The transgender-advocacy group Trans Actual installed a toilet in the colors of the transgender-pride flag outside of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court on Wednesday to protest its recent ruling that ensures legal protections for single-sex spaces like bathrooms.
“The bold question at the heart of the campaign: Where, exactly, are trans people supposed to go?” reads a press release from Trans Actual. “The toilet – placed prominently outside the UK’s highest court, reflects the exposure, isolation and risk trans people face when excluded from public life and legal recognition. It challenges the notion that safety and dignity can be optional.”
The feminist activist organization For Woman Scotland brought a case against the Scottish government concerning the definitions of “woman” and “man” in U.K.-wide Equality Act 2010, particularly whether either word could apply to a transgender-identifying individual who had obtained government-issued Gender Recognition Certificate that recognized an identity different from the individual’s sex. The courts rejected For Woman Scotland’s argument twice, but in April, the U.K. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that “woman” and “sex” in the U.K.-wide Equality Act 2010 respectively refer to females and biological traits, thereby ensuring legal protections for single-sex spaces.
“The definition of sex in the [Equality Act] 2010 makes clear that the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man,” reads the Supreme Court’s judgment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) released interim guidance after the judgement. In workplaces and services open to the public, the EHRC states, “trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities and trans men (biological women) should not be permitted to use the men’s facilities, as this will mean that they are no longer single-sex facilities and must be open to all users of the opposite sex.”
However, the commission also encourages a third option to accommodate transgender-identifying people, stating that “where facilities are available to both men and women, trans people should not be put in a position where there are no facilities for them to use,” and “where possible, mixed-sex toilet, washing or changing facilities in addition to sufficient single-sex facilities should be provided.” The Equality and Human Rights Commission says on its website that it is continuing to update its guidance to reflect the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The Trans Actual group launched the “trans loo” project with the “third toilet” installation on Wednesday in direct response to comments made by the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Baroness Kishwer Falkner. She had suggested that transgender-advocacy organizations “should be using their powers of advocacy to ask for those third spaces” like unisex toilets.
“[The Third Toilet] is a powerful statement about being forced to exist without safety, privacy, and rights, in full view of a society that refuses to see us,” the Trans Actual organization wrote on social media. The project was developed in conjunction with the marketing agency BBH London.
“We need to move the conversation on from ridiculous things like bathrooms and onto the things that matter. And that is the safety of trans people everywhere,” said Olivia Campbell Cavendish, self-described “black trans woman” and the executive director of the Trans Legal Clinic. For the campaign, Campbell Cavendish was photographed sitting and posing on the pink, white, and blue toilet.
The Trans Actual organization challenged the health secretary’s order to ban puberty blockers for minors. In 2024, the High Court upheld the ban. Trans Actual decided to not appeal the ruling, and the organization’s health director Chay Brown condemned the health secretary’s ban as “an outright attack on young trans people, and a clear declaration that trans lives matter less than cis ones.”