The paradox that sunk the radical transgender agenda as its core ideology is 'invalidated' by landmark UK Supreme Court ruling

Sky News AU

22-04-2025

After the multi-generational narratives of women's liberation and the civil right movement and then homosexual recognitions and law reforms, trans rights is the first such major narrative of social liberation to not just come to an abrupt halt - but to have its ideological aims and core beliefs be invalidated.
Trans ideology has been institutionally and culturally discredited in a stunningly brief span of time, and across all relevant spheres - medically and psychologically by last year's momentous Cass Report in the UK, by elite sporting bodies such as FINA, and last week by the UK Supreme Court, which decided unanimously that the definition of a woman is limited to biological sex.
Trans activism has lost its footing so badly, because it hasn't been able to fight the battle it wanted.
Its ideal and envisaged opponent was reactionary conservatives - ideally meanspirited and coarse online, and ideally framed as struggling to cope with wider anxieties about societal change.
That was the ideal opponent - one that could be written off as being on the wrong side of history, as one whose ignorance could be abided through.
But that hasn't been the main opponent.
Trans activism's biggest foe has been institutional - and for the most part, the kind of institutions progressives usually extol - the highly educated, informed and experienced academic and pedagogical veterans, professionals with gravitas, consciously above politics and with impeccable credentials, lauded by their peers at the highest levels of law, medicine and academia.
Core elements of progressivism, in spirit at least - rationalism, empiricism, methodologies and applied reason - these were supposed to be the underpinning of trans-activism.
Instead, the movement has been blindsided by these institutions pronouncing against trans activism, leaving the activists looking guilty of the things they tend to rail against - demagoguery and inflexible radicalism.
It's difficult to fend off reactionary trolls and empiricist peers with OBE and FRCN after their surname at the same time.
After the US Supreme Court's Obergefell decision making gay marriage legal at the federal level, it seemed like the trans communities' empowered integration would be a kind of minor addendum, that trans people would benefit from many of the national recognitions and protections, we would be largely done of the culture wars over sexual identity and rights, and that would more or less be that.
Many will argue that those trans people entering into women's private spaces, or competing in women's sports, represent such a miniscule proportion of the population, that it is practically negligible and doesn't impact on the overwhelming majority of people's lives.
But the issue became one of absolutism - a strident approach of not ceding any ground ideologically, with this extending to scenarios that just didn't seem to hold up - the housing of biological men in women's wings of prisons, the notion that someone only needed to perceive themselves as the opposite gender, without any impetus or interest in any form of tangible transition, and being granted, or expecting a whole range of rights of access.
The trans movement devised for the vast generality terms like 'cisgender' or 'male presenting', and someone, rather than simply being of the generality, might now be referred to as 'cis', or 'cis-het'.
Health services had to alter their language invoking specious constructions such as 'chest feeding' or 'people who menstruate'.
Activists abstracted gender from sex, leading to a cultural mess of relativism and inevitable antagonisms.
But just as swiftly, things changed.
In 2022, Maya Forstater, a researcher who lost her job at a think tank after tweeting that a transgender woman could not change their biological sex, successfully brought a test case to establish that gender critical views are a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act.
She won a landmark decision on appeal.
Ms Forstater also successfully won a claim that she was discriminated against because of her gender critical beliefs.
In mid-2022, world swimming governing body FINA effectively banned transgender women from competing in woman's events.
Then, The Atlantic ran a comprehensive piece entitled: 'Take detransitioners seriously'.
Then came the BBC Tavistock inquiry: the Tavistock clinic's gender identity development service for children kids shut its doors in 2023, having been the subject of increasing scrutiny, with a BBC inquiry prompting an investigation into the Tavistock by the NHS regulator.
Then there was the attempted boycott of the Hogwarts Legacy video game, set in the world of Harry Potter.
Activists would not abide an outspoken critic of trans ideology like JK Rowling benefiting financially and coordinated to criticise Twitch streamers and reviewers who affirmed the game.
But Hogwarts Legacy was a smash commercial success, and the activists turned out to lack much clout.
And then, overnight, the discourse emphatically changed.
The long-awaited Cass review into NHS gender services for children warned that teenagers are falling off a cliff edge when it comes to care.
The review's final report said children have been let down by a lack of research and evidence on medical interventions and gender care.
The report said that for most young people a medical pathway is not the best way to manage their gender related distress.
The Cass Report, a sweeping professional investigation headed by Hillary Cass, a retired paediatrician and former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and child health, found considerable uncertainty around gender ideology.
The report looked at gender identity services for under-18s and NHS England but found gender medicine to be operating on 'shaky foundations' when it came to the evidence for medical treatment, like prescribing hormones to pause puberty, or to transition to the opposite sex, and the ability of young people to comprehend the scale and implications of their decisions.
The findings appeared to refute the model known as gender affirming care, where a presenting child's gender identity is accepted by clinicians without question.
In the aftermath of the UK Supreme Court's decision, J. K Rowling is looking, to plenty of ordinary people, like she might have been right about the gist of the issue.
It has become somewhat socially permissible to contest elements of trans ideology.
People are generally accepting of trans individuals who, past the age of 18, have transitioned and are living a fulfilling life.
They might even count one or two such people as friends or co-workers.
However, the broad generality will still take their cues from institutional bodies headed by professionals with a wealth of experience in their fields.
Most of these venerable institutions still acknowledge the evidence, both scientific and historical, that the spectrum of human gender diversity has long existed in many parts of the world.
And it is of course common decency to live-and-let-live when it comes to people reaching the age when they can define their own destiny.
The issue isn't personal freedom and choices, it has been the strident ideology that has impinged too much upon other people's freedoms and choices.
The pushback - the corrective - has been institutional.
And it has left trans ideology with little to say, and little sense of what to do.
Nicholas Sheppard is an accomplished journalist whose work has been featured in The Spectator, The NZ Herald and Politico. He is also a published literary author and public relations consultant