Expected to confirm

Written by

May 20, 2026

Trans women must be barred from female toilets, changing facilities and sports teams, new official guidance is to state.

Bridget Phillipson is expected to confirm on Thursday that official guidance will state what businesses and public bodies must do under the law to protect single-sex spaces.

The guidance follows last year’s Supreme Court judgment that trans women, who were born male, are not legally women for the purposes of the Equality Act.

Yes, it follows it from very very far back. Miles back. 13 months.

The equalities minister’s failure to publish it until now has meant that hospitals and leisure centres are still allowing trans women into female spaces.

The guidance was written by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and submitted to Ms Phillipson in September, but she requested several revisions before agreeing to publish it.

You mean she extorted several revisions before agreeing to publish it.

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, called on public bodies to stop dragging their feet and implement the guidance.

“There never was any reason for employers and service providers to wait for this guidance before implementing the law,” she told The Telegraph.

“The Supreme Court was completely clear that when providing single sex spaces and services, sex has to mean sex – male and female.”

And we know what that means. It’s not some arcane mystery.

The update to the EHRC’s code of practice – the official name for the guidance – was required after the Supreme Court ruled last April that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

As it always had. Pretending it could refer to men who claimed to be women was just that: pretending. “Women” can’t mean “women” if it also means “some men” just as “up” can’t mean “up” if it also means “a little bit down”.

ry-Ann Stephenson, the EHRC chairman, said in December that the guidance would give advice on ensuring “there are services provided for people who can’t or don’t want to use the services for their biological sex”.

That sounds expensive. Can we all do that? I don’t want to take this crowded bus; dispatch a limousine for me – does that work?

Alexandra Parmar-Yee, the director of Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, said the guidance must ensure trans people are protected as she described law as “a mess”.

“The earlier draft of this guidance encouraged the policing of everyone’s gender based on appearance and was focused entirely on excluding trans people,” she said.

Excluding them from what? The definition of women? Of course men are excluded from the definition of women, and vice versa. From institutions belonging to women? Of course men can find their own institutions; god knows there are plenty of them. Not all exclusion is invidious or unfair or cruel.

Comments

12 responses to “Expected to confirm”

maddog1129

May 20, 2026 5:23 PM

The guidance “must ensure trans people are protected.”

What’s that supposed to mean?
Ophelia Benson

May 20, 2026 5:38 PM

The usual. Not “policing” people’s gender i.e. telling boys to get out of the girls’ spaces.
Francis Boyle

May 21, 2026 1:29 AM

Just off the top of my head: “women” and “not women” would be better than the unthinking default of “men” and “not men” except that doesn’t “protect” (i.e. give special status to) TIMs.
Sumi

May 21, 2026 5:30 AM

Any company with a legal department should have had sex-compliant policies in place a fortnight after the Supreme Court ruling. You’d think reputational risk-averse companies would want to avoid needless lawsuits. The footdragging on this is unbelievable, and the cues for it come from the government’s lack of action.
PJH

May 21, 2026 8:08 AM

“That sounds expensive”

Hardly, when such facilities already exist for those who “can’t or don’t want to use the services for their biological sex”.

The disabled toilets.
Athel Cornish-Bowden

May 21, 2026 8:35 AM

There is something I don’t understand at all, and maybe someone can explain.

I’m not surprised that some despicable men, starting with the President of the USA, both binary and pretend women, think it’s a god-given right for men to go into any space reserved for women, including any vaginas they fancy.

What I don’t understand, however, is why so many real women, such as Bridget Phillipson, Mary-Ann Stephenson and Alexandra Parmar-Yee, not to mention Nicola Sturgeon, are so determined to push the trans agenda. Would Bridget Phillipson, for example, be perfectly OK with it if I wandered into the women’s changing room while she was preparing to go into a swimming pool? How can one explain this?
Bjarte Foshaug

May 21, 2026 9:00 AM

One concession at a time.
Ophelia Benson

May 21, 2026 11:29 AM

PJH – But disabled people strongly object to having their facilities hijacked for other purposes.
PJH

May 21, 2026 1:32 PM

“disabled people strongly object to having their facilities hijacked for other purposes”

Yes, but.

Are they not mentally disabled?

For another view on this, I have a fully perambulatory friend, who’s badly visually impaired, (not ‘totally blind’) who finds the disabled toilets much easier to navigate. Not all disabilitues require the wheelchair on the sign – can we not extend this to mental illnesses?

In addition, if they’re not getting attention for being “male transvestite while in the women’s bathroom” does that not mean they won’t spend longer in there than necessary to drain their penis or drop their bowels?

Rather than, say, while in the women’s taking selfies screaming “HERE I AM IN A WOMEN’S TOILET!!!!one!11!!Eleventy” or perving on all the females in there?
iknklast

May 21, 2026 3:14 PM

PJH, I often use the disabled toilets for just that reason. When I’m having an anxiety episode, I can’t come out of the stall if there is anyone else in the restroom…that’s…awkward.

Also, too many toilets are too short these days. With my knees, which are not severely disabled enough to count for disability, I struggle to get down, and then to get up again. Last night, I was in a theatre where the toilet was way down low; I am too tall to manage it well. The toilet paper holder was way up high; sitting, I am too short to manage it well (and my shoulders are severely disabled, having suffered through four surgeries).

A lot of disabilities don’t show on the surface; mine mostly don’t. But the mental disorder of the trans ‘women’ does…it’s manifest.
Ophelia Benson

May 21, 2026 3:34 PM

What IS that with the insanely low toilets? I’ve been noticing it around here too. They’re misery for anyone over the age of 4. Why design public toilets with toddlers in mind thus making them uncomfortable for all females over the age of 12 or so (and males when sitting is relevant)? News flash: toddlers don’t use restrooms on their own, so they don’t need toilets 3 inches above the floor, because Mummy or Daddy can help with higher ones.

Drives me nuts.
Lady Mondegreen

May 21, 2026 7:14 PM

Yes, it’s a “mess.”

But who created the mess? It wasn’t such a mess 10, 15 years ago, when everybody understood that women’s facilities were intended for female human beings.

It’s not gender critical feminists’ fault that gender activists created this mess. And nobody will die if we all just agree to recognize sex and stop pretending that “identity” is magic.