I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset.
In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia.
In 2005 I started medical transition. For the state to recognise this I had to submit to standards of “care” which were humiliating, degrading and which placed me at risk of violence.
But I did it “by the book”
As I did it “by the book”, the NHS agreed to reregister me as female, which makes sense because my anatomy now is.
In 2007 I had sex reassignment surgery. This had to be signed off by two mental health professionals, “by the book”, and it was.
In 2008 I applied for gender recognition. This involved signing a statutory obligation, stating that I promised, BY LAW, to live fully as female for the rest of my life. As this was done, “by the book”, the government promised that it would treat me as such.
Its first act as treating me as female was to annul our marriage because it was a same sex marriage and those were not allowed.
The state then reissued my birth certificate, correcting the “mistake” it had originally made when it recorded me as male, “by the book”.
In 2009 Sylvia and I married for the second time, in a same sex civil partnership, which was done “by the book”, because the state regarded me as female and I was bound by law to be female.
In 2013 we married again, because the state decided that same sex marriage was in fact allowed after all. This was done, “by the book”. Despite having been married for 12 years, we had to submit ourselves to individual questioning to prove our relationship was genuine, “by the book”.
In April of 2025 the state turned round and told me that I had been mistaken. That it never regarded me as female. That I was male the whole time. That the marriage it annulled because it was a same sex marriage was never a same sex marriage (but it stays annulled). That the civil partnership in 2009 never really happened because “opposite sex” civil partnerships were not allowed in 2009.
And that the legal obligation I have to live as female for the rest of my life, which I signed and gave up my marriage for, is still in effect but also if I keep following it, I am breaking the law and subject to arrest. As it’s still valid, presumably if I don’t keep following it, I am also breaking the law and subject to arrest.
The law of the land simultaneously requires me to be both a man and a woman and if I do either then I am breaking the law and subject to arrest.
At every stage I did what the state asked me to, even though it was humiliating, degrading and cruel.
And it kept moving the goalposts, and reneging on the agreements it made, whilst continuing to hold me to them even when they are now mutually contradictory.
Apparently this is “all my fault” and I should have known that this would be the consequences of my actions when I started medical transition 2 decades ago.
Perhaps you can now appreciate why we are upset?
* Sarah Brown is a former Liberal Democrat member, activist and Councillor. She now lives outside the UK.
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30 Comments
Sarah I am so sorry that you have been through this. I think more people would understand if they knew what was involved. It is incredibly brave of you to open up and tell your story this way. Thank You.
This makes me so angry. SO ANGRY. All Sarah wants to do is live in peace and love her wife. Well, and maybe a bit of paddleboarding.
Self ID now. None of this “”reasonable concerns”” claptrap. Just like an Englishman’s home is his castle, a person’s pants should be free from nosey genital inspectors.
Sarah, thank you for telling your story in such a compelling way. I hope that people read it and learn what you have been through and realise the appalling cruelty that all trans people are being subjected to.
I hope that this will mean that more people actively stand up for trans people to ensure that you are all able to get on with your lives, free from discrimination, harassment and a contradictory legal minefield.
Agreement with Christine, Jennie and Caron.
We live in a country where people who are different in whatever way – gender identity, religion, colour, health, sexuality – can be picked out by the people who control the media as a target for the masses in the same way as a huntsman sets hounds on a fox.
How do we stop this performative cruelty?
I am pleased that this is here but these attacks are an attack on western democracy. Trans people are just a wedge being used to dismantle everything we believe in and I have no doubt that the push to get us out of the ECHR will be using trans rights to remove ALL our rights. I really want to see Leadership on this, from our leadership. This isn’t some battle affecting 0.5% of the population. I want to hears loudly, strongly and persistently that trans rights are human rights. I am an Adult Human Woman, I and my community need help and we are tired of telling everyone that these attacks are an attacks that are stripping away everyone’s human rights.
To our leadership, grasp this nettle and pull it out roots and all or it will destroy us all.
What our country is becoming is horrific.
James has hit the nail on the head with ‘performative cruelty’.
I remember the first time I heard about what trans people have to go through now to legally transition and get a GRC. I was shocked and appalled at how inhuman and degrading it sounded.
And now to tell people who have suffered through that, that jumped through all the hoops and had a panel of strangers decide if they were worthy of their identity, that they might not have bothered?
Fuck all of this. This is why we fight, why me march at pride, why we crochet yarn beasties. Why we care. Fighting back against injustices like this is what liberalism is.
This state of affairs is truly appalling. What makes it worse is our party’s silence on this. Where is the amendment to the equalities act? Where is the denunciation of Starmer’s government for its disgraceful behaviour?
I have been so saddened to see Sarah’s story. She and Sylvia have been together for over 2 decades and have followed what have been the rules at every stage of their journey together. Lovely people facing such distress from changing legalities outwith their control.
