HERE’s a conundrum. The Government is attempting to subvert the Supreme Court ruling that, in law, biological sex trumps “gender identity” (Analysis, 2 May 2025), The Sunday Times has reported. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has drawn up guidance on what that means for single-sex spaces; but the Equalities Minister, Bridget Phillipson, is refusing to sign it, saying that it is “trans-exclusive”.

Is it possible to respect both women’s rights and trans rights? Vocabulary is revealing here. The Sunday Times referred to “a man who identifies as a woman, known as a trans woman”. In contrast, in much of the mainstream media, the term “trans woman” is now used without caveat.

What the article is implying is that “trans woman” is not a neutral term. Rather, it tacitly accepts the world-view of those who give trans rights primacy over women’s rights. This attitude is now so embedded in elite culture that, if you ask ChatGPT for a more genuinely impartial term, it struggles.

The description “a biological male who identifies as a woman” is implicitly anti-trans, it insists. Even terms such as “assigned male at birth” are ideologically loaded, it claims. “The safest approach is to describe facts without asserting either side’s ontology,” it avers. But it then fails its own test; for the definition that it favours — “a woman assigned male at birth” — uses “woman” in a way that presupposes that a “trans woman” is indeed a woman, something that critics deny.

In contrast, those critics who are branded “gender-critical” by the trans lobby have begun rejecting the label, arguing that it implies that “gender ideology” is normative. But, as opinion polls reveal, most people reject the idea that “gender identification” is more important than biological sex. Indeed, public opinion is growing more convinced that people born male do not belong in women’s spaces or sports. (Labour voters are moving more slowly, which perhaps explains Ms Phillipson’s foot-dragging.)

In classical logic, the law of the excluded middle says that a proposition must be either true or false. But debates about women’s rights and trans rights are not primarily about truth and falsehood. They are about how categories are defined, how rights are protected in practice, and how competing interests are balanced in specific social contexts. They are political questions, not logical ones.

Philosophers from Aristotle to Isaiah Berlin have warned that rights can conflict but this does not means that one of them must be invalid. The slippage is over whether “woman” is defined by biology, psychology, sociology, or law. When one side insists that only one meaning can be legitimate in all contexts, conflict becomes inevitable.

Women’s rights and trans rights protect different — but overlapping — interests. Women’s rights historically focus on political representation, equality in employment, reproductive autonomy, and protection from male violence. Trans rights focus on dignity, legal recognition, protection from discrimination and violence, and social participation without humiliation or exclusion. None of these goals is inherently opposed.

The tension arises in specific areas such as public lavatories, changing rooms, prisons, and safeguarding. Christian ethics suggest that protection should be given to the most vulnerable and least powerful. Most men are not rapists, but most rapists are men. Most men who transition retain the advantage of adolescent male physical development. The balance in single-sex spaces and sports ought to be self-evident.