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The rise and fall of the trans movement

The rise and fall of the trans movement

1/ Hubris

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Nick Cohen
Jun 26, 2025
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Writing from London
Writing from London
The rise and fall of the trans movement
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a group of people holding signs and wearing masks
Photo by Aiden Craver on Unsplash(

(This is the first of a two-part series. Part 2 is here.)


No campaign has risen so fast and fallen so far as the LGBT+ movement. Only two years ago HR departments across the private and public sector, the current government of Scotland, the then government of the United States, international sporting bodies, arts administrators, charities, and Harry Potter film stars endorsed an ultra-subjective ideology that denied the material reality of biological sex.

If a man said that he was a woman, then he was a she and she was a woman. Anyone who doubted it was a modern heretic to be shunned, denounced and, on occasion forced out of their jobs.

Today the story of the trans campaign has become a warning to progressives; a modern morality tale on the dangers of putting ends before means.

It’s losing everywhere. The UK Supreme Court ruled in April that sex means biological sex, not acquired sex. As far as the law is concerned a trans woman is a man, and has no right to access women’s refuges, prisons, hospital wards, sports teams, changing facilities, and other single-sex spaces.

The justices said that whatever other rights and protections trans people possessed:

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