Скачать или смотреть Trans Rights Are Human Rights: Creating Safe Coworking Spaces with Tash Koster-Thomas

“I’m not going to hide my tears right now. So often, people sit behind keyboards and write these comments, and they don’t see the impact of their words. And today I want you to see the impact.” - Tash Koster-Thomas.


Unreasonable Connection Going Live! London, February 2026.


🎟️ Tickets go on sale in January 2026.


The entire day is co-created by the coworking community builders on the co-creation waitlist.


Tash Koster-Thomas was delivering a paid webinar on LGBTQ+ allyship when the anonymous racist comments started scrolling across the screen.


Two hundred people watched as she broke down live on camera, choosing vulnerability over politeness, truth over comfort.


This wasn’t just a difficult moment. It was a perfect distillation of what Trans Awareness Week actually means in 2025 Britain—and why every coworking space owner needs to understand what’s happening right now.


Bernie sits down with Tash, equity and inclusion consultant and co-founder of Breaking the Distance, to unpack the brutal reality of the Supreme Court ruling that just made trans people legally vulnerable in British workplaces and public spaces.


You’ll hear how the law now allows employers to ask about someone’s “gender status.”


How the state’s own equality watchdog has redefined trans people’s right to exist as merely a “preference.”


And crucially, what coworking operators can do to create a genuine sanctuary when the government won’t.


This isn’t academic theory. This is survival economics in real time.


If you’ve ever wondered how to signal safety without performativity, or how to support marginalised communities when the law actively works against them, this conversation will show you exactly where to start.


The personal cost of this work is real. The political stakes couldn’t be higher.


And the practical steps forward are more straightforward than you might think.


Timeline Highlights


[00:04] Bernie’s announcement: Co-creating the London Coworking Assembly for February 2026—”you will design the curriculum or the agenda together”


[02:11] Tash’s mission statement: “Being a good human, actually. That’s what I’d like to be known for.”


[03:21] Trans Awareness Week scope: “It is global, but probably more prominent in the UK”


[04:16] The Supreme Court ruling explained: “Sex refers to being assigned female at birth, and are biological women. And therefore, if you’re a trans woman, you are not a biological woman.”


[06:45] The legal contradiction: “Just because you’re protected in this instance here, it still means you can be highly discriminated against.”


[07:48] The impact on coworking spaces: “We want to be a trans inclusive space and we welcome all, but now we feel like this ruling is a contradiction of that.”


[09:02] The intersex reality: “1.7% of our global population are intersex and fit into neither one of those binary categories”


[10:24] Fear as the weapon: “What happens is it creates fear more than anything”


[11:53] Clear signals matter: “If I see a space that says we are inclusive and it includes all women, trans and non-binary folk. That to me signals safe space.”


[13:57] The exclusion principle: “A safe space can’t always be a space that everybody comes to, because then by default, it stops being a safe space.”


[17:06] The moment of truth: “I’m not going to hide my tears right now. I want you to see the impact of these words.”


[19:24] Bernie’s visceral reaction: “I couldn’t believe you held it together.”


[21:04] The spotlight problem: “Trans community is facing the most amount of hate that it’s been facing all year because now it’s a spotlight”


[23:30] Allyship as consistency: “Allyship isn’t a thing that you can do as a performative thing. It has to be a consistent effort that you put in day in, day out.”


[24:32] Practical bathroom policy: “Put something up that says, We recognise that ideally we would be using gender-neutral toilets... you have the freedom to use whatever bathroom feels right for you.”


The Supreme Court Ruling Nobody Talks About


In April 2025, the UK Supreme Court ruled that “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act means biological sex only—not gender identity.


Most people missed this. Most coworking operators definitely missed this.


But Tash explains the brutal implications with surgical precision: trans people can now be legally questioned about their “gender status” at work and excluded from toilets matching their lived identity.


The state’s own equality watchdog calls this loss of dignity a mere “preference for things to be a certain way.”


This isn’t legal theory. It’s economic precarity by design. When you can’t safely use a workplace toilet, you can’t safely earn a living.


For coworking spaces, this creates an urgent choice: follow the government’s new permission to discriminate, or become a sanctuary that provides the rights the state just stripped away.


Why Safe Spaces Can’t Include Everyone


Tash cuts through the liberal fantasy that inclusio...