Marion Calder, centre, and Susan Smith, left, from For Women Scotland, celebrate outside the U.K. Supreme Court in London on April 16, 2025 after the court ruled that a woman is someone born biologically female, excluding transgender people from the legal definition in a long-running dispute between the feminist group and the Scottish government.
| Photo Credit: AP
The U.K. Supreme Court has ruled that the Equality Act, 2010, will not treat trans women as women. In doing so, it drastically curtails the rights and protections that trans women can avail under the law. Effectively, the ruling undermines the U.K.’s Gender Recognition Act, 2004.
In January, U.S. President Donald Trump passed an executive order declaring that his government recognises two sexes — male and female. He said that the order “restores sanity.”
Trans exclusion
Two days ago, I saw a social media post by a leading member of the U.K.’s oldest South Asian and Black feminist group welcoming the Supreme Court ruling for upholding “common sense” and protecting safe same-sex spaces for “biologically” female women while also, according to her, protecting trans women’s rights. The Labour Party too welcomed the verdict, saying that it “clarifies” the issue. Why are people who see themselves as opponents to far-right politics welcoming a ruling that is being celebrated by the far-right internationally as a triumph? Perhaps this is because the campaign for trans exclusion has framed itself as feminist.
J.K. Rowling, who fronted and funded the campaign that resulted in the ruling in the U.K., declares that the verdict will keep women and girls “safe” from trans women. Fear-mongering about women’s “safety” (from predatory Muslims, Mexicans, or trans women) and immigration are the most potent ingredients of global far-right discourse today. Muslim men are accused of masquerading as Hindus to seduce Hindu women; trans women are accused of being men masquerading as female to rape women.
Alexandr Dugin, the guru of the global far-right, says LGBTQIA+ rights, like all human rights, are symptoms of kaliyuga — i.e., caste/race/gender mixing (varnasamkara, miscegenation), pollution, and confusion of natural categories and hierarchies. Trans exclusion today is the last socially acceptable bigotry — and thus the portal through which other bigotries slide back into “common sense.”
Billionaires such as Ms. Rowling and Elon Musk have the wealth and power to shape “common sense”, policy, and judicial opinion. They have the approval of Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yet they claim to be victimised by trans women’s posts on social media. Seen through the refracting lens of far-right ideology, power arrangements appear inverted. Minorities menace majorities, threatening them with elimination and extinction.
Generally, democratic people recognise that there is no evidence to support the ‘Great Replacement; idea: i.e., the far-right claims that whites are being demographically “replaced” by non-whites or (in India), Hindus by Muslims. But the same people are often ready to accept (without a shred of evidence) that women are being replaced by trans women in sports.
Take a closer look at trans sceptical arguments and their appearance of “common sense” begins to come apart, revealing a fundamental incoherence. Ms. Rowling had said she was worried that in a patriarchal society, girls would be tempted to become male. But that doesn’t explain why so many would rather be trans women than retain the privilege of passing as “boys” and “men”. And it is these trans women who are the most targeted by trans exclusionary campaigners such as Ms. Rowling.
Some of my feminist friends reassure me (and I suspect, themselves) that the U.K. ruling offers equal but separate facilities and protections ( such as bathrooms, domestic violence shelters, and sports) for cis and trans women. ‘Separate but equal’ — have we forgotten that this was the infamous doctrine used to rationalise racial segregation in the U.S., in schools, housing, transport, and yes, bathrooms? Segregating trans women from other women will make public spaces more hostile to all women. It will entitle misogynists to scrutinise the bodies of every woman, denouncing her as a trans imposter if they think she looks butch or gamine or indeed “too feminine to be true.”
Imane Khelif was assigned female at birth, but this didn’t stop Ms. Rowling from calling her a man. Must all girls and women have to carry certificates proving that from birth till the present their external and internal anatomy, as well as chromosomes and hormones, have passed the gender test? Or will we single out women for such tests whose appearance does not conform with traditional femininity?
Scientific evidence
So many who reject science when it comes to vaccines or climate change declare “science is real” to say trans people are not real. But sexual diversity is as “biological” as neurodiversity. Biology is not anatomy: there is mounting scientific evidence of diversity in hormones, chromosomes, and brain structure, resulting in diverse sexual identities.
The erudite Shashi Tharoor has said the use of “they” as a singular pronoun is ungrammatical. I have news for him. The singular “they” as a gender-neutral pronoun has been around since Chaucer. We don’t think it’s grammatical heresy to say “Everybody should mind their own business” or “Someone left their purse in the classroom.” Feminists were ridiculed when they asked for gender-neutral terms; today, “chairperson” is the norm, not “chairman.”
Science, law, language cannot erase trans people, just as they could not erase gay people. One day, the idea of the sex binary as a biological reality, as “common sense”, will appear as absurd as the idea that the earth is flat, and as bigoted as the idea that women’s wombs made them unfit to study, vote or play sports.
Kavita Krishnan, Feminist activist and writer
Published – April 24, 2025 02:29 am IST
