Updates

For a weekly email listing the previous week’s updates, join our mailing list.

To see updates organised by topic, go to Where sex matters. Click on a tag at the end of any update to see other updates and resources with the same tag.

Will you support Sex Matters in 2024?

It has been a tumultuous year. Gender-critical campaigners in the UK have achieved major wins alongside setbacks and frustrations: Sex Matters is just one small organisation working with many others on these issues. Our focus is on how sex matters in law and policy. We work to clarify the law, to...

29th November 2023
An Epic crisis is unfolding in the NHS

Since October, several NHS trusts in England have been using new £450 million NHS patient-data software produced by US-based IT company Epic Systems. This has been programmed by local teams to record the “gender identity” of babies. For adults, the system has been programmed to register patients according to...

29th November 2023
This is male violence against women

Today is White Ribbon Day, the start of an annual 16 days of activism opposing violence against women. Politicians, celebrities and business leaders will make laudable declarations to “end violence by stopping the silence”. But many will remain silent, or even excuse or encourage the escalating campaign of intimidation,...

25th November 2023
The escalating campaign of intimidation and violence against gender-critical women

After nearly 15,000 people signed our letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Joanna Cherry KC MP asked Laura Farris, Minister for Victims and Safeguarding, if she would condemn the escalating campaign of violence and intimidation against women in the name of “trans rights”. The minister responded that she had read our letter...

24th November 2023
Sex-based language matters in healthcare – webinar

Thursday 30th November, 7.30pm to 8.30pm Our director of advocacy, Helen Joyce, will be talking to Karleen Gribble, an academic at Western Sydney University, and Elaine Miller, aka @GussieGrips, a physiotherapist and comedian, about the harmful trend to erase sex-based language when talking about women in health and social...

22nd November 2023
Putting remembrance in context

Today, 20th November, is Trans Day of Remembrance, which has been marked annually since 2011 and is intended to commemorate the deaths of trans-identified people caused by transphobia. It has rapidly become a fixture in transactivists’ campaigning calendar. Unevidenced claims about the outsize risks faced by trans people, the...

20th November 2023
“Please, please make it stop.”

On 9th November we delivered a letter to the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, calling on him to act to defend gender-critical women from threats, violence and police harassment. The letter was signed by nearly 15,000 people. More than 3,000 of them also added a personal comment to the letter, and...

15th November 2023
Guidance for service providers on single-sex services

In the light of the For Women Scotland judgment.

14th November 2023
Sex Matters delivers letter to Prime Minister

The Sex Matters team were joined by women’s rights activists to deliver the #DefendUs letter to 10 Downing Street today. The letter, signed by almost 15,000 people, asks the Prime Minister to take urgent action to halt the escalating campaign of violence and intimidation against women in the name...

9th November 2023
The ONS should admit its gender-identity question failed

The Office for National Statistics has released the final summary of its investigations into the quality of the England and Wales census data from the “gender identity” question. A clear assessment of the quality of the data is important, both because the data will be used to drive understanding,...

8th November 2023
No conversion therapy in the King’s speech

Sex Matters welcomes the news that the government has not committed to bringing forward a bill to ban “conversion therapy” in the King’s speech today. We think that any bill which criminalises forms of talking in relation to gender identity would: What next? We note that those who have...

7th November 2023
It’s time to act

Following the judgment in the For Women Scotland appeal, it is time for the government to act.

2nd November 2023
Court rules that GRC changes sex for the Equality Act

For Women Scotland’s appeal against the Haldane judgment that a GRC changes a person’s sex in relation to the Equality Act has been rejected. In the case of For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers CSIH 37 the Court of Session has handed down a judgment that: “a person...

1st November 2023
It’s time to ban modern conversion therapy

The campaign to ban “conversion therapy” focuses on historic abuses, like this one that happened in 1964: “During the appointments, I was taken to a dark room and strapped to a wooden chair. Doctors gave me painful electric shocks while images of women were projected on the wall in...

25th October 2023
Data matters

The easiest way to ask about sex is to ask a simple question and expect a straightforward answer.

19th October 2023
Sex matters in data collection webinar

On 24th October 2023, Sex Matters’ director of advocacy, Helen Joyce, talked with sociologists Michael Biggs and Lucinda Platt about the rights and wrongs of data collection, when it comes to sex and gender identity. Maya Forstater, executive director of Sex Matters introduced a new Sex Matters publication that sets...

