Updates • Page 5

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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.

What’s wrong with WPATH version 8?

Guest post by James Esses, of Thoughtful Therapists On 6th September 2022, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) published its updated Standards of Care: Version 8. WPATH was founded in 1979 as a self-regulated membership body. Its stated purpose is to “promote evidence-based care, education, research, advocacy,...

20th September 2022
Reclaiming Kenwood Ladies’ Pond for women

Take action: if you have experience to share as a Ladies’ Pond user let us know using the survey. The Kenwood Ladies’ Pond on Hampstead Heath is an iconic open-air single-sex service in London that was changed to running on the basis of gender self-ID, without consideration for women...

29th August 2022
The Attorney General clarifies the law on single-sex services

On 10th August 2022 the Attorney General Suella Braverman gave a speech at the think-tank Policy Exchange. She noted that both public and private bodies are struggling to understand their obligations in relation to single-sex services and the protected characteristics of sex and gender reassignment. Her speech aimed to...

26th August 2022
NHS Confederation: leadership needed

“It is now — not the good times — where all that work you did on purpose and values matters. Like a winter coat, integrity is only tested in storm.” Matthew Taylor The NHS Confederation is the membership body for NHS services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its...

26th August 2022
Sex Matters writes to the NHS Confederation

The NHS Confederation is the membership body for NHS services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its members employ over 1.5 million staff, care for more than a million patients a day and control £150 billion of public expenditure. It recently sought bids for a piece of work to create:...

24th August 2022
Converting minds or bodies?

A riposte to the Good Law Project’s published advice on conversion therapy

16th August 2022
Sex and the law – share our short guide

What does intersex mean? Are you allowed to mention someone’s sex if they don’t want you to? Has someone with a gender recognition certificate changed their sex? Do you have the right to privacy when you’re taking your clothes off? Is it discrimination to keep male people out of...

4th August 2022
What Hilary Cass needs to tell schools: social transition is incompatible with safeguarding

On 28th July Dr Hilary Cass, the eminent paediatrician commissioned by the government to review paediatric gender-identity provision in the NHS, made an announcement that vindicated everyone who has criticised that provision, often at considerable personal cost. The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), England’s sole NHS clinic for under-18s...

29th July 2022
Employers must reconsider their policies and relationship with Stonewall after Allison Bailey’s victory

Allison Bailey has won her claims of direct belief discrimination and victimisation against Garden Court Chambers. The Employment Tribunal unanimously found that Miss Bailey was discriminated against and victimised by her barristers’ chambers on the basis of her gender-critical beliefs. Importantly, the judgment recognises that the whole of Allison Bailey’s...

27th July 2022
If you can’t say sex, how can you say sexual harassment?

An employment tribunal in Leeds has handed down judgment in a case involving catering staff at a Sheffield NHS Hospital Trust. A female employee reported that a male colleague had asked her to go into a private room and then had quipped about removing his underwear. Another reported having...

20th July 2022
Why do single-sex services matter?

In February 2022 Sex Matters undertook a survey to find out why single-sex services matter to people. The response was astonishing. In a little over a week we received over 7,000 replies, nine out of ten of them from women. Many included details about how the loss of everyday...

19th July 2022
Will the next Tory leader #RespectMySex?

Boris Johnson is on his way out, and the contest to decide who will replace him as prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party will begin shortly. At the time of writing, there are at least 15 potential contenders, but there is no obvious favourite, as there was...

8th July 2022
What does the Forstater judgment mean for employers?

On 6th July 2022 an employment tribunal found that Maya Forstater had been directly discriminated against by the Center for Global Development because of her beliefs. This follows on from the precedent-setting judgment of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in June 2021, which found that the “gender critical” belief “that...

8th July 2022
A win for free speech and sex-based rights

Sex Matters’ Executive Director, Maya Forstater, has won her employment tribunal case against her former employer. Here is her press statement: Maya Forstater, who took a claim for belief discrimination against her former employer, the Center for Global Development, has been vindicated by a ruling that she was unlawfully...

6th July 2022
Edward Lord recused from hearing gender-critical belief case

A recent hearing of the Employment Appeal Tribunal considered whether trans rights activist Edward Lord was a suitable person to hear a case of gender-critical belief discrimination. The case of Kristie Higgs v Farmor’s School concerns whether restrictions of the free-speech rights of critics of the transgender movement are...

5th July 2022
Information Commissioner strikes down secrecy of Stonewall scheme

The Information Commissioner has ordered the University of Oxford to disclose the scores and feedback it received from Stonewall as part of the lobby group’s controversial Workplace Equality Index scheme. Following a Freedom of Information appeal undertaken as part of the “Don’t Submit to Stonewall” campaign initiated by Legal...

