Outside Worcester Guildhall on a Saturday afternoon, people gathered with trans flags and handmade signs. One of those signs read: "We have always existed. We always will." I want to start there, with that sentence, because it is the truest thing anyone said all day.

Members of Worcester City Pride and other LGBTQ+ groups came together on 14 June to push back against the Equality and Human Rights Commission's draft updates to its code of practice on single-sex spaces. The guidance, laid before Parliament on 21 May with a 40-day window for consideration, would mean that single-sex services and facilities are to be operated on the basis of biological sex. In practice, that means trans people can be turned away. Melissa Poulton, one of the organisers, named it plainly: "The guidance is telling businesses, for example, that trans people are not welcome. It's segregation in the name of protecting women and girls."

That framing matters. When something is described as clarification, as guidance, as a tidy administrative update following a court ruling, it can be easy to lose sight of what it actually does to real people's lives. Melissa has not lost sight of that. She said she fears that trans people are being "targeted", and she is right to be concerned. Draft guidance does not have the weight of statute, but it shapes behaviour. Service providers read it, HR teams read it, managers read it, and they make decisions on the basis of it. Guidance that tells businesses trans people should use facilities according to biological sex is, in effect, guidance that tells businesses it is acceptable to exclude trans people. That is not a neutral administrative position. It causes harm.

Green councillor Alex Mace, who represents St Stephen on Worcester City Council, was there and made a point I hear often from people who think carefully about this: the framing of this debate as being about the safety of women in spaces gets the problem exactly backwards. "The real problem in our society is violence by men and I don't see the government doing enough to address that," he said. "They're too busy trying to keep trans people out of bathrooms." He also made clear that the guidance is not just a concern for trans women: it makes things more difficult for all women, including those who do not conform neatly to the expectations that are now being enshrined in official documents.

He is right on both counts. Trans women are women, and the evidence that trans women in shared spaces represent any kind of threat simply does not exist. What does exist is substantial evidence that trans people face discrimination, harassment, and violence. Guidance that frames exclusion as protection does not address the actual sources of risk; it redirects anxiety onto a group that is already vulnerable and calls that a solution.

The legal position has attracted considerable noise and deserves attention. The Supreme Court ruling in April 2025 interpreted the Equality Act 2010 as meaning that the terms "sex", "man", and "woman" in that Act refer to biological sex. That is an interpretation of existing legislation, not a new law, and it has been criticised by many legal commentators, equality organisations, and human rights advocates who argue it does not reflect Parliament's original intention when the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010 were passed together. The ruling did not remove protections from trans people: trans people remain protected under the characteristic of gender reassignment. The EHRC's draft guidance, which follows from that ruling, is draft. It has not been finalised. The 40 days in Parliament are precisely the period during which it can be scrutinised, challenged, and amended.

That is why what happened in Worcester matters. This is not a metropolitan story. This is an ordinary English city, an ordinary Saturday, and ordinary people who decided that staying at home was not the right response. They came out because they understand that guidance framed as clarification is, in practice, discrimination. They came out because they know that when trans people are excluded from public spaces it is not a minor administrative technicality: it is a message about whose presence in public life is welcome. "Trans rights are human rights," said Alex, and he is right about that too.

The sign that stayed with me, though, was the one about existence. Trans people have always been here. They were here before the EHRC's code of practice, before the Supreme Court ruling, before the Gender Recognition Act, before any of the legislation that now frames their lives as a political problem to be managed. They will be here long after this particular piece of draft guidance has been revised or forgotten. The question is not whether trans people exist. The question is whether the institutions that are supposed to protect everyone choose to protect them too.

Worcester, on a Saturday afternoon, said the answer should be yes.

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 advocate, and the founder of GenderGP.