The Tantrum Over Single-Sex Spaces

Schadenfreude is the most ignoble of instincts. The English are so ashamed of it that they have left it to the Germans to invent the term. It is of course a perfectly natural impulse, albeit one that we should strive to curb. But who doesn’t feel that warm interior glow when our enemies finally get their comeuppance?

If we’re honest, plenty of us are feeling this way following the publication this week of guidance by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on single-sex spaces. The meltdowns from those who have consistently attempted to obliterate women’s rights have been predictably melodramatic. The collision with reality has left them smarting, and justifiably so.

‘In a world’s first,’ wrote one activist on X, ‘the United Kingdom moves to make it illegal for trans women to pee. Welcome to 2026 where laws discriminating against and segregating minorities are now commonplace again.’ We have grown accustomed to the trans lobby indulging in fantasies of their own oppression, but the extent of the hysteria is still difficult to fathom coming from grown adults.

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Over on Bluesky, that toxic haven for bigots and bedlamites, the wailing has been deafening. The violent activist group Bash Back has vowed ‘further mass resistance’. Professional troll India Willoughby has called it ‘trans apartheid’ and asserted that he intends to continue breaking the law. Others have compared it to the era of Jim Crow, or taken it as further evidence of ‘trans genocide’.

The infantilism of activist culture has prevented many from calmly accepting the law. Trans-identified people have precisely the same rights as everyone else, and nothing about this guidance has changed that. We need to ask serious questions about what has happened to our society. How is it that a sizable minority now believe that human beings can change sex, and that this pseudo-religious belief ought to supersede women’s rights in law?

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Much of the blame has to lie with groups such as Stonewall that have misrepresented the law to public bodies and businesses. For years, campaigners have insisted that men who identify as women must be allowed to use toilets and changing facilities of the opposite sex. Since last April’s Supreme Court ruling clarified that this is not legal, activists have nevertheless continued to deny it. The collective meltdown we are now seeing is the result of this misinformation. If activists wish to direct their ire anywhere, it should be towards those who have lied to them and claimed that they have a special privilege to override women’s rights.

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Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities, has hardly helped matters. The guidance from the EHRC has been languishing on her desk since last September, while companies have claimed to be too ‘confused’ to implement its directives. This is disingenuous, of course, since the Supreme Court ruling could not have been clearer. But it just goes to show how adherents to genderism are committed to living in their own make-believe world.

The hysteria is completely unnecessary, given that the guidance explicitly states that trans-identified people should be offered a space of their own to change or use toilet facilities wherever possible. The EHRC has simply reminded service providers that single-sex spaces cannot exist where both men and women are permitted entry. This should not be difficult to grasp.

The tantrums we have seen over this basic restatement of the law suggest that, for some, it will be difficult to restore any semblance of sanity. Following the example of Stonewall, many people are determined to cling to the view that defending women’s rights is inherently ‘transphobic’. Civil disagreement is always preferable, but meaningful debate becomes impossible when one side insists on treating ordinary legal boundaries as expressions of hatred.