Image shows the UK Houses of Parliament shot across the river Thames
. The EHRC guidance on several groups' rights - not just the "headline" of trans peoples' rights, and the entitlement to violence and abuse it has given people who aren't (yet) having their rights "discussed" at government level.
. "Simpler Recycling", and the "You're getting more bins! We will leave you with stinking, rotting refuse, and fine you if you make one single mistake about what goes where, or some passerby dumps a crisp packet in your cardboard bin! No, we don't care how little space you have to actually house all these bins!"
. Constant media frothing about "young people who are unemployed and aren't even in any kind of training scheme!" and "how much it's costing the country!"
. "Simpler Recycling", and the "You're getting more bins! We will leave you with stinking, rotting refuse, and fine you if you make one single mistake about what goes where, or some passerby dumps a crisp packet in your cardboard bin! No, we don't care how little space you have to actually house all these bins!"
. Constant media frothing about "young people who are unemployed and aren't even in any kind of training scheme!" and "how much it's costing the country!"
These things seem very different and distinct from one another - just as many of the problems we face in business, or in our individual everyday lives can feel very different and distinct.
This sense of disconnectedness, of difference and distinct situationality, is why we feel overwhelmed all of the time - because we believe we have so many problems, and that therefore we have to constantly generate solutions. We can't come up with maybe three solid solutions, because there's three hundred problems! And they're all so different!
NEETS, bins, and peoples' rights seem to be very distinct, very complex problems, which would need a raft of highly specialised - and very costly - solutions.
But, in fact, they're not problems in themselves; they're symptoms of one problem, which the UK has been ignoring for decades, and which is actually the root of many symptoms that appear to be problems in themselves.
The problem? A lack of a spirit of enquiry.
No one is asking three core questions:
1. Who is doing XYZ?
2. What is happening as a result of them doing it?
3. Are there safe, affirming, accessible alternative options for them?
Considering that the overwhelming majority of people who have been violently (to the level of actual physical assault) "challenged" in the wake of the EHRC's guidance on trans people using "designated single sex spaces" have actually not been trans; most of them have been women who were assigned female at birth, and have never lived as anything other than women.
Newspaper columnists and government ministers like to snidely announce that "it's not just about toilets - it's about safety in rape crisis centres, in domestic violence shelters, in spaces where there are traumatised women!" - but what of the cisgender (non-trans) women who have been traumatised by cisgender women? Those spaces typically have highly trained, professional staff in attendance - those staff will be trained in maintaining psychologically and physically safe boundaries.
Girls have to go to school with boys who are watching deeply toxic "manopshere" content, and internalising "how males behave" from the likes of Andrew Tate, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump. Girls have to go to school knowing that two convicted teenage rapists, both cisgender boys (boys who were assigned male at birth, and who have never challenged that), were let off without any prison time because a cis male judge "didn't want to criminalise them at such a young age." Women have to go to work knowing that Sarah Everard was raped and murdered by a serving police officer - the very type of person they've always been told are there to protect them.
Girls and women are being told that the greatest threat to them is a woman who is just a little too tall, whose voice is just a little too deep, whose shoulders are just a little too broad, whose face looks suspiciously like it might be developing a trace of five o'clock shadow, rather than the boys and men who are being assured, over and over again, that "real men" take photos up the skirts of women and girls, that "real men" are "just naturally" attracted to teenage girls, and have some kind of inalienable right to be sexual with anyone they are attracted to, that "real men" prove themselves through violence and sexual aggression.
Disabled people who are deemed to "lack mental capacity" have lost the right to refuse or to leave treatment.
Because the NHS proves its funding demands through patient numbers, this means they have been given a significant incentive to label every disabled person as "lacking mental capacity", so that no one can refuse treatment, and thus the NHS has more patients - who need more complex care - and thus they need endless tranches of more and more funding.
