Over the last few days, like so many trans people, I have been trying to process my feelings about the UK Supreme Court’s strange and contradictory ruling on an interpretation of the Equality Act in Scottish parliamentary proceedings. Despite the fact that, yes, this case is that niche, it has been taken as an important precedent and a first step towards laying to rest one of the British press’s favourite ‘gotcha’ interview questions: “what is a woman?” Unfortunately, the precedent set is not one in the favour of trans people.
The answer given by the presiding judge is what defines a woman is “biology”. But unfortunately for everyone celebrating this decree, they still fail to demonstrate an understanding of biology that aligns itself with science — that is, which isn’t simply a cherry-picking essentialism of hidden characteristics like chromosomes or genital appearance. “Biology” is here, then, only an overzealous and normative claim over what is “natural”, but far from this getting at some reliable version of the truth, as we all should know — cue Zizek voice — most claims of naturality only indicate our full immersion in the realm of ideology.
What makes the Supreme Court ruling contradictory in this regard is that, in asserting a “biological” basis for the category of woman, the judge has nonetheless cowed to a selective understanding of the biological. Because, despite what TERFs claim, you can change your biology… In fact, for many people, that’s sort of the whole point of being trans… As one Twitter user succinctly put it:
it is because sex is biologically real that sex can be changed btw. the things that make up sex are meaningfully real and that is why when those things are changed, sex then changes. loads of things are real and also mutable, obviously
— michael wave (@michael__wave) April 17, 2025
TERF ideology shades into a kind of (capitalist) realism here: when it comes to the supposedly divine rights of gender, there is no alternative. The indefatigable problem that remains, of course, is that there are alternatives that the law cannot eclipse.
It never ceases to amaze me how the UK’s institutional transphobia wrests on a wilful ignorance about endocrinology and its development. Instead, the ability to change (or even “maintain”) one’s sex, via biotechnologies that have been available for almost a century, is being increasingly gatekept by cis regimes of normativity through purely extractive and vindictive means.
What we are living through are the consequences of a primitive accumulation of sexual technology. From puberty blockers to testosterone-suppressing treatments for prostate cancer, from the contraceptive pill to hormone replacement therapy to alleviate the symptoms of menopause — these are all medical treatments offered readily to cis people, which would likely not exist were it not for biomedical science’s interest in developing forms of care for trans people.
The truth never acknowledged by aging TERFs, then, who have likely benefitted from these treatments themselves, is that the science of changing sex predates a lot of the treatments now offered to maintain their own sexual identities.
This history will be familiar to many already: the first sex change operation took place in Germany in 1930 or 1931, after which much of the research into trans healthcare was lost due to Nazi book-burnings. Was this event a factor — one amongst many others, no doubt — that led to the thirty-year delay before the emergence of the contraceptive pill (which uses synthetic forms of estrogen and progesterone to prevent pregnancy) in the 1960s?
We can also note how hormone replacement therapies for cis and trans people were introduced and medically sanctioned in tandem during in the 1990s and 2000s, with research into their long-term effects still ongoing. But even prior to HRT’s medical normalisation for cis people, there are of course many recorded instances of trans women using HRT that precede this. Trans people have always existed — that much is true, and that truth is often repeated — but what is left out of this acknowledgement is the additional fact that trans people have long been the endocrinological guinea pigs for treatments that many cis people now take for granted.
Of course, no one would dream of denying cis people access to the sorts of care that help remedy the things we judge to be cruel acts of “nature” — although many TERF allies, like anti-abortion campaigners and the far right more generally, would like to do this as well. But the same principle is not extended to trans people’s access to medications or their general exercise of bodily autonomy. This is on the basis of such care being “unnatural”, despite the fact that advances in trans care have only further highlighted the mutability of cis bodies as well.
It baffles me that the irony of this is not more readily apparent at the moment, but it is the sort of paradox that will soon come to bear on trans and cis healthcare in the years ahead. No one is “natural”; everyone is valid. But still we defer to “biology” without considering the mutability explored by this domain of science in itself.
