Something caught my eye this week that gave me genuine hope, and I want to make sure people see it. Disability Rights UK has published a clear, unambiguous statement opposing the new EHRC guidance on single-sex spaces, and standing in solidarity with trans people. In a political moment when equality bodies are being pressured to turn on one another, this matters to real people whose lives sit at the intersection of trans identity and disability.

The EHRC guidance, which followed the Supreme Court's ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers, instructs service providers that they may exclude trans people from single-sex spaces on the basis of biological sex. Disability Rights UK's statement does not hedge around what that means. It says the guidance causes harm. It says the EHRC, as a body whose purpose is to uphold equality for everyone, should be doing better. And it calls out the way the guidance creates a hierarchy of protected characteristics, where some people's rights are treated as more real, more urgent, and more deserving of protection than others'.

That analysis is correct, and it cuts to the heart of what is wrong with this guidance. Equality law was never designed to work as a zero-sum system. The Equality Act 2010 protects people across multiple characteristics, and many people carry more than one. A trans person with a physical disability navigating public spaces is not experiencing two separate equality questions in parallel. They are one person, in one body, trying to move through the world with dignity.

What the guidance actually does to disabled trans people

Trans people with disabilities already face compounded barriers. Access to healthcare is harder. Navigating public spaces is harder. Finding environments that are affirming and physically accessible at the same time is harder. The EHRC guidance adds another layer of exclusion on top of all of that by telling service providers that it is lawful, and by implication acceptable, to turn trans people away.

For a disabled trans person who relies on accessible facilities, or who needs support from a carer, the practical consequences of this guidance are not abstract. If a single-sex space is the only accessible option available, and the guidance permits that space to exclude them, then what the guidance is actually doing is telling that person they are not fully entitled to access public life. Disability Rights UK understands this because they work with people who live it.

Their statement also makes a broader point that I think deserves more attention: when equality bodies are weaponised against one another's communities, everyone loses. The rights of disabled people have never been secure. They have been fought for, defended, and are still under pressure. The idea that protecting disabled people requires excluding trans people is not just wrong, it is a tactic, and Disability Rights UK has the integrity and the clarity of purpose to name it as such.

Why solidarity between equality movements is not optional

What gives me hope here is not just the content of the statement, welcome as it is. What gives me hope is that Disability Rights UK chose to say something at all. They did not have to weigh in. They could have stayed quiet, let the political weather pass, and focused narrowly on the issues most directly associated with their own community. They did not do that. They looked at what was happening to trans people and they said: this is our concern too.

That is how equality movements have always made progress. Not by competing for a fixed pool of sympathy or protection, but by recognising that rights are indivisible and that attacks on one community weaken the foundations everyone else is standing on. When disabled people were fighting for independent living, for the right to be in public spaces, for recognition that access is not a favour but an entitlement, they needed people to see that their exclusion was everyone's problem. The same logic applies now.

The EHRC was created to uphold equality for all protected groups. A guidance document that pits those groups against each other, and that the EHRC's own equality commissioners from the trans community and beyond have criticised, is a failure of that mandate. Disability Rights UK is saying so clearly, and I am glad they are.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the right to live as yourself.