On the morning of Saturday, May 24, three young activists brought a ladder to the Glasgow office of the EHRC and climbed up the building next door. They crawled their way along a ledge, before perching on a balcony above the street and unfurling a banner which read: “End segregation. Trans Liberation”. “Nobody was there when we arrived so everybody thinks we scaled the building, which unfortunately makes us sound a lot cooler than we are,” 17-year-old Ripley jokes.

Ripley is a member of Trans Kids Deserve Better Scotland, part of an activist network which, since launching in July 2024, has staged a series of creative protests against Britain’s wave of anti-trans legislation. This latest action was in response to interim guidance issued by the EHRC last month, which – if it becomes law – will effectively ban trans people from using bathrooms and other facilities in line with their gender identity.

The activists managed to stay on the balcony for around two hours before police officers opened the window from inside the building and began dragging them inside. According to Ripley, one of his fellow activists hit their head on the way in (at no point during their subsequent detention were they checked for head injuries), while he himself injured his shoulder. After informing the arresting officers of this, he says, they made sure he banged his shoulder on every door frame on the way down to the street (Police Scotland declined to comment on this allegation or any other).

A crowd had gathered outside to show support, at one point attempting to stop a van, which contained one of the activists, from departing. Footage taken at the scene suggests a heavy-handed police response. Ripley was charged with breach of the peace, taken to a nearby police station and processed quickly, but had to wait six hours in the pouring rain for his fellow activists to be released. ‘My friends told me they were left without loo roll, left without water to wash their hands. One of the activists on the ledge was denied two doses of heart medication,” he says.

Ripley has no regrets about taking a stand against the EHRC, which he believes is putting the lives of trans people at risk. “The EHRC guidance has left me feeling the most unsafe I’ve ever felt as a trans person,” he says. “I don’t feel safe using public toilets anymore. So part of my motivation is: if I’m feeling unsafe anyway, I might as well do something actually unsafe.”

Like most young trans people, Ripley has been directly impacted by the raft of anti-trans policies introduced in Britain in the last few years. In late 2023, shortly after his 16th birthday, he began being assessed by a Gender Identity Clinic in order to start taking testosterone. In January of this year, however, his doctor called him up in tears and told him that he wouldn’t be able to go ahead with the treatment – this was due to the Cass Review’s recommendation that hormone replacement therapy should not be given to anyone under the age of 18. “Things are awful,” he says, with a grim laugh. To be a young trans person in Britain today is to be confronted with a “complete and constant humiliation and demoralisation that knocks your confidence and sometimes even your will to live”.

During this bleak time, Ripley has found a powerful sense of community in Trans Kids Deserve Better. “Being around people who know exactly what I’m going through and who are willing to fight to make things better has been so fantastic. I don’t know where I would be without this group – I’ve made so many friends and I’ve got such a good support group around me that I would not have if I hadn’t joined this group,” he says, adding that they’re always looking for more trans kids.

If I’m feeling unsafe anyway, I might as well do something actually unsafe

The following week, Trans Kids Deserve Better staged a five-day-long occupation outside the EHRC’S London office. I join them on the Tuesday, and although it’s a wet, blustery evening in Vauxhall, the atmosphere is quite festive (someone turns up and distributes pizzas; people are chatting on pop-up picnic chairs). The walls around the building are covered in home-made posters, which range in tone from playful to defiant: “‘Do you know how annoying you’re being’ – my human rights lawyer sister”; “Trans and ADHD – in this economy?”; “We will exist in spite of your hate”. A huge banner reading “LISTEN TO US” is draped over the encampment. 

I sit down on the steps with 17-year-old Blue and 16-year-old Goose – like Ripley, these are their activist names, which everyone in Trans Kids Deserve Better uses. They both slept over the night before. “We have a layer system going on,” Blue explains. “There are two layers of cardboard, then yoga mats and sleeping bags. Surprisingly, it’s not that bad.” Goose didn’t have quite such a restful night. “My legs hurt, my shoulders hurt, my back hurts, my arm hurts,” he says, quite cheerfully. 

For the most part, the reaction from people who work inside the building – the EHRC is only one office among many – has been positive. “One person told us to fuck off and said we were taking the piss, but generally the sentiment seems to be supportive,” says Blue. “We’re kind of hoping to turn the rest of the building against the EHCR,” Goose adds.

As part of the occupation, Trans Kids Deserve Better have organised a programme of events, including a community dinner, a board game session, an open mic night and a closing ceremony. “It’s about community building and claiming spaces as our own,” says Goose. “The EHRC want to send trans people to third spaces [e.g unisex toilets], so I have a placard that says: ‘EHRC, like our third space? It’s your office. Xoxox’.”

That mischievous spirit is typical of Trans Kids Deserve Better. Since the group formed last year, it has scaled the offices of The Telegraph to unveil a banner reading “The Daily SMELLegraph” and egged Wes Streeting’s constituency office while wearing Easter Bunny masks. “At the end of the day, we are a bunch of children,” Blue says. “We try to stay whimsical and a bit playful.”  

“If it can be as close to a prank as possible, that’s always fun,” Goose agrees. But the anti-trans backlash has lately reached such a fever pitch that their approach has become more sombre: this May, for example, they left bloody hand-prints on the windows outside NHS HQ, to demand the release of a report into trans youth suicide which is being withheld. “It’s become harder to do the more playful actions when we’re dealing with so much awful shit, but I guess it’s important to keep up some of that [spirit],” he adds.

The EHRC is in the pocket of pressure groups who want to erase us completely from public life. We are here taking a stand against our erasure

Considering what they’re up against, it’s amazing that Trans Kids Deserve Better are capable of any positivity at all: this is a group of very young people taking on a powerful, influential and well-funded political movement. “What the EHRC is doing is blatantly harmful and it goes against their core principles as the defenders of the rights of people,” Blue thinks. She continues to give her opinion that “they’ve not actually listened to us. They’ve not considered the harm they’ll be doing with their actions, because they’re in the pockets of pressure groups like Sex Matters and the LGB Alliance, who want to erase us completely from public life. We are here taking a stand against our erasure.”

However successful the anti-trans lobby has been, the transphobia it represents is not a mainstream opinion, as Blue and Goose have discovered while leafleting and engaging with the public. “These groups have a disproportionate amount of influence, but they’re small,” says Goose. “As soon as people start speaking out, that’s when they lose their influence. We need to prove they’re not the majority.”

But it will take more than posting memes to turn the tide. “People – mainly cis people but also other trans masc and AFAB nonbinary people – need to be going on marches, supporting demos and donating to trans women’s fundraisers,” adds Goose “‘Protect the Dolls’ is an empty statement if you don’t actually do anything.” Trans Kids Deserve Better's courage, determination and ingenuity should be an inspiration to everyone.