We show how UK law provides for separate sport for women and girls in several different ways, for fairness, safety and opportunity, from grassroots participation to elite competition, and why not having a female category may result in legal challenges for indirect discrimination and harassment.

The post Getting back on track: a new report appeared first on Sex Matters.

Rules and policies that allow men to participate, compete or use facilities “as women” disadvantage women. 

Sex Matters’ new report, Getting back on track, explains how the Equality Act 2010 provides the legal framework for protecting and providing for women and girls in sport.

• Read the report online.
• Download a pdf version.
• Listen to Fiona McAnena and Maya Forstater discuss the report in the Sex Matters podcast.
• Read Maya Forstater’s speech at the report launch at the House of Lords on 4th June 2026.

Under the Equality Act, sports organisations can be service providers, employers, associations and qualification authorities. Duty bearers that design or operate policies (or instruct, cause or induce others to do so) which put women at a disadvantage are at risk of claims for sex discrimination. Public authorities may also face claims that they are not fulfilling the public-equality duty. Women and “trans women” do not share a protected characteristic, meaning that this group cannot be the target for lawful positive action “for women”.

Legal misunderstanding

Over the past 15 years, governments, sports councils and national governing bodies (NGBs) have conflated the protected characteristic of “sex” (innate biology) with “gender reassignment” (identifying as transgender). This resulted in policies that prioritised allowing men who identify as women to access female spaces, activities and competitions under the banner of “inclusion”, undermining female-only provision.

The Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers clarified that in the Equality Act, the terms sex, woman, and man refer to a person’s innate biology, thus confirming that it is lawful to exclude men (including all “trans women”, regardless of whether they have a gender-recognition certificate) from benefits, services and facilities provided for women. 

The court affirmed that including biological men in provisions for women undermines the purpose of the Equality Act exceptions that allow single-sex provision and the public-sector equality duty. 

It’s not just Section 195

The legal exceptions that allow for single-sex activities and facilities in sport go well beyond those concerned with participation as a competitor. They include exceptions that enable service providers to give women and girls the time, space and resources they need to thrive in sport. Supporting female participation isn’t just about who gets to compete in which event, but about what enables sports providers to offer services, investment, competitions, facilities and development programmes to women and girls across a range of situations: 

• Single-sex associations (Schedule 16)
• Single-sex and separate-sex services (Schedule 3 Part 7)
• Positive action to meet specific needs of women or men (Section 158)
• Charities for women or for men (Section 158)
• Competitive events (Section 195)
• Employment limited to men or women where this is a genuine occupational requirement (Schedule 9).

The exceptions are permissive rather than prescriptive, but this doesn’t mean providing for women and girls in sport is optional. 

• Organisations that cater for both sexes should make sure that they consider the needs of women and girls: failing to provide fair and safe sports opportunities may amount to indirect sex discrimination.
• The public-sector equality duty (Section 149) requires that public authorities consider women’s needs when setting policies. This includes the UK sports councils and local authorities. 

Unlawful policies and practices continue

Despite the legal clarity of the Supreme Court ruling, many organisations continue to operate unlawful policies. Examples of current practices that undermine women’s sport include:

• Misguided inclusion policies: bodies like the Lawn Tennis Association and Royal Yachting Association encourage local clubs to presume inclusion for “trans” individuals, allowing trans-identifying men into women’s competitions even though this leads to female exclusion and self-exclusion. 
• Female participation programmes undermined: activities aimed at increasing female participation, such as British Cycling Breeze Rides, are advertised for women but welcome trans-identifying men. The result is that women who have been led to expect a women-only activity may find themselves confronted with a man, sometimes in secluded locations.
• Unreliable data and rankings: some charities such as Parkrun encourage trans-identifying men to register by “gender” rather than sex, allowing male runners in the female category to inflate their age grade scores and top the female rankings, rendering women’s finish positions unreliable. 
• Culture of fear: the sports sector has created an atmosphere of intimidation, in which women are warned against discussing fairness and safety, and risk sanctions or non-selection if they speak out against the inclusion of males in the female category.

Sports bodies that continue to operate policies that allow men in women’s or girls’ activities risk legal liability for direct and indirect sex discrimination against women, as they are no longer protected by the Equality Act exceptions. Public bodies also risk judicial review for failure to comply with the public-sector equality duty.

The need for leadership

You shouldn’t need to be a scientist or a lawyer, an expert in the Equality Act or particularly brave to argue that sports should be provided fairly and safely for women and girls, but right now you do. 

