“We’re not scary, we’re not trying to hurt anyone. We just want to do the things that everybody else wants to do in life,” says Alfie Bailey-Bearfield, a volunteer at Trans+ Solidarity Alliance.
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The group gathered nearly 1,000 trans people and allies outside the UK’s seat of power, the Houses of Parliament, to speak to their MPs after new guidance came into force last month excluding trans people from single-sex spaces. Many queued for hours to talk to their representative.

The guidance, which Alfie calls “unworkable and dangerous”, sets out that trans people should not be allowed to use facilities and services, such as toilets and changing rooms, for the gender they live as, and in some cases also for their biological sex. Instead, gender-neutral “third spaces” should be provided where possible.

It follows last year’s supreme court ruling, which found that sex in the Equality Act refers only to biological sex and does not include transgender women with a gender recognition certificate. The ruling was celebrated by gender-critical activists, who viewed it as a “huge reset”.

“I want MPs to recognise that this community is in pain right now, we are suffering,” says Amelia, a 27-year-old trans woman from London who is hoping to train as a social worker. She says the ruling has made people afraid of leaving the house for fear of not being able to access the facilities they feel safe in.

The group set up a giant card, labelled ‘Farewell to Britain’s standing on LGBTQ+ rights’, which they plan to give the prime minister, Andy Burnham.

The UK fell to its lowest ever position on the annual Rainbow Index of European countries ranked by their laws on LGBTI equality last year after the ruling, having been first place in 2015. Britain is now the second worst country for overall LGBTQ+ laws in all of western Europe, according to International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) Europe.

The director of Trans+ Solidarity Alliance wrote an opinion article for the Guardian about the fear and anxiety that have followed the supreme court ruling. You can read it via the link ► https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/27/trans-people-segregation-parliament-supreme-court-ehrc?CMP=yt_gu

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