Write to your MP about the EHRC Code

Your MP can still act

For trans men this is not an argument about definitions. It could mean being refused a men's service, forced to disclose a history you had every right to keep, questioned because of your face or your body, or offered an alternative that is miles away, inaccessible, or does not exist.

Around 20,000 people have already written to their MPs about this Code. 166 MPs signed a motion calling for it to be rejected, including more than 90 Labour MPs who put their names against their own government's policy.¹ Signing a motion is not a vote, and it did not stop the Code. It did put substantial parliamentary opposition on the public record, and it is why ministers know this is contested.

Nothing about that is finished. The order has not been made.

What the Code is, and what it is not

It is not an Act of Parliament and it creates no new duties. It is statutory guidance on applying the Equality Act to services, public functions and certain associations.

Once in force, courts and tribunals must take into account any part relevant to a case, and an organisation that follows it can rely on that in its defence. It carries real weight without being law.

It does not require every organisation to exclude every trans person from every gendered setting. Where an organisation relies on an exception it must usually show its approach is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, and the Code says it is very unlikely to be proportionate to leave a trans person with no toilet they are allowed to use.⁴

Those qualifications are real. They do not make the framework safe. The pressure runs one way. Providers fear sex discrimination claims if they stay inclusive, and gender reassignment claims if they go too far the other way. Most will choose caution, and caution means us.

What that means for a trans man

Excluded in both directions

Refused a men's service, because the Act now counts you as female. Refused a women's service, because you are visibly a man and the provider thinks exclusion is proportionate. The Code says leaving someone with nowhere to go will rarely be proportionate. It cannot guarantee anyone will build the alternative.

Questioned because of how you look

Where there is evidence of a problem with people of the opposite sex using a single-sex service, the Code says it may be legitimate to ask someone to confirm they are eligible, and that the evidence prompting concern might include a person's physique, appearance or behaviour, or complaints from other users.⁶ A man consistently assumed to be cis may be outed the first time someone decides he does not look right. A man early in transition may be challenged before he has a chance to say anything. A feminine or gender non-conforming man may be treated as a problem in every room.

Told your protection is conditional

The Equality Act protects you from the moment you propose to undergo gender reassignment. No surgery, no hormones, no documents required. The Code adds that reassigning sex is likely to involve more permanent changes, such as changing pronouns and consistently presenting as the opposite sex, and that someone presenting in a gender non-conforming way for another reason is not protected at all.⁷

Our view, and it is our view rather than a ruling: that narrows what Parliament wrote. If it takes hold, the men whose protection is challenged first will be the men early in transition, the men who cannot be out everywhere, the men without changed documents, and the men who are not read as male. The men with the least support and the least chance of being believed.

And it lands unevenly

A man with money, a car and three services within reach can go elsewhere. A man in a rural area with one bus and one clinic cannot. Disabled trans men rely more often on healthcare, on carers, on the accessible toilet that is now also being offered as the trans solution. Black and brown trans men are read through racialised ideas about which men look threatening, and will be asked to prove themselves more often and challenged harder when they do. Older trans men, who have often already spent decades outside community, depend most on the health and social care this reaches. Being told to use another service is not an answer when there is no other service.

Everyone else this touches

We centre trans men because our lives go missing from this debate. Nobody is being harmed in isolation.

Trans women, and trans women of colour especially, face acute and disproportionate hostility, and the impact assessment names the risk of violence and sexual assault where they are pushed into men's provision. Non-binary people are poorly served by a framework built on two boxes. Gender non-conforming cis people will be challenged too, and the government's own analysis concedes that women considered masculine may face greater scrutiny about their sex.⁵

Intersex people and people with variations in sex characteristics face a Code that gives appearance a role in deciding who gets questioned. We are a trans men's project and this is not ours to speak to in detail. We are asking ministers to consult intersex-led organisations directly, before this Code is commenced.

These experiences are connected. They are not the same. Solidarity does not require pretending otherwise.

What to ask your MP

1. Do not commence the Code yet. Not until Parliament has debated it and ministers have answered the harms in their own impact assessment.

2. Answer the practical questions. How will the government prevent exclusion in both directions, forced disclosure, appearance-based questioning, and people being left with no service they can actually reach or use?

3. Meet the people affected. Trans constituents and trans-led organisations, before taking a position.

Your MP can write to the Minister for Women and Equalities and the Prime Minister, table questions, seek a debate, press select committees, raise your case, and push for changes to primary legislation. What they cannot do is claim nobody told them.

For local organisations

The Code has not commenced. No organisation should be treating it as current law, or claiming it already requires every trans person to be excluded from every gendered space. The Supreme Court judgment binds. The Equality Act still applies in full, including protection against gender reassignment discrimination and, where exceptions are relied on, proportionality.

Take your own advice, relevant to what you actually do. Do not make disproportionate changes. Do not question people publicly. Protect personal and medical information. Involve the people affected. Write down your reasoning.