The report ends with a call for leaders in the sector to step up:

1. The minister for sport must call for opportunity, fairness, and safety for women and girls to be respected at every level of every sport.
2. The Sports Councils Equality Group (SCEG) should update its misleading 2021 “trans inclusion” guidance to withdraw the so-called trans-inclusion option, making clear that women’s and girls’ activities must exclude everyone male.
3. The sports councils must make a joint statement committing to women’s sport and producing clear guidance that when it comes to protections against sex discrimination, “woman” means female and “man” means male.
4. Individual sports councils need to bring data-collection surveys and registration data in line with the biological, binary reality of sex as defined in the Equality Act.

National governing bodies and publicly funded organisations should sign a fairness pledge to protect women’s sport and to use sex-based categories in their equality impact assessments.

The post Sex matters in sport appeared first on Sex Matters.

Yet the following day, counsel for the Minister for Women and Equalities put forward arguments in the High Court that led Mr Justice Swift to say she was “trying to rewrite For Women Scotland”.

Zoë Leventhal KC, making submissions on behalf of Bridget Phillipson in the case of Good Law Project and others v Equality and Human Rights Commission, denied this. But she presented an extraordinary series of convoluted arguments that seemed designed to create confusion and uncertainty and to undermine the basic duty of employers and service providers to ensure that single-sex facilities for women offer adequate privacy from men.

In its manifesto the Labour Party had promised to “continue to support the implementation of its single-sex exceptions”. And on 5th May, following the Supreme Court judgment, Phillipson had written to the Scottish Government saying: 

“The UK government has always supported the provision of single-sex services based on biological-sex. The ruling brings clarity and confidence, for women and service providers, such as hospitals, refuges and sports clubs.” 

But now the government is backtracking. 

Following the Supreme Court judgment in April, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published an admirably clear interim update on single-sex facilities. It said, in short, that women’s toilets are for women, men’s toilets are for men, and those who don’t wish to use the correct toilet for their sex should use the unisex option. It reassured employers and service providers that if they offer all three and have clear rules, they can be sure they are meeting everyone’s needs and not breaching the law. 

The Good Law Project (GLP) says this sensible advice is wrong in law and “transphobic”, and that it breaches trans people’s human rights. It has brought a legal challenge together with three anonymous individuals who felt upset when their employer responded to the judgment by telling staff who didn’t wish to use the correct facilities for their sex to use the unisex facilities.

In the government’s intervention in the case, the Minister for Women and Equalities declined to back the EHRC in defending its update, instead entering a “neutral” plea on the question of whether its advice to service providers and employers was correct in law. 

Questioning the exceptions

The government’s legal submissions appear to be a desperate search for a loophole that would enable service providers and employers to continue to allow trans-identifying men into women’s spaces. The written submissions call single-sex services “trans-exclusive” and seem set on undermining legal certainty and reinventing the argument for “case-by-case” decision-making:

“The premise of the trans-exclusive interpretation of the EA 2010 appears to be that, absent lawful reliance on the [single and separate sex service] exceptions, a [single-or separate sex service] will amount to direct sex discrimination of men and/or women.”

This was up till now an uncontroversial statement of the obvious. If you put up a sign that says “women only” or “men only” you are discriminating against members of the opposite sex by excluding them, and the Equality Act provides single-sex and separate-sex exceptions to allow this. 

The EHRC’s code of practice for services, which has been in place since 2011, contains a section titled “Single-sex only services”. It says:

“The Act provides that the prohibition of sex discrimination does not apply where services are provided exclusively to one sex, as long as to do so is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, and at least one of the conditions set out below applies…”

The fifth of those conditions is: 

“The service is for, or is likely to be used by, more than one person at the same time and a woman might reasonably object to the presence of a man (or vice versa).”

The example given is:

“Separate male and female changing rooms or any service involving intimate personal health or hygiene.”

This clearly covers male and female toilets.

But, in a piece of logic that appears to have been sourced from transactivist social media, the government’s submissions now argue that perhaps the single-sex and separate-sex exceptions don’t apply to such everyday facilities as separate men’s and women’s toilets at all. 

“The first question in law must logically be whether a [single or separate sex service] amounts to direct sex discrimination. If it does not, then there is no need to consider the Exceptions.”

So it says that you have to start with an individualised, fact-sensitive determination. In most cases men don’t want to use the ladies’, so there is no less favourable treatment in not allowing them to. In oral submissions Leventhal said that unless a claim of sex discrimination was made out:

 “you wouldn’t get to the analysis of having to maintain a single-sex exception based on an exception to discrimination that isn’t present.”