The government has sanctioned a rise in demand for the very limited number of fully accessible disabled public toilets - meaning disabled people are less able to independently access public spaces for prolonged periods of time...which makes the "obvious" solution to fund more long-stay hospital beds, to defund social care to the level where it becomes extremely restrictive in how disabled people are engaged with and supported. The lack of disabled public toilets becomes a whip - "well, businesses have to have toilets that are accessible for disabled people, so actually the most logical thing is for you to be in full time employment, regardless of the limitations of your disability, or the impact on those disabilities of working full time. With the current hyperfixation on "not all disabilities are visible!" (which is true), the demand on limited disabled toilets actually includes anyone who doesn't want to wait in line for a regular toilet - because hey, that person could have an invisible disability! They may have every right to use that disabled toilet! (And, indeed, they may well do - someone could have IBS and be unable to wait. They could need to change a stoma bag. They could have a musculoskeletal condition which means they need support bars to assist them with getting up from a seated position, even if they don't need a mobility aid to walk. None of these people will "look disabled.")
This has happened because, at no point, did anyone in government ever asked cisgender (non trans) women:
"Have you ever been sexually assaulted, subject to clearly "pervy" behaviour, or threatened in a single sex space you were using by someone you knew, provably in court, to have been assigned male at birth?"
No one in government ever asked trans women: "Do you still brazenly stroll into designated female spaces when you are conscious of looking more masculine than is typical for women?" (I've been in the men's toilets, and seen a very anxious-seeming person I read as a very early-stage trans woman there, washing their hands. I've heard plenty of trans women talking about "just getting over it, and using the men's", using disabled toilets, or avoiding using public toilets, or toilets at school or work, altogether, because they feel so dysphoric about their appearance, and feel they "don't pass well enough" to use the women's facilities. Likewise, something that has become a trope across the trans community is how almost all of us have just "accepted that swimming isn't really an option any more."
The focus is "these biological males!" - but biology is the interaction between primary and secondary sex characteristics, chromosomes, relative sex hormone levels, and social roles. You have no way of knowing someone's chromosomes or sex hormone levels.
Not all cisgender women have "visible breasts" or "higher body fat percentages" (both deemed "female secondary sex characteristics"). Some cisgender women with conditions like PMOS have visible facial hair - a "male secondary sex characteristic").
What even is a "female" or "male" social role in 2026, when men are expected to "contribute 50/50 to cleaning, childcare, and managing the domestic 'mental load'", whilst going to therapy and being open about their emotions, and women can hold full-time roles in senior leadership, go into bars unaccompanied, and choose not to have children? Do you ask everyone who comes into "your" public space how they're performing some arbitrary, and rapidly-disappearing, social role?
Perhaps you have encountered a trans person in "the wrong" toilet, or another single sex space that didn't correlate to what you believed their "sex as assigned at birth" was (I know several trans women who were initially assigned female at birth, even if this was later corrected. People assigned as intersex at birth in the UK, especially since default neonatal "corrective surgeries" became less common when there wasn't an obvious medical need, currently run at around 0.8% of the UK population; many people only find out they are intersex when they are older - either in the teens or twenties, when either their puberty is very atypical, or they are struggling to become pregnant.) Did anyone ever actually ask you what happened, beyond "I felt uncomfortable seeing someone who didn't look like me?" I've certainly never been asked if I've "ever encountered a trans man in a designated male space", or what adverse action resulted from such an encounter. I've never heard of cisgender women being asked about whether they have actually even seen a provably trans woman in "women's spaces", and what negative thing actually happened to them as a result of that. (I know the claim is "But penises! Trauma!" - I've been in men's toilets at a large showground-based event...I saw at least a dozen women willingly stroll into those toilets, walk past men pissing into a trough urinal, and stand in immediate proximity to those men waiting on the stalls - presumably because the line was impossibly long in the womens' toilets...no one fainted away. No one had a breakdown. No one had to reach for the smelling salts. It felt a bit weird as a man, and I noticed other men seeming visibly awkward when they noticed the women, but you finish, zip up, wash your hands, and forget about it. Women also make a lot of fuss about how they "shouldn't be excluded" from designated mens' mental health groups, "because I'm not a girly girl! I think more like a dude!" - men are jumped on for "misogyny" when we ask why we can't have any space to ourselves.
There are almost no men's domestic violence or rape crisis centres.
There are almost no mixed-sex provisions for survivors of sexual assault and/or domestic violence.
There is no reliable provision of mixed sex changing facilities or toilets, especially toilets which aren't actually intended for disabled people.
Gyms could provide cubicled changing areas, with lockable doors, as a default - but they don't.