The most harrowing thing about this ruling has been watching its psychological impact on trans people up and down the country. But it must be said that, on its own, the ruling counts for very little. Yes, it has sent the tabloids into a frenzy as they hypothesise gleefully about how power might further malign a social minority, but we must always remember that these attempts to clamp down on trans life are quintessentially reactionary; they have arisen in response to growing awareness and acceptance of trans people amongst the general public at large, following the so-called “transgender tipping point” of the early 2010s, when Laverne Cox appeared on the cover of Time.
Still, trans friends everywhere are afraid of what will happen next. Those who are some way into their transitions fear losing ground and access to medications, and I imagine there are those yet to come out to anyone who may now think they are better off continuing to suffer in silence. But I would like to offer some sort of interjection here, if not to the dolls then to the eggs. It is Easter Sunday after all.
When friends have asked how I am personally feeling in light of the Supreme Court ruling, my honest answer has been one of defiance. Perhaps I am also in denial. But this ruling has not frightened me in the same way it has others, because I do not feel like I am due to lose anything in light of this judgement. On the one hand, this could be framed as some sort of privilege; on the other, it could be framed as not having gained certain privileges that I might later lose. To explain why, perhaps it is worth me providing on update on my journey so far.
I came out relatively late in life; three years ago, at the age of 30. Having written an achingly egg-laden post on this blog in 2021, at what was (in hindsight) the tail end of a long-term relationship that I’d been hiding behind for a decade, I moved to Newcastle and changed my pronouns in mid-2022. In late 2023 — having recovered from a severe mental breakdown that followed the relinquishment of all of life’s habits and comforts, and which was triggered more acutely by the end of a brief flirtation, on the grounds of my not “being a woman” (which I’d last experienced the pain of in my late teens) — I took my time building up my strength and resolve and finally decided to start taking hormones. I began buying estrogel online via a Bulgarian pharmaceutical company in October 2023 and immediately felt a sense of relief, but it was only in late 2024 that I feel I got my dosage right, finally feeling the more pronounced effects of HRT when I added a testosterone blocker to my daily regime of medications last September.
The cost of these medications is roughly £120 a month. This is a disconcerting expense to feel committed to for the rest of my life — along with an anxiety regarding the various unforeseeable contingencies that may disrupt this — and it later led me, at the encouragement of my friends, I filled out a self-referral form for “gender-affirming care”, which I sent on to a private clinic. I also wrote a letter to my GP, informing them of what I was doing, and asking if they were prepared to assist in fulfilling any scripts offered if and when I had completed the self-referral process. (They agreed.)
Unfortunately, my timing was off. A lack of faith in the incumbent Labour Party, who had just won the 2024 UK general election — particularly the restrictions may assumed would be implemented by health secretary Wes Streeting, starting with the ban on prescribing puberty blockers to “gender-confused” adolescents — meant that my self-referral application was denied. To save myself the grief of digging the original email out of my inbox, I will paraphrase: the private gender-care clinic implied that they were only going to take on new patients that they were confident would more easily pass through the various hoops necessary to change one’s “gender”. Having perhaps been too honest about identifying as “non-binary”, this did not include me. I was deeply disappointed, but soon shook off my deflation as I continued to explore DIY treatment on my own terms.
In hindsight, this feels like a blessing in disguise. Many of my friends have successfully acquired treatment through the NHS and private health care (in collaboration), even recently. They have progressed along an “officially” sanctioned path of gender recognition, in feeling assured that they want a “binary” sex change, and so have begun hormones on the NHS and have also sought to change identification documents, etc. These are all expensive processes, of course, but here in Newcastle at least, we have established a network of community support that has reduced this financial burden considerably. Having spent the summer of 2023 raising funds for a friend’s top surgery, and being wildly successful in doing so, we have since extended this support to other queers in our community (via a platform we call the Big Gay Fund). Although our capacity is limited and voluntary, to date we have raised thousands of pounds for local trans people who have gone on to receive the care they desire through official channels. However, having acquired this access, these friends now fear they have much to lose.
