The Vagina Lobby Is Out of Control

Imagine surviving transphobia, only to be sidelined by the people yelling “equality.”

“Womanhood does not belong to cis women. It belongs to all of us who live and suffer under it.” — Alok Vaid-Menon

The UK Supreme Court has decided that under the Equality Act, the word “woman” means “biological female.” Which is a polite, gavel-wielding way of saying, “trans women, please queue quietly at the back.” It doesn’t matter if you’ve lived as a woman for ten years, been stalked for it, assaulted for it, fired for it, or treated like an admin error at your own GP. You can have the surgeries, the paperwork, the trauma — it’s not enough. Apparently, unless you emerged from the womb with the right bits and a British passport stamped “female,” the law no longer sees you as one of us. It’s equality by biology now. Womanhood has gone full members-only.

And let’s not pretend this is just about language. It’s about doors. Shelter doors. Job doors. Healthcare doors. You’re a trans woman. You’ve fled an abusive home and turn up at a women’s refuge, still bruised. The staff tell you they’d love to help, but “unfortunately” the new guidance is quite clear. You go to a rape crisis centre. Same story. You get ignored for a public board position aimed at improving gender equity. Apparently, you don’t qualify as a gender anymore. Even if you have a Gender Recognition Certificate — which, by the way, you can only get after convincing a panel of strangers that your identity is both lifelong and legally appropriate.

“The meaning of the terms ‘sex’, ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex... A person with a Gender Recognition Certificate does not come within the definition of a woman under the Act.” — UK Supreme Court Judgment, 16 April 2025

Why are we treating gender like it’s passport control and feminism like it’s bloody Heathrow? Who appointed the Mumsnet crowd as gatekeepers of womanhood? Now we’re demanding proof of periods, trauma credentials, a verifiable cervix and a tone that doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable. It’s absurd.

Womanhood has never been tidy. It’s never been one thing. It’s included women who don’t want children, women who don’t want men, women who get kicked out of their family homes at sixteen because they were “too much.” But suddenly, now that trans women are in the room, we’re acting like we’ve always had a clear definition. We haven’t. We just got away with the ambiguity until someone we didn’t like tried to claim it too.

Let’s be clear. Most people won’t feel this ruling. Cis women will still get their smear tests and argue on Facebook. Men will still pretend it’s about toilets. But for trans women, this changes everything. Hate crimes are up. Brianna Ghey was murdered at fifteen. NHS waitlists for gender care stretch into years. And now the law has told them, in perfect bureaucratic English, “you’re not really a woman either.” We keep saying feminism is about protecting the vulnerable, but apparently that only applies if your genitals pass inspection.

You can’t fight for women’s rights while narrowing the definition of “woman” so tight it strangles the very people who need those rights most.

Are Trans Women Really Women?

Let’s get to it. The question everyone’s either whispering or shouting, depending on the postcode. Are trans women really women? It’s the kind of thing that derails every conversation before it starts. I’ve heard it mumbled at feminist panels and screamed on GB News. And no one wants to touch it because they know it’s loaded. It’s not always shouted from hate. Sometimes it comes from fear, confusion, that weird instinct to preserve something that feels like it’s slipping. But fear isn’t neutral. Fear shapes policy. Fear writes headlines. Fear just got a Supreme Court ruling. So no, I’m not going to avoid the question. I’m going to walk straight through it.

Let’s say it. No, trans women and cis women aren’t the same. Obviously. That’s not offensive, it’s just basic reality. But since when has womanhood ever required everyone to tick the same bloody boxes? Some women give birth, some don’t. Some menstruate, some never have. Some grow up with womanhood dumped on them like a tax, others walk towards it knowing it’ll cost them everything. And yet, all of us get policed, punished, doubted and diminished for simply existing. Feminism has always been a messy coalition of people who’ve had to fight to be seen as real. Why is this where we suddenly draw the line? Is the sisterhood only sacred until someone walks in with a different kind of pain?

