We're here, we're queer, we're really fucking tired so we're just gonna go straight to biting instead of feigning polite confusion if you're gonna be a bigot this time, just so you know.
some suggested framings for your letter to your mp to protest against the EHRC guidance, UKPOL (26th May 2026)
Following up on this briefly now the guidance has been delivered. I have briefly looked through is and read analysis by legal experts. I am likely to follow up in more detail
As far as I can tell, it is an absolute dog's dinner, full of contradictory statements, ambiguous hedging (lots of may be/is likely/is unlikely) and is of almost no use to service providers wishing to ensure they are legally compliant.
Some language has softened, but it remains a lawfare bully's charter.
For example:
1) There are many references to the supreme court redefinition of terms in EA2010 to base "sex" on "biological sex" ("BS" which as far as I can tell is not the outcome of any specific scientific test, just observation, assignment and recording around birth or as near to that point where there is an external ambiguity - i.e. "administrative sex").
1b) It then states that there is no document which categorically captures this information for an individual (13.197) and such relevant documents as there such as birth certificates or GRCs are cannot be demanded for privacy reasons
1c) It implicitly invalidates the solemn oath required by recipients of GRC documents
"I _ do solemnly and sincerely declare that:
I am over 18 years of age.
I transitioned in DD/MM/YY
I have lived as a (insert ‘male’ or ‘female’ as appropriate) throughout the period of years before the date of this statutory declaration and I intend to live in that gender until death."
1d) It also makes the lived experience requirements for new GRCs nigh-on impossible
2) It is simultaneously mandatory for trans men to be required to use female-designated spaces and possible to exclude them based on other users' sensitivities
3) Services covering multiple protected groups are declared possible. Providing a single-sex service may be mandatory and making it biological sex ("BS") only may be discriminatory to trans people unless proportional, but including trans people may be discriminatory to non-trans people. Litigation risk from all sides
4) There is an explicit example 4.100 that "GC" or religious-based beliefs about homosexuality should not be stereotypes as having negative attitudes to (respectively) trans or gay people (scope creep).
This is a reworking of the "hate the sin, not the sinner" rationale used by some religious people. I cannot see how it has a place in equalities guidelines. Those beliefs are definitionally negative about the people embodying them. A similar statement would not be made about eugenicists or racial supremacists
5) Sex-specific medical services (gynecology, urology, mammography) can exclude trans people even when their bodies require attention from those services
13.147 elevates "discomfort" by an individual in a protected category to the level of justifying exclusion of one in another. This has nothing to do with "proportionality" and is an absolutely chilling precedent both in this case and for other categories
13.170 indicates "13.170 It is unlikely to be either practical or appropriate to approach any particular individual to make enquiries about their sex in relation to facilities, such as toilets, which are incidental to the primary service."
Are toilets part of the primary service of a pub, or restaurant or office? Are changing rooms part of the primary purpose of a gym?
6) This will inevitably result in service providers discontinuing sex-designated services and facilities or reworking to be unisex
7) The main outcome I foresee - beyond daily distress to several hundred thousand British people - will be years of legal threats and wranglings by those with the deepest pockets and a chilling effect on public life
8) There is a of handwaving based on assumed existence of segregated third spaces in addition to sex-designated. This is both unlikely to be represented by actal facilities on the ground, and is just an awful, dehumanising, othering approach
9) Enforcement is nigh-on impossible, equity is nil.
This could have been avoided with new legislation which reasserted the original spirit and intent of the earlier acts (as evidenced by the speeches in Hansard and surrounding commentary) to overturn this radical reinterpretation.
Worryingly, bad-faith or simply incorrect representations of rights are being trumped across media channels, including the national broadcaster.
This will devastate and victimise members of an already vulnerable group, as well as anyone who sufficiently motivated people decide may possibly be in those groups.
Horrific.
ALSO
Dear Clive,
Last time we met, we spoke about waiting for the guidance due to be published by the EHRC. That guidance has now been published and laid before Parliament. It will become law if not rejected by MPs.
It is now clear that this guidance is the bathroom ban trans people were fearing. Some features of older versions of the guidance have been watered down or removed, such as the unworkable advise about service providers asking for proof of “biological sex” by requesting identification (no form of identification records this information in the UK).
