Right-wing factions of the United States and the United Kingdom have spent recent years making claims that transgender women — especially in public restrooms and competitive sports — threaten the safety of cisgender women.
But U.K.-based advocacy group TransLucent wanted to put those claims to the test.
A new study from the group gathered data from hundreds of public institutions in England, and found that, over the last three years, there have only been four complaints about trans women in women’s single-sex spaces.
The investigations specifically examined “whether cisgender women patients or service users had formally objected to sharing spaces with trans women.”
Data was analyzed from over a three-year period, across 382 public institutions. A follow-up survey also covered 2024 data from councils serving over 16.5 million people. Through it all, only those four formal complaints were found.
“Across local authority toilets, hospital wards, and domestic abuse refuges, the evidence demonstrates that political and media rhetoric about trans women threatening women in single-sex spaces is unsupported by actual complaints,” the report reads.
Two of the complaints the researchers did track ultimately came down to complaints about a bathroom policy, another was based on perception of a trans woman and did not confirm the person’s identity, and another incident was not categorized by authorities as “serious.”
A gender-neutral restroom sign. Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash
“With 382 public bodies reporting only four relevant complaints, the evidence is overwhelming: Trans women’s access to appropriate single-sex spaces is not creating documented safety or dignity problems in England’s major public services,” the report concludes.
“The numbers are clear: this is a manufactured controversy, not a documented crisis.”
While trans women still face discriminatory laws like bathroom bans, this study finds that cisgender women are not in danger, and the data does not point to anyone actually being disturbed by the presence of trans women in public spaces.
The moral of the story? TransLucent hopes this “empirical risk data” helps authorities understand that “same-sex” policies are not necessary and that “existing approaches to facility access are working effectively.”
Moreover, they hope to bust some myths about trans women.
“Behind the statistics are real people navigating daily life. Trans women using public toilets, accessing healthcare, or seeking refuge from domestic abuse are not engaged in political protest; they’re simply trying to live safely and with dignity,” TransLucent concluded in the investigation.
“Our FOI investigations demonstrate that their presence doesn’t generate ‘the wave of complaints’ that gender-critical and culture war rhetoric suggests. Instead, the data reveals quiet coexistence, where trans women use appropriate facilities without incident, and where services manage any concerns through existing individualized processes rather than blanket exclusions.”
A version of this article was originally published in The 2026 Feminist Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
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Header image by Sung Jin Cho on Unsplash
