It just occurred to me that I blogged the letter I wrote to my MP about the transphobic guidance laid before Parliament last week, but I forgot to share it anywhere 🤦🏼 This might be useful to other people who have a minister as their MP. Ministers can't sign EDMs owen.blacker.me.uk/posts/blog/2...

Jess has been working so incredibly hard on trans rights for as long as I've known them. We met volunteering for TSN, they have been volunteering their time and forging other opportunities to devote their incredible talent to trans rights causes since they were a student.

I'm privileged to be Jess's friend and colleague when they were at @transsafety.network and they deserve so much respect. The article on trans death certificates in the UK was really emotional for all of us and is so important. transsafety.network/posts/corone... To paraphrase Leave Jess Alone

“Lord Reed, chair of the Supreme Court’s appointment commissions, seems to be suggesting that potential candidates must profess *his* judicial ideology if they wish to be appointed to the Court.”

🚨DR UK's Statement on the EHRC's New Code of Practice "We are appalled at implications that an adequate workaround is trans people using Disabled toilets instead. We will not be used as a loophole in the wider erosion of trans rights." Full statement👇 www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/disabil...

Struggling to know what to read or do following the announcement of the UK's anti-trans segregation regime? I've created a basic set of information, resources, and actions - in the form of an auto-reply sent to every single person who emails me at work.

Jess O'Thomson dedicates themselves body and spirit to fighting one of the most demoralising and gruelling political fights in the world. They contend with constant abuse from professional transphobes both online and off, and are thanked by people in our community calling them cis and privileged.

Jess O Thomson is one of our strongest soldiers show some respect

Jess O'Thomson is a treasure and that they get so much hassle for being non binary is shocking I bet you say the same about bisexuals ya weirdos

The constant harassment of Jess O’Thomson is fucking disgusting and some of y’all are no better than GCs. They are a wonderful person, legal advocate, and activist. Go fuck yourselves.

What is an "interim access arrangement" and is it inadequate toilet access

The recent rulings in the supreme court I think are not just a sign of a roll back of rights but a sign that the legal establishment in the UK is more and more comfortable with simply ignoring international human rights norms and having no expectation of being held responsible for failing them.

Does what it says on the tin. It's an inflatable plane

Alongside colleagues, I have tabled a motion to disapprove the Equality Act 2010: Draft Code of Practice for Services, public functions and associations. We cannot support it, and we have a responsibility to our trans constituents to resist it. Please email your MP asking them to sign EDM 240.

The Fire Brigades Union has made a statement on the proposed EHRC Code of Practice on Services. Our message is clear. Equality matters, solidarity is essential, and we will continue to fight for both.

Let's talk about UK prison policy for trans people. It's historically not been great, but after a string of suicides the policy was set that trans people would be initially held in solitary confinement for 2 weeks pending a board decision about their placement.

Joint statement from international LGBTQ+ rights NGOs, including @ilgaeurope.bsky.social and @tgeuorg.bsky.social “How can any trans and intersex person travelling to the UK feel secure that they will be treated with respect and dignity while using services?” tgeu.org/joint-statem...

The UK government has put a revised Code of Practice before parliament, which, if adopted, will intensify the serious regression of basic human rights that trans people are experiencing across the UK, and can similarly affect intersex people.

The issue is not recognition of "biological sex". That sex discrimination on the basis of bio characteristics was banned was never in question. The issue is deciding that for all purposes other than marriage, trans people's sex and sexuality is defined as birth sex only and this determines access.

I'm one of the signatories to this letter. We note that NHS England's ban on hormone therapy by under-18 was proposed: ● without any clear rationale, ● on the basis of a methodologically-flawed process, ● in the absence of peer review, ● and without plans for monitoring impact or mitigating harm

Over 80 clinicians, researchers and academics have signed an open letter raising serious concerns about NHS England’s recent evidence reviews of gender affirming hormone treatment for trans youth. Read the full letter here: transactual.org.uk/blog/2026/05...

If you’re a UNISON member you should engage with this. This has the potential to be so so powerful.

also a lot of people will call the city because they saw an animal. not an invasive pest, or a sick animal, or an aggressive one. just hello, animal control, there is an animal outdoors, what do you intend to do about this

I really love being a trans person trying to figure out what will happen to me if I have to go to hospital and not being able to read articles about it. Anyone have access to this?