The updated guidance explicitly advises service providers enact a blanket ban on trans people using spaces according to their acquired gender by creating a catch-22 situation: that to include trans people in this way is discrimination against both cis women and cis men. To avoid being taken to court, service providers must enact a blanket ban on trans women using facilities according to their acquired gender.
This is a bathroom ban. Far from providing “clarity”, it pushes all responsibility for enacting the ban, and defending against nuisance litigation, onto service providers. It also explicitly points out there is no meaningful way to enforce such policies, because no forms of identification exist that record “biological sex”, or “sex at birth”.
This is a calamitous situation for trans people, service providers, and gender non-conforming cis people. In 2016, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office warned British LGBT people about travelling to the US in the wake of legislation in North Carolina that forced trans people to use toilets according to their sex at birth. What are we supposed to do when our own government issues legal guidance advising businesses to enact the same bathroom ban in our own country? This guidance must be debated by Parliament, and it must be rejected by MPs. Further, the Labour Government must legislate to make clear that trans women are afforded the same rights as cis women, and trans men are afforded the same rights as cis men in the Equality Act. It should also legislate to ensure that holders of gender recognition certificates are “for all intents and purposes” considered their acquired sex, as was written into the Gender Recognition Act in 2004. Anything less would be a permanent stain on the legacy of the Labour Party, and remembered long into the future in the same way as Section 28. It is my sincere belief that we are witnessing the systemic dismantling of the human rights of trans people under a Labour government. Regards, Katie Fenn
AND
(No alt text was provided for this one).
And this template letter:
take a mix-and-match approach and personalise it if you can. be polite and don't use language that will have your letter rejected, but don't shy away from describing the consequences.
You might want to reference:
"Like a snowball: the growth and impact of the gender critical movement in the UK", Amnesty International, published 21st May 2026.
Samaritans responds to EHRC guidance after 40% rise in calls following Supreme Court ruling, Samaritans, published 22nd May 2026
Samaritans responds to EHRC guidance after 40% rise in calls following Supreme Court ruling
Press statement published 14th May 2026 by ILGA (prior to the EHRC guidance but relevant to the UK's piss-poor standing on trans and queer rights generally in Europe).
The UK has dropped six places in ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map, as Hungary and Georgia also register steep falls following anti-LGBTI legislatio
If you have a UK MP (and if you live in the UK you do have one) please do this and share it ASAP, there is a limited period of time before Parliament vote on the guidance.
If you don't have a UK MP please at least share this post.
POST DATE: 25th MAY 2026.
WriteToThem is a website which provides an easy way to contact MPs, councillors and other elected representatives.
To find your MP and send an easy email, use WriteToThem.
We need to put out periodic reminders in fandom that trying to argue in favor of the divine right of kings or defending wartime atrocities or rich people's entitlement to the deference of indentured servants or whatever is, in fact, way less compelling and far stupider than just going well, that character is hot and this is fiction so I've decided it's all good.
Wanting to fuck the evil demon king because he's gorgeous and tormented is far more respectable than trying to defend his actual policies. If someone accuses you of only liking him because you want to fuck him, you can just say yeah that's true, and then what? Either they kinkshame you or they leave. Checkmate.
This stunning gypsum selenite baclava/lasagna belongs to Phillip Rendina, it was shared on Facebook, and boy aren't we jealous! We thought you needed to see it too.
the whisper of watersports in the latest chapter had me breathless (it’s my niche, i’m obsessed with bodily realism in sick/injury fics like yeah ilyas gonna need to piss like a race horse he is on a liquid diet and is basically wheelchair bound so can’t even sweat it out)
Anon, I am so sorry I took so long to answer this. You are CORRECT in every way <3
I wanted to explore this in more detail in the story, but feared I'd already dropped too many unexploded kink landmines, with not enough chapter space to detonate them all. I am still thinking about it. Probably more than I should. There is non-zero chance that the theme will recur, possibly as a one-shot.
mx itch you’ve got me reading your hannibal fics as someone who has never watched the show (not for lack of trying still to this day im made that i was unable to hyperfix on it) because all you’re writing is amazing
WELCOME TO THE TABLE! <3
(and maybe sorry in advance)
there are so many good fics, and SO MUCH amazing art in the hannibal fandom if you feel like sticking around
theartofmadeline
dededos
origamiaround
kaledo-art
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
ellievsbear