Councils and businesses could provide entirely gender-neutral toilets, all of them also fully accessible, matching the number of segregated toilets they currently have - but they don't.
Denial of access to spaces "for the opposite biological sex" also:
. Prevents opposite sex parents keeping young children safe when a family toilet isn't available.
. Prevents opposite sex friends from supporting survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault.
. Prevents opposite sex therapists from supporting clients to access social provisions, gyms, or other wellbeing provisions.
Governments - local and national - never asked individual households what they put in their general refuse wheelie bin, or why they didn't "just compost" animal bedding, food waste, etc.
They didn't ask whether everyone in their districts had the ability to take their "excess" rubbish to the local tip.
This sense of disconnectedness, of difference and distinct situationality, is why we feel overwhelmed all of the time - because we believe we have so many problems, and that therefore we have to constantly generate solutions. We can't come up with maybe three solid solutions, because there's three hundred problems! And they're all so different!
NEETS, bins, and peoples' rights seem to be very distinct, very complex problems, which would need a raft of highly specialised - and very costly - solutions.
But, in fact, they're not problems in themselves; they're symptoms of one problem, which the UK has been ignoring for decades, and which is actually the root of many symptoms that appear to be problems in themselves.
The problem? A lack of a spirit of enquiry.
No one is asking three core questions:
1. Who is doing XYZ?
2. What is happening as a result of them doing it?
3. Are there safe, affirming, accessible alternative options for them?
Considering that the overwhelming majority of people who have been violently (to the level of actual physical assault) "challenged" in the wake of the EHRC's guidance on trans people using "designated single sex spaces" have actually not been trans; most of them have been women who were assigned female at birth, and have never lived as anything other than women.
Newspaper columnists and government ministers like to snidely announce that "it's not just about toilets - it's about safety in rape crisis centres, in domestic violence shelters, in spaces where there are traumatised women!" - but what of the cisgender (non-trans) women who have been traumatised by cisgender women? Those spaces typically have highly trained, professional staff in attendance - those staff will be trained in maintaining psychologically and physically safe boundaries.
Girls have to go to school with boys who are watching deeply toxic "manopshere" content, and internalising "how males behave" from the likes of Andrew Tate, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump. Girls have to go to school knowing that two convicted teenage rapists, both cisgender boys (boys who were assigned male at birth, and who have never challenged that), were let off without any prison time because a cis male judge "didn't want to criminalise them at such a young age." Women have to go to work knowing that Sarah Everard was raped and murdered by a serving police officer - the very type of person they've always been told are there to protect them.
Girls and women are being told that the greatest threat to them is a woman who is just a little too tall, whose voice is just a little too deep, whose shoulders are just a little too broad, whose face looks suspiciously like it might be developing a trace of five o'clock shadow, rather than the boys and men who are being assured, over and over again, that "real men" take photos up the skirts of women and girls, that "real men" are "just naturally" attracted to teenage girls, and have some kind of inalienable right to be sexual with anyone they are attracted to, that "real men" prove themselves through violence and sexual aggression.
Disabled people who are deemed to "lack mental capacity" have lost the right to refuse or to leave treatment.
Because the NHS proves its funding demands through patient numbers, this means they have been given a significant incentive to label every disabled person as "lacking mental capacity", so that no one can refuse treatment, and thus the NHS has more patients - who need more complex care - and thus they need endless tranches of more and more funding.
The government has sanctioned a rise in demand for the very limited number of fully accessible disabled public toilets - meaning disabled people are less able to independently access public spaces for prolonged periods of time...which makes the "obvious" solution to fund more long-stay hospital beds, to defund social care to the level where it becomes extremely restrictive in how disabled people are engaged with and supported. The lack of disabled public toilets becomes a whip - "well, businesses have to have toilets that are accessible for disabled people, so actually the most logical thing is for you to be in full time employment, regardless of the limitations of your disability, or the impact on those disabilities of working full time. With the current hyperfixation on "not all disabilities are visible!" (which is true), the demand on limited disabled toilets actually includes anyone who doesn't want to wait in line for a regular toilet - because hey, that person could have an invisible disability! They may have every right to use that disabled toilet! (And, indeed, they may well do - someone could have IBS and be unable to wait. They could need to change a stoma bag. They could have a musculoskeletal condition which means they need support bars to assist them with getting up from a seated position, even if they don't need a mobility aid to walk. None of these people will "look disabled.")