Trans women are already treated like women — just not in the ways anyone would ask for. They’re harassed for how they look. Sexualised for what they’re not. Attacked for being visible and excluded for being inconvenient. They get denied housing, healthcare, safety and dignity, not because they’re pretending to be women, but because society sees them as the wrong kind of woman. That’s not cosplay. That’s survival. If you’re being punished as a woman by every system around you, what else do you need to prove? If you bleed for womanhood — not from your body, but from how the world treats you — who gets to say it doesn’t count?

Trans women often do more to prove they’re women than most of us have done to prove we’re human. They legally transition, medically transition, socially transition, and still get treated like they’ve shown up to a black-tie event in fancy dress. We’ve built an entire bureaucratic obstacle course and told them to run it in heels.

And the punchline? Even when they make it through, we still say, “Sorry, not quite convincing enough.” That’s not fairness. That’s surveillance dressed up as safeguarding. When womanhood becomes something you have to earn through paperwork, pain, and polite performance, it stops being empowering. It becomes a cruel little club run by people who are terrified of change and addicted to control.

So no, I’m not interested in the question “Are trans women real women?” anymore. It’s tired. It’s lazy. It’s the intellectual equivalent of trying to reboot your feminism by yelling at strangers. The question I actually care about is this: Does your feminism show up for trans women, or does it panic the second things get uncomfortable? Because if it can’t stretch to include those most at risk, then it’s not feminism. It’s an aesthetic. It’s what the cool girls wear when they want to say “girlboss” on Instagram and still vote like it’s 1952. Trans women don’t need to be the same as me to be included with me. They need to be beside me, because the systems that hurt me, hurt them too. Just with sharper teeth.

And look, I get why people struggle. Gender is messy. Bodies are weird. Identity is a complicated soup of culture and trauma and language we barely agree on. But if the cost of clarity is someone else’s erasure, then maybe the clarity isn’t worth it. Feminism was never meant to be a gated community. It was meant to burn the gates down. So let’s pause and ask: who wins when we tighten the circle? Who gets left out? And who benefits from keeping the door shut just a little longer? Feminism doesn’t need a firmer border. It needs a stronger backbone.

Feminism’s Fault Line — Who Is It Actually Protecting?

Let’s get this out the way. I am a feminist. Proudly. Loudly. Aggressively, if necessary. But that doesn’t mean I’ve pledged blind allegiance to every dusty variation of the movement. If your feminism requires an ID check and a genital inspection at the door, I want no part in it. I am not here for the version of feminism that treats trans women like a clerical error or a glitch in the gender matrix. That’s not empowerment. That’s an anxious spreadsheet with a superiority complex. If your feminism starts building fences instead of bridges, it’s not feminism. It’s just another control system wearing Doc Martens and tweeting about “the sacred female body” from a burner account.

And let’s not pretend this is the first time feminism’s had an internal meltdown. It’s practically tradition at this point. White feminism pushed women of colour to the sidelines. Anti-sex feminists tried to ban kink and cancel pleasure. The movement spent decades ignoring disabled women, poor women, queer women — basically anyone who didn’t come wrapped in middle-class white cotton.

Every time feminism has tried to trim itself into something more “respectable,” it has left someone behind. This is just the 2025 edition. The question today is who we’re willing to exclude in order to feel more certain, more safe, more morally superior. And right now, the answer seems to be: trans women.

What’s worse is who’s cheering that exclusion on. Courts, politicians, policy-makers — all suddenly cosplaying as defenders of womanhood. The same people who have slashed funding for women’s services, ignored domestic violence stats, and watched as migrant women got deported straight from rape clinics are now very concerned about the sanctity of single-sex spaces. Convenient. This is not feminism. This is state-sanctioned transphobia wearing a suffragette sash. When the government starts quoting feminism to justify who it won’t protect, we have to ask whether we’ve been co-opted, or whether we’ve just been too quiet to notice.

