Labour’s trans guidance ‘poses danger to women’

[IwantToRetire]

New transgender guidance approved by Labour risks putting women in danger, say campaigners.

The updated code of practice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) states that information about sex is “sensitive” and should be treated as “special category data”.

Women’s rights campaigners have warned that the guidelines misinterpret data protection laws and put women at risk of “unlawful harassment”. Special category data refer to personal information that needs more protection because it is sensitive.

Maya Forstater, the chief executive of Sex Matters, said in the letter that she was “surprised and dismayed” to see the guidance on special category data, claiming it went significantly beyond the EHRC’s mandate.

She wrote: “These statements are wrong in both fact and law. For the vast majority of people, information about their sex is not sensitive, and it is very rarely possible for anyone to keep their sex private over sustained periods.

“Sex is not special category data. It is ordinary personal data which can be used routinely, just like other personal information such as name or age that must also be used fairly, lawfully and transparently with appropriate scrutiny.”

On Monday night, the Government opened the door to rewriting the guidance within days of its publication, saying it was “looking into” the concerns raised by campaigners.

Full article https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/05/25/campaigners-claim-labour-trans-guidance-risks-harassment/

Also at https://archive.is/J6Ttm

I think this was included on several of the many threads since "Guidelines" Published.

So posted as a new thread more for the last paragraph which seems to idicate Sex Maters has more than a little bit of influence!

Criticism post on 22 May, and response from Goverment on 25 May - a bank holiday!

I said "in my experience", though I've also suggested what could happen should a woman be challenged in a women's toilet or changing room .

That this could possibly happen on occasion is down to the heightened awareness of the issue, and with time and proper implementation going forward, incidents would gradually diminish.

Though, no doubt, activists such as Joss Prior will continue for as long as possible to flout and flaunt ( and photograph) his presence in women's facilities.

Oh dear…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/12/ive-been-spat-on-gender-non-conforming-women-tell-of-toilet-abuse-in-aftermath-of-supreme-court-ruling

Bloody transactivism. This is what it does. You're so on the wrong side of history.

Exactly @Datun- a problem entirely created by men pushing their way into spaces for women in the first place. I’ve been saying this for years.

Interestingly it was man that called her out, not the other women in the queue. Male sensitivities are generally far less subtle and clued in than women's.
The woman ( in the swimming pool changing room) was just aggressive and prejudiced. Thankfully most women are not quite so aggressive.

I suspect it's more the combined decades of experience of gender non conforming women on this board.

It surely cannot be beyond the wit of man to come up with customs that make it possible to keep sex private except in those limited circumstances where something depends on it.

In a structured environment, such as a gym, admin can record sex, and make the use of same-sex or gender-neutral facilities a condition of service. No-one else needs to know. Anyone concerned about 'outing' will stick to gender-neutral. Anyone spotting an apparently opposite-sex person in single-sex facilities can complain to admin, who have options such as asking passing trans to stick to gender-neutral, or blackballing rule-breaking non-passing trans.

Unstructured scenarios like public toilets are harder because they've always operated on a basis of superficial appearance + politeness, with the 'politeness' rules being the main thing that's actually changed. It needs to become normal practice again to challenge people who look out of place. They can't be required to provide proof of sex, but they also cannot insist they have a right of entry without it.

This is hard on people with XY DSDs, but it always was, and would be even if trans didn't exist. Trans ideology has just made it harder.

Is this what you mean?

Willmott explains: “I’m the best part of 6ft4in, short hair, don’t wear makeup or skirts. Barely a week goes by that I don’t get a double-take. Women glance in, see a 6ft body with short hair and think: ‘Aah!’. But after the second glance they think ‘Oh OK, it’s a woman.’”

For Willmott, “it’s just something that happens. It used to bother me because we do need to broaden the bandwidth of what a biological woman looks like”.

Caz Coronel is very clearly female.

I'm not sure what happened to Claire Prihartini, but a woman who has had a bilateral mastectomy just looks like a woman who has had a bilateral mastectomy. The scars are a bit of a give away. Also, often, the lack of nipples.

When you pretend that homophobic and misogynistic abuse is genuine confusion about sex, you are just aligning with the abusers.

Claire Prihartini is Jolyon Maugham’s wife. She has two “trans” daughters. She is also very obviously female.

That's 9 months old. We had a thread about it at the time. That, and JM's wife. It was part of a post-SC ruling 'moral panic' from the TRAs. I don't recall seeing anything more recent. Certainly not 'numerous incidents'.

Although, it only ever seems to happen to people already involved in transactivism in some way. So maybe a kind of 'reap what you sow' vibe.

Anyway, no-one needs to be 'outed' as trans. If someone is asked about their sex, there is always the option to answer 'prefer not to say'. Of course, that will mean that you cannot use that particular facility, but there will usually be a universal option. No biggie, surely.

Exactly this.

So you want sex to be a special category only for trans-identified people? Well, that's hardly fair, is it? Every human being has a sex.

Besides, the argument is academic. Sex is not a special category under the law, doesn't matter what the guidance mistakenly says. I suspect there are knowledgeable people working right now to remove the mistake.

Oops, looks like Sex Matters are already on the job! I'm late to the party.

Communism is also a philosophical belief.

So by your logic, if I take another's property under my philosophical belief that all property is theft and I am therefore righting a crime not committing one, no one can check the fact of ownership in case it exposes my philosophical belief that a thing that is not mine should be mine 🙄

The woman pictured does not look like a man, so she is unlikely to be challenged by other women; and as it says in the article it was a man, not a woman, 'a male voice shouting across the vestibule: “The men’s toilets are on this side!' who challenged her.

