How the war wasn’t won

Following the verdict of the Supreme Court in the For Women Scotland case live on the news back in April 2025, I remember jumping up and screaming with joy and relief. In the Edinburgh courthouse itself, women who had a moment before been waiting nervously, hands over their mouths, whooped “yes!” and punched the air. 

The judgment confirmed that the terms “man”, “woman”, and “sex” within the 2010 Equality Act refer strictly to biological sex (the sex registered at birth) rather than “certificated sex”, that is, sex according to gender recognition certificates (GRC). It also gave service providers, employers, businesses and public bodies a clear statutory grounding to restrict access to single-sex spaces based on birth sex, without needing to make complex case-by-case exceptions for GRC holders. The advice that Stonewall had given organisations like my own for the past fifteen years was, as many of us had suspected, unlawful. It was undoubtedly a victory for gender critical feminists: according to the ruling, trans women were not “women”. From now on, whilst upholding trans rights under the 2010 Act, this could not be done at the expense of women’s sex-based rights.

For years, my own University had accepted uncritically and wholesale the claims of gender activists about the precedence of “gender identity” over “sex”. This was embedded in University policies, EDI frameworks, and the accolade of being a “Stonewall Diversity Champion”. The latter was particularly important in that it provided guidance for the University that rested on certain key ideological beliefs. These include the idea that everyone has an internal gender identity, that language in the UK Equality Act 2010 that defines sex strictly as “male” and “female” is outdated, and that there should be a non-formal/non-medical acceptance of trans identity beyond the strict GRC definition. Among the recommendations given to institutions such as my own was the encouragement to allow trans and “non-binary” individuals to use the single-sex facilities that conform to their gender identity.

American friends, observing this from outside, told me in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling: “Well that’s all settled then!” The truth has been a little different. A year on, whilst some organisations have moved to apply the recommendations, many have not, with Universities prominent among the latter. The fact that gender critical feminists — backed by J.K. Rowling — could win in court did not, it would appear, mean that institutions built for a decade on gender identity ideology would accept what the court decided.

This became clear almost straight away. A couple of weeks after this ruling, my own University produced what they called a “University update following UK Supreme Court ruling on legal definitions of sex within the Equality Act ”

Reading it, I was chilled by how carefully the document performed neutrality while tilting consistently in one direction.  The only group named as being impacted by the ruling were “Trans and Non-Binary members of our community”. Women — whose sex-based rights the ruling exists to protect, and who brought this case — were entirely absent as a category with interests.

The update then stated, selectively repeating the judgment without its main conclusion: “their decision should not be seen as a victory of one side over another.” I am not sure what this was intended to mean other than discouraging anyone from drawing legitimate conclusions from the ruling. Finally, support was directed to the Trans & Nonbinary Peer Support Network, LGBTQIA+ Network, and LGBT+ Society. There is no women’s network in my institution; or rather there is a women’s network which proclaims on its website: “This network welcomes trans and non-binary academic colleagues who are comfortable in women-centred settings”. The comfort of women is not even a consideration here, and this despite the fact that there are numerous LGBTQIA+ and Trans and Non-Binary networks which you can join if you so wish. 

When the network launched a couple of years back, I was invited to sit on the panel, but in view of the fact that it wasn’t a women’s network in any meaningful sense of the term, in my view, I declined. This organisation remains in place today presumably not qualifying as a “single sex space” in the (very limited) sense the act specifies: intimate places such as changing rooms, toilets, hospital wards, domestic violence shelters and prisons. The ruling’s legal clarity has done remarkably little to settle the wider institutional question of whether women may still organise, socially and politically, as a sex class at all. Meanwhile, the prominent case of Jo Phoenix served as a warning to all those who might consider starting a gender critical network, effectively a women’s network for biological women only.

The update ends with: “We do not tolerate bullying, harassment and discrimination of any kind.” Coming immediately after the diversity-and-inclusion paragraph and before the signalled support services, it was clear that this was directed at those who might act on the ruling’s implications – i.e., women who are not bullying, harassing or unjustly discriminating but simply asserting their sex-based rights.

