come back to haunt you a thousand-fold, pursuing through time and place, and robbing you of dignity, everything your views take from me and those like me.

How many of you ‘pure’ women have been assaulted by a transgender woman in a bathroom or changing room?  None.  How many on the other hand have been harassed or fondled or assaulted by a cis man, anywhere at all?  Nearly all of us.  Where does your view come from?

When you say it isn’t ‘about me’, tell me not to cry in fear when I have to use a changing room or a bathroom because I’m sure as fuck not using a men’s facility.  No, I cry in fear because one of you hateful, ignorant enemies of women might be lurking in there, might say my jaw is too big, I’m too tall, that my pussy isn’t real anyway [you know who you are], that I am just a man with a pussy and tits, or worse, that I am a predator.  

I am scared.  Deathly scared.   And I don’t deserve it.  I worked out the other day and had to take a shower, and there was no way in hell that I would go into a men’s changing room, it was skin-crawling, allergic-making concept.  And I shook in fear as I entered the women’s room, which was thankfully empty.  But when I came out of the shower there was another woman there.  I turned my back to her, but when I was dressed and she looked at me, it made me cry for the compassion in her eyes.  

My trans brothers and sisters don’t deserve this.  No queer person deserves it.  No body that doesn’t fit the mould deserves it.  No dark skin or set of beliefs which differs from your white, privileged, middle-class gender-critical set of beliefs deserves it.  No woman deserves it.  And that’s where it begins.  Look at the mirror.  What you see is a self that hurts yourself.  You are ugly as fuck, and it comes from inside you.

Yes, you are stupid.  But when stupidity meets with power and seeks to erase people from existence you become more than just laughable or pathetic, you become evil, you become complicit.   You too have the blood of my brothers and sisters on your hands.

Why Supporting the UK Supreme Court’s Anti-Trans Ruling Is a Betrayal of Women

I. Introduction: The Danger of Policing Womanhood

The 2023–2024 UK Supreme Court ruling restricting the definition of “woman” to exclude trans women from certain legal protections has been celebrated by gender-critical feminists as a victory. But supporting this ruling—especially as a woman—amounts to a betrayal of feminist principles and a dangerous alignment with state-enforced gender essentialism. It harms all women by strengthening patriarchal tools of exclusion, surveillance, and control.

II. The State Has No Place Defining Who Is a Woman

Feminism has long fought against the state’s attempts to legislate womanhood. From property laws to reproductive rights, patriarchal legal systems have historically excluded women from personhood and full citizenship.

When the Supreme Court rules that trans women do not qualify as women under equality law, it sets a dangerous precedent: it gives the state authority to define womanhood according to narrow biological criteria—criteria that have always been used to police, punish, and exclude certain women (especially queer, disabled, Black, and gender-nonconforming women).1

This legal essentialism betrays the feminist ideal that womanhood is not a function of anatomy, but of lived experience under patriarchy.

III. Dividing Women Weakens Feminism

Feminism gains power through solidarity, not exclusion. Yet this ruling fractures that power by drawing hard lines between “real” and “fake” women.

Trans women are among the most vulnerable members of the broader female experience:

• In the UK, 56% of trans women of colour have experienced hate crimes.2
• Almost 90% of trans people avoid public spaces for fear of abuse.3
• Globally, trans women—especially sex workers—face disproportionate murder rates.4

To deny their womanhood is to deny them protection, leaving them outside the scope of feminist concern. That is not just unkind. It is politically reckless.

IV. The Gender-Critical Fallacy: “A Man Can Never Be a Woman”

This is the cornerstone of the gender-critical argument: that no amount of surgery, hormones, or social transition can turn a man into a woman. But this logic is built on the same biological essentialism that patriarchal science used to deny women education, property rights, and suffrage for centuries.

Moreover, the phrase “a man is not a woman” assumes what it sets out to prove: that a trans woman is a man. This is circular reasoning, not argument. It erases the social, psychological, and legal realities of transition—and the documented mental health consequences of denying recognition.5

Even if you disagree with trans women being women, you cannot deny that denying them access to gender-appropriate services, shelters, and protections increases their risk of assault, homelessness, and death. What feminist would consider that an acceptable price for ideological purity?