This is starting at the wrong end of the argument for a respondent (such as a service provider or employer). The purpose of the single-sex and separate-sex exceptions is to give these duty bearers a safe harbour to offer straightforward, familiar single-sex and separate-sex services including toilets, changing rooms and showers without fearing that they are breaching the sex-discrimination provisions and without having to go through complex legal arguments to consider whether any specific individual could be lawfully excluded. 

The Schedule 3 exceptions can be used in order to provide a separate-sex or single-sex service, wherever the service satisfies at least one of the “gateway” conditions and is a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim” to offer a service designed in this way, rather than to be provided to both sexes together. As the notes to the relevant part of the Equality Act say:

“This paragraph contains exceptions to the general prohibition of sex discrimination to allow the provision of single-sex services.”

Now the government is arguing that the question of whether the exceptions apply depends first on determining whether an individual man can prove that he suffered less favourable treatment on the basis of sex by being excluded from a women’s space. If he didn’t then no unlawful discrimination occurred. If he did then the exceptions can kick in and no unlawful discrimination occurred. This is a pointless diversion from the basic purpose of the law.

The only purpose of this argument seems to be to try to create uncertainty and blur the rules about whether an apparently single-sex service is a single-sex service at all. 

Creating uncertainty

The Minister for Women’s legal team then threw more transactivist talking points at the EHRC’s simple clarity. 

Perhaps single-sex services need to allow for “derogations”, the submissions argue. Both GLP and Leventhal pointed out that mothers are allowed to take their infant sons into the women’s changing rooms at the swimming pool, and suggested that this created the possibility of allowing grown men into female-only spaces. 

“Now, that’s a point that perhaps ought to be addressed, because there may well be a relevant distinction between those two scenarios,” said Mr Justice Swift.

“I don’t wish to advance the point any further, my Lord,” said Leventhal.

“So he’s got the interesting bit, and you’re saying you’ve got nothing more to say?” replied the judge.

But many women’s services, including women’s refuges, admit young children of either sex. Using this to introduce uncertainty about whether adult men should be allowed in “as women” is absurd. 

The government’s submissions included two further ridiculous scenarios: “A theatre attendant permits a pregnant woman who faces a queue for the women’s lavatory in the interval to use the men’s lavatory”, and “A peripatetic female massage therapist who only provides massages to women makes an exception for a man with whom she has a pre-existing professional relationship.”

“Could we come to an example much closer to home? Because I always find they help,” said Mr Justice Swift, seemingly exasperated by the government’s diversion from the main point. 

“So the minister’s submission… is that a single-sex provision, a provision which is open to, say, women and trans women, is still a single-sex provision. Is that right?… Because that’s what you appear to be saying,” he said.

Leventhal replied No, but the government’s submissions seemed to dodge back and forth around this question, sometimes suggesting that such provision was single-sex with “derogations” and sometimes suggesting that although described as for “men” or “women” they were not actually separate-sex or single-sex in the sense meant in the Equality Act. On whether a service provider could provide a women-only service that allowed in trans-identifying men, she said: “You may… You may be unable to… There’s a possibility… You might nonetheless need to look at the fact-sensitive issues”. 

None of this makes sense in the real world, where service providers need to be clear to everyone whether a service or space is for men, women or both sexes. This is essential to avoid creating situations that are likely to be hostile, humiliating and degrading – for women or for men who wish they were women, or indeed for both – and unworkable for staff. 

Rewriting the law

The government seems to be trying to stick to the faulty interpretation of the law that it advanced before the For Women Scotland judgment.

Last year members of the public sent in 404 bad policies in response to a call for evidence from the previous government. 

The Office for Equality and Opportunity, which has long been the prime promoter of Stonewall law throughout the civil service, concluded that the majority of the policies which allowed those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment to use single-sex spaces that “correspond with their self-identified gender” were “correctly interpreting the Equality Act’s single-sex spaces provisions”.

The government’s interpretation at the time was that policies were unlawful only if they suggested that allowing trans-identifying men into women’s spaces was mandated by the Act. 

The Supreme Court judgment has made clear that this interpretation was wrong. This is what was reflected in the EHRC’s interim update. 

The government should know that if it won’t comply with the law, it is going to end up in court. 

The post The government is “trying to rewrite For Women Scotland” appeared first on Sex Matters.

This email campaign has now finished – thank you to all those who wrote to MPs.

So far more than 2,000 people have written to their MP. This is the third of three blog posts about our asks. 