Not sure how this one got part the censors at the Guardian but good to see another article about the negative and exclusionary effects of Labour's Bathroom Ban (for them to ignore). www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Gender recognition is a terrible example. Which voters were won over by Labour supporting self ID and then backpedaling? "Supporting a more dignified process" is a great example of Comms empty of both facts and principles. No one in labour knows what they mean by "more dignified process".

There's one example from the new EHRC guidance that has been messing me up. It's all awful obviously but this one in particular is really sticking out as pointless cruelty. It's about excluding trans women from post mastectomy counselling.

It's really hard to get through to cis people that yes, these people really do believe that being trans is not real, and that trans people are actually either 1. Perverts faking it for sexual gratification 2. Confused into thinking we're trans and too autistic/vulnerable/mentally ill to notice

Filming random members of staff you're attacking over policies they don't decide and have no control over is just pointless cruelty even if the policy is actually a problem.

"Though pushed by a minuscule number of people, the assault has been full-spectrum—government, courts, press, the health system, radicalised internet groups, and violent vigilantes." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-end-of-t...

Ten years ago the UK government issued a travel advisory for LGBTQIA+ individuals about risks of going to the US partly because of trans bathroom bans. Now we have those bans in UK. This is what I mean by Labour being worse on trans rights than the previous government.

The EHRC guidance is a clear statement that the government considers permanently and systematically disadvantaging, and often completely excluding trans people from access to leisure, healthcare, sports, counselling, hostels etc. is considered acceptable.

I am apparently to allowed to hold the opinion that the "love the sinner hate the sin" people are homophobic because that's stereotyping

Someone at my friend's polling station accidentally posted their driving license into the ballot box. So, there's some good news for you.

I’ve been hearing so much anger and disappointment from frontline workers about the BBC investigation into fraudulent asylum claims. One of the most damning responses has come from one of the experts they interviewed, solicitor Ana Gonzalez. It’s really worth reading her response in full:

Do they seriously think there's a magic number where the mail will stop writing anti immigrant scare stories to whip up racist hatred? This kind of silliness is the end result of taking the position that all anti immigrant sentiment is 100% "reasonable concerns" and 0% racism.

The UK Trans Experience: you can be arbitrarily included in a lawsuit that has nothing to do with you, be included in national coverage and have dozens of articles written about you, be found innocent of everything and still have journalists follow you to different countries to call you a pervert

The cis judge who decided it didn't really matter if Dr Upton was outed should have to pay her compensation imo. She's moved to the other side of the planet and she's still being stalked and harassed. He ruined her life because he refused to consider outing and harassment a serious harm.

British hospitals are very gender segregated. On a particular ward there are usually shared rooms for men and shared rooms for women and it's considered a big deal if someone has to be put in the wrong one. I had a procedure recently and they had split waiting areas and recovery areas.

There are so many things about this which are awful but I want to point out that moving trans women to men's prisons "within days" allows no time for the prison service to do a risk assessment of whether a particular placement would put a trans woman at risk of physical or sexual violence.

There was an incident when a staff member of a well-known London university had to attend an immigration tribunal to contest the Home Office's assertion that they weren't a 'genuine' institution. The judge accepted their appeal as the judge had received their own law degree from said institution.

It is almost, almost, impressive just how Labour have taken the massively dysfunctional and incompetent Home Office and managed by dint of policies and rhetoric to make it even more dysfunctional and incompetent. It is a true testament to how hostile they are to migrants. archive.today/07Hdr

Extremely relevant context for understanding the new Finnish study

Being in group training with someone constantly using AI to answer is really annoying. The point of the exercise is to think through the example. Not to post a chatgpt list 5 seconds in and do 0 thinking. Interferes with other people's learning as well, everyone else wants to actually engage.

The methods here are absolutely wild. So any gender appointment before 22 is included, going back to 1996. I'm not sure exactly when Finland started offering any kind of medical transition to under 18s but I'm sure it wasn't 1996.

Welcoming in our beautiful solarpunk future

They say "there are different views" because they can't say "the evidence is mixed" or "the evidence shows risks and benefits". The evidence shows nothing but benefits. But some people think it's bad even though evidence says otherwise! So it's technically true that "there a different views" 🫠

"It's unlikely that he would've been able to, given Waffle House's sealing jutsu," said Hiruzen Sarutobi, who holds the Sandaime Chair of Ninjutsu Studies at Leaf University. "But some Sharingan users have been able to use unconventional space-time techniques, so we can't rule it out."

Who to trust, guy who claims he teleported to a waffle house, or a guy willing to describe himself to the NYT as a teleportation expert