It’s a year since the Supreme Court ruled that gender means biological sex – and not much has changed. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is advising the government on how to apply the judgment to law, has spent a long while drafting guidance. But last week, word arrived that Bridget Phillipson, the women and equalities minister, wants the EHRC to ‘tone down’ its advice, leading to further delays. Why the hold-up? My guess is that it has something to do with a new era we are entering. An era of ‘TRANS RAGE’.
That’s not my expression. It’s from Bash Back, a recently formed anonymous collective going after people and organisations it believes frustrate the transgender experience. Its supporters’ first act, last August, was to rough up Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s constituency office. Next, they vandalised a Brighton conference centre hosting an event for feminists. In October, Bash Back daubed the headquarters of the EHRC in pink paint. This year, members hacked the website of the Free Speech Union (FSU) and published a list of its donors.
Transgender activism was always fraught, but after last year’s Supreme Court ruling, it switched register
‘ALL OF OUR TARGETS HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS,’ Bash Back says on its website. (Why, with protest groups, is the copy always upper-cased?) ‘WE REFUSE TO LET THEM WASH IT OFF IN PEACE. WELCOME TO A NEW ERA OF TRANS RAGE.’
Transgender activism was always fraught, but after last year’s Supreme Court ruling, it switched register. A nihilism has infected parts of the movement. Look at this snippet, for instance, of a podcast that Grace Campbell, daughter of Alastair, did with a transgender figure called Charlie Craggs in June 2025, in the weeks following the judgment, where they attacked gender critical feminists:
Grace: With what’s going on at the moment, with these freaks…
Charlie: FREAKS! With their ugly hair! Outside the Supreme Court! So UGLY!
Grace: Ugly! UGLY! With the worst hair and the worst clothes. They’re not chic!
Since the ruling, the transgender movement has taken on a new callousness. Activists concluded that discussion was ineffective. In Bash Back’s ‘ACTION GUIDE’, which explains the group’s methodology to wannabe activists, it tells how the transgender movement gave up on regular protest: ‘The mechanisms provided to us from our oppressors – petitions, marches and debate – have been roundly ignored and have always been wholly inadequate… It is clear that appealing to the better nature of oppressors by showing them our pain, our exhaustion and our suffering will no longer suffice.’
Who are these nihilists? We have some idea, because after Bash Back hacked the FSU website it accidentally left a digital trail that appeared to lead to someone called Autumn Redpath, a cybersecurity student at the University of Warwick. Redpath, born male, now identifying as female, was named in court documents with the FSU. On a personal website – which has been removed from the internet but which you can still access via online archives – Redpath claims to have an interest in ‘hacktivism’ and boasts of ranking highly in a hacking competition in 2021. The site is marked with the acronym ‘Acab’, meaning ‘All Cops Are Bastards’. (Redpath denies being part of Bash Back, while Bash Back says that Redpath has ‘no association’ with the group.)
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It’s not trans people alone who are agitating for a new era of rage. There seems to be a network behind them. A while ago, the group started a recruitment push. It advertised for members on social media, each time providing links to surveys on a website called CryptPad, a document-hosting platform for the private-minded. Bash Back asked prospective comrades to fill in the form, leave their details and await instruction.
But it seems someone cocked up. In one promotional tweet, Bash Back gave a link to a survey which affords whoever clicks it editor’s access. That means anyone can see the responses to the form.
One person, I read, is offering Bash Back a future target. ‘I have the log-in details of Labour Women’s Declaration social media and website accounts in addition to the email addresses of over 2,000 members,’ they said, leaving a way of contacting them at the bottom. Labour Women’s Declaration advocates for women’s interests in the Labour party and has pushed the Labour leadership not to allow trans people to attend the party’s annual women’s conference.
I can also see that a woman called Amber, apparently from Corporate Watch, has been trying to get in touch with the group via the survey. Corporate Watch is an investigative news outlet that ‘helps people stand up against corporate power’. It is regulated by Impress, a press standards organisation which enforces a code on its members, forbidding them from engaging in ‘unethical practices’.
Amber wrote on 16 January: ‘Got in touch to chat about how to share info that we come across at Corporate Watch with you that may be of use.’ Corporate Watch is based at Freedom Press on Angel Alley in Whitechapel in London, which is also home to the city’s only anarchist bookshop. This is interesting because recently Bash Back and groups like it – such as Trans Kids Deserve Better and the Trans Liberation Front of Brighton, two other direct-action organisations – seem to have taken an anarchist turn. (Corporate Watch did not respond to a request for comment.)
Go inside the anarchist bookshop at Freedom Press and you’ll see literature about transgender activism mixed with texts about anarchist theory. Alongside military-style badges with the insignia of Antifa and other ‘anti-fascist’ and anarchist organisations, you will see more ragged, homemade patches to show allegiance to Trans Kids Deserve Better (which very politely declined to be interviewed for this article). No doubt you will hear, as I did, a staff member pitching anarchism to a young woman: ‘It’s bomb-throwing, but it’s not just bomb-throwing.’
Seeing all this, you wonder whether Phillipson wants the EHRC to soften its guidance to save herself. A new abrasiveness has entered transgender politics. The Supreme Court ruling was not the end, but rather the start of an era. The era of rage, rage, RAGE.
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