Sawt Falasteen - Trans campaigners descend on UK parliament to protest 'bathroom ban'

The protestors, some carrying the white, blue and pink trans flag, queued in the blazing sun to enter parliament and attempt to speak or leave a note for their local MP.

"I will be hopefully speaking to my MP... because we have been, as the trans community, getting a lot of hate and we have been... isolated from the decision-making process that concerns us," Jade Lopez, 27, who came from Manchester for the protest, told AFP.

"My partner, who's also trans, needs to go to the hospital a lot and I'm really worried for her" because "currently we've got nurses up and down the country not knowing where to put a trans patient and are just abandoning them on the hallways," said the civil servant, who arrived from El Salvador three years ago.

The UK's Supreme Court unanimously ruled in April that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex.

A few days later, the UK's equality regulator (EHRC) published new interim guidelines that included a ban on transgender women from using "female-only services" such as toilets, changing rooms and certain hospital areas.

Women-only and lesbian clubs, for example, will no longer be able to welcome trans women, and they will be banned from competing in women's football competitions in England and Scotland.

The "sweeping and regressive" guidelines go further than the judgement itself, said the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, which organised Wednesday's action.

They are urging that the EHRC amend the guidelines before submitting the final version to the government.

Callie Max Easton, a 31-year-old trans and non-binary person, was waiting to meet Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, to tell him that "this has been an incredibly difficult time ever since the guidance was passed down".

The singer and actress Kate Nash, who came to show her support, told AFP that "there's a lot of hatred and a lot of hyper-focus and obsession" on the trans community, even though it represents "such a small percentage" of the population.

"Trampling on another vulnerable group's rights in order to protect cis women doesn't make sense to me," Nash said.

S.Barghouti--SF-PST