WCC Supports Trans People
by laurencet
Following a unanimous vote at the 2025 AGM, the Women’s Classical Committee UK wishes to reiterate its unwavering support for trans and non-binary people. We are deeply concerned at the harmful implications of the Supreme Court Ruling of 16 April 2025, the subsequent EHRC guidance, and the unfolding implementation of this guidance across educational and government institutions during the past six months.
Since its inception in 2015, the WCC has been a trans-inclusive organisation, which welcomes people of all genders as members and participants in our events and initiatives. Two of our key stated aims as an organisation are:
- to support those who identify as women, non-binary people, and people of other marginalised genders in classics;
- and to raise the profile of the study of women, non-binary people, and people of other marginalised genders in antiquity and classical reception.
By ‘women’ we include, and have always included, all those who self-define as women, including (if they wish) those with complex gender identities which include ‘woman’, and those who experience oppression as women.
We reject the reduction of womanhood to a narrow definition of biology, and find this policing of gender identity and sexuality antithetical to our aims, both in our scholarship and in our activism.
We are shocked and saddened that trans and non-binary people in our field are facing ever more hostility and difficulty in going about their daily lives. We find the current direction of travel in our national institutions unacceptable, and we recognise the ever-growing barriers that many of our colleagues face as a result of living in a country which is increasingly hostile to their gender identity and expression.
We wish to restate our conviction that people of any gender expression or identity who support our aims are welcome to attend events, become members and to put themselves forward for office. We prioritise holding our events in spaces that are inclusive and do not police public spaces such as toilets and changing rooms.
We also encourage cis women to sign the ‘Not in Our Name’ petition, supported by the Good Law Project, which rejects the premise that trans women are a threat and calls on the women of the UK to stand together against discrimination (https://notinourname.org.uk).
As ever, we will continue to raise up the voices of our members, and all women, non-binary people and people of other marginalised genders in classics.
Signed,
WCC Steering Committee 2025
We thank Cheryl Morgan for her advice and guidance on this statement. “Nothing about us, without us.”