You don’t have to be a judge to understand April’s Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of “sex”. The court was asked to decide a straightforward legal question about the meaning of the word in the 2010 Equality Act, and it did so with admirable clarity.

That’s why it’s hard to have much sympathy with Victoria McCloud. The former judge has now claimed that the court’s handling of the case breached trans people’s rights under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees a fair trial, by refusing to hear from trans individuals.

McCloud, who is a trans woman, has launched a case against the UK in the European Court of Human Rights, causing a flurry of excitement among people who don’t like the ruling. McCloud tried last year to intervene in the Supreme Court case, arguing that the outcome would affect the legal status of trans women with a gender recognition certificate (GRC).

The request was refused, unsurprisingly, because it wouldn’t have made any difference. The judges had been asked to give a clear ruling on what is meant by certain terms in the Equality Act. They were not required to consider the impact of that law on individuals, even former judicial colleagues who might not like what they eventually decided. “We are told we must use dangerous spaces such as male changing rooms and loos when we have female anatomy […] If we are raped we must go to male rape crisis [centres],” McCloud told the Guardian.

This gets what’s happened precisely the wrong way round, which is an odd error for a former judge to make. It was never the case, on a correct reading of the Equality Act, that trans-identified men with a GRC had the right to use women-only spaces. That was an overreach by trans activists and organisations such as Stonewall, which promoted their version of what they wanted the law to be rather than what it actually was.

The question before the court was whether that misinterpretation of the law was correct. The litigation was prompted by the Scottish government’s bizarre claim that a board consisting of half men and half trans women with a GRC — six males — was gender-balanced. Scottish ministers lost. Their subsequent reluctance to change guidance that isn’t in line with the law is about to be challenged in court by For Women Scotland, the group which brought the earlier case.

McCloud’s attempt to relitigate the Supreme Court case is further evidence, if any were needed, of just how many individuals and organisations are resisting the outcome. They’re being encouraged by parliamentarians who persist in recklessly promoting the notion that the Supreme Court decision has made life dangerous for trans people. The latest culprit is Culture Minister Lisa Nandy, who was photographed at the weekend wearing a “Protect the dolls” t-shirt.

“Dolls” is slang for trans-identified men who “pass” as women. It’s a slogan dripping in thoughtless misogyny, as though the most desirable form of femininity is a child’s simulacrum of a woman. Protesters against the Supreme Court decision would be better advised to campaign for services specifically for trans people, as women did when it became clear that single-sex services were desperately needed.

McCloud and trans activists have long made claims that everything, including the driest of legal cases, is about them. But it isn’t — and narcissism is one of the reasons why so many people have had quite enough of gender ideology.

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Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

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