This month, updated NHS England guidance confirmed that single-sex wards, toilets and changing rooms in England hospitals must now be used in line with “biological sex,” meaning that trans women cannot access women’s facilities in hospitals, nor can trans men use men’s facilities. (“Biological sex,” here, refers to sex assigned at birth; U.K. law does not recognize that biological sex can be changed.) This is part of a chain of policies enacted after the 2025 U.K. Supreme Court judgment that decided that the words “woman” and “man” in the 2010 Equality Act refer to an individual’s assigned sex at birth. 

Various institutions in the U.K., from the British Transport Police to the notorious Equality and Human Rights Commission, have interpreted this specific judgment as a wider confirmation that trans people should legally be considered their assigned sex at birth, and have changed their policies accordingly. The anti-trans movement have proclaimed this a triumph of “reality” over delusion. This is, of course, a smokescreen—trans people are real, and trying to sort people by assigned sex is unworkable. But these policies are a very effective way to excuse deliberate mistreatment as common sense.