Wait, Claire's brother is in Hundred Reasons? They're one of my all-time favourite bands! It's probably best I didn't know that when we met, actually...

Ah, now seen the feedback, at least, which is extremely clear as to why the essay completely failed, including the fact the student clearly hadn't paid any attention whatsoever to the actual brief (or, as it turns out, the entirely reasonable feedback).

This is what I tell my students: the worst-case scenario isn't your code not running, it's your code running fine but doing something completely different to what you *think* it's doing.

And this ability to ensure transphobia is viewed as *potentially* acceptable is so important to them, they're willing to gut equality law, encourage employers to risk punishing legal battles, tie up UK courts in endless confused fighting over what's going on, AND RISK ALL WOMEN'S SAFETY to get it.

It's to just allow people to harass those who don't "look like women" (whatever the hell that's even supposed to mean) can't trust the law will have their back when they're challenged while going for a piss. The guidance allows for this, and so from the EHRC's perspective, it's job done.

Once you see this, all the seeming madness of what's being proposed disappears. The plan isn't to have some way of legally enforcing trans women use the gents, and it *by explicit admission* isn't to have some way of legally enforcing trans men use the ladies.

And that's because the *real* goal isn't to create a legally enshrined space for "biological females". It' not even to create a legally enshrined space for cis women, though that's closer to what those pushing this want.
The real goal is to make trans people too uncomfortable to exist in public.

Everyone noting this is discrimination based on appearance is completely right. Everyone noticing this is patriarchal enforcement of gender norms is completely right. But it's *also* completely unable to achieve it's own stated goals.

Now it's just:
Stage 1: Ask someone if they are "biologically female".
Stage 2: ???.
Stage 3: Only "biologically female" people get into ladies toilets.

Like, "show me your birth certificate before you can have a wee" was obviously stupid, and in practice going to potentially put an extreme administrative burden on employers for no fucking reason at all, but it at least was a theoretically coherent (which again, is distinct from moral) approach.

But now we've moved on to blocking people's access to toilets based on vibes. It's not just cruel, and bigoted, and anti-science and anti-trans, and (as the original article notes) harmful to cis women as well as trans women, it is *utterly unworkable* from the bottom up.

Back when "sex written on original birth certificate" was being touted as an apparently objective and infallible legal definer of sex, I said at the time it could obviously be neither. But it was at least a *useable* criteria, albeit one to be used in the pursuit of oppressing trans people.