We are angry, and you should be too.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission, whose job it is to protect our rights, are now moving to take them away. Their new guidance, expected to land within weeks, will tell schools, hospitals, leisure centres, and even shops that it is lawful to bar trans people from single-sex spaces, and that birth certificates can be demanded to access basic facilities.

They are claiming that this is about safety. Let’s be honest: it’s about appeasing a loud, politically convenient minority. A minority that is being amplified by well-known public figures and media pundits, who have no expertise in law or human rights, but plenty of influence over politicians who are looking for an easy headline.

This is political cowardice, pure and simple. A watchdog bending to pressure instead of standing up for the people it was created to protect.

The EHRC has rushed this process from the start. Over 50,000 people took part in their consultation, yet leaked documents show that they plan to ignore more than half of these responses, processing the rest through AI. Not because it’s fair, but because the board itself set an arbitrary deadline and is “overwhelmed by the volume”. When human rights are on the line, “we didn’t have time” is not an excuse.

This guidance isn’t just targeting trans people. It creates the possibility for anyone, trans, non-binary, intersex or cisgender, to be excluded from either single-sex space based purely on how they look or are perceived.

That means that a non-binary person could be denied entry to both the men’s and women’s toilets. A trans man, or a cis woman with short hair and masculine features, could be told to leave the women’s changing room because they are “too male presenting”. A trans woman, or a cis man with feminine features, could be thrown out of the men’s showers for being “too female presenting”.

This isn’t safety. It’s appearance-based discrimination that leaves people with nowhere safe to go. It humiliates the person targeted, puts others in uncomfortable and potentially unsafe situations, and achieves nothing except deepening division and fear.

Here in West Norfolk, we don’t have to imagine the harm. We’re already seeing it:

• Trans people avoiding healthcare facilities or public buildings out of fear.
• Affirming materials being quietly removed from libraries.
• People denied housing or medical care simply because of their identity.
• A rise in local anti-trans rhetoric, with new exclusionary groups forming, going as far as to copy our name to mislead the public, sow division and disguise prejudice as “community concern”.

To anyone who thinks this is only about trans people, you’re missing the point. Once it becomes acceptable for a public body to strip rights from one group, it sets a precedent that can be turned on any marginalised community. The ball has started rolling, and we cannot say where it will stop, or who will be hurt as a result.

To our trans, non-binary, intersex and gender non-conforming siblings: You do belong here. You have every right to exist, to work, to learn, to live authentically, without fear or permission.

To our local and national leaders: Reject this guidance publicly. Protect gender-affirming spaces. Meet with our community in your constituencies and listen to what this will really do to their lives. Silence is complicity.

And to those who will rush to defend this guidance with slogans from the LGB Alliance or other anti-trans groups, understand this: the law is not on your side, science is not on your side, the facts are not on your side, and history will not be on your side. Your talking points are tired, recycled, and fall apart under even the lightest scrutiny. If you think human rights are a zero-sum game, you’ve already lost the argument.

Pride is not neutral. It never has been. And when institutions retreat from equality to please a vocal few, our response is simple: we step forward.

We are still here.

We are still proud.

We will not be erased.

KLWN Pride Committee.