3. Tell the civil service to follow the law across the government’s own operations and buildings

The ongoing scandal of workplaces that allow trans-identifying male employees to use women’s toilets, changing rooms and showers – and let male visitors use women’s toilets – is continuing even in the government’s own buildings. The law is perfectly clear, particularly for workplaces, which are subject to the 1992 Workplace Regulations. Adequate separate facilities for women and men are a legal requirement. 

The Palace of Westminster, which houses MPs and peers and their staff, has sorted itself out, restoring clarity over who can use the women’s and men’s toilets, and signposting unisex toilets that can be used by either sex for anyone who prefers them. 

But many government offices have relabelled men’s and women’s toilets as “gender-neutral” in recent years, even though they do not meet the legal standard of being single-occupancy fully contained rooms. Some have signs asking users to close the door when using them – something never seen in a women’s toilet.

It is hardly surprising when civil service departments and agencies for a long time competed to be ranked in the Stonewall Top 100 Employers list, instead of following the law. 

Separate-sex toilets may seem like a small thing, but they are important for everyday dignity and privacy. They protect women and girls from the risk of voyeurism and exposure by men, and they make everyone feel more comfortable. 

Claims that it is expensive or unworkable to expect people to follow ordinary sex-based rules do not hold water. These offices all operated separate men’s and women’s facilities for many years, and can do so again. They already have unisex alternatives so no-one has to feel uncomfortable. There really is no excuse for not following the law. 

Even as the Darlington nurses are in court making the case for male-free changing rooms at work, the government is presiding over unlawful policies like these. It should be leading by example. 

The post It’s time to TELL the civil service to follow the law appeared first on Sex Matters.

This email campaign has now finished – thank you to all those who wrote to MPs.

So far more than 2,000 people have written to their MP. This is the second of three blog posts about our asks. 

2. Commit to fixing the problem of inaccurate sex records, and their use in new forms of digital identity

The law is clear. But one of the things that makes it difficult to provide single-sex services with confidence is that service providers cannot rely on official documents such as passports and driving licences to provide reliable information on anyone’s sex. Even medical records can be changed, and none of this requires a gender-recognition certificate. 

No systematic records have been kept, so the numbers are not known: there could be as many as 100,000 people whose ID shows them as the sex which they are not. And the government seems set on making it worse by developing digital identities based on this unreliable sex data.

Official data systems are in such a mess in relation to sex because of decades of ad-hoc and informal measures attempting to accommodate the wishes and protect the privacy of people who identify as transgender. There are better ways of protecting privacy – by making it clear where sex is recorded, making sure it is accurate and only sharing the data if there is a lawful basis to do so. 

Whether or not the UK adopts a digital identity system, the problem with flawed, contradictory sex records must be addressed now, following the Supreme Court’s judgment which made clear that many ordinary services can and should be provided based on biological sex.  

The public-sector equality duty requires data collection about sex, not about heterogenous groupings of women and trans-identifying men who, the Supreme Court pointed out, “may have little in common”. The Supreme Court warned against corrupting data collection and said: 

“We do not understand how the interests of this heterogenous group can begin to be considered and addressed”. 

It’s time to address this so that government data and official documents can be trusted. 

The post It’s time to COMMIT to fixing the data appeared first on Sex Matters.

This email campaign has now finished – thank you to all those who wrote to MPs.

So far more than 2,000 people have written to their MP. This is the first of three blog posts about our asks. 

1. Revoke the old EHRC code of practice

Shortly after the Equality Act was enacted in 2010, the Equality and Human Rights Commission developed and published statutory guidance on how to comply with this new law. There is a code of practice for employment and another for equal pay, as well as a separate code of practice for services, public functions and associations. This was issued in 2011. 

All of this guidance is now out of date. The EHRC has revised the code of practice for services, public functions and associations, taking account of the Supreme Court’s judgment in April 2025 which made clear that the terms man, woman, male and female in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex.

This revised code of practice was delivered to the Minister for Women and Equalities, Bridget Phillipson MP, on 4th September 2025. It is not a new law or even a change to the law. What should happen is a simple process where the old code of practice is revoked and the new one is laid before Parliament, and forty days later it comes into force as guidance endorsed by Parliament. But she has not yet done this. 

Instead the government is claiming that a regulatory impact assessment is needed, which could delay the adoption of the new guidance by as much as a year. In the meantime, the 2011 guidance remains in force, even though it is legally wrong. 

