One Year of Trans Wise Trans Strong

When I started the podcast in February 2025, that I would be celebrating its first birthday, seemed a distant dream, and for this first episode of its second year, I thought I would review not just one year of episodes, but also the events of 2025, and early 2026, that were impactful to the trans, nonbinary, and intersex communities.

But why did I start this podcast, it really arose from explorations of the meaning of gender with my psychotherapist Dr Kenneth Demsky, and a podcast seemed an ideal avenue to explore gender identity and expression, as well as sexuality.

I described the podcast as providing facts and insights, with humour and a little bit of politics, well this episode might have a bit more politics, little p.

Welcome to “Trans Wise Trans Strong”, I am Carolyne O’Reilly.

Episode seventeen, “One Year of Trans Wise Trans Strong”

If we plotted events of 2025 on a vertical bar graph, that were impactful on the trans, nonbinary and intersex communities, then standing shamefully above all others would be the judgment delivered on Wednesday the 16th of April at The Supreme Court, in the case of “For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent)”.

The Supreme Court’s ruling centred on the interpretation, or perhaps re-interpretation would be more accurate, of the “Equality Act 2010”, in respect of the definition of “woman”, “man” and “sex”.

Although the news coverage on the day of the ruling, gave the impression that it only concerned the definition of woman, and as a trans woman I was left feeling judicially othered.

This ruling, and the subsequent Equality and Human Rights Commission, (EHRC’s) guidance, are both being challenged by the “Good Law Project”, and it is worth considering that cisgender women who do not conform to someone’s idea of how a woman should look, may also be impacted.

I discussed this ruling in the “Trans Lives Matter” episode, although I did not explore what precipitated the court case.

It was brought by “For Women Scotland”, who were formed in 2018 as, in the words of the Transgender Map website, an anti-transgender pressure group, to challenged the Scottish Ministers plans for a Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill.

However this bill did not become an Act of the Scottish Parliament, as the Secretary of State for Scotland invoked Section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998, and vetoed the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill.

So if it was not gender recognition reform, what was the legislation that “For Women Scotland” challenged, well before The Supreme Court case, there was the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018.

The purpose of this piece of legislation was laudable, and was to ensure that the non-executive members, of a public company’s board of directors were 50% women.

So what aspect of the legislation did For Women Scotland challenge, it was centred on Section 2 - Key definitions, and this line, “…‘woman’ includes a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (within the meaning of section 7 of the Equality Act 2010.”

The mentioned of the Equality Act 2010, was why this legislative saga reached The Supreme Court.

At times some legal cases seem to resemble a tennis match, so what happened at the first court case?

Well, at the Outer House, Court of Session, For Women Scotland lost their petition on, the 23rd of March 2021, love fifteen against, but they appealed and at the, Second Division, Inner House, Court of Session, the appeal court ruled in their favour on the 18th of February 2022, deuce.

The reason For Women Scotland won, was because the proposed definition in the legislation, of “woman”, to include “transgender women”, was deemed by the appeal court to have expanded the definition of protected characteristics within the Equality Act 2010, and was outside the scope entitled to the Scottish Ministers.

As a result of this ruling, on the 19th of April 2022, the Scottish Ministers produced revised guidance, woman would only be as defined in Section 11 Sex, of the Equality Act 2010, but added, that a person with a full gender recognition certificate, as defined by the Gender Recognition Act 2004, has the acquired gender of female, and their sex is that of a woman.

Want to hazard a guess what, For Woman Scotland’s, response to this was?

They went to court again, but at the Outer House, Court of Session on the 13th of December 2022, this petition was dismissed, fifteen-thirty against.

Did they give up, did they, expletive deleted,

and perhaps at this point it is worth posing the question, how were they able to afford all these expensive legal cases, well, For Woman Scotland was incorporated on the 30th of July 2020 as a private limited company, and are crowdfunded.

One notable donation of £70,000 came from, well multiple sources attribute it to, a certain author of wizardry related books.

