Anti-Trans Activist Hadley Freeman Thinks UK Court Win Means People Have To Be Her Friend

After a UK Supreme Court ruling, Hadley Freeman celebrated by lamenting the friendships she’s lost over her views. Her side may have won the ruling, but it won't improve her social life.

Hadley Freeman April 20th Article - The Sunday Times

Hadley Freeman—a columnist whose anti-trans positions have made her a darling of the UK’s gender-critical movement—took to the Sunday Times this weekend to spike the ball after a devastating UK Supreme Court ruling that sharply curtailed the rights of transgender people. The court’s decision, which determined that transgender women are not, for the purposes of the Equality Act, legally women, opened the door to widespread legal discrimination. In the wake of the ruling, Britain’s major papers handed column inches to gender-critical commentators like Freeman, sidelining the mass protests that erupted across the country in defense of trans rights. But Freeman, instead of celebrating her legal victory in full, devoted space to lamenting the friendships she’s lost over her views—and appears to believe, strangely, that this ruling might somehow win them back.

“I’ve been writing about the effects of gender ideology for more than a decade, and in that time I’ve had to leave a job I thought I’d have forever, I’ve been publicly denounced by people I thought were friends, and I’ve been blacklisted from more events than I can count,” complains Freeman—who also takes time to denounce the so-called “abuse” she claims to have received from critics, including Doctor Who actor David Tennant, whose supposed offense is being the supportive parent of a non-binary child.

Freeman and other UK-based anti-trans activists are celebrating a recent Supreme Court ruling that hands a sweeping victory to the country’s anti-trans movement. The court determined that transgender women are not considered women under the Equality Act, effectively opening the door to widespread legal discrimination. The ruling went even further, declaring that lesbian women would not be considered lesbians if they are in relationships with transgender women—a revelation that will no doubt come as a surprise to the many lesbian couples in the UK who defy that logic by simply existing. Similar arguments are now surfacing in the United States, where a looming Supreme Court case, United States v. Skrmetti, could determine whether transgender Americans are entitled to equal protection under the Constitution.

Despite her cause’s legal win, Freeman is likely to be disappointed if she believes it will earn her back the friends she’s lost. Ask the anti-marriage-equality activists of the early 2000s. Back then, more than 30 U.S. states passed bans on same-sex marriage, and many of the loudest opponents surely believed their victories in the courts would translate into cultural dominance. They were wrong. Public opinion shifted dramatically, gay couples gained visibility and support, and just a decade later, the right to marry was enshrined nationwide. Today, those who championed those bans are remembered not as protectors of tradition, but as relics of a bigoted era—and the same fate almost certainly awaits the loudest voices in today's anti-trans movement.

Society is not getting any less queer or trans. While comprehensive data out of the United Kingdom is limited, recent numbers from the United States show that 2024 saw one of the largest increases in LGBTQ+ identification in recent history. In the U.K., LGBTQ+ communities overwhelmingly support transgender rights. A 2023 YouGov poll found that just 8% of cisgender lesbian, gay, and bisexual people held negative views on trans rights, while 75% expressed support. One thing is certain: transgender people are not going back into the closet as a result of the attacks. As queer visibility continues to rise, acceptance is bound to follow close behind.

Ultimately, Freeman’s column isn’t pitiful because it rubs salt in the wound—it’s pitiful because it lays bare the true aim of the anti-trans movement. This was never about policy or bathrooms or youth sports. It’s about a cohort of people who feel culture shifting beneath their feet, who were raised in a world where casual cruelty toward transgender people was normalized, and who now find themselves resentful that society has moved on. Rather than reflect or grow, they double down, demanding that their revulsion be seen as virtue—that their discomfort be not only accepted but celebrated. Freeman’s yearning for social validation, cloaked in the language of righteous indignation, reveals the movement’s hollow core. The title of her piece says it all: this isn’t about the law, it’s about the isolation that comes from being wrong. And no court decision—no matter how cruel—will win back the friendships lost to hate, or rescue those who chose the wrong side of history from the consequences of that choice.