This has happened because, at no point, did anyone in government ever asked cisgender (non trans) women:
"Have you ever been sexually assaulted, subject to clearly "pervy" behaviour, or threatened in a single sex space you were using by someone you knew, provably in court, to have been assigned male at birth?"
No one in government ever asked trans women: "Do you still brazenly stroll into designated female spaces when you are conscious of looking more masculine than is typical for women?" (I've been in the men's toilets, and seen a very anxious-seeming person I read as a very early-stage trans woman there, washing their hands. I've heard plenty of trans women talking about "just getting over it, and using the men's", using disabled toilets, or avoiding using public toilets, or toilets at school or work, altogether, because they feel so dysphoric about their appearance, and feel they "don't pass well enough" to use the women's facilities. Likewise, something that has become a trope across the trans community is how almost all of us have just "accepted that swimming isn't really an option any more."
The focus is "these biological males!" - but biology is the interaction between primary and secondary sex characteristics, chromosomes, relative sex hormone levels, and social roles. You have no way of knowing someone's chromosomes or sex hormone levels.
Not all cisgender women have "visible breasts" or "higher body fat percentages" (both deemed "female secondary sex characteristics"). Some cisgender women with conditions like PMOS have visible facial hair - a "male secondary sex characteristic").
What even is a "female" or "male" social role in 2026, when men are expected to "contribute 50/50 to cleaning, childcare, and managing the domestic 'mental load'", whilst going to therapy and being open about their emotions, and women can hold full-time roles in senior leadership, go into bars unaccompanied, and choose not to have children? Do you ask everyone who comes into "your" public space how they're performing some arbitrary, and rapidly-disappearing, social role?
Perhaps you have encountered a trans person in "the wrong" toilet, or another single sex space that didn't correlate to what you believed their "sex as assigned at birth" was (I know several trans women who were initially assigned female at birth, even if this was later corrected. People assigned as intersex at birth in the UK, especially since default neonatal "corrective surgeries" became less common when there wasn't an obvious medical need, currently run at around 0.8% of the UK population; many people only find out they are intersex when they are older - either in the teens or twenties, when either their puberty is very atypical, or they are struggling to become pregnant.) Did anyone ever actually ask you what happened, beyond "I felt uncomfortable seeing someone who didn't look like me?" I've certainly never been asked if I've "ever encountered a trans man in a designated male space", or what adverse action resulted from such an encounter. I've never heard of cisgender women being asked about whether they have actually even seen a provably trans woman in "women's spaces", and what negative thing actually happened to them as a result of that. (I know the claim is "But penises! Trauma!" - I've been in men's toilets at a large showground-based event...I saw at least a dozen women willingly stroll into those toilets, walk past men pissing into a trough urinal, and stand in immediate proximity to those men waiting on the stalls - presumably because the line was impossibly long in the womens' toilets...no one fainted away. No one had a breakdown. No one had to reach for the smelling salts. It felt a bit weird as a man, and I noticed other men seeming visibly awkward when they noticed the women, but you finish, zip up, wash your hands, and forget about it. Women also make a lot of fuss about how they "shouldn't be excluded" from designated mens' mental health groups, "because I'm not a girly girl! I think more like a dude!" - men are jumped on for "misogyny" when we ask why we can't have any space to ourselves.
There are almost no men's domestic violence or rape crisis centres.
There are almost no mixed-sex provisions for survivors of sexual assault and/or domestic violence.
There is no reliable provision of mixed sex changing facilities or toilets, especially toilets which aren't actually intended for disabled people.
Gyms could provide cubicled changing areas, with lockable doors, as a default - but they don't.
Councils and businesses could provide entirely gender-neutral toilets, all of them also fully accessible, matching the number of segregated toilets they currently have - but they don't.
Denial of access to spaces "for the opposite biological sex" also:
. Prevents opposite sex parents keeping young children safe when a family toilet isn't available.
. Prevents opposite sex friends from supporting survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault.
. Prevents opposite sex therapists from supporting clients to access social provisions, gyms, or other wellbeing provisions.
