We are aware of the recent Supreme Court hearing that has resulted in the definition of sex under the 2010 Equality Act being asserted as referring to biological or birth sex only. We have seen that a lot of organisations have issued statements in opposition to this and we are aware that current and future members of Northants Lesbian Society may have been expecting a statement from us. We are sorry we haven’t made one sooner.

In a way, we felt we didn’t need to as NLS has been trans inclusive since our very beginnings in 2022, however, we are aware that this Supreme Court ruling is intended to allow that organisations can enforce ‘female’ (defined as sex at birth) only spaces when it is ‘proportionate’ to do so and that Northants Lesbian Society would likely be legally protected if we decided to do this, so it is reasonable that our trans members may be concerned that we will. 

We are issuing this statement to reassure all of our trans members that we do not and will not ever enforce our organisation as a ‘single sex space’ as we believe that trans women and trans people as a whole are a valued and important part of the lesbian community. 

Our goal as an organisation has always been to increase lesbian visibility and acceptance in the local area and this goal would in no way be excluding trans people from our membership. Aside from this, we have never even been a lesbian only space and have always referred to ourselves as lesbian focused not lesbian exclusive. All people, regardless of gender or sexuality are welcome to take part in our events and support groups if they feel that we represent them and they like our message.

We are also upset about how this ruling has allowed the definition of lesbian to be written by the Supreme Court, and not the lesbian community. This decision to define lesbians as ‘females who share the characteristic of being sexually oriented to females’ has been made without consulting the vast majority of the lesbian community.

Not only does this exclude trans women from the definition, as in this context female has been used to mean ‘biological female’ or assigned female sex at birth, it also strangely has expanded the definition of lesbian to include bisexual women or women who are also attracted to men as it has failed to use the word ‘exclusively’. The Supreme Court decision has stated this has been done in order to protect lesbians as a class but how can they protect us when they can’t even recognise the important differences between exclusively lesbians and bisexuals?

Unfortunately, lesbians are often blamed for transphobia within the community when in fact most lesbians are inclusive and supportive of trans people. According to YouGov, 84% of lesbians in Britain have a positive view of transgender people, which we believe shows that if lesbians as a whole or even just cisgender lesbians had been consulted on this definition of lesbian, this decision wouldn’t have been made. 

We are concerned that this is only going to cause a larger rift between lesbians and the trans community, as lesbians are often blamed for the rise in transphobia despite us being only 1.2% of the entire country’s population as of 2023 (Office for National Statistics). 

We do not see how this ruling can be interpreted as a win for either women or lesbians and we firmly reject the government’s ability to define what we already know about ourselves. 

For anyone who is concerned about this ruling and what it means for them, you can reach out to TransActual at  www.transactual.org.uk 

If you are looking for support, Trangst is a local peer support that meets both in person and online. They can be found on instagram here.

And as always, we meet on the third Thursday of every month at Saints Coffee from 5 to 6:30pm where you can chat with our members and organisers and help build our community locally. 

With lesbian love and visibility, 

Euphoria Scargill

Sharne Roberts 

Jennifer Jordan 

(Your local dyke organisers)