V. The “Violence Is Male” Argument: A Misuse of Statistics

Another frequent claim is that “all violence against women is committed by men,” and that allowing trans women into female spaces increases risk. But this argument falls apart in three ways:

1. Most male violence comes from cis men, not trans women—who make up a tiny percentage of the population. There is no evidence that trans inclusion increases violence in women’s spaces. A 2021 meta-analysis of U.S. jurisdictions with inclusive policies found no increase in assaults in gendered spaces.6
2. Trans women are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. In fact, they are often victimized by cis men in women’s spaces (like shelters or prisons) when denied appropriate housing.7
3. If violence by men is the problem, the solution is to target violent men, not trans women. Exclusion does not stop violence—it just shifts it toward more vulnerable women.

To argue otherwise is to echo the same logic used to exclude butch lesbians from women’s spaces in the 1980s, or to surveil Black women as “aggressive” or “mannish.”8 It’s not feminist. It’s fear-based exclusionism.

VI. Hierarchies of Womanhood Are Patriarchy’s Favourite Tool

Supporting the UK Supreme Court’s ruling implicitly endorses a hierarchy: that some women are real, and others are counterfeit. But history shows us how quickly these hierarchies become tools of control—shaping laws, social norms, and even safety. These hierarchies are not abstract. They are functioning systems of governance:

• The “respectable wife” vs. the “dangerous whore”:
Under the Contagious Diseases Acts (1864–1886), police were empowered to detain any woman suspected of prostitution, subjecting her to forced medical examination for venereal disease—often with no evidence or recourse. Middle- and upper-class women were exempt; working-class and Irish women were targeted, stripped of dignity and liberty.9 This was state-sanctioned sexual policing—based solely on who counted as “real” women and who did not.

• The fertile mother vs. the barren spinster:
Social policy in 20th-century Britain promoted the nuclear family as the ideal, marginalizing childless, unmarried, or queer women. Even today, access to IVF and fertility care in the NHS is restricted by age, marital status, and postcode—a postcode lottery that disproportionately excludes queer women and those with disabilities.10 Womanhood remains tied to reproduction in ways that are punitive and exclusionary.

• The cis woman vs. the trans intruder:
The Supreme Court’s decision, and the broader UK legal-political climate, reproduces a harmful narrative: that trans women are not just “different,” but dangerous. This echoes moral panics around predators in bathrooms, despite overwhelming evidence that trans people—especially trans women—are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.11 The ruling legitimizes state and social suspicion of a whole category of womanhood.

• White womanhood vs. racialized femininity:
Colonial feminism held up white British women as moral exemplars while depicting colonized women as either degraded or in need of rescue. The abolition of sati in India was less about saving Indian women and more about asserting moral dominance.12 Today, UK immigration law continues this tradition by invoking “honour-based violence” or “female genital mutilation” to justify interventions—while often ignoring migrant women’s asylum claims and refusing them basic protections.13

• Able-bodied women vs. disabled women:
The feminist movement has long failed disabled women, many of whom were forcibly sterilized or institutionalized well into the late 20th century. In the UK, the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act permitted the detention of “feebleminded” women to prevent them reproducing—laws only formally repealed in the 1980s.14 Reproductive autonomy is still limited for disabled women, whose motherhood is often considered suspect or impossible.

Each of these examples shows how patriarchal systems use internal divisions among women—respectability, fertility, biology, race, ability—as tools of control. Supporting a legal hierarchy of womanhood, as the Supreme Court now does, is not just a judicial opinion. It is a direct inheritance of these historic violences. True feminism must dismantle these hierarchies—not reinforce them with gavel and robe.

VII. Conclusion: What Kind of Feminism Do You Serve?

A woman who supports the UK Supreme Court ruling may believe she is protecting women. But in truth, she is:

• Ceding the definition of “woman” to state institutions

When the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill was blocked by Westminster, it wasn’t just trans people who lost—it was Scotland’s ability to self-govern gender rights. The UK government is now positioned as the ultimate arbiter of who counts as a woman, bypassing lived experience and community consensus.15 This opens the door to future restrictions based not on justice, but on political expedience. And history tells us the state has rarely defined “woman” in ways that protect the marginalized.

