UPDATE 19 JUNE 2025: the new advice and guidance has landed.
We are delighted and proud to announce updated advice to lesbians organising lesbian-only spaces and events.
Two key points: firstly, as lesbians, we have every right to our boundaries, to organise events as spaces for adult human females attracted to other adult human females. It’s really not complicated. It’s not news or even ‘unkind’. It is our right. Secondly: the Judgment is the law. No organisation, institution or ill-informed barrack-room lawyer on X gets to gainsay it, or to suggest we should ‘wait’ for more guidance or explanation before our community rebuilds.
Lesbian-Only Spaces Updated Full Advice 15-6-2025
The Legal Defence of Lesbian Spaces Short Organisers Guide 17-6-2025
Above are two pdfs. Please download, share, print all you like. The full advice is from barrister Naomi Cunningham for FiLiA. The ‘Short Guide’ is our short leaflet summarising her advice. (She had reviewed it for us, but it is not a legal document.)
The lesbian community is built on bottom-up, self-organised activity. Some of it is aimed at changing the world, whether within political parties or beyond. Other groups and events are purely social, arranged around hiking, art, singing and more. We do love a nice bar, but it’s by no means the only aspect of our community. We know, as organisers ourselves and from our networks, that the community has really struggled with the impact of men who identify as women insisting on entering lesbian spaces. Their presence changes the character of such spaces, and many lesbians end up self-excluding. Many women who want our community to retain exclusively lesbian opportunities have self-excluded and often become more isolated.
Three years ago, FiLiA helped us publish a guide for organisers to defend our boundaries. The legal advice was necessarily cautious, giving details on managing claims to have a Gender Recognition Certificate, the importance of confidentiality, the interconnection between ‘sex’, ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender reassignment’ and more. The judgment of the Supreme Court in April has changed all that. The Court made it clear that, for legal purposes under the Equality Act, ‘sex’ means biology, not certificates. Our rights of assembly and connection have been restored.
We asked if FiLiA would support us to go back to Naomi Cunningham to update her advice in the light of the judgment and produce both a formal, legal advice note and a simple summary guide for organisers on the ground. Those wonderful women said yes!
Naomi has thoroughly updated her opinion and we are now publishing both documents. They are also available as printable pdfs on the FiLiA website. There will be printed copies available at various events, most importantly the FiLiA conference in October.
LGBAC is immensely grateful to everyone who made this support for the lesbian community possible – not least the interveners in the Supreme Court Case, everyone at FiLiA and Naomi Cunningham.
This advice for lesbian organisers in the UK is a central part of our work at LGBAC. Our group is proud to represent same-sex attracted people in Cymru/Wales. We enjoy working in lots of partnerships, but remain a small, grassroots campaign, unaffiliated to other groups or parties.
If you live in Wales and would like to support our work please get in touch. (A DM on Twitter or an email to lgballiancecymru@gmail.com works best). Alongside rebuilding our communities, we keep up constant pressure on Welsh Government and Senedd as they still struggle to accept the reality of sex and the importance of lesbian lives.
UPDATE 19 APRIL 2025: this week the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that allowing people of the opposite biological sex to join a lesbian social association would significantly undermine the right to associate on the basis of sexual orientation. (Shortened version of para 231 of the Judgement.) With FiLiA’s help, we are updating this guidance and will publish it shortly.
Lesbians have always faced challenges from men unable to accept our independent sexuality, but in the last five years we have seen such attacks ramp up every month. The number of assaults and the vitriol aimed at us has grown beyond many women’s ability to manage.
The organisers of such spaces sometimes give in to these demands. Maybe they are not too concerned about lesbian boundaries, or they sincerely welcome male-bodied people into their organisations. That’s not a problem, so long as everyone knows what to expect. But we hear too often from women saying that they don’t believe they have any legal choice, but to allow men into women’s spaces. Or they are scared of the doxing and abuse that frequently follow when women say ‘no’.
We are seeing lesbians forced into gathering in secret, meeting behind closed doors or passwords, and using false names in social situations.
LGB Alliance Cymru refuses to go back in the closet, to return to hiding. Those days are done for good.
So when FiLiA approached us wondering if we had a project in mind for which we would welcome some help, we knew what we wanted. An authoritative guide for lesbian organisers to defend our spaces, our groups and our lives. FiLiA hooked us up with the fantastic barrister Naomi Cunningham.
We asked Naomi for both contextual guidance and for the answers to some specific situations we knew of, which are called ‘indicative questions’ in this document. This is her authoritative advice as at early October 2022; the date matters as there is ongoing case law but unless government changes primary legislation this is how the situation currently stands.
This advice is based on the law of the United Kingdom, and especially the Equality Act 2010. (This Act is not devolved to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland though there may be local policy impacts.) If you are fighting the same battles in other parts of the world, you have our sisterly support, but you will need to seek a similar review of the law in your own country.
We have also produced an easy-read version of this advice which you can find below and on the FiLiA website.
We are really grateful to FiLiA for this support to lesbians, and to all the lesbians who commented on earlier drafts and helped make this advice and the easy-read version as useful as it can be. We are especially grateful to Naomi for her clarity and focus. Most of all, we applaud all the lesbians, gay men and others standing up for our rights all over the world.
