‘A huge reset’: gender-critical activists and trans rights campaigners react to supreme court ruling

For gender-critical campaigners, the supreme court’sruling on the legal definition of a womanwas a “huge reset” that left them feeling “vindicated and relieved”.For transgender rights campaigners, it was a “damaging attack on their rights”, signalling the start of “real issues” in their fight for legal recognition.“I think this will be the kicking-off point for a very enhanced push for overt restrictions on the rights of trans people,” said Victoria McCloud, who changed her legal sex more than two decades ago.View image in fullscreenVictoria McCloud, the UK’s first trans judge, moved to the Republic of Ireland after her job in the UK became ‘untenable’.Photograph: Andrew MasonThe UK’s first trans judge, sheapplied to intervenein the supreme court appeal but was refused. Last year she quit her job as a judge, saying her position had become “untenable” because her trans identity was viewed as a “lifestyle choice or an ideology”. She now lives in the Republic of Ireland.McCloud said the supreme court ruling came in the midst of “a scary time” for trans people in the UK and would mark the start of a more intense fight for rights. “The rest has been phoney war. The real issues now start,” she said.“If I was a trans person in the UK today, I would steer clear of using any loo in a public space unless it was a combined-sex loo, because I personally cannot, as of this moment, judge whether I should use the male loo or the female loo,” she said.“I haven’t got my head around the complexities of the judgment and its repercussions will be ongoing for some time. But I’m happy I live in the Republic of Ireland, where this problem is not an issue. They know where I’m allowed to pee here.”Outside the supreme court on Wednesday morning, Susan Smith, a co-director of the gender-critical campaign group ForWomenScotland, which brought the appeal, was one of a number of women jubilantly celebrating the result.View image in fullscreenSusan Smith welcomed the verdict.Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/Zuma Press/Rex/Shutterstock“It was quite something to walk out into banks of photographers and loads of people cheering and clapping. It was very emotional,” Smith said. “We’ve all given up a lot to fight this and we’ve all had to put up with a lot of abuse, a lot of misrepresentation of our motives and our position and our beliefs.“We’ve finally got clarity on the law, and we know now that when spaces and services are provided under the Equality Act and they’re single-sex, it means exactly that. That feels like a massive relief.”Smith said the ruling would help women feel safe if there was a male in a female-only space: “They will know that they are well within their rights to object to that.”She added: “Gender reassignment is a protected characteristic, and it is still protected. But saying that women were just some amorphous collection of people and it was an identity anyone could have, it was really downplaying the very real and different issues that affect men and women.”Maya Forstater, who founded the campaign group Sex Matters after she won an employment tribunal that found she had beenunfairly discriminated againstbecause of her gender-critical beliefs, said the ruling brought “relief, vindication, happiness and pride”.“This judgment has been so clear and it’s from the highest court in the land,” she said. “There are dozens and dozens of women who have had to bring employment tribunal cases because they’ve been victimised for just saying what they think the law says. Now we know that we were right.”2:32UK supreme court rules definition of woman in Equality Act refers to ‘a biological woman’ – videoShe said the court judgment was about “recognising rules and reality”. “If you’re a man, you can call yourself what you like, you can dress how you like, but you cannot work in a rape crisis centre, you cannot go into a woman’s changing room,” she said.McCloud said she also shared concerns about protecting women’s spaces – “I don’t want men in the women’s loos myself, thank you”. But she said people with extreme views “regard someone like me as dangerous” simply because of her trans identity.“Gender-critical ideology is on the ascendancy, and this is obviously a success for them,” she said. “But the struggle starts now, both for them and for us, because they are going to want to enhance this success and we are going to want to clarify and protect the rights that we thought we had.”View image in fullscreenEllie Gomersall called the verdict ‘yet another attack on the rights of trans people’.Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The GuardianEllie Gomersall, a trans woman and Scottish Green party activist, said she was “gutted” when she saw the news and described it as “yet another attack on the rights of trans people to live our lives in peace”.“This will only impact trans people who have got a gender recognition certificate (GRC), which actually the vast majority of trans people don’t. But I don’t want to underplay how damaging it is,” she said.“It sets the idea that even if you jump through all of the hoops, you go through that really dehumanising and stigmatising process to get a GRC, you’ll still never be recognised in law for who you truly are.”She added: “Some individuals and organisations will see this result and use it as justification or vindication to discriminate further against trans people, and that makes me really worried for my community.”