17th October 2023
Sex Matters at FiLiA

The Sex Matters team had a fantastic time at the FiLiA conference in Glasgow from 13th to 15th October. Over 1,400 delegates from all over the world gathered to talk about women’s rights. Hundreds came to talk to us about the next stage of our campaign to clarify the...

17th October 2023
Sex matters in the hospitality industry

If you provide toilets to the public or to employees, take ten minutes to respond to the government’s consultation on its new building regulations for toilets before 8th October. Sex Matters has published guidance.

3rd October 2023
Sex Matters to intervene in For Women Scotland case

Sex Matters has been given permission, as a human-rights organisation, to intervene in the For Women Scotland case being heard by the Court of Session Inner House in Edinburgh on Wednesday 4th October. Our submission will urge the court to consider whether Lady Haldane’s interpretation of the meaning of...

2nd October 2023
What is new in the EHRC guidance?

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has today released updated technical guidance on the Equality Act for schools in England and in Scotland. We look at what has changed. Clearer definitions: no child under 18 can change sex The new guidance is more careful and precise about the legal...

22nd September 2023
Campaign update and appeal

Sex Matters is campaigning for the government to make a one-line change to the law to make clear that the protected characteristic of “sex” in the Equality Act means sex. This would make it easier to protect single-sex services, sports and associations. Read about the story so far, from...

22nd September 2023
Sex and gender: a contemporary reader

Two directors of Sex Matters, Michael Biggs and Emma Hilton, have contributed chapters to Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader, an academic book just published by Routledge and edited by Alice Sullivan (who is in Sex Matters’ advisory group) and Selina Todd. Three further chapters are contributed by members...

18th September 2023
EHRC to correct inaccurate schools guidance

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has written to us to confirm that it is undertaking a rapid review of its 2014 technical guidance for schools and intends to publish a revised version within the coming weeks, correcting the inaccuracies that have been highlighted: “We recognise that since that...

17th September 2023
Schools are in danger of breaking the law on sex and gender

The Department for Education’s new guidance for schools needs to be produced soon, and it needs to be aligned with the law. Today we publish the UK’s first review of the legal framework on sex and gender in education, and it shows that thousands of schools and colleges in...

4th September 2023
Dear Kemi: will you tackle the technical guidance?

Sex Matters has written to the Minister for Women and Equalities calling on her to ask the Equality and Human Rights Commission to urgently finish its review of the 2014 Technical Guidance For Schools (in England and Scotland) and make clear its conclusions. If the EHRC no longer believes...

3rd September 2023
Sex Matters welcomes review of police politicisation

The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman KC MP, has written to Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Andy Cook, to raise concerns about police involvement in politically contested matters including “gender identity”, critical race theory and climate activism. She has ordered a review of how much political involvement by the police “may...

2nd September 2023
Prime Minister, will you stand up to violence against women?

Today we have written to the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. Dear Prime Minister We ask you to take urgent action to halt an escalating campaign of violence and intimidation against women in the name of “trans rights”. Women are being threatened with social ostracism, loss of livelihood and physical...

1st September 2023
Sex Matters in Manchester

Sunday 10th September, 10am to 12.30pm “Woman means adult human female.” “Transwomen are men.” People who make statements such as these risk social ostracism and threats to their livelihood. But many are fighting back, because they believe that sex matters for women’s rights. Join Sex Matters for a morning...

31st August 2023
Getting to good schools guidance

The Secretary of State for Education is due to release guidance for schools in relation to “gender-questioning” children (who may have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment under the Equality Act). This was delayed at the end of last term as the Department for Education needed more time. In order...

30th August 2023
Stonewall chair speaks (and then recants)

Iain Anderson, chair of trustees for Stonewall, has given an extended interview to Sky News’s Beth Rigby. It is well worth watching the whole thing. In the interview Anderson seemed to be trying to distance the organisation from the extreme position it has taken, saying that he recognises that...

22nd July 2023
Why is the government getting in such a mess over the schools guidance?

It has been reported that Rishi Sunak is planning to delay issuing trans guidance for schools after the Attorney General and government lawyers warned that plans to strengthen it “would be unlawful”. What is it that the Attorney General thinks is unlawful? The sticking point is whether children “should...

19th July 2023
Schools guidance: the Education Secretary must act

The end of term is getting near, and Secretary of State for Education Gillian Keegan has still not handed in her homework. The critical question that the Department for Education appears to be stumped by is whether they should tell schools that they must consider “socially transitioning” some children,...

14th July 2023