It is a travesty that this now feels like a possibility, and I stand in furious solidarity with them. But speaking personally, and grasping for the faintest of silver linings, I retain a defiant stance. Speaking personally, I feel I don’t have anything to lose — for better or worse.
One of the virtues of DIY HRT — although at the mercy of supply chains and having a sustainable income, etc. — is that there is no institutional oversight with regards to what I choose to do to my own body. The only people in any position to deny me access to the medications I take daily are those inspecting my mail at the UK’s borders. So far — and here I am touching everything made of wood in my immediate vicinity — I have experienced no hiccups. So long as I can continue to afford the monthly cost, I feel confident that nothing else stands in my way. Again, this may be naive, even a symptom of denial, and I must of course acknowledge the financial privilege of this position — although I am honestly so overworked at the moment — but my feeling is that a lack of official recognition is not rock bottom. We each have our own sets of chains, we are each at the mercy of certain contingencies, but the government has not yet closed off all routes available to us, and though they may try to deny trans people access to care, I do not think they can realistically close off all of the avenues that are available.
This will no doubt bring little solace to the dolls — for which I’m sorry, as truly no one should fear losing anything they are entitled to — so I suppose I am speaking more to the eggs who are afraid of continuing down any one of the paths that lay open to them. In short, my message to the eggs is simple: healthcare professionals have seldom been loyal friends to trans people. It is despicable that the more “official” pathways may soon be closed, but there are alternatives, for all of us, and there are many people who can help you to access them. There remain considerable barriers — mostly financial — whichever route you take, but there is arguably more support available for those who take the DIY route than there are for those who proceed otherwise. It can be so intimidating and difficult to ask for this support, but perhaps it takes less courage to ask your community for help than it does to ask bureaucrats. It is essential that we remember this going forward. Where there is a will, there is always a way.
I am reminded here of a conversation had on Twitter a few months ago, which I ultimately found irritating — and my position here may well irritate others in turn. But when I was feeling the disappointment of failing to step onto a more official pathway towards accessing gender care, I registered my feelings online and was rebuked for apparently denying the wealth of trans knowledge available online. At that time, I was stressed about the burden of keeping up my monthly payments. The process of self-referral involves far steeper initial payments, of course, which I nonetheless felt I could raise via my community if I asked, and so this felt like less of an obstacle than the ongoing monthly payments I continue to make solely out of my own pocket.
It was a cynical rebuttal, to my mind, as I was certainly not denying the virtues of DIY HRT and the wealth of advice available online — that was precisely what I had been utilising for two years at that point — but I still hoped that an official pathway was more stable. On this point alone, I concede, I may have been wrong — but I see no advantage to denying fellow trans people any hope they might be clinging to. I want to avoid doing this as well. For the eggs, do not give up; for the dolls and kings, all hope is not lost.
Having one’s official documentation reflect one’s lived experiences is hugely important here, and must not be maligned. It is not simply access to hormones that matters, and not all trans people choose to undergo this kind of medical transition. But for those that do, being legally recognised in one’s gender is an integral next step. Social recognition is one thing; legal recognition is another. In fact, it is the disparity between the two that opens trans people up to all kinds of violence.
On a most fundamental level, it is painful to have to default to a gender assigned a birth that may no longer reflect the changes to sexual characteristics that someone has undergone. I want to reiterate the point above here that these changes are real. When interacting with people in my daily life, they continue to default to masculine pronouns. I can hardly begrudge them of this, as I continue to embrace the fact that I have a beard. But my facial hair has thinned out considerably over the last year, just as the hair on the rest of my head has grown far more feminine. The shape of my face has changed. I have breasts and now regularly wear a bra. At the risk of giving you too much information, I have developed the distinct shadow of a vulva along my testicles. My body, my sexual characteristics, have changed and are continuing to. It is changed my relationship to sex, it has changed my mood. It is changed almost everything about me, even if only in a small way.