• Abandoning the most vulnerable women to abuse and marginalisation
  

Trans women face staggeringly high rates of homelessness, domestic violence, and sexual assault in the UK—yet they are often excluded from services designed to protect women. Women’s refuges that refuse trans women or force them to undergo humiliating scrutiny leave them without safety.16 Meanwhile, the media and political class obsess over “threats” trans women pose, while ignoring the actual abusers—who are overwhelmingly cisgender men.

• Undermining feminist solidarity by promoting exclusion over inclusion
  

Groups like Women’s Place UK and the LGB Alliance claim to defend “women’s rights” but focus almost exclusively on restricting trans rights, rather than challenging male violence, economic inequality, or reproductive injustice. This has fractured feminist spaces and created an atmosphere of surveillance and suspicion—where women police other women’s bodies, voices, and existence, rather than standing together against patriarchy.17

• Reinforcing patriarchal norms that have always punished non-conformity
  

The same logic used to exclude trans women—that deviation from biological norms is suspicious or threatening—has long been used to control all women. Intersex women, butch lesbians, and gender-nonconforming women have all been pathologized, sterilized, or punished for not being “feminine enough.” In the UK, lesbian mothers have lost custody of their children on these grounds as recently as the 1990s.¹⁷ The boundaries of “acceptable womanhood” have always served patriarchy—not liberation.

• Wives v. whores
• Mothers v. spinsters
• Respectable v. unruly

Feminism cannot thrive on purity, fear, or division. It thrives on collective liberation. And there is no liberation that leaves trans women behind. When we allow the state to draw the boundaries of womanhood, we all become hostage to its definition. When we exclude the most vulnerable among us, we compromise the safety and dignity of every woman who doesn’t fit the mould.

If your feminism requires a hierarchy, it is not feminist at all.  You cannot build safety by throwing others under the bus.  Do you serve women or do you serve the State?  Are you a liberator or an oppressor, no better than the toxic masculine with tits?

Endnotes

1. Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia, 2004), 100–108.
2. Stonewall, “LGBT in Britain – Hate Crime and Discrimination,” 2022. https://www.stonewall.org.uk
3. Galop, “Trans People and Domestic Abuse: Barriers to Accessing Services,” 2021. https://galop.org.uk
4. Human Rights Campaign, “Fatal Violence Against the Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Community in 2022.” https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-community-in-2022
5. American Psychological Association, “Resolution on Gender Identity Change Efforts,” 2021. https://www.apa.org/about/policy/resolution-gender-identity-change-efforts.pdf
6. Jody L. Herman et al., “Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Laws and Public Safety in Restrooms, Locker Rooms, and Changing Rooms,” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 17, no. 3 (2020): 494–507.
7. Prison Reform Trust, “Transgender People in Prison,” Briefing Paper, 2020. https://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk
8. C. Riley Snorton, Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 118–132.
9. Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge University Press, 1980).
10. British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), “Fertility treatment access still riddled with discrimination,” 2021. https://www.bpas.org
11. Stonewall, LGBT in Britain: Trans Report, 2018; and Galop, Transphobic Hate Crime Report, 2020.
12. Lata Mani, “Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, eds. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989), 88–126.
13. Pragna Patel and Southall Black Sisters, “Asylum and the Politics of Gender,” in Women and Migration in the UK, eds. Natasha Carver and Anastasia Chamberlen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 121–139.
14. Anne Borsay and Pamela Dale, Disabled Children: Contested Caring, 1850–1979 (Routledge, 2012).
15. UK Government, “Section 35 Order: Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill,” January 2023. https://www.gov.uk
16. Amelia Abraham, Queer Intentions: A (Personal) Journey Through LGBTQ+ Culture (Picador, 2019).
17. Clare Hemmings, Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory (Duke University Press, 2011).