Government guidance still says “transsexual people” should be treated “according to the gender role in which they present”

The 2011 guidance did a great deal of mischief. There is nothing in the Equality Act to support this interpretation, but the 2011 code of practice said:

“If a service provider provides single- or separate sex services for women and men, or provides services differently to women and men, they should treat transsexual people according to the gender role in which they present. However, the Act does permit the service provider to provide a different service or exclude a person from the service who is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or who has undergone gender reassignment. This will only be lawful where the exclusion is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate [aim].”

The 2011 guidance also said:

“Service providers should be aware that where a transsexual person is visually and for all practical purposes indistinguishable from a non-transsexual person of that gender, they should normally be treated according to their acquired gender, unless there are strong reasons to the contrary.”

Again there is nothing on the statute about this. In any case, a policy based on the idea that some trans-identifying people may be “indistinguishable” from the other sex is unworkable in practice. 

All this has gone from the new code of practice, but the latest government excuse means that may not be published for another year.

Complying with the law is not a culture war

The Times reported a government source as saying that complaints about the delay were “put about to stoke divisive culture wars”. This has been a repeated refrain of this government. But expecting compliance with the law cannot be dismissed as a culture war; it is entirely reasonable. Meanwhile the failure to provide genuine male-free spaces and services is causing genuine harm. 

The law is already clear. Organisations which keep old policies in place allowing men into women’s spaces cannot rely on the 2011 guidance for legal justification, because the Supreme Court judgment has shown that it is incorrect. The EHRC chair, Baroness Falkner, has repeatedly said that no-one should wait for the guidance: they should comply with the law now. Any suggestion that waiting is the safer choice legally is misguided. 

If the Minister for Women and Equalities will not lay the revised code of practice before Parliament quickly, she must at least withdraw and revoke the 2011 guidance, which is providing advice which is now known to be unlawful.

The post It’s time to ACT to sort out the code of practice appeared first on Sex Matters.

The hearing on 12th and 13th November in London comes nearly a year after the Supreme Court heard the For Women Scotland case. 

The Good Law Project is challenging the national equality watchdog’s interpretation of the Equality Act and workplace health and safety regulation, and its guidance, following the Supreme Court’s judgment, that employers and service providers should stop telling employees and service users that they can use opposite-sex facilities if they identify as trans or non-binary. 

This is an important case which could provide greater confidence that the law is clear and that women should not find themselves forced to share “female” toilets, showers and changing rooms with men. 

We hope that the judgment will provide greater confidence to service providers and employers and their frontline staff, to trans-identifying people and to women about what the familiar “male” and “female” signs on a door mean in terms of who is allowed in. 

Whenever these kinds of cases are heard it is important that women’s experiences and viewpoints are considered, and not only the arguments of trans activists. Our evidence draws on our 2022 survey Why single sex services matter, to which some 7,000 people responded. 

We have also been allowed to put in evidence on female biology from physiotherapist Elaine Miller and from Michelle Shipworth, a survivor of male violence in a women’s toilet. Sex Matters CEO Maya Forstater has provided evidence on the recent history of guidance and policy in this area, and the experience and concerns of women in relation to everyday privacy and dignity. These are written witness statements, supported by evidence, which we will publish. There is no cross-examination in judicial reviews. 

As well as providing written submissions and evidence, Sex Matters has been given 30 minutes to make oral submissions to the court. We have made legal submissions on two points: 

1. The proper construction of the Workplace Health and Safety Regulations 1992.
2. The detriments to women that arise when men (including those who identify as trans and non-binary) are allowed to access women’s toilets and changing facilities.

You can read our arguments in our application to intervene:

We are represented by Rupert Paines of 11KBW and solicitor Paul Conrathe. The interested parties in the case are the Minister for Women and Equalities, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Health and Safety Executive and the Scottish and Welsh Ministers. 

What is the case about?

The Good Law Project (GLP) is challenging the EHRC’s April update on the practical implications of the UK Supreme Court judgment in FWS and its draft updated code of practice. In particular it is challenging the sections saying that in workplaces and services open to the public where separate-sex or single-sex services are lawfully provided: 

• “trans women” (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities and “trans men” (biological women) should not be permitted to use the men’s facilities.
• where possible, mixed-sex toilet, washing or changing facilities in addition to sufficient single-sex facilities should be provided.