1st July 2022
Male and female in the Equality Act

Last week Old Square Chambers hosted a seminar about single-sex services and the law. Barristers Nicola Newbegin and Robin Moira White argued that biological sex is something that “popped up” recently in relation to the Equality Act. The meaning of the protected characteristic of “sex”, they said, is ambiguous and...

21st June 2022
Who is Edward Lord?

Can a person who accuses everyone who disagrees with radical gender ideology of “transphobia” be the right person to hear a case about discrimination for gender-critical belief?

20th June 2022
Sex Matters response to “More in Common”

More in Common is an organisation that seeks to “build societies and communities that are “stronger, more united, and more resilient to the increasing threats of polarisation and social division”. Perhaps as a response to this challenge from Maya Forstater, it has applied its approach to the gender wars....

16th June 2022
What is conversion therapy?

Stella O’Malley of Genspect explains… “Gay conversion therapy” is the term given to attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation from gay to straight. This includes demeaning and painful practices such as electric shocks, forced watching of pornography and, in extreme cases, “corrective rape”. Such abhorrent practices are now...

15th June 2022
Sex self-ID in Scotland and transgender unemployment

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 was an extraordinary piece of legislation intended for an extraordinary group of people. It was passed to allow people who had transitioned under medical supervision to change the legal sex recorded on their birth certificate “for all purposes”. Now the Scottish Government is...

14th June 2022
Sex Matters briefing for conversion therapy debate

On Monday 13th June there will be a Westminster Hall debate on introducing “gender identity” into the planned government bill to ban gay conversion therapy. This is a debate following a public petition. It is not a government motion, but a government Minister will respond. This is Sex Matters’...

11th June 2022
We have been worthy of respect for a whole year!

A year ago today Maya Forstater won a critical judgment in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, establishing that gender-critical beliefs are “worthy of respect in a democratic society”. The judgment had many implications: Employers should not refuse to employ someone because they have expressed gender-critical views online. Organisations should recognise...

10th June 2022
“Conversion” therapy or just therapy?

On 23rd May 2022 an article appeared in the i news stating that Dr Az Hakeem was under investigation for attempting to “practise transgender conversion therapy”. Dr Az Hakeem is a psychiatrist now in private practice after more than 15 years working in the NHS. He is Fellow of...

8th June 2022
Sex realists gaining ground at Westminster

Debates on new laws in Parliament are one of the key battlefields between sex realists and sex denialists, with one side seeking clarity on sex, and the other seeking to conflate and confuse sex and gender identity. A long-term strategy of the sex-denial lobbyists has been to propose legislation seemingly...

31st May 2022
Is the Attorney General wrong about the law, or is Stonewall?

The Department for Education is developing new guidance for schools on how to accommodate children who identify as transgender. Attorney General Suella Braverman gave an interview which suggests that the guidance will be based on the principle that children who identify as transgender have not changed sex, and therefore...

29th May 2022
Attorney General clarifies the law for schools

In an interview with the Times, Suella Braverman said schools should treat children according to their sex, not their self-identified gender. Sex Matters welcomes Braverman’s comments, which align with Sex Matters’ guidance. The Department for Education is currently drawing up new guidance for schools. Braverman said: “Under-18s cannot get a...

27th May 2022
Reading University VC speaks up for academic freedom

On 25 April 2022 Dr Holly Lawford-Smith, of the University of Melbourne, gave a seminar at Reading University’s school of law. She analysed Australia’s recent legislation banning conversion therapy, and questioned the rationale for including gender identity alongside sexual orientation. “We champion freedom of expression but…” When local LGBTQ+ organisations learnt...

23rd May 2022
Is Scotland going to turn the UK into an identity-laundering haven?

As part of Sex Matters’ response to the Scottish Parliament consultation on GRA reform we raised security concerns. This has been reported in the Telegraph and the Times, and Maya Forstater had a Thunderer piece in the Times. Identity matters The involvement of the state with an individual’s identity...

18th May 2022
Has your MP fallen for a simple slogan?

Was your MP one of the ones who posed with a sign about banning conversion therapy? It is worth writing to them urgently. Make sure they hear the other side. Use our form to send them Dr Hilary Cass’s interim report and Sex Matters’ report on the “Ban Conversion...

16th May 2022
Highlights from Kirrin Medcalf’s evidence

From our live notes of the evidence of the Allison Bailey v Stonewall Equality Limited and Garden Court Chambers Case – cross-examination of Kirrin Medcalf, 10th May 2022 (all screenshots are from documents in the public domain). Background: Kirrin Medcalf had been employed by Stonewall as its head of...

16th May 2022
We’ve told the Scottish Parliament our views – have you?

We asked you to respond to the consultation on Scotland’s draft bill to reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and introduce self-ID, whether you’re in Scotland or not (because if legal sex change just by self-declaration is allowed in Scotland, it will make it easier for it to be come...

16th May 2022