There Has Never Been an All Powerful Trans Lobby

And anyone claiming so was lying to you.

Before we get started:

I wanted to apologize to most of you for the number of marketing emails you've received from me recently. I signed up for a program that sends automatic emails asking free subscribers to consider subscribing, and apparently it was flooding some peoples' inboxes. A reader only recently made me aware of this issue and I have cancelled the auto-email program. My apologies.

This Week's Sick Burn:

I'm going to keep this relatively brief because I've been writing every day this week and this is the last thing I have to do before the long weekend. But I can't ignore what happened in the UK this week. On Thursday the UK government unveiled a long expected and long dreaded trans bathroom ban.

I haven't looked closely at the details yet, but it appears to bar trans people from any public spaces, sports teams, or services associated with their gender identity. So trans women are forced to use men's rooms, etc, and trans men are forced to use women's rooms... most of the time.

There's actually a carveout for trans men who pass as men to be forced to use a disabled toilet. There's no real guidance on how to identify who is a trans person, or what documentation a person must carry to prove compliance with this guidance, so the UK is now essentially the lawless wild west but for gender.

Essentially, anyone suspected of being trans can be confronted in any gendered space. The guidance says this interaction must be respectful, but if you can come up with a respectful way to ask someone if they were born with a dick or vagina, please tell me. I don't think it can be done.

Perhaps worst of all is that this policy is being forced through by one of the supposed left wing parties in the country, the Labour party. For the Americans who read me (which I think is most of you according to the stats I have available), Labour are analogous to the Democratic Party.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also point out, as an American trans person, that Labour's bathroom policy is significantly more bigoted, invasive, and restrictive towards trans people than anything that any American Republican red state has managed to implement.

Labour, by implementing this policy, and for their earlier banning of gender affirming care for trans youth, are measurably more extreme on trans issues than the Republican party in the US.

I'm sure there are British folks reading this who simply won't be able to comprehend this, but it's true. I worked a 13 hour day yesterday, so I was mostly offline, but in the brief moments I did have on social media, I saw Labour MP after Labour MP on Bluesky saying that this bathroom ban needs to be implemented with respect and understanding towards the trans community.

Respectfully, fuck off.