The stark and unintended consequences of the Supreme Court ruling that nobody’s thought of

How will gender-critical campaigners feel when unquestionably masculine trans men are forced to use women’s toilets because they were born female? asks Diana Thomas. And how much easier will it be, then, for actual predators to sneak into those spaces?

If someone says, “I’m not a racist, but…” you can pretty much guarantee that they are about to go full Tommy Robinson. Likewise, trans people are constantly having to put up with fake allies who precede a full-on assault on our basic identities and rights with the solemn assertion that they really, really support us.

This was precisely the basis upon which the Supreme Court ruled that trans women are not legally women under the Equality Act.

A great show was made of saying that trans people’s human rights as a protected group were being protected, while denying us the only right that really matters. What do we want? To belong to the sex to which we have transitioned – and be able to live in that identity, as fully as any other member of that sex.

My understanding was that the status of our “acquired sex” was, until 16 April 2025, the explicit law of the United Kingdom, based on one European Court of Human Rights judgment and two acts of parliament. Those acts have not been repealed. But the Supreme Court has made it clear that they are no longer worth the vellum-bound archival paper they were printed on.

So, where does that leave a trans woman like me now – aside from shocked, frightened and confused?

I literally don’t know what sex I am now considered to be. Yes, I have male XY chromosomes, as, for that matter, do some natal women. But I have the genitalia of a woman, the figure of a woman and the oestrogen levels of a woman my age who is on the same HRT patches as me. So if you saw me in a swimsuit, trust me, your first thought would not be, “That’s a geezer.”

How then can I be considered biologically (let alone emotionally or psychologically) male?

More practically, will Britain now take a leaf from the most extreme anti-trans policies of Donald Trump and insist that trans people can only have official documents that refer to them by their birth sex?

The stunningly beautiful transgender supermodel/actress Hunter Schafer recently renewed her passport and discovered that she was now officially male. So have thousands of other, less famous trans people. And they find themselves in a terrible situation. For one thing, they have to “out” themselves every time they show anyone their driving license (which has a gender marker in the US), passport or any other form of state or federal ID. So they immediately open themselves up to abuse.

What’s more, their gender marker does not match their appearance or name, an inconsistency which can mean that airlines refuse to carry them – or immigration officers refuse to let them into another nation.

Will that happen here too? Every document I have lists me as a female “Ms”, as do my NHS and HMRC records. Will I now have to be a Mr?

And will the government seriously follow the most right-wing, bigoted, Maga states of the Union and introduce “bathroom bans”, which insist that people have to use facilities that accord with their birth sex?

The risks to trans women who are forced to use men’s toilets is surely obvious. But the unintended consequences are no less troubling.

Natal women who are unusually tall, or have short hair, or just don’t conform to female stereotypes are already being insulted and even physically attacked because other women think they are trans. So how will gender-critical campaigners feel when big, butch, hairy trans men are forced to use women’s toilets because they were born female? How much easier will it be, then, for actual predators to sneak into those spaces?

If you think that’s confusing, there’s more …

In one of its many bizarre inconsistencies, the Supreme Court ruled that, “a trans woman can claim sex discrimination because she is perceived to be a woman.”

Hmm, let me think about that … So, I’m not a biological woman, but I am still a “she”. And I’m certainly perceived to be a woman, and treated as such wherever I go. But I’m legally a man, if I want to go to the loo. But if someone is sexist because they think I’m a woman, then I’m actually a woman … except for all the time when I’m a man.

Now that is a catch that makes Catch-22 look like no catch at all. But the truth of it is not remotely amusing.

Like every trans woman I know, I am preparing for a life in which I live in constant fear of exposure. We will all have to “go stealth” as trans people used to say, keeping our gender identities secret and hoping that no one ever finds out that we aren’t “normal” women or men.

In order to do that, however, we will have to make ourselves even more silent and unrepresented than we already are. I am currently very far advanced on a book and a pitch for a podcast. Both projects would make the case for trans people in a way that has simply not been done until now.

But they would also require me to show my face in public, meaning that I could then be identified and outed if I’m going about my business as a woman. So, for my own safety, those plans may have to be scrapped – and the case will go unmade.

I have already taken my name off the electoral roll, and moved to a top-floor apartment of a large house, behind a stone wall. But that may not be “stealthy” enough.

Trans people were already discussing migration away from the UK before the Supreme Court ruling. Now that semi-serious chit-chat is giving way to actual planning. But where can we go? What countries still welcome our unwanted tribe?

And how long will it be before we discover, as many American trans people are doing, that our mismatching, natal sex passports prevent us from escaping at all?