License to Discriminate: UK’s Labour Pushes Unethical Anti-Trans Steps
Leading Off: Studies try to put a veneer of legitimacy on Cass’s political project. A powerful UK agency says bigotry based on appearance is A-OK. Top story lines for the week.
photo illustration by Aly Gibbs
by Assigned Media
The UK, a leader in anti-trans bigotry, appears to be moving forward with discriminatory and unprincipled plans on two fronts even as its Labour-led government is plummeting in the polls.
The National Health Service England announced it will conduct two studies of puberty blockers. The agency will recruit 226 children diagnosed with gender dysphoria and administer puberty blockers, with some receiving the blockers right away, and others receiving them after a year. The studies, the agency said, will follow these children for two years.
These projects come in the wake of the widely refuted Cass Review, a 2024 political document that was intended to undermine gender affirming medical care for minors.
The NHS announcement drew immediate criticism from LGBTQ+ advocacy groups for its focus on the effects of these treatments solely on trans youth, despite their regular and undisputed use for cis youth. The studies are exclusionary as well, critics said, because they set an extremely high bar for qualification.
According to a document widely leaked to the media, a powerful UK government agency is preparing to call on businesses and organizations to restrict access to single-sex spaces and services based solely on appearance.
The agency, the deceptively named Equality and Human Rights Commission, has yet to finalize its “code of practice,” but the leaked version seeks to erase lawfully issued gender recognition certificates and vaguely dictate how the public and private sectors should enforce government discrimination, using terms like “evidence of concern,” QueerAF reported.
The document, which is still being contested by groups like the nonprofit GoodLaw Project, has drawn widspread outrage from civil rights and queer organizations. A spokesperson for TransActual described it as "a license to discriminate based on looks, plain and simple."
In effect, this change would leave trans people in limbo regarding single-sex spaces, with the potential of being denied access to facilities for their gender identity but also the potential of being barred from spaces for their sex assigned at birth, leaving them with nowhere to go.
The potential effects of this guidance extend beyond just trans people to cis people whose apperance doesn’t align with strict gender norms. In just this past year, we have seen numerous examples of cis people being denied access, or worse being assaulted or harassed, while using spaces that align with their gender.
The Maine Human Rights Commission is suing five school districts for refusing to comply with trans-inclusive policies. The government of Maine has been a stronghold of support for trans people since Donald Trump’s inauguration, consistently pushing back on his discriminatory anti-trans edicts and refusing to back down to his threats.
Despite this support by the state, five school districts have adopted policies in line with his biased executive orders: “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” and “Defending Women From Gender Ideology.”
The lawsuit seeks to overturn these policies and unify the state in its support of its trans population.
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