My experience is at most the occasional 'Oi, this is the ladies'. No heckling, No wrestling. Certainly no spitting, and it's awful that any woman experienced that.

Spitting is not only a horrible thing to do , it is also considered assault or battery.
I suspect the spitters were already nasty pieces of work, and were not hitherto conspicuously law-abiding women who were suddenly prompted to start spitting at other women by a ruling of the Supreme Court.

The article you quote is from 2025 and the absence of anything more recent would suggest that the outbreak of spitting has been dealt with - possibly by the perpetrators being charged with assault, or battery?

Going back to what I'm sure was discussed at the time the SCJ came out (and may actually be mentioned in the SCJ it's too hot to go and check)

• The purpose of questioning one person's sex would be to protect the entire facility and resource for all women requiring a single sex space, and to ensure this is available for them

• One person cannot be permitted to muck about in a way that could remove the resource from the whole group - a resource that is there to achieve a justifable aim and which is by law meant to exclude those of the opposite sex. Therefore questioning someone who appears to be breaching this - and potentially threatening the resource and inclusion for all the women who need it - would seem a wholly justifiable aim.

• There should be a designated gender neutral facility available as an alternative to this: there is no question of not having a space.

• Someone making a fuss about proving their sex has already demonstrated they wish to mess about and are likely to be a bad actor.

• 'Proving' sex is ridiculous anyway - and I'm sure the SJC does mention this, we have had case law saying that 'outing' is not a reasonable excuse - it would be quite simply that because data can now be easily and legally falsified because the governments of today are out of their little tiny minds, a service provider in doubt of a person's veracity about their sex can refuse them access to the single sex provision anyway. The onus is on the person in question to prove this, and the service provider does not have to let them. They can be redirected to the gender neutral facility. So no actual need to 'prove', particularly if you have a six foot chap with a huge adam's apple and size thirteens proudly showing you his birth certificate that now says he's a woman. You can just say no, but feel free to use the gender neutral space and have a nice day.

• If the person wishes to pursue this legally, they're not going to have much of a case. A court can certainly suggest they have a mouth swab DNA test to prove conclusively, but even if they do turn out to be a woman, it's still a reasonable aim to protect a women's single sex space if in doubt as the person could easily use the gender neutral. And as the SCJ does reference, I'm sure, individual personal tragedies do not equal a right to remove a needed equality resource for an entire population. It's about meeting the needs of the group, not the individual.

IANAL, feel free, but I'm certain this conversation was had a year ago and it seems pretty straight forward to me. The issue will always be that these men always always will see everything as solely all about them. The law is not.

But if organisations can’t record sex, how can they ensure there is no sex-based discrimination? Same applies for gender identity.

Gender identity (where someone has one) shouldn’t be some dirty little secret. The law says clearly that transwomen are NOT women, so nobody should be pretending that they are. Transwomen have their own needs including protection from discrimination.

I always want to ask people like @EmilyinEverton

What do you think women should do if they experience a man in their legally single sex space?

Suck it up so they don't offend anyone?

Before trans right activism we had high trust around toilets etc. They didn't need policing we trusted everyone would stick to the rules and so masculine looking women were probably unlikely to be challenged as the default presumption was if in the women's they were probably women.

Unfortunately because of trans activism we no longer have high trust and we can no longer trust that masculine looking people have a right to be in the womens. So there may be more challenges to masculine looking women than before but that's because of the men who have and continue to undermine trust in the safety of single sex spaces.

Saying that any women challenged it would usually take 3 seconds to realise she is a women anyway.

Emily seems to think women shouldn't demand single sex spaces if it occasionally causes some awkwardness.

I think the trans ideology movement will eat itself eventually, the way communism did in the USSR.

Stonewall is already morphing the cause to Trans+

I think people like Emily should be aware of this, and jump on the train quickly, because LGBTQIA+ is leaving the station. I am vaguely interested in seeing what Stonewall dictats are issued in the coming months.

I have a real problem with that Guardian article as it doesn’t show what’s going on for women and children in reality.

Obviously, the Good Law Project is involved in some way or other. They don’t understand design and how it affects safety and health.

Their ultimate aim seems to be to enclose us all in private cubicles or rooms within mixed sex areas.

In the Keeping Children Safe in Education consultation: “Contrary to how the guidance is framed, schools are under no obligation to provide any single-sex facilities whatsoever. It would be entirely lawful and legitimate for a school to provide toilet and changing facilities entirely in self-enclosed lockable rooms, designed for use by one pupil at a time. Indeed, where this is practicable, this may be the most sophisticated way of addressing the needs of all pupils. The guidance should make this clear”.

That above is wrong, dangerous, and implies schools have the space and money to do this.

Bridge's aim is basically to ensure self ID.

Have single spaces, men can't be questioned even if it's bleeding obvious (and not only the special data nonsense but also the statement that no one can challenge anyone because 'rude and harassment' as if a bloke with an 'inappropriate desire to use women's single sex spaces' (excellent phrase sex matters) is not equally being rude, harassing, and attempting to coercively control and remove equality and provision from every woman user.

I don't see that standing up in court. Sex Matters may well have to take Bridget there, and I am ready to help fund it.

The word and logic twisting will gather pace now that the activists have run out of road. In the end, it will be all they have left, and they will be arguing only with each other, because everyone else will focus on reality and won't have to pay the activists any attention at all anymore.

And I will be overjoyed to not have to discuss this subject ever again!

Emily, my philosophical belief is Reality, and I would expect everyone to respect my beliefs and not ask me any questions that might "out" my understanding of Reality.