Updates • Page 7

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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.

Clarify the Equality Act: sign the petition

The Equality Act 2010 protects everyone’s rights and covers everything from schools to hospitals, pubs to sports, and everybody’s workplace. It includes protection against sex-discrimination, and allows single-sex services. But on 13th December a judge in Scotland pronounced that Equality Act does not recognise biological sex as a protected...

16th December 2022
The “gender-affirming” care model is built on sand

Our new report shows that the “gender-affirming” model of care for teenagers is based on evidence that falls apart under examination. Researchers and clinicians often argue that gender-questioning teenagers need puberty blockers and hormone treatment because their mental health will suffer without them. But all long-term studies showing mental-health...

15th December 2022
Scottish court rules that sex is about paperwork, not biology

This is the first in our series of posts about the Haldane judgment. A judgment handed down on 13th December in the Scottish court of session highlights the importance of a Sex Matters campaign to persuade the UK government to clarify the meaning of sex in the Equality Act 2010. SIGN...

13th December 2022
Why we have written to UCAS about data

The latest attempt to destroy data on sex by replacing it with data on self-declared “gender identity” is in the higher-education system. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), the national undergraduate admissions service that acts as gatekeeper to all university places, is planning to change an already-flawed question...

7th December 2022
Hadley Freeman interviewed on Woman’s Hour

On 5th December 2022, Hadley Freeman was interviewed by Emma Burnett on BBC Woman’s Hour. She talked about why she was leaving the Guardian, after 22 years of working for the paper. The audio with subtitles available on Youtube. We have added links to relevant media articles, and to...

7th December 2022
Petition to make the Equality Act clear – campaign webinar

Maya Forstater and Helen Joyce of Sex Matters were joined by campaigners @MsGiveZeroFox and @satiricole on 6th December 2022. Watch the recording For other Sex Matters webinars, see our YouTube channel. About the webinar Since our petition was launched in early November, more than 38,000 people have signed, calling...

29th November 2022
Our response to the NHS interim service specification consultation

The NHS’s public consultation regarding the interim service specification for youth gender services ends on 4th December. We would encourage people to respond, including parents, teachers, school leaders and clinicians. We have published our full response. Sex Matters joins Transgender Trend and the Gay Men’s Network in welcoming the broad direction...

29th November 2022
Mass harassment in HM Prisons and Probation Service

As reported in The Telegraph today, HM Prisons and Probation Service’s Pride in Prison and Probation (PiPP) staff network has circulated documents for Trans Awareness Week telling MoJ staff to recognise a series of words and phrases as “transphobic dogwhistles”. The PiPP is an official staff network, with a...

20th November 2022
Helen Joyce speaks at Caius College

On 25th October 2022, Sex Matters’ Director of Advocacy Helen Joyce spoke at an event at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, entitled “Criticising gender-identity ideology: what happens when speech is silenced”. This page documents the events surrounding the talk. Criticising gender-identity ideology: what happens when speech is silenced...

15th November 2022
Lib Dems revise “transphobia” definition

The Liberal Democrats have revised their definition of transphobia in the light of recent legal cases. The previous policy which drew on the work of “organisations such as Stonewall and TransActual UK”. But following advice from two KCs (one, from Karon Monaghan KC, has been published), it has now...

14th November 2022
Trans rights are human rights!

Sex Matters is a human-rights organisation. We believe that universal human rights form a powerful framework for thinking about how a diversity of freedoms can be respected, while protecting against harm and maintaining an open and prosperous society. It is sometimes argued that those who call for clarity on...

9th November 2022
Toilets Matter: a Sex Matters webinar

Maya Forstater and Helen Joyce of Sex Matters were joined by journalist Rose George, author of The Big Necessity, on 18th November 2022 in the run-up to World Toilet Day.

8th November 2022
Why are judges still calling rapists “she” in court?

The Equal Treatment Bench Book is a guide to judges on how to run an inclusive court room. But it is not based on the law, and it is leading judgments astray. Sex Matters has published a new report on the problems with the Equal Treatment Bench Book. In...

7th November 2022
Sex Matters welcomes headteachers’ guidance

Sex Matters offers a qualified welcome to the new Guidance for maintained schools and academies in England on provision for transgender pupils published by the Association of School and College Leaders, Chartered College of Teaching, Confederation of School Trusts (CST), Institute of School Business Leadership, National Association of Head...

7th November 2022
New guidance for barristers curtails freedom of speech and promotes discrimination

The Bar Standards Board has been holding a public consultation on its new guidance on the regulation of non-professional conduct use of social media by barristers. Barristers are bound by their duties “not to behave in a way which is likely to diminish the trust and confidence which the...

6th November 2022
Open letter to Minouche Shafik of the LSE

Members of the Open University Gender Critical Research Network have written to Baroness Minouche Shafik, Director of the London School of Economics, to ask for an independent review into the LSE’s Department of Gender Studies. Sex Matters joins them in calling on the LSE to launch an independent investigation...

6th November 2022
Petition champions

After just three days we were over a quarter of the way to the 100,000 signatures needed to prompt a parliamentary debate. We’ve now got more than 40,000 signatures. Thank you to everyone who has already signed the Make the Equality Act Clear Petition. Every signature helps! If everyone...

5th November 2022
Campaign update: Day 1

Yesterday we launched the Make the Equality Act Clear petition, calling on the government to clarify, with a legislative amendment, that sex means sex in the Equality Act 2010. It got an amazing response. In less than 24 hours, 15,000 people signed the petition, and the number is continuing...

3rd November 2022
We call for a “Cass Review for Education”

Sex Matters together with Bayswater Support Group, Fair Play For Women, LGB Alliance, Safe Schools Alliance and Transgender Trend have written to the new Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, to draw her attention to the problem of gender ideology being promoted in schools. We ask her to:...

1st November 2022
Sex Matters writes to the new Chair of Stonewall

Iain Anderson is Stonewall’s new Chair of Trustees. This morning he made his first public appearance, on the BBC. Laura Kuenssberg asked him about engaging with women who are “gender critical”, saying they are asking questions about the trans rights debate and “feel like they have been shut out...

30th October 2022
Is Sex Matters a feminist organisation?

The Sex Matters team is just back from a fantastic time at FiLiA, Europe’s largest feminist conference. But Sex Matters is not a feminist organisation. We simply subscribe to the radical notion that women are human beings, with full human rights. We also attended the LGB Alliance. But Sex...

27th October 2022
Sex Matters writes to MSPs

Tomorrow 27th October is the Stage 1 debate on the Gender Recognition Reform Bill by the Scottish Parliament. Sex Matters has written to MSPs and sent them a copy of our “Sex and the Law” booklet. Equality law remains an area which is reserved for UK wide legislation, yet...

26th October 2022
Don’t water down the schools guidance – a plea from a 14-year-old girl

“Cynthia”, 14, writes… I recently read in The Times that Ministers were seeking a “compromise” concerning the Department for Education’s long-awaited transgender schools’ guidance and, as a 14-year-old-girl in secondary school, to say I am furious is an understatement. It is absolutely vital that we – teenage girls