GLP is also seeking to challenge any future iteration of the guidance that makes the following assertions of law: 

1. That references to “men” and “women” in the Workplace Health, Safety Regulations 1992 are to be construed as referring to a person’s “biological sex”. 
2. That the workplace regulations require employers not to permit “trans women” to use the women’s toilets or “trans men” to use the men’s toilets. 
3. That if trans men are permitted to use the men’s toilets, or trans women permitted to use the women’s toilets, this means that the toilets must be made open to all users of the opposite sex. 
4. That where single-sex facilities are made available, it is lawful for trans men to be required to use the women’s toilets, and trans women to be required to use the men’s toilets, as long as they are not put in a position where there are “no facilities for them to use”. 
5. That it is sufficient to ensure lawfulness (under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010) for trans people to be provided only “where possible” with unisex facilities in addition to single-sex facilities.

GLP argues against this that if the EHRC guidance is accurate on the law then the law itself is incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights. 

We say that other people’s rights matter too. 

How you can help 

Please donate to support Sex Matters’ work on this case and others.

The post Sex Matters intervenes on single-sex services guidance  appeared first on Sex Matters.

A government source said: “Any suggestion the government is delaying is total nonsense” and: “It would be catastrophic for single-sex services to follow guidance that wasn’t legally sound and then place them in legal jeopardy again.”

This is irresponsible. Duty bearers must follow the Equality Act 2010 right now. Updating the statutory guidance to accurately reflect recent case law can only help them. It is the existing guidance, dating from 2011, that is known to be legally unsound, and is being used to confuse. 

The push for a regulatory impact assessment came from a group of backbench Labour MPs who warned the government of “chaos for firms over gender recognition advice”. They said they had been contacted by “large numbers of companies” alarmed at the implications of the guidance, citing significant potential costs and a “minefield” of competing legal rights.

Who were these companies? The Trans Solidarity Alliance, a project involving Stonewall’s ex-CEO Nancy Kelley and the Good Law Project’s community outreach lead, Jess O’Thomson, provided the MPs with a letter signed by “650 businesses”.

Five years ago, Nancy Kelley was able to persuade major companies to sign an open letter in support of gender self-ID. Signatories then included Disney, BP, Expedia, Microsoft, Sky, Aviva, Sony, the Financial Times and Warner Bros as well as the British Army, the charity Marie Curie and several universities, tech companies and major charities. Big law firms Baker Mackenzie, Clifford Chance, Hogan Lovells, Linklaters and Pinsent Masons were also represented. 

This year’s letter reveals that the big companies have all gone. It is a long list of sole traders and micro-businesses. Less Disney, more Mickey Mouse. There are a few student unions and independent pubs on the list, as well as activist businesses Lush and Ben & Jerry’s. But “queer”-themed businesses, LGBT trainers, tattoo artists, botox technicians, counsellors, content creators, consultants and crafts businesses feature heavily. Here is a selection:

• Alchemy by Abbie – Liverpool-based business offering one-to-one Angelic Reiki Healing and Angel Readings
• Bracken and Paws – Etsy seller making custom attire for dogs
• Blooming Queer – a wellness coach for independent queer creatives
• Cheryl Waves Vinyl – Bristol record shop
• Crumbs and Doilies – a Soho cake shop 
• FM Sings – a one-person singing business run by the same “FM” as Optics 3D
• Frances Celebrates You – a wedding celebrant
• Hot metal works – an artistic blacksmith in Surrey
• Insert Here prosthetics – a one-person business offering handmade gender-affirming prosthetics
• Livingstone Textiles – an online fabric store
• Liverpool Queer Minds – Rach (she/they), a counsellor and queer activist
• Joy by Sophie – an “aesthetic clinic” based in Chorlton
• Kerece Peters – East London jewellery maker
• Milk It Digital – a Devon-based SEO consultant
• Mimo Brighton – market stall selling stickers and ceramics
• Misfits Workout – an aerobics instructor in Colchester
• Optics 3D – a two-person company selling 3D glasses run by Colin and “FM”
• Pretty Vacant Collective – a Liverpool hair and nail parlour
• Stakehaus – a food van in Camden, Brighton and Covent Garden
• Vivacity Rail Consulting – a WordPress site with no posts since 2016.

Where are they now?

More serious businesses that operate premises and services to the public seem to be able to recognise that they can follow the Equality Act by being clear about where they offer single-sex facilities and where they are mixed sex. There are no significant costs involved, just a willingness to say No to LGBTQ+ activist networks that want to queer the rules

The major firms that signed Stonewall’s letters in 2020 have gone quiet and are getting on with complying with the law.

Sex Matters has published guidance on providing single-sex services with confidence: 

The post What is the real cost to business of ignoring equality law?  appeared first on Sex Matters.