Levi Pay

Levi Pay is a policy, strategy and higher education specialist with experience in a range of UK organisations. He joined the Scottish Parliament in 2002 as its first equalities manager. He has also worked in policy and communications roles in equality organisations, including the Commission for Racial Equality, the Equality Challenge Unit, and Stonewall. After moving into the higher education sector, he worked as director of student services in three UK universities – King’s College London, Northumbria University, and the University of Leeds. He now runs his own training and consultancy company, Plinth House, delivering training and consultancy support to the higher education sector and beyond. Much of the team’s work focuses on re-modelling support teams, helping people to feel confident when working with distressed people, and reviewing organisational policy and practice in areas such as safeguarding. He also sits on the advisory board of the Gender Dysphoria Alliance.

“Sex matters because, if we lose sight of the reality of biological sex, it is invariably women who lose out or are put at risk. The environments that concern me most are prisons and support services, such as rape crisis centres, where women are already vulnerable. I’m concerned about the ways in which we are destabilising children’s sense of their own sex.

“As someone who was a gender non-conforming child, I believe passionately that we should expand our notions of what it means, for example, to be a boy or a man – but not by throwing away the foundational reality of sex. Sex also matters greatly to trans people. The more we ignore sex in favour of affirming a subjective gender identity, the greater the risk that trans people will be unable to access the healthcare they need.”