Mary-Ann Stephenson, the new head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has given her first interview to the BBC representing the organisation. In it, she stated that she didn’t expect that there will be a “toilet police” to keep trans people out of single-sex facilities. Instead, she expects that everyone will “follow the rules”.
The problem (apart from, you know, the transphobia) is that the rules are completely incoherent.
Likewise, there doesn’t need to be a toilet police if your organisation is appointing a vibes-based toilet militia.
The EHRC’s new transphobe-in-chief
Stephenson took over leadership of the equalities watchdog organisation back on 1 December 2025. Her predecessor was Kishwer Falkner, who instituted an “anti-LGBT” culture to the extent that current and former staff members branded her an “enemy of human rights”.
Following in her predecessor’s footsteps, Stephenson is also a transphobic plant at the head of the equality organisation. She donated money to ‘gender critical’ lawyer Alison Bailey’s case, met with trans-hostile feminist group FiLiA back in 2020, and signed a declaration opposing Gender Recognition Act reforms.
So, a perfect pick to head up an organisation that’s meant to defend trans and women’s rights. She’s clearly free of any biases.
No toilet police, is it?
Anyway, her *BBC*interview obviously centered on the forthcoming trans-exclusionary code drafted by the EHRC. Stephenson stated that:
Nobody is expecting there to be a toilet police.
But equally if there are situations where there are complaints about regular problems, then people might need to… improve signage, improve explanations, or make sure they have got alternative provision.
Nobody is expecting ‘toilet police’, that’s true. This is, however, is because the EHRC has recommended that staff members at venues with single-sex facilities exclude whomever they like. This will be based on whether the individual in question looks or acts trans, whatever the hell that means.
The leaked trans guidance also stated that there is no actual method to verify whether somebody is or isn’t trans. As I previously reported on the topic:
So, walk with me here. There’s no way to tell whether or not someone is trans by official documentation. As such, a service provider is allowed to exclude someone from single-sex spaces purely according to how they look and act.
Therefore, someone doesn’t have to be trans in order to be excluded under the new anti-trans guidance. So stating that “trans women could be questioned” etc. isn’t actually true, is it? Anybody could be questioned, and anybody could be excluded, based purely on “concerns raised by others”.
The EHRC and its transphobic stenographers in the BBC and the Times would like you to believe that this code will only impact trans people. This is a lie, and a deliberate one at that. Transphobes like to believe that they can tell who is trans just by looking at them, because they’ve convinced themselves that all trans women look like men in dresses, and all trans men look like tomboys.
So yes, there will be no toilet police – it’s more of a ‘toilet militia’ type situation.
‘Follow the rules’
The BBCalso reported that Stephenson said:
she expected both service providers and people using these services to “follow the rules”.
Again, there is no way to verify who is following the rules. The EHRC has recommended that service providers exclude people based on who looks trans. This is a schoolyard-bully’s charter, not a basis for a functioning legal system.
When asked what trans people should do if there is no space for a gender-neutral provision, the EHRC chief said:
There’s often unisex provision and where there isn’t, as I say, we need to think more broadly about how we make sure those that those facilities are available…
If you’ve got, you know, two self-contained cubicles, one of which is labelled men and one of which is labelled women, then the most sensible thing in those circumstances for a service provider to do is to make both of those unisex.
This is actually interesting if true. The previous anti-trans guidance under Kishwer Falkner actually required that workplaces had to provide single-sex facilities. As such, stating that a space-poor venue could have two gender neutral toilets is something of a walk-back on the previous guidance.
Of course, we don’t yet know what the law will be, as equalities minister Bridget Phillipson hasn’t yet enacted any version of the draft guidance. However, a recent employment tribunal ruled that the Supreme Court ruling doesn’t necessarily mean that employers must exclude trans people from single-sex spaces.
What happens next is still up in the air. However, when the head of the EHRC is giving interviews stating that she expects that everybody will “follow the rules”, you can tell that she hasn’t given a moment’s thought to just how unworkable those rules actually are. That, or she just doesn’t care.
Featured image via the Canary
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