My heart goes out to you Sarah, and to every trans person who has had to suffer this humiliation and persecution with these ever changing ridiculous rules. I thought this country had become accepting of anyone who wished to change gender, after much heart searching and often an extremely difficult decision, when they knew how they felt inside. How wrong was I. Shame on these intolerant rule changers who can ruin someone’s life as they obviously think they know better than the person involved. SHAME, SHAME on you. This is the 21st century, get out of your Victorian mindset and help all those who know who they want to be.
Thank you for sharing this Sarah.
As you have said you have done everything by the book. You have also stood alongside many of us in LGBT+ Lib Dems to help edit that book along the way, to enable equality for everyone and help erase some of the ignorance under which some of those earlier by the book moves made had enslaved you and Slyvia.
Our party has long been at the forefront of LGBT+ rights, pushing for progress, pushing for equality. Sadly there are some who want to do away with that progress, they want to “burn” the book that leads to equality, they want to “burn” the science books that point out gender is not binary but complex, and sadly they want to “burn” the narratives of trans people. Sadly they tried this before and it was the start of a far bigger regression of rights.
We all need to stand up and not let rights be taken away. Let nobody slide back to be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.
Sarah, thank you for sharing this horrific situation. Words fail me For the way the State is treating you and countless others in your situation.
Let’s hope that by speaking out, others will realise just how wrong the law can be.
While Laura, in her mostly excellent comment, is right about the direction this is going in, I would be wary about describing trans people as “just a wedge”. Trans people’s rights are important because they’re people, and unless we all have rights then none of us have rights.
The people who pit trans people against cis women are treating rights as zero sum: they are not. Nobody has less rights if trans people have more – not even the weirdos who want to inspect your genitals before letting you have a wee – and I think we should not give in to that framing.
I am so saddened that this has happened to you, Sarah, and would be ashamed if our party did not stand up for a person to be the person they were born to be, no matter their appearance, chromosomes, genetics or lifestyle. I read ‘The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes’ by Zoe Playdon recently; it really opened my eyes to the legal minefield which challenges trans people, which seems to be getting worse instead of better. Why is it anyone’s business to question another’s ability to live a happy and contented life?
This post reduced me to tears and jaw-clenching anger in equal measure. No-one should have to go through this for being who they are. I made a post the other day on here about us unequivocally being the party of human rights. We also need to be the party unequivocally against transphobia, including in its legally sanctioned forms. Some party members may disagree, and they are free to say so, but they are unbelievably, tragically, illiberally wrong. This needs an unafraid and undiluted liberal voice pressuring this authoritarian horror show of a government on trans rights and shaming its vile predecessors. Christine Jardine has been heroic on this. More please. Solidarity Sarah.
Thank you for sharing this very human, real, and upsetting story. I hope people who are potential allies of the future stumble across it. In the meantime, keep strong, remember the challenges you have overcome. We are entering dark times but in the end light will triumph x
Now if only our party would actually take a clear stand against the government for what it is doing to trans people and call for the law to be changed to undo the effects of the supreme court ruling. Those can only offer expressions of concern need to stand aside and let real liberals take charge of the party.
thanks Sarah. I always understood. This happenend to my patients. I am so angry that this issue has been weaponised. What can we do? Just keep campaigning for LibDems is the answer, I suppose
Unfortunately lobby groups pushed the narrative that access to women’s spaces was based on self-ID, for anyone who ‘felt like’ they were a woman. They massively overreached. If there should be anger at anyone, it should be for the likes of Stonewall for pushing policies so extreme we ended up with a double rapist being housed in a women’s prison. This is now the correction to such policies.
@Margaret known as Me
Not quite: we make sure we campaign for the majority of Lib Dems who are angry about this and want to see it resolved, rather than for the deluded minority who think if they ignore this whole issue hard enough it will go away, or for the even worse, tinier minority of those on the party’s fringe who advocate for things getting worse for trans people rather than better. This is not something to be quiet about: this is something to be absolutely livid about. The internal elections will be an excellent opportunity to make a positive difference.
“the person they were born to be, no matter their appearance, chromosomes, genetics or lifestyle”.
If an individual carries a fully functional SRY gene – that individual WILL look and behave as male in the majority of cases. – the genetic jargon is “exhibit a male phenotype”. And if an individual does not have an SRY gene at all – that individual WILL look and behave as female in the majority of cases. And that is what those people are “born to be”.
Does that mean that everyone MUST fit into the binary model? Of course not. Leaving aside choice I suspect an individual’s genetic make up will predict that individual’s phenotype (how they look and behave) in many cases.
Here’s a case where the genetics is well understood – the Guevedoces children where “girls turn into boys at puberty”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34290981
The interesting thing is that transitioning Guevedoces adolescents are almost always accepted by their society – which understands this phenomena is perfectly ordinary.