Finally there was one last appeal in Scotland, at the Second Division, Inner House, Court of Session, but on the 1st of November 2023, this motion was also refused, fifteen-forty, with the court asserting in its conclusion, that.

“The Guidance, does not conflate two separate protected characteristics. A person with a Gender Recognition Certificate in their acquired gender possesses the protected characteristic of gender reassignment for the purposes of, Section 7 (Gender reassignment) of the Equality Act 2010.”

Following this second defeat, the focus shifted to England and Parliament Square, London, the location of The Supreme Court, where as mentioned, For Woman Scotland where successful, game, set but hopefully not match.

Then just 9 days after the ruling, on the 25th of April 2025, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published interim guidance, and in their words, “…on the practical implications of the UK Supreme Court’s Judgment.”, and reading it, it is for very uncomfortable, if you are trans, nonbinary or intersex.

I’ll just mention a couple of their so called recommendations; in respect of workplaces, they said it is compulsory to provide single-sex toilets that exclude respectively trans women and trans men, and for schools in England and Wales, they said they must provide separate single-sex toilets for boys and girls over the age of 8, in Scotland it is at any age.

The Good Law Project are challenging the EHRC’s guidance at the High Court, and after contacting them at the end of June 2025, the EHRC backtracked in respect of the workplace, toilets, showers and changing facilities may be mixed-sex where they are in a separate room lockable from the inside.

The High Court ruled on the lawfulness of the EHRC’s interim guidance, on the 13th of February 2026, and it was good news, bad news, as revealed by the Good Law Project.

Starting with the good news, to quote from the Good Law Project’s website.

“...The court has also made clear that it will likely be discriminatory to force trans people to use facilities based on their sex recorded at birth. In short, the law does not require a bathroom ban…”

And the bad, “…the EHRC’s interim guidance had been widely misunderstood,…” therefore, “…the interim guidance was not unlawful…”

Further, “…The court said that unless toilets and changing rooms are provided in individual lockable rooms, then employers will be required to offer single-sex facilities – and these must be trans-exclusionary…”

And also, “…The court suggested that requiring trans people to use third spaces will ‘rarely’ be unlawful discrimination. We think this is wrong…”

Because as the Good Law Project pointed out,

“…It ignores the very real risk of ‘outing’ trans people, who will struggle to explain why they have suddenly started using the gender neutral toilet on the ground floor, rather than the women’s toilet outside their office door…”

I have also mentioned that there is a cost to legal proceedings, and the transcript of this episode on my website at www.twts.co.uk, has a link to the Good Law Project’s, Crowdfunder: Fighting fund for trans rights, page.

After the Trans Lives Matter episode there were two somewhat lighter episodes with first, “There’s a Woman on the Stage”, a look at the origins of the Pantomime Dame, how the role has evolved, and how Pantomime has become a staple of Christmas theatre entertainment, and I also looked at how in the time of Shakespeare, there were no female actors, and in a sense the Pantomime Dame is the last vestige of this.

Followed by, “The Kings and Queens of Drag”, where I explored the origin of the word drag, in the context of drag queens and drag kings, and discussed some notable drag performers, and how an 18th century court was more enlightened than a 21st century employment tribunal.

But where did it all start, well appropriately the first episode was called, “In The Beginning”, where I explored, how Intersex/DSD conditions, questioned the notion that we are a strictly binary species and the life of David Reimer.

There are about 40 plus intersex/DSD conditions, and I examined a number of these conditions.

I concluded the episode by looking at the life of David Reimer, born in 1965 and due to a disastrous circumcision, was raised as a girl called Brenda until in their mid teens, when they were told they where born a baby boy.

Brenda had never felt they where a girl, and when told changed their name to David, and there after lived as boy and man.

I felt that although David was not transgender, that they instinctively knew they were not female, even though all those around them said they were, was in a sense the same as for transgender children, who inherently know that the sex they were assigned did not match their gender identity.

