Deciding to suspend our work In 2023 we at Trans Legal Project suspended our work and we have, with one brief exception, stayed off social media since then. The purpose of this summary is to give you some explanation for why we stepped back and why we haven’t as yet returned.
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TLP has always had two people at its core, both trans. One is a qualified legal expert, who has made it their mission to develop an encyclopaedic understanding of UK law as it effects trans people. The other, who has focused on our social media and online output, has a long history of activism and has made significant contributions in other areas of trans rights over the last 15 years. Neither of us is interested in the limelight or in supporting our own egos in this work but simply in trying to give the community a solid, reliable and honest point of view around the law, to illuminate and challenge the (often poor quality) legal arguments of those who wish us ill. Though we have never been in a position to deal with individual cases, despite often being asked, central to our work has always been the provision of high-quality commentary on legal developments and rulings. We have typically spent many hours on each analysis paper, sometimes inviting other legal opinions and taking it through 4 or 5 drafts before releasing it.Â
Our work has included consistently opposing the politically-driven turn of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, pointing out the shortcomings of its partisan and often legally illiterate hostility towards trans people, defending Stonewall against some ludicrous Gender Critical assertions starting with a case centring on the University of Essex, challenging offensive government and media rhetoric and absurd interpretations of the law, defending trans women’s rights to take part in sports and trans children’s rights to not face discrimination at school, taking the Daily Telegraph to IPSO and achieving a win, connecting with and receiving support from MPs and members of the House of Lords, and being referred to in the press (both mainstream and LGBTQ+) and the Scottish Parliament.
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Around the founders, TLP has also comprised of a group of lawyers, legal researchers and legal academics, many (though not all) trans or queer, who supported the aims of the organisation. Whilst we made attempts to build capacity, our own time limitations (both with other full-time commitments), lack of financial resource and, candidly, our inexperience in scaling up our work whilst also guaranteeing its consistent high quality (so vital in matters of law), meant that we did not succeed in expanding TLP as we might have liked. In addition, and importantly, unlike some of the well-resourced Gender Critical groups that have emerged, we as founders have also had to deal with the personal effect of the avalanche of transphobic material in the discourse – legal or otherwise – that is now a feature of British life.
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The constant drumbeat of hate inevitably had an effect. Every legal case aimed at destroying trans people's rights was, and is, obviously, aimed at destroying ours as trans people living in the UK too. The nature of the work also meant that we actively needed to seek out (and were often told of) vindictive lawsuits against trans people, in order to assess their level of threat. Alongside this, the sheer size of the task became overwhelming at a moment when other personal factors also made the work particularly challenging.
The result was that we took the reluctant decision to suspend our work in large part about 18 months ago, and with the exception of a brief exploration of recent NHS guidelines prompted by some sickeningly inaccurate right-wing press interpretations, it hasn’t yet felt possible to restart it.
GC groups have changed their strategy in the UK There was however one other important factor in our decision to step back. We saw the strategy of our opponents start to change, and with it the legal landscape. When we began our work in 2021, we were, we felt, facing an increasingly coordinated threat from bigots and right-wing actors attempting to use the law as it stood to destroy our rights. Four years ago, GC individuals and groups were typically making arguments in law that were wrong, sometimes even ridiculous. We pointed this out. The judiciary, still not infected by the culture wars that have defined Britain since 2016, often agreed. For a time, GC success in the courts was relatively poor (with a few important exceptions, like Maya Forstater’s eventual legal victory) – though the British political establishment and mainstream media rallied round them more and more, whatever the outcome. We wondered how long it would be before anti-trans activists started to pivot to a new strategy and around 2023 it began to be clear that they were doing so. Since then, GC groups have, we believe, turned far more attention to not fighting the trans community under existing law, but to getting that law changed. The EHRC has led the way with its attempts to alter first the non-statutory and most recently the statutory guidance around The Equality Act, attempting to frame it in a trans-hostile terms which could pave the way for blanket-bans of trans women from areas of public life. Lobbying of parliament by GC groups has increased and been professionalised. In November 2024, an anti-trans group, For Women Scotland, reached The Supreme Court with their twice-already-lost appeal of a case that could, should the Court rule in their favour, very seriously damage the legal rights of trans women in the UK, even those with Gender Recognition