IF it turns out the huge variety of human sexual/gender phenotypes has a genetic basis (there seems to be good reason to think a significant amount of it does) AND IF this becomes well understood generally – then I think we have a better chance of keeping the bigots off the backs of trans people than we do with abstruse logical arguments that justify statements like “a woman can have a penis” and “a man can have a child” that contradict most people’s lived experience.
This article sets out the situation so clearly. Thankyou so much for writing it.
Many of the transphobes seem to imagine that trans is something between a choice, a craze, a whim, a perversion, or an attempt by men to invade women’s spaces. Most people actually establish their sense of gender between the ages of 4 and 5, and it doesn’t change thereafter. It will, of course, depend on how hostile the environment – initially parental, then social – is, whether someone who is trans is actually able and chooses to do something about it. Many either attempt or succeed in suicide – figures around 42% are widely cited. Given the Cass review and Mr. Streetings ban on puberty blockers I would imagine the onset of puberty would be a cause for despair.
The supreme court ruling would seem to judicially repeal the Gender Recognition Act, particularly the effects of a GRC as quoted above. Parliament should step up to this judicial over-reach.
There’s a reason why gender reassignment surgery shouldn’t determine legal gender: otherwise, people would have to undergo major surgery just to have their “identity” legally recognised, which raises serious ethical concerns.
Thank you so much for writing this Sarah, it sums up my stance fully as well. I know you know already but I transitioned at much the same time as you a few decades ago and currently I feel completely betrayed by my country.
This is awful. Arbitrary, malicious, inconsistent. Not how government or the law should treat anybody.
I naively half expected the Supreme Court to recognise gender transition as the GRA demands, when all the hurdles are met, and to dismiss self-ID/nonmedical transition/nonbinary/etc.
I’m not an expert and have no personal stake in this so I’d be grateful for any explanations, but it seems to me that the Supreme Court may have got itself a little confused because we all use the same language for two things that are related but have some distinctions: (I apologise if my terminology here is insensitive) (a) medical transition – needing changes to the body to be your true self and (b) social transition and nonbinary – needing a different social construct of gender than the one society has imposed. Somebody in group (a) may or may not be entirely happy with gender as socially constructed, but just needs to be the other one.
It’s not my place or nature to be language police but is this a confusion that exists?
“The supreme court ruling would seem to judicially repeal the Gender Recognition Act”
I am a solicitor, though I do not have any particular expertise in discrimination or human rights law. There may be someone here who has more expertise than me. I have however read the Supreme Court Judgement.
As I understand it, the legal issue was a conflict between the Equalities Act 2010 and the Gender Recognition Ac 2004. Specifically, does a GRC changes a person’s sex for the purposes of the EA 2010?
To resolve the conflict the Court analysed the words of the two Acts to try to understand what Parliament intended to do. In accordance with the usual rules of interpretation of statutes , it is assumed that if there is an inconsistency the 2010 Act overrules the 2004 Act.
There were no helpful definitions in either Act. Thus undefined words like “male” and female” and “man” and woman” carry their ordinary meanings. In the circumstances the supreme court decided the “ordinary meanings” were in line with “biological sex” as described on a birth certificate.
To be continued in next post
Continued from above
The Court emphasised that it is NOT the court’s job to “adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the word “woman” other than when it is used in the provisions of the EA 2010″.
The judges also said: [the Court] has a more limited role which does not involve making policy”. That was to rebut accusations of judicial over-reach.
The attack on the ECHR and the Human Rights Act from authoritarians like Farage, Trump and the gang is that they say judges should not make law – only politicians should do that – and that judges have been using the Human Rights Act/ECHR to over-rule elected politicians. We (liberals) say that citizens’ fundamental rights need legal protection from politicians.
While Farage etc are of course very happy with the Supreme Court decision it’s not an example of judicial overreach. We should not give ammunition to the authoritarians by wrongly suggesting it is.
The House of Commons Library analysis of the judgement is here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10259/
@Laura leigh
Yes precisely. The regressive right are targetting the path of least resistance toward removing many human rights. I can paraphrase better words than mine to make it clear:
First they came for the Trans Persons
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Trans Person
Then they came for the Gay People
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Gay Person
Then they came for the Women
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Woman
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Where does this leave us?
To quote Sir Terry Pratchett, in the words of one his characters in an early novel, “If it stops anywhere it stops here”.
I feel you. I’m in a similar boat, I got my GRC, I had my statutory declaration, I’ve been on hormones, I waited my turn for the NHS and I’m imminently getting the op. Yet, it’s still not enough. I’m scared, as I think most of us are. I’m just begging, pleading, cis allies to speak up for us. It’s incredibly easy to feel alone right now and I think most of us are struggling to find much hope.
If we had a Lib Dem government we would have both equal marriage and equal civil partnership laws and none of this would happen.
Maybe under this government it may be possible for a Lib Dem private members bill for equal civil partnership to get through?