‘Single-sex spaces will be more dangerous for women’

Trans advocate Jaxon Feeley tells The Independent why the Supreme Court’s judgment could have serious consequences

- MILLIE COOKE

Single-sex spaces for women will become more dangerous, not safer, after Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, a transgender campaigner has warned. Sitting down with The Independent, Jaxon Feeley said the landmark ruling that trans women are not legally women is impossible to enforce in practice.

The judgment, which states that the definition of a woman in equality law is based on biological sex, means trans women with a gender recognition certificate can be excluded from single-sex spaces and has been billed as a victory for biological women. But Mr Feeley warned that the emphasis on biological sex opens up a whole host of other issues for single-sex spaces, including that trans men will now be forced to use women’s spaces, including bathrooms and changing rooms.

Outlining the myriad difficulties in enforcing the policy, the campaigner – who transitioned from female to male while serving as a prison officer in the UK – said: “If I walk into a [women’s] toilet now and say: ‘Well, I was assigned female at birth’, people are not going to be happy about that. I feel like people are going to be quite intimidated by that.

“It not only obviously puts [biological women] in a difficult situation, but it also allows any [cisgender] man to walk into any so-called official single-sex space now and say, ‘Well, I was assigned female at birth.’ How are you policing that? You can’t police that.”

He added: “The frightening thing is the fact that you’ve not just made women’s spaces more dangerous for trans women, you’ve actually made spaces more dangerous for biological women because of that lack of understanding.”