When you try to imagine the lives of trans people in the UK today, you could be forgiven for thinking they have always been dominated entirely by fear and anxiety. Things have been getting worse, but until recently, my life as a transgender woman had not been consumed with worrying about how I’m supposed to live it. That is, until last year’s UK supreme court ruling.

In fact, when I’ve worried about needing a bathroom or felt hesitant about taking up space when invited to join a women’s network, it’s been other women who have made me feel welcome and pushed me to stop worrying. This was the reality for many trans people in the UK until 2025, when the court decided that “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act must refer to “biological sex”, upending decades of shared understanding of the law.

We saw the decision greeted with laughter and celebration by gender critical campaigners, and welcomed by ministers. Despite the court saying its decision would not disadvantage trans people, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) tried to implement it in a way that tore up previous protections. The EHRC’s initial advice stated that trans people should be excluded from any service or association for men or women, or gay and lesbian people, that matches their gender – whatever the wishes of the organisations running them.

The regulator left no glimmer of inclusion for trans people – suggesting that even inclusive social groups such as the Women’s Institute should be forced to exclude us, which it reluctantly later did.

The EHRC faced widespread criticism for this approach, leading to changes to the draft guidance published last week. The new version contains just the thinnest cushioning on trans equality. There is now a route for associations to carry on including us, meaning the aforementioned Women’s Institute may be able to think again by operating as an association for multiple protected characteristics. The language of the document has also softened slightly, into a more polite kind of cruelty.

The rest, however, is just as bad. Unlike for associations, the guidance gives inclusive men’s and women’s service providers no clear route to remaining so, and urges them to exclude trans people. Services, in this case, can mean anything from a men’s toilet or hospital ward to some women’s writing workshops. Unless disapproved by parliament, the guidance will usher in an era of enforced segregation for trans people, the policing of which will be outsourced to businesses, charities and the NHS.

Instead, we are expected to use “third spaces” where they exist, but what happens when they don’t? Nobody seems to have the answer – certainly most pubs in dated buildings won’t know what to do.

What cost will this have? In a very literal sense, the official figures put the financial cost of reconfiguring facilities at more than half a billion pounds, not including the years of litigation this could unleash. In a human sense, the government is leading us into a dark reality with its eyes wide open. It can stop this at any time.

The government’s own equality impact assessment admits that the impact on all trans people will likely be wide-ranging and negative, and notes trans women could face “disproportionate risk of violence and sexual assault” if we are left only with access to men’s services. The document also notes that “women who are considered masculine may face greater scrutiny” and warns of adverse impacts on disabled people. It will be more than just the trans community who suffer under a system that encourages suspicion of people’s gender based on “physique or physical appearance”, to quote the guidance itself.

Trans people will be left with a choice between researching toilet provision every time we go out or living our lives as we always have – only now without the protection of the law. In reality, our worlds will get smaller, and so many trans people who enrich our communities will self-exclude, leaving everyone worse off.

Away from toilets and changing rooms, our access to services of all kinds will become harder. This year, I found myself scared to go to hospital with lung problems in case they decided to admit me to a men’s ward, and I know I’m not alone. Trans people are anxious about leaving the house in a new world that makes us second-class citizens – told to accept being excluded, outed and put at risk. Far from Andy Burnham’s preferred “live and let live”, not fixing this will define Labour’s legacy on LGBTQ+ rights for a generation.

Trans people’s legal protections, hard-won and vital, clearly no longer work. We elect our politicians to be legislators, and they must fix the law itself. Not doing so is a political choice, and they cannot hide behind the courts in making it. As we go headfirst into becoming an outlier in the rights-respecting world, the picture is bleak – but it’s not too late to change it.

• Alexandra Parmar-Yee is a campaigner for trans equality and a director of Trans+ Solidarity Alliance

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