For a moment, I wondered if I was misreading it; it was so reasonable on the surface and yet I could not deny the feeling that I, and my fellow gender critical academic colleagues, were being gaslit. Contributing to that feeling was the fact the University had never expressed any concern for the wellbeing and “safety” of the gender critical feminists in the University, including those of us who had publicly expressed our views. Some colleagues and I had indeed given our gender-critical feedback to a range of policy and procedures, from student pronouns to EDI training, and when we were not represented on the freedom of speech working group, formed in response to the Higher Education Act (Freedom of Speech) 2023, one colleague and I made an appointment to see the very senior academic who led that group to tell him about our experiences. I remember how we dressed carefully that morning — more nervous, both of us agreed, than we had ever been at a job interview or promotion panel. He listened politely. He agreed that the Chicago Principles were a sound basis for university governance. However, he then mentioned, almost in passing, that he had himself been an activist academic. We left feeling we had been managed. We were never asked for our views again

A day later, on May 2nd, the Vice Chancellor, Professor Tim Jones noted: “The issues here are difficult and divisive and since the decision, there have been many different opinions and interpretations expressed by legal minds, campaigners and others. It is worth noting, however, the caution expressed by the Court against interpreting the decision as a victory for one group over another. Universities are large and diverse communities, which is part of our strength, resilience and influence.”

The response by my own University was not unique and indeed was mirrored by Universities up and down the country.  Many other Universities posted similar updates following the initial decision; the emphasis in each case was on delay and the need for further consideration, setting up working groups to debate the response and so on, some of them promising updates which have still not come.  Within weeks of the ruling, over 50 student unions came together in response to “defend trans and non-binary students rights” which, apparently, they felt had been threatened by this clarification. Although official University webpages and student union statements have usually been issued separately, some Universities include both, implying that they agree with the students over this.

Meanwhile, academic lawyers in my institution quickly moved to contest the ruling’s implications. For example, my University’s feminist legal academics’ network held a research day which challenged the basis of the Supreme court ruling head-on. One paper characterised it as “lavender-washing” — arguing the Court cynically deployed lesbian rights as cover for what it called a “generally anti-rights and specifically anti-LGBTQ+ rights judgment.” The organisations that intervened on behalf of lesbian women are described as “anti-trans groups”. Another argued that biological sex in law is irreducibly indeterminate and that a clear legal answer on the question “has not, and importantly will not, ever come” — which is an academic argument for the ruling’s impossibility. There was no paper accepting or supporting the ruling.

In effect, within my institution, we had multiple layers of resistance:  the VC asserting legal uncertainty from the top, and feminist legal academics providing the intellectual scaffolding for that uncertainty from within, with student and academic unions also providing grassroots opposition. Each layer is doing a different job but in all cases the result is the same: the ruling happened, and the institution — at every level — is working to undermine its practical implications.

Across the sector more generally, legal academics echo those arguments made by my own legal colleagues. Collective statements have been issued from prestigious gender studies centres at Leeds, York, Manchester and elsewhere condemning the judgment. Simultaneously, many other academics, many of them leading EDI policy, are advising academics to serve as “positive disruptors” to the enforcement of the act.

My VC’s claim that legal minds remain divided is, then, not caution, and nor is it an accidental misreading. It reflects a real and organised academic effort, including within my own institution, to keep that division alive.

At the end of May 2026, the EHRC published its practical guidance following the Supreme Court’s ruling. The updated Code of Practice confirms that single-sex spaces should be provided on the basis of biological sex. Yet the guidance also introduces a striking vagueness, stating that it is “unlikely to be either practical or appropriate” to question individuals about their sex in many settings. Prominent gender critical feminists like Maya Forstater have already argued that this renders the legislation, in practice, effectively unenforceable.

And that is precisely where we are now: not in a world where the ruling is openly rejected, but in one where its implementation is endlessly softened and deferred, challenged both on technicalities and general principles and suspended accordingly in a kind of institutional ambiguity.

Outright resistance is already visible. The President of the National Union of Students has called on Parliament to reject the draft guidance in defence of “trans equality”, while the President of the UCU has described the moment as “significant and unsettling… for trans people everywhere.” Across universities, legal academics continue to publish critiques arguing that the ruling is conceptually incoherent, legally unworkable, or socially unjust with a few, isolated voices arguing in favour, such as Dr Michael Foran, who himself was subjected to bullying  on account of his position.

A year on, the everyday culture within universities tells its own story. Pronouns remain recommended on institutional emails. University conferences continue to define “women” in ways that encompass trans women. Colleagues who might object keep their heads down.

Looking back, my excitement and relief was misplaced. The Supreme Court ruling clarified the law. What it did not, and could not, settle was whether institutions built for more than a decade around gender identity ideology are willing to accept the implications of that clarification.

Within British universities, at least, it has become clear that the real struggle has only just begun

Of my three academic colleagues who openly challenged aspects of this orthodoxy, one has since taken voluntary severance, and the other two have decided to keep their views private for professional reasons. I remain where I was: still arguing, still formally protected by the language of academic freedom, and still aware that institutional hostility has not disappeared but has merely become more careful.

My American friends still think it’s all over. But within British universities, at least, it has become clear that the real struggle has only just begun.