Updates • Page 4
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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.
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Data matters
The easiest way to ask about sex is to ask a simple question and expect a straightforward answer.
19th October 2023
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Sex Matters welcomes review of police politicisation
The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman KC MP, has written to Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Andy Cooke, 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Incitement to violence at Trans Pride
At Trans Pride in London on 8th July 2023, a speaker was seen addressing the crowd using a PA system. He said: “If you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face.” The speech was captured on video by Dazed, and re-posted on the Pride in London Instagram....
10th July 2023
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Sex Matters statement on LGB Alliance win
London – Today, the First Tier Tribunal general regulatory chamber (charity) rejected a challenge brought by trans lobby group Mermaids against the Charity Commission, seeking to have the charitable status of gay-rights organisation LGB Alliance removed. The Tribunal agreed LGB Alliance’s primary case that Mermaids did not have standing...
6th July 2023
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Trans guidance for schools goes round in circles
The long-awaited guidance from the Department for Education on how schools should respond to children with gender issues in school has been delayed again. Schools leaders desperately need guidance on setting rules that are feasible, clear and comply with the Equality Act. The Equality Act 2010 protects people in...
5th July 2023
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Statement on the People’s History Museum
Sex Matters is a human-rights organisation that campaigns for clarity on sex in law and policy. We were founded because of the widespread, shameless, unlawful discrimination faced by people who hold and express “gender critical” beliefs. On 25th June we held a board meeting in Manchester in the Coal...
30th June 2023
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Let the UN Special Rapporteur on VAWG deliver her mandate
Nearly 800 representatives of women’s-rights and human-rights organisations have sent a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council in support of Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls. It urges the United Nations to give Alsalem the protection and the facilities she needs...
23rd June 2023
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Fairness in sports governance: a Sex Matters webinar
Our director of advocacy, Helen Joyce, talked to Olympian Sharron Davies and campaigner Fiona McAnena on 28th June 2023 about the work they and others have been doing to reverse unfair policies that allow male athletes into female sporting events on the basis of self-declared “gender identity”. This webinar...
21st June 2023
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New guidance on trivial, malicious and irrational complaints
The College of Policing has published new Authorised Professional Practice (APP) guidance on ‘Responding to hate’, which states that non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) must not be recorded if the complaint is trivial, malicious or irrational. This follows on from the Court of Appeal’s judgment in the case of Harry Miller v...
19th June 2023
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Westminster Hall debate on our petition to make the Equality Act clear
Monday 12th June 2023 For the full official transcription of the debate, see Hansard. In the Chair, Judith Cummins began by reminding everyone that the petitions being debated indirectly related to two ongoing legal cases in the Scottish courts, but that reference to those would be allowed. Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower)...
13th June 2023
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Statement on the reference to suicide made during the Westminster Hall debate
Yesterday during the debate on the definition of sex in the Equality Act, Kirsty Blackman MP referred to a trans constituent she said had contacted her: “When they heard about biological sex being included in the Equality Act and this change being made, they said, ‘What hope is left?...
13th June 2023
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Make the Equality Act clear: easy-read version
This is the seventh in a series of blog posts in the run up to the debate on 12th June about clarifying the Equality Act. When governments consult on major legal changes or produce guidance on laws, they often produce easy-read versions. These use simple words and pictures to...
8th June 2023
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The Equality Act and human rights
This is the sixth in a series of blog posts in the run up to the debate on 12th June about clarifying the Equality Act. The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s letter to the government on our proposal to clarify the Equality Act points out that if the Equality...
7th June 2023
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Why the Equality Act should be sorted out with legislation
This is the fifth in a series of blog posts in the run up to the debate on 12th June about clarifying the Equality Act. Stonewall argues that clarifying the Equality Act is unnecessary. But the Equality Act is ambiguous, with legal experts unable to say with certainty whether...
5th June 2023
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Less than a third of Brits say transwomen should be allowed in female-only spaces and sports
Sex Matters has today released the findings from a representative national poll. It finds that less than one in three Britons believe that transwomen – men who identify as women – should be allowed in women’s sports, changing rooms and toilets, or to provide ‘female-only’ intimate care. The lack...
5th June 2023