Now, I’m not pretending this stuff is simple. Some spaces are complicated. Prisons. Refuge shelters. Elite sport. These places require nuance, not slogans. But complexity is not an excuse to start banning people like they’re suspected of shoplifting. Why is exclusion always the first answer, when inclusion has worked quietly and effectively in many spaces for years? If a system can cope with male guards in women’s prisons but not a trans woman with a quiet record and a hormone patch, then it’s not built for safety. It’s built for optics.

Let’s talk about what’s really going on here. Is the panic around trans inclusion about fairness? Or is it because womanhood is becoming too fluid, too messy, too hard to brand? Maybe the fear isn’t that trans women are invading womanhood. Maybe the fear is that they’ve revealed how fragile the whole thing was to begin with. Trans women didn’t break the boundaries of womanhood. They just exposed how shaky they always were — how much of it was held together by tradition, fear, and a shared agreement not to ask questions.

Because here’s the truth: if your feminism leaves certain women out, it’s not protection. Real feminism isn’t terrified of ambiguity. It shows up anyway. It adapts. It makes room. It protects the people who need it most, not just the ones who fit the vibe. If our feminism can’t hold trans women, then it was never built to hold all women. And if that’s the case, maybe it’s time to build something better.

I’m Still Figuring It Out, But I Know Who’s at Risk

Look, I’m still figuring this out. Legally, emotionally, politically. I’ve read the legislation. I’ve seen the arguments from feminists I used to agree with. Some days I nod, other days I want to set the entire comment section on fire. It’s not cut and dry. And I’m not here pretending I’ve reached moral enlightenment just because I can tweet in a sentence what Parliament can’t decide in ten years. But when rights are being cut, and protections are being rewritten to exclude the people who need them most, silence is not neutrality. It’s just comfortable compliance. I don’t know exactly where I land on every edge of this. But I know the middle ground is often where people stand when they’re trying not to be hit, not where justice lives.

I get the fear. Really, I do. People are afraid of losing safe spaces, fairness, even the last remaining scraps of what it means to be a woman under a system that’s never really protected us. But there’s a difference between personal fear and state power. One is yours to feel. The other gets turned into law. And once fear gets drafted into legislation, it stops being emotional and starts being structural. It becomes policy. It becomes exclusion dressed up in safeguarding language and delivered in PDF form by people who’ve never had to explain their existence at a reception desk. Fear is human. But when fear becomes law, it stops being personal and starts becoming dangerous.

Let’s zoom in. Trans women are not taking over anything. They’re not replacing you in line for a job or a doctor’s appointment or a place at the shelter. They’re a tiny, targeted minority who are simply trying to stay alive in a country that increasingly acts like they’re an inconvenience. Hate crimes are rising. The NHS is a disaster. Gender services are so backlogged people are waiting years for a single appointment, and now even the legal frameworks meant to recognise them are being pulled apart one technicality at a time. When the law decides your identity is too awkward to protect, that’s not just miscategorisation. That’s abandonment.

Because let’s be honest, this isn’t really about language. It’s about access. It’s about who gets safety when they’re scared, fairness when they’re failed, and dignity when the system collapses. Who gets to be counted when it counts? And who gets quietly excluded on a legal form or a policy update or a door that doesn’t open? I’m not sure where I land on every detail. But I know this: if the law starts trimming the category of ‘woman’ so tightly that trans women fall out of it, then our feminism, and our legal system, are failing.

To trans people (especially trans women) I want to hear from you.

After this ruling, what kind of protection actually feels like protection to you?

In spaces like sports or shelters, what do you think makes the most sense — for fairness, for safety, for dignity?

Should the law expand to include “gender identity” and “gender expression”? Would that make you safer, or just more visible to be targeted?

And to everyone else — feminists, men, lawmakers, confused bystanders — I’ll ask you this:

What kind of womanhood are you defending if it requires someone else being pushed out of it?

What kind of world are we building if protection becomes an exclusive category, not a shared human right?

NOTE: Any transphobic comments will be reported and banned. No debate. No interaction. No “just asking questions.” This is a safe space, especially for the people most targeted by this decision. If that bothers you, log off.