Governments - local and national - never asked individual households what they put in their general refuse wheelie bin, or why they didn't "just compost" animal bedding, food waste, etc.
They didn't ask whether everyone in their districts had the ability to take their "excess" rubbish to the local tip.
They simply assumed the "problem" was "people are throwing away food waste, and that's why their general refuse bins are always chocca"; for many people, the bulk of the general rubbish they throw out is:
. Nappies
. Sanitary items (including incontinence items)
. Animal bedding
. Broken items
- none of which are accepted in any of the "new" recycling "options."
People living in flats don't have anywhere to have a compost heap.
Even if you do have an earth-based private outdoor space, if it's very closely overlooked, neighbours may be very vocal in their objections to you having a compost heap.
Not everyone is able to drive, and council tips are generally not accessible by public transport. Taxis won't take bags of rubbish.
Not everyone can afford to "just pay for additional private waste collections" - when we're already paying council tax.
No one was asked if they had space inside their homes to separate multiple lots of rubbish, and to store food waste inside for a week - during the height of summer - in a hygienic and safe way.
There doesn't seem to have been any exploration of the potential costs of flytipping when general waste collections are drastically reduced, in comparison to the income councils believe they can generate from enhanced recycling capabilities.
Neither the government nor the media is even acknowledging that there's currently over a million more people out of work than there are jobs for them to go to. With businesses closing every week, and "new businesses" typically being micro-businesses with under 10 employees, or "solopreneurs" - single person owner-operated businesses with no employees, there's no path to "creating" over a million new jobs in the remaining term of this current Parliament.
No one is asking what young people, recent graduates, and those who are unable to pursue employment because of disability, have directly experienced when they have engaged in jobsearching.
No one is asking how many of these groups would actually be the sole or primary wage earner for their household if they were working, and what that means about the kind of salary they'd need, and how many jobs that were accessible to them actually offered that.
No one asked how many of these groups also have kinship care commitments, and what that means about the flexibility they need in employment, and how many jobs were accessible to them that met that need without barriers or resentment.
Laws, especially those which place demographics and individuals at risk because of how they are spoken about and perceived, must not be made on "vibes and common sense" - common sense is not an objective reality. Every single stakeholder group must be equitably involved in any planned change to laws and social norms.
The right questions need to be asked before change is even discussed. Because the answers will inform the discussions - or even whether the discussions take place.
People living in flats don't have anywhere to have a compost heap.
Even if you do have an earth-based private outdoor space, if it's very closely overlooked, neighbours may be very vocal in their objections to you having a compost heap.
Not everyone is able to drive, and council tips are generally not accessible by public transport. Taxis won't take bags of rubbish.
Not everyone can afford to "just pay for additional private waste collections" - when we're already paying council tax.
No one was asked if they had space inside their homes to separate multiple lots of rubbish, and to store food waste inside for a week - during the height of summer - in a hygienic and safe way.
There doesn't seem to have been any exploration of the potential costs of flytipping when general waste collections are drastically reduced, in comparison to the income councils believe they can generate from enhanced recycling capabilities.
Neither the government nor the media is even acknowledging that there's currently over a million more people out of work than there are jobs for them to go to. With businesses closing every week, and "new businesses" typically being micro-businesses with under 10 employees, or "solopreneurs" - single person owner-operated businesses with no employees, there's no path to "creating" over a million new jobs in the remaining term of this current Parliament.
No one is asking what young people, recent graduates, and those who are unable to pursue employment because of disability, have directly experienced when they have engaged in jobsearching.
No one is asking how many of these groups would actually be the sole or primary wage earner for their household if they were working, and what that means about the kind of salary they'd need, and how many jobs that were accessible to them actually offered that.
No one asked how many of these groups also have kinship care commitments, and what that means about the flexibility they need in employment, and how many jobs were accessible to them that met that need without barriers or resentment.
Laws, especially those which place demographics and individuals at risk because of how they are spoken about and perceived, must not be made on "vibes and common sense" - common sense is not an objective reality. Every single stakeholder group must be equitably involved in any planned change to laws and social norms.
The right questions need to be asked before change is even discussed. Because the answers will inform the discussions - or even whether the discussions take place.
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