STILL ME, STILL A WOMAN: A Reflection on the week that shook my sense of belonging

BY CRISTAL S.

It’s been a hard week. Not loud and dramatic, but quietly exhausting. The sort of week that pulls you inwards, away from people, away from joy. The UK Supreme Court’s ruling that the word “woman” in the Equality Act refers only to biological sex has shaken something deep in me. I’ve read the articles, listened to the interviews, watched people debate our existence like it’s a thought experiment. And I’ve felt it all - not as a political point, but as a person. As a woman. A trans woman. Just trying to live.

For years, becoming myself has been a long, complicated and often beautiful journey. I knew I was different from a very young age, though I didn’t always have the words. For much of my early life, I carried that difference like a secret. It shaped how I moved through the world – cautious and careful, often invisible.

Coming out, transitioning, was terrifying. It cost me relationships. It brought financial strain. It meant re-learning how to exist in public space while often being watched, questioned or mocked. But it also brought something extraordinary - a deep, unshakeable sense of home in myself. That first time someone called me “she” without hesitation, the first time I looked in the mirror and saw me—not a performance, not a mask- I cried. That’s the joy of becoming your authentic self. No matter how difficult the path, there is such light at the end of it.

And yet, here I am, years into that journey, being told by the highest court in the land that I am, in the eyes of the Equality Act, not a woman. Not legally. Not fully. The ruling doesn’t take away my gender recognition certificate, nor the small legal protections that still exist under “gender reassignment.” But it does something harder to explain. It chips away at my sense of safety, of recognition, of legitimacy.

I worry what it means for access to services, to single-sex spaces, to being respected as who I am. I worry about how others will interpret this ruling, will it embolden hostility? Will it make someone think they have the right to “correct” me in the street, or deny me entry to a women’s bathroom or worse?

And I feel tired. Tired of explaining my humanity. Tired of being discussed in newspapers as if I’m some sort of legal anomaly or social risk. I’m not. I’m a person. I make tea in the mornings. I cry at soppy films. I dance (badly) in my kitchen. I help my mum with her garden. I’m trying, like anyone else, to be good and kind and loved. And yes, I am a woman. That isn’t up for debate in my heart, even if the law now draws a harder line.

I wish more people understood the emotional toll this takes. How unsettling it is to feel like the ground beneath you might shift at any moment. How each headline, each ruling, each cold legal phrase like “biological sex” can feel like it’s reaching into your life and whispering, “you don’t quite belong”.

But I do belong. And so do all trans women, non-binary people, gender-diverse people who are just trying to live without fear. We are part of the fabric of this country, whether the law recognises us fully or not. We are carers and colleagues, sisters and friends. We are not an abstract problem. We are people and we are tired, but we are still here.

These past weeks have hurt. But I know who I am. And despite everything, I hold onto hope. Not naïve hope, but the kind that builds slowly in community, in solidarity, in compassion. I hope for a future where no one is made to feel less than for simply being themselves.

Until then, I’ll keep walking through this world as me. Still proud. Still a woman. Still here.