I Don’t think any lawyer would have expected this result, ”says Britain’s first trans judge of the Supreme Court’s decision that a woman is defined by biological sex rather than gender.
This means that trans-women-inclusive those with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) can be excluded from one-bin for women, such as changing rooms and medical services.
“I did not expect the trans community to lose,” Dr. Victoria McCloud, who was publicly promoted as a symbol of the diversity of modern court.
April’s Bombshell -Herdias leave Britain “not much better than countries that criminalize transgender people,” she says.
Dr. McCloud believes that her rights as one of the 8,000 people who have legally changed the sex on their birth certificate have been violated under Article six of the universal declaration of human rights. “It literally changed my legal sex into discrimination overnight,” she says.
The ruling says that sex is binary “but it has actually created a situation where I am two genders at once, which is a bit peculiar … For the purpose of the Equality Act, I am male, but for everything else I am a woman, so if I have to mark a box on a form, I do not know which box to cross.”
It is for these reasons that she, together with a team, plans to take the British government to the European Human Rights (EMK).
It is not a decision that has been made easy as she expects EMK to take six years just to decide the case and although she is successful, changes would not come automatically. “If you win, all you get is a statement that the country’s violating your human rights.”
The Supreme Court’s decision was seen as a victory of the critical side of the gender; It was the campaign group for Women Scotland that brought the case after first challenging the definition of a woman back in 2022. For the Trans community and its allies, it is seen as a huge rollback in rights, a result that Dr. McCloud hoped to avoid.
She notes that there were no transmits in the case, even though she gave up her role as a judge to apply last year to intervene in the case (but was not allowed, and did not get a reason for it). “I think it will be embarrassing to the law to have a situation where the people who are most affected in human rights conditions actually have no voice at any time.”
Now lives in Ireland – as she describes as a “much safer place” where she can “go down on the pub and no one is interested in what LOO I go to” – she says to hear that the Supreme Court’s decision was like “seeing a car accident at a distance”.
“My own country has left me as much as I have left my own country. The distance allows you to dampen yourself from a shock while I believe that many people in Britain are still confused and numb from the shock. I am in an interesting position as I kind of lead this [campaign] And yet, I’m in exile. “
For Dr. McCloud means the spread of transgender people “We just disappear quietly”. It is in a physical sense as transgender people leave the UK, but also metaphorically when transmarencies are deleted in pace in both Britain, the United States and all over the world.
Returning to London for a visit feels like a “special mission,” she says, because she doesn’t feel able to use toilets at the airport and instead have to reach where she lives. “It now feels palpable differently as soon as you hit the ground [in the UK]. “
To help other transgender people, especially those who do not want to be exposed, have Dr. McCloud Created Trans Exile Network (TEN), which can be joined upon request via her LinkedIn page.
“It is a group of trans, non-binary and intersex people (along with their families) who want to come out,” she explains. “It’s a private group to share tips from those who have done it and have the experience of what to do.” She also hopes to crowdfund to help those who will financially fight to move. “I don’t want anyone to be left through a lack of funds.”
For those in the UK, things could further worsen for transgender people “As long as Keir Stormmer, Wes Streeting and Bridget Phillips are responsible,” she fears.
“I had 25 years, whatever it has been, of a perfectly ordinary, very nice life,” she says, with younger people who had a bleak view. And as her legal challenge could take a decade, her commitment to the less of herself and her friends is “it really is for people who are the next generation instead”.