I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY [519]

My umpteenth "Myra Breckinridge" reference

With the leaking to “The Times” newspaper of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) update of the 2010 Equality Act Regulations, instigated by the Supreme Court judgement in April 2025 that transgender women with a Gender Recognition Certificate are not women under the terms of the Act, it has been confirmed that requests for paperwork for some people to enter single-sex spaces that correspond with their gender, found in interim changes to these regulations that have since been withdrawn, have been replaced with perception-based assessments on appearance and behaviour. 

This attempt to avoid the policing of these spaces inadvertently creates what sounds like, to me, a beauty contest, because what a joy it is going to be having to pass the test to appear in the correct space at the right time. 

This remains theory for now, as the knowledge of what could become law stems from a leak of something the Government is assessing, but considering how often “The Times” reports on this issue, and with the EHRC imploring the Government to implement these new regulations as soon as possible, this new report raises questions for me about motivations I won’t get answers for, as I will only be affected by what the final decisions will be.

Years of experience as a human being, let alone as a trans woman, show that “passing” as the correct gender in any situation, for anyone and everyone, is as much in the eye of the beholder as bias and prejudice will be in other situations. In using a public toilet or a changing room, the regulations make clear that there will be circumstances where you present so well in your gender that you can reasonably be excluded from the space that corresponds to your sex, but it is made clear I cannot be left without any facility.

I hope people don’t talk about me like they would the cross-dresser from across the road, if they have one, or any person they see more than once without ever needing to talk to them. I am not “committing to the bit”, I am being myself, but if you don’t know me, you don’t know that, and your confidence in bridging the gap should not then leave me at your mercy.

The knowledge that months of waiting for clarification of the law is effectively to continue the status quo that existed for decades, after what has felt like a protracted abjectification of trans people in the media since the Supreme Court judgement, is a profound waste of my time and energy. By necessity, “gender critical” belief is included in the regulations, but also crucial wording about distinguishing the objectionable expression of beliefs.

If implemented as reported, the new Equality Act regulations codify a loss of trust, regulating what could no longer be left to people to decide. Good luck, everyone.

CAN’T YOU FEEL THE TOWN EXPLODING? [497]

I decided to use the famous shot of Buser Keaton being framed by the window in a falling wall, from his 1928 film “Steamboat Bill, Jr”, to illustrate exactly how I have felt since the UK Supreme Court decided that, for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act, that transgender women did not count as women – I would have been flattened by the wall, had I not known where my marker was, which in Keaton’s case was a nail.

The monolithic stature and sheer audacity of the stunt means its context is rarely considered. After an hour of a comedy plot involving a rivalry between paddle boat owners, into which an effectual son of one captain arrives, along with his girl friend from college, a cyclone comes in to destroy the harbour town, at which point it becomes a disaster film – Keaton, in hospital, looks up as the building is torn away. His bed is blown through a street and a stable, avoiding falling masonry, until it stops outside a house – its occupant, seeing a crack opening the side of the house, jumps out of the top floor window and onto the bed, saving his life. Keaton, looking obliviously into the street, does not see the façade as it then falls, effectively entering the window the man had just leapt from. 

From there, every possible physical gag about walking into the wind, and last-second avoiding crumbling buildings, leads to a final escape on the steamboat. It is an extremely well-handled sequence, coming from someone either supremely confident in their ability to conceive and execute these stunts so effectively, or so lax in their judgement to have endangered themselves so recklessly in the name of entertainment, financial problems and alcohol abuse having contributed to the latter narrative. 

“Steamboat Bill, Jr” was also the last of Keaton’s films to be made independently, before a move to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that saw his creative control gradually eliminated. His previous distributor, United Artists, had already began to insist on the monitoring of expenses after Keaton deployed the most expensive shot in silent film history, the destruction of a steam engine and a railway bridge in “The General” (1926). The cyclone sequence in “Steamboat Bill, Jr”, one seventh of the film’s running time but one third of the budget, replaced a planned flood sequence, although a real-life river flood also forced this change. In short, as Keaton reached his creative peak, he was becoming less trusted.

As I said, I knew where my marker was. I have held a Gender Recognition Certificate since 2017, having done everything required of me to prove my status as a transgender woman was stable and permanent. My gender was changed in law for all purposes, as the Gender Recognition Act 2004 stated. At no point was anyone telling me that I didn’t know myself, or that I am instead autistic or have borderline personality disorder because it fit the limits of their understanding. I am perfectly fine, and the matter was settled.

