Equality chief calls UK transphobia an ‘imported culture war’ intended to ‘quash women’s rights’

Transphobia in the UK could pave the way for anti-abortion policies, the chief executive of a human rights charity has claimed.

Rebecca Don Kennedy, the boss of Equality Network, believes that, given the chance, many trans-exclusionary men claiming to be “feminists” would actually be willing to strip abortion rights in a “heartbeat.”

Equality Network, founded in 1997 and based in Scotland, campaigns for LGBTQ+ equality among other rights.

“The ultimate objective is quashing women’s rights,” Kennedy, who has been the charity’s chief executive since last year, told The Herald. “Once we allow trans women to be scapegoated, it’s a slippery slope.”

Trans-exclusionary rhetoric helped men “maintain a patriarchal system” by allowing society to ignore the “dangerous behaviour” that men are more likely – statistically – to commit, she added.

“We know there’s an outrageous, horrific rise in violence against women, sexual crimes and rape,” she said. “Now there’s the rise of incel culture and the likes of Andrew Tate pushing ideas of men’s power and what they’re entitled to. It’s really sad that those pushing the anti-trans narrative don’t realise that’s exactly what they’re playing into.”

Many gender-critical activists campaign for the exclusion of transgender people, typically through political lobbying. Several such groups believe the idea of womanhood should be dictated on the basis of “biology”.

Kennedy claimed that this gender-critical rhetoric, including phrases such as “biological sex” or “biological women”, only serves to help maintain patriarchal norms and would, in the long run, further rescind the rights of all women, including access to abortions.

“If you take the definition of a woman as being per her genitalia, then we’re going back 50 years to how a woman should be defined by her reproductive ability,” she said. “It’s a slippery slope from ‘women should be defined by their reproductive ability’… to ‘we must ensure that women use their reproductive ability’.

“It’s so transparent to those of us working in equalities and women’s rights.”

‘People who are hateful are lauded and lifted up as heroes’

Her comments come after the UK Supreme Court‘s April 2025 ruling that the 2010 Equality Act’s definition of women referred to “biological women” and that sex referred to “biological sex.”

However, in the unanimous verdict, the country’s top judges warned that their decision should not be seen as a “triumph of one group over another.”

Since the verdict was announced in April, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued interim guidance that effectively bans trans people from spaces consistent with their gender identity and, in some cases, their birth sex too.

“It’s terrifying. [Trans people are] demonised by the press, by politicians, demonised on TV, questioned within institutions and their workplace, and they maybe not even able to use the toilet when they go outside,” Kennedy went on to say.

“All the while this is happening, other people who are hateful are lauded and lifted up as heroes, and, worse than that, painted as heroes for feminism. It’s abhorrent.”

She also condemned anti-trans conspiracies that paint the transgender community as dangerous and that laws enabling trans rights would allow men into women’s changing rooms.

“If that was the case, I would be against it but that isn’t what’s happening. It’s categorically not happening… trans women have been using these spaces for decades without any problem.

“Trans people must be able to access the services everyone needs and have the same rights to safety, privacy and dignity as everyone else. Insisting they’re treated as their biological sex at birth all the time makes that impossible.”

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