Many of these changes nonetheless remain invisible to many, although not entirely. This often makes engaging with social bureaucracy a humiliating experience — personally, I have felt this most acutely when travelling internationally, feeling under far more scrutiny when a discrepancy is intuited between my official information and how I now appear. It is hard to articulate what this feels like. The term “micro-aggression” is useful in this instance; it is painful to feel under suspicion when a bureaucrat identifies a hint of social difference, whether on the basis of race, sexuality or gender identity. It painfully highlights one’s elusion of certain apparatuses of capture, and lays out our social hierarchy in painful ways. It makes you feel “wrong” for simply being who you are.
This is where the Supreme Court’s ruling may soon to bear on trans lives. But again, despite what has been reported — that the ruling constitutes a cut-and-dry decision that defines “women” on the basis of “biology” forevermore (whatever that even means) — it is a judgement riven with contradictions and betrays a total incoherency that brings various forms of legislation, each supposedly still upheld, into direct conflict with one another. It is, then, a contradictory ruling that further splays the disparities between legality and sociality that are so painfully felt by trans people in the course of their everyday lives.
I would like to defer to Ed Burrell here, who read the entire court judgement and posted reflections on Instagram that I found clarifying. For starters, Ed notes how, rather than being a sweeping judgement on categorisations of sex as such, “it’s all in reference to one specific Scottish representation law and whether trans women can be considered as part of [a] 50% woman/man split in representation quota[s] in senior positions of public life”. Ed continues:
The argument ultimately is that the Equality Act protecting women from discrimination shouldn’t protect trans women from discrimination on the basis of being a woman because it makes the application of equality law contradictory and incoherent.
Yet the whole argument is based on biological vs. certified sex, acknowledging biological transition but then essentially disregarding that as certified (e.g. GRC [gender recognition certificates]). The document sets out that it is not the court’s position to define sex, yet [it] bases its argument on completely incoherent ideas about biology and sex.
The irony missed by the presiding judge — who has priors for legislating against queer people on the basis of his religious beliefs — is that the whole case is about “the coherency of law based on ‘biological’ versus ‘certified’ gender”, whilst not even the distinction between “biological” and “certified” sex is coherent in itself. “No wonder trying to interpret a law with [these categories] makes no sense.” It’s an incoherent argument arguing for coherency?! Ed adds:
Look any further into what constitutes sex biologically and how that interacts in social and legal spheres, the definitions they adopt become so arbitrary and random.
It feels like they’re running around trying to plug holes in a crumbling ideology of sex. They can’t define it because it doesn’t make any sense and so they’re trying to rule on it and they can’t because the whole stupid ass thing doesn’t work.
Ed concluded his Instagram stories on the ruling as follows:
It finishes by saying that this ruling should have no adverse [effects] on trans people because they are still protected against discrimination for being trans under the Equality Act. But girl U literally just ruled that in some situations trans women should not be considered women and that they CAN be discriminated against on the basis of being a woman. Not only is [there] a glaring possibility of opening [trans women] up to … discrimination on the basis of being a woman, it also OBVIOUSLY (and especially because of press [coverage]) sets a precedent for other cases to further restrict the situations in which trans people can be considered their gender.
It is a ruling on one specific tiny Scottish rule, but the precedent is what the transphobes are celebrating[:] the GRC not being applicable in all cases like the law that established it said it should be.
This is what the ruling can be boiled down to: labelling. But how we are labelled legally is not the be all and end all. It is important, and it should not be something taken away from anyone. But just as the law threatens to turn its back on us, yesterday’s march in central London showed that thousands of people — and I do feel that it is a majority — and turning to stand with us.
It is despicable that any of the gains made by the trans community might be reversed, but just as we do not rely solely on what is legally sanctioned in other areas of political life, nor should we feel that the standpoint of the law is the ultimate measure of trans life. Our communities stand with us, and it with them that we have long had our strength. The Supreme Court ruling is nothing more than a small victory for the small-minded. We have so much more to win than they.