Since the Supreme Court decision on Wednesday 16^th April to define “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 to mean “biological” sex, because we all speak of ourselves in terms of washing powder now, it has felt like open season on trans people, despite gender reassignment being protected under the same act. I have been most perturbed by the tendency for the Supreme Court decision to have settled the matter morally, that trans people were never what they said they were, but I think the people saying that now only do so because they feel emboldened. So what – the terms “gender ideology” and “gender critical” appeared years after my formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and the phrase “live and let live” pre-dates all of them.

In May 2025, there are too many reasons to be apprehensive. Interim guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission appears to ban trans people both from the bathroom of their appropriate gender, and from their biological sex in certain situations, presumably if they “pass” in their gender too much, but I can’t be allowed to have nowhere to go. I can also still play a sport, so long as the association providing it is comprised of no more than twenty-five people. This is ahead of full guidance expected in the coming months. Meanwhile, I wrote to my MP asking for confirmation that my legal paperwork is still valid – I await their answer.

But I have not been made an outlaw. I have not been deemed an undesirable presence in society. Enough people treat trans people with dignity and respect to balance out those who say they should be, then do nothing more. 

Unlike Buster Keaton, I don’t feel that people have less trust in me because of my situation, but other people could not trust themselves with the subject and concept of gender, so it has been decided for them absolutely. Policing of gender will now be unavoidable – can you prove yours?

I’ll be fine, somehow – I think the law may still be on my side. In the meantime, hoping and coping produced the following playlist, unexpectedly all from the 1970s:

The Real Thing - Can You Feel The Force

Jackson Browne - Doctor My Eyes

Fleetwood Mac - Don’t Stop

Wings - With a Little Luck

David Bowie - Starman

Elton John - Crazy Water

Slade – How Does It Feel

GIVE THEM MOON AND CLOUDLESS SKIES [479]

from "The Simpsons" episode "Barthood", a parody of Richard Linklater's "Boyhood"

It isn’t unusual to want Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson to grow up OK when you have been watching them on television for most of your own life. You hope that our real world, both reflected and created by the show, will ultimately be as kind to them as you want it to be for ourselves.

With “The Simpsons” having now run for an astonishing thirty-five years, three years away from eclipsing “Last of the Summer Wine” to become the world’s longest-running sitcom, its status quo means that, while I was younger than Lisa when I first saw the show, I am now older than both her parents. We have grown up with these characters, but they can only grow through lessons learned, fleshing out their backstory.

I fell out of watching “The Simpsons” for some time, returning upon subscribing to Disney+ to find a show that, while not having folded over itself by pandering to its audience’s nostalgia, has become playful with its own history: it began its thirty-sixth season with a “series finale” that stopped questions on how the show would eventually end, having previously broadcast a fake clip show of leaked episodes purportedly too outlandish even for later-period “The Simpsons”, and a “Treehouse of Horror” story created a “Westworld”-like theme park of the moments adopted as internet memes.

The 2022 episode “When Nelson Met Lisa” was when I realised that my favourite episodes of “The Simpsons” depict an imagined future for its characters, seeing what their experiences have made them, regardless of it being a parody of “When Harry Met Sally”. Lisa has been shown to have a crush on Nelson Muntz before, but a series of scenes across the years builds this into a mature, happy and hopeful ending, one you hope will be canonised.

By necessity, the future depicted in “The Simpsons” can’t be set in stone, because that could get in the way of a good story, but there have been elements built up on each other, then knocked down and rebuilt: Bart could become a deadbeat divorced dad, living in a Springfield Elementary converted to makeshift apartments; Lisa is successful, but marries Milhouse; and Maggie, the eternal silent wildcard, becomes the biggest noise in pop music, and the most constant depiction of her future. Thankfully, Bart and Lisa’s future has been depicted more hopefully, with Bart becoming a BMX stunt champion, artist and a repair shop owner, while Lisa will attend Harvard and have the world as her oyster. 

Then again, Bart could also become a Supreme Court judge after missing “The Itchy & Scratchy Movie”, and Lisa could become President of the United States, having inherited “quite a budget crunch from President Trump”, although the episode “Bart to the Future”, broadcast in 2000, would not have known which Trump presidency it would be. 

Predicting the future can be futile, despite the number of times situations and jokes in “The Simpsons” replayed themselves in real life, from predicting the discovery of the Higgs boson to Disney buying 20^thCentury Fox, but imagining the future should be encouraged, except for preparing for when “The Simpsons” eventually ends – I don’t think anyone is truly prepared for that. Perhaps it could then be rebooted with an older Bart, Lisa and Maggie – it happened with "The Flintstones" and “The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show”.