Certificates. Critically, as FWS’s legal team likely knows, even should they lose again there is a chance that The Supreme Court, influenced by the deafening newspaper-led witch-hunt against trans people, will issue in its judgment some obiter* remarks that may still be strongly sympathetic and legally helpful to their position. The Court may even suggest to the government that the law should be changed to discriminate against trans women more clearly – a prompt which the new Labour government could use to do just that (just as it has used the cover of The Cass Review to decimate the lives of trans young people, despite international condemnation). This also illustrates an additional feature of the current legal landscape; in our view, the British judiciary is now institutionally transphobic, with judges at all levels now inclined to provide interpretations of the law that restrict or destroy trans people’s rights. Given this clear turn, and the increasingly effective political and legal contacts being forged by well-funded GC actors, it began to seriously concern us that our takedowns of their sometimes-inept legal opinions might actually serve to alert them to the holes in their arguments, allowing them to strengthen them. Or worse, even to shine a light on aspects of the law on which they should lobby for change. Such lobbying has become intense. Clearly, helping anti-trans activists to more effectively damage our community was, and is, the complete reverse of our aim. This was another reason to suspend our work – amongst the most powerful.
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Communication choices
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Our primary platform for communication has long been Twitter/X and we have built up a relatively small but valued following there (which has grown steadily even while we have been away). We will retain an account there for now, but for at least the last year have been feeling increasingly sickened by our (albeit passive) connection to a platform full of bitter hatred and where the vilification or erasure of trans people has reached epidemic levels under the ownership of the richest man in the world - someone who we believe is disturbed, unprincipled and dangerous. Because of this we will not be adding more content on X from this point - should we have more to say it will be from our Bluesky account.
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Where to from here?
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2025 is likely to be another difficult year for the British trans community. In the US, the return of Trump is likely to be a disaster for our siblings and the hatred that the new US administration will direct at trans people may well have an effect on the UK discourse. We can expect the Tories, Reform Party and the large number of newspapers sympathetic to them to be inspired by Trump’s ideas and to work to import them here. Whether Labour will hold the line against further destruction of trans people's human rights remains unclear - thus far it seems obvious that neither the Health Secretary nor the Prime Minister are allies and that an assault on our community could come from either (as it has already from the former in the Puberty Blocker ban and the latter in deeply transphobic remarks before the election), if it seems politically expedient. In spite of this, we believe that eventually the tide will turn. Trans people will not stop existing simply because those who hate us wish it. We have always existed - in cultures all over the world - and we always will exist, no matter what bigotry is directed at us by people who want us gone. We have some major advantages over those who hate us. First the inner truths that call us to live our lives as we truly are create in us a resilience that those who base their outlook on lies or hate can never have - because their values are based not on strength but weakness and fear. The strength we have needed to find in ourselves simply to be ourselves is a great asset and we should draw on it. Second, the reality of our lives is not as those who spread those lies would have others believe. Those who smear us, from social commentators, to journalists, to lawyers base their attacks on prejudice and invention. Social and political arrangements based on untruths always collapse eventually like a house of cards, though its not always clear how long that will take. The last Tory government in the UK disintegrated under the weight of its dishonesty and Trump will one day be gone too. We will still be here, because we are always here, when the bigots have died out.
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We at TLP are reviewing what contribution we might make going forward. It’s unclear to us just yet – resources and support remain a major issue, The Supreme Court verdict (likely in the spring) will be central, and we remain very conscious that we don’t wish to assist our enemies by giving them legal arguments to use against us. We will continue to reflect on this. In the meantime, we’d suggest that we in the UK also turn our attention to the conditions under which trans people are living in other countries. If you want to help, please consider donating to Trans Rescue, a tremendous organisation dedicated to legally evacuating trans people from dangerous countries all over the world. Since the re-election of Trump they have been inundated with enquiries from the United States and we’re sure they would welcome your support.
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*Commentary around the case that may not be directly related to it but relays some judicial opinion. **********
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