Trans people have been using gendered spaces for decades – we’re not going to stop now

As a trans person trying to make sense of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance on single-sex spaces, I feel quite exhausted and even more confused than before. 

I found myself reading and re-reading sections, trying to work out what it actually means for me, for my community, for the trans people who will now have to navigate this on top of everything else we already face. It’s exhausting, worrying and nerve-wracking. 

There’s something deeply wearing about having to sit down and decode dense legal language that is, ultimately, about whether or how you are allowed to exist in public spaces. 

What is crystal clear to me, even through the fog of legal language, is that it is going to make life harder for trans people regardless.

This mess was never based on safety, protection or fairness. It was based on bigotry, exclusion and a profound lack of empathy.

I don’t think people quite understand the stress that comes from this, and the threat that your rights to use spaces and public services could be taken away from you at any moment. 

The guidance, published by the EHRC, sets out how service providers and associations should interpret the Equality Act following the Supreme Court ruling of April 2025. It states, among other requirements, that services such as toilets and changing rooms must be used on basis of biological sex.

Trying to enforce exclusion of trans people from certain gendered spaces will be entirely impossible. You can’t always tell if someone is trans or not, so it stands to reason that you won’t be able to prove someone is or isn’t trans without a massive invasion of their privacy. 

I find myself wondering who would be enforcing the rules, and what would happen to those who don’t follow it.

I’ve been living my life as a woman for my entire adult life, and that’s not going to change because of this new guidance. 

Trans people are not going to disappear. We will keep showing up – in our workplaces, our communities, our gyms and public bathrooms – because we belong there, and we always have. 

The only thing that will change is that it will be that little bit harder and more dangerous for us to do so. 

To understand how we got here, it’s worth remembering that this didn’t happen in a vacuum. Over the past 10 years there has been a concentrated and well-funded effort to undermine trans rights – and the volume of it has been staggering. 

A report published in May 2026 by Amnesty International UK found that in the past five years, over 17,000 articles have been published about trans people – around 264 a month, or nine a day. It also noted a persistent inclination for trans people to be associated with controversy, conflict and harm.

That is not normal; that is a concentrated effort to undermine our rights by sowing distrust, fear and bigotry. 

And the fact that our courts, government and decision-makers have been swept up in it is deeply concerning. The Supreme Court ruling last April did not bring clarity – it brought further confusion, and this guidance is the latest consequence of that.

The guidance itself isn’t as horrible as the previous draft, which stated that transgender people could be excluded from services provided for members of the opposite sex, and that birth certificates could be requested to prove someone’s sex.

But it still bases itself on unnecessary exclusion and complications for trans people in their daily lives – making it hard for us to know how to use public services. 

Placing us in a separate space doesn’t protect anyone – it separates us

There have been many interpretations of it from both the online trans community and those who advocate against us, and it’s impossible to know what’s truly correct. 

But the fact is that we shouldn’t even be in this predicament in the first place. 

One of the more absurd elements of the guidance is its suggestion that trans people should be provided with a separate bathroom of their own – situating us as a ‘third sex’. 

I think what makes this part of the guidance so bizarre is that I thought the whole point was about trying to adhere to a binary of sex and gender.

Instead, they’ve created a third category, which defeats the point they are trying to enforce – and the fact non-binary people have been trying to campaign to be legally recognized for a long time without success is particularly glaring here.

Trans people have been using gendered spaces for decades without it ever being an issue, and this moral panic around services and bathrooms is not based on fact or reality. It’s based purely on fear.

Placing us in a separate space doesn’t protect anyone – it separates us, and it outs us as trans to strangers and service providers who would otherwise never have known. It creates a target on our backs.

The guidance creates a complicated mess in which organisations are now forced to interpret vague guidance while trying to deliver important services – particularly those who are already trans inclusive and wish to remain so. 

Those providers shouldn’t have to choose between their values and legal liability, and I am deeply worried about how service providers, who are already often underfunded and understaffed, will now be faced with potential legal challenges for simply trying to do their job.

But if history has taught us anything, it’s that we are still here. Every attempt to erase us, to legislate us out of existence, to make us feel like we don’t belong – we have survived all of it. And we will survive this too. 

The trans community is resilient, creative, and full of people who refuse to be made invisible. We have each other, we have our allies, and we have the truth on our side. This isn’t the end of anything – it’s just another obstacle on a road we’ve been walking for a long time. 

And we will keep walking it.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jessica.aureli@usnewsrank.com. 

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