David was a victim of a flawed theory by a Dr John Money at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, that gender could be imposed, it cannot.

The tragedy of what happened to David was sadly not unique, as a recent documentary on Channel 4 illustrated, “The Secret of Me”, which was about another victim of Dr Money’s repudiated theory.

If you want to avoid spoilers please come back after you have seen the film, currently available on All4 in the UK.

The film follows Jim, and their discovery that they where born a baby boy with a micropenis in 1976, and like David, a Doctor determined that they should be raised as a girl, and also like David they never felt truly feminine, and it was at college that they began to question the sex they were assigned.

They obtained their medical records and learnt that their sex chromosomes were XY, and upon learning this they changed their name from Kristi to Jim and began living as a man.

What befell Jim is all the more tragic when one learns of a medical study, on the National Library of Medicine website, “Fate of the micropenis and constitutional small penis: do they grow to normalcy in puberty?”, that most children born with a micropenis with have a normal penis size before they reach puberty.

Following episode one, what should two be about, and after some thought I decided to look at the origin and evolution of the original Rainbow Pride flag, describe the Pride flag for each letter of the initialism LGBTQIA+, and a few other Pride flags, in “Take Pride In Your Flag”.

I also looked at a couple of key figures, the Rainbow Pride flag’s creator, Gilbert Baker and Harvey Milk the first openly gay man elected to a public office, and a key event, the Stonewall Uprising in 1969.

I also mentioned how in Trump 2.0 America, trans rights had come under attack, not knowing within a month, there would be a similar replication in the UK.

I thought there was more milage to be had with the LGBTQIA+ initialism, and for “What Are Words Worth”, I explained the origin, meaning, and evolution of the terms that those letters represented.

I also looked at how the criminalisation of being gay and male came about and how the age of consent if gay was eventually reconciled with the straight age of consent, and there was the first mention of Dr Magnus Hirschfeld.

And thinking back to the episode that proceeded “Trans Lives Matter”, “The New Eugenics”, which was published three days before The Supreme Court ruling, it now seems almost prophetic, as I posited that trans and nonbinary people are experiencing a modern form of eugenics based on transgender identity prejudice.

Now this prejudice is enshrined in law.

I also looked at how a 19th Century Augustinian friar, discovered the principles of inheritance laying the foundation for our modern understanding of genetic inheritance.

I have always enjoyed films, and the first film I recall seeing at the cinema was the original, “The Jungle Book”, whose UK release was December 1967, yes I am that old, and I thought a top ten of trans film would make for an interesting episode.

However after I began researching the episode, I decided that there would be enough material for two episodes which I published either side of the, “What Words Are Worth” episode, with “Celebrating Trans Films - Part One”, the films of the 20th century, and “Celebrating Trans Films - Part Two”, films of the 21st century.

Interestingly the films of the 21st century proved half as more popular than the 20th, newer films seem to be of more interest than older ones.

There were some notable difference in respect of the films in each episode, part one with the exception of the only documentary, and one fiction film, had cisgender actors portraying the trans characters, also I considered five films, some very well known, that I consider transphobic.

Whereas in part two there were three documentaries with many trans contributors, and four of the fiction films had at least one trans actor, and unlike part one, was just a celebration of trans films.

Following the 21st century’s films episode was the first part of what became an autobiographical trilogy, and their respective downloads showed a stark contrast with the first episode “A Journey of Transition - Carolyne's Story - Part One”, proving much more popular than parts two and three.

Part one was up to when I left school, and I also examined a few trans pioneers; April Ashley, Caroline Cossey and Julia Grant.

With Part Two, I went from when I left school to when I decided to come out as a trans woman and begin my transition journey, a span of nearly forty years, and quite a lot happened.

The start of the eighties saw the first reports of a disease that would become a pandemic, and ignorance about it would see in the eighties a rise in homophobia, that disease is AIDS, the Margret Thatcher led Conservative government, oversaw unemployment exceed three million in 1983,and the year of a numerically titled dystopian novel came, and went, 1984.

And the Doomsday Clock, in 1984, was set to 3 minutes to midnight, pretty scary, however as I mentioned in the episode, in 2025 it was set to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest its been, scary didn’t even come close.

And what about 2026, you remember I just said the closest it had ever been, it is now set at 85 seconds to midnight, insert expletive here.

There were two European Court of Human Rights cases, in 1986 and 1990, in respect of Article 8, which is essentially a right to a private life, and Article 12, the right to marry, which although failed, led in the new century to three landmark pieces of legislation for the LGBTQIA+ communities; the Gender Recognition Act 2004, the Equality Act 2010, and The Married (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013.

And on a personal note, I graduated with a BSc in computer Science and began working for the BBC as a broadcast engineer.

With “Part Three”, I covered my transition journey, and this episode covered the shortest period of time, just under seven years, and I described my social, legal and medical transition, which culminated with my gender affirming surgery, and along the way there was another pandemic, Covid-19.

My first thoughts for the next episode was an examination of psychotherapy, however I was unsure how I would relate it to being trans or nonbinary for a whole episode and therefore decided instead to focus on how the medical profession’s understanding of being trans, as well as being lesbian or gay, has changed over time, with “I Am Not A Disorder”.

What I found shocking was how recent it was that being lesbian or gay or trans, was no longer considered a mental disorder, and what was interesting was that the change in attitude to gender non-conformity lagged behind being lesbian, gay or bisexual.

25:

A couple of days after the I Am Not A Disorder episode was published, I was contacted by a PR and marketing agency, about my autobiographical episodes, asking if I was interested in interviewing an author they represent, Kestral Gaian.

They said that Kestral, is a nonbinary author, playwright and self-confessed professional overthinker, and I replied that I would be very interested in interviewing them.

However, before compiling the questions, there was the matter of the next episode, which I realised would be published four days before Christmas, and as quizzes are popular around Christmas, I thought why not have an episode that was a bit of fun.

So I decided to ask you, dear listeners, how many gender identities you know from A to Z, and if you where more ambitious, who originated them and when.

The interview with Kestral Gaian was recorded shortly after Christmas Day and was the first episode of 2026.

That just left the last episode for the first year of the podcast, an idea had been developing whilst I was researching and writing the autobiographical episodes, namely a biographical episode of someone important to the LGBTQIA+ communities.

And top of the list was someone who loyal listeners would have heard about, Dr Magnus Hirshfeld, who was a pioneer in many ways, the founder of the first gender identity clinic, an early proponent that gender identity and sexual orientation are separate distinct aspects of a person, and all round wonderful LGBTQIA+ ally.

I also looked at the work of, Professor Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Scale, they devised with two colleagues, Dr Fritz Klein who expanded it, devising the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, and my psychotherapist, Dr Kenneth Demsky, who further expanded Dr Klein’s grid with the “Klein-Demsky Matrix of Sex and Gender”, which can be found on “The Beaumont Trust” website.

And as I was researching and writing the episode, I thought it could be the first of an occasional series and decided to call the series, “Portrait of…”

And that was a round up of 2025, and just under two months of 2026, and to conclude I thought I would look at a few stats.

You may have noticed the flags either side of the podcasts logo, they represent each country where the podcast has been downloaded, and currently the total stands at 20.

The Top three most popular episodes are, first, “In the Beginning”, followed by “Celebrating Trans Films - Part Two”, with, “TrAnZgender Identity - An A to Z” in third place.

The country with the most downloads is the “United Kingdom”, followed by the “USA”, “Germany” and “Canada”.

This episode was written and presented by me, Carolyne O’Reilly, thank you for listening.

And before you go, I would just like to say, I would really love to hear from you dear loyal listeners, which you can do so totally anonymously if you wish, on the Have Your Say page of my website at www.twts.co.uk.

And it would be lovely to hear what attracted you to this podcast, and I should add no comments will be posted on my website unless you give express permission.

Next time, Is yet to be decided!