Content warning for institutional transphobia. This post is really speaking to cis allies and family members, not to trans people. We already know what the risks are.

The Supreme Court in the U.K. has decided that in the eyes of the law, only people whose are assumed female at birth are women. This is a dangerous ruling: dangerous for vulnerable transgender and cisgender women.

Forget for a moment about the political capital that people are making from endangering transgender women. Ignore the legal back and forth that’s to come, the protests that are being organised, the petitions. Set aside the fact that none of this does anything to protect cisgender women from murder, sexual assault, unequal pay and workplace discrimination, misogyny from institutions like the police and healthcare.

Consider instead the cost to a person. What does this mean for one individual trans woman? If Veronica lived in the U.K. (or if this hate-fuelled law came to Ireland), what would it mean for her?

If she were to become unhoused, a shelter would have the right to quarter her with cisgender men, even though she’d be at high risk of physical or sexual assault.

If she were to go to jail or prison, the system would have the right to subject her to searches by a male police officer or warden and put her in a men’s prison.

If she were to survive violence at the hands of a man, a women’s shelter could refuse access to her and a female survivors’ counselling service could turn her away.

If she were to go into long term care in her old age, she would not have the right to request that a woman orderly help her with certain personal and intimate procedures. She would not have an automatic right to accommodation with women. The same in a hospital setting.

If she were to go to a swimming pool or gym, they would have the right to bar her from the women’s changing rooms.

Transgender people are twice as likely as cisgender people to be victims of crime in general and four times as likely to be victims of violent crime. Around 50% of trans people are assaulted or abused during their lives. Hate crimes against trans people are on the rise. Putting trans women into facilities with cisgender men is reckless endangerment of a vulnerable group.

And what about cisgender women who don’t conform to people’s visual assumptions of womanhood. Will they have to prove that they are cis women, that they didn’t transition, that the documents they have access to in the moment are “right”? Will we start to see vulnerable cis women being “accidentally” shunted away from safety and into danger?

Bear in mind that no evidence has been found to support an increased safety risk from transgender women using public facilities that align with their gender identity. All the focus on trans women has in fact increased instances of assault and harassment of both trans and cis women in public facilities.

Trans women are not men. Trans women are women. Anything contradicting this spits in the face of progress in understanding gender and sex, deciding that genital configuration at birth is more important than lived experience and later discoveries. It reduces womanhood to presumably working ovaries, a womb and a vulva. It perpetuates the myth that sex is binary and simple.

Coming back to the human(e) level: trans people are tired. We’re tired of being attacked, tired of being unjustifiably villainised, tired of being the means by which someone makes political capital. I’ve seen friends and loved ones hitting the depths of despair over everything that’s happened in the past months. It’s hard to believe that anyone’s on our side, that we will be safe out in the world.

Take care of your trans friends, siblings and community members.

And look at the people who are celebrating this Supreme Court ruling as a win. They are not safe for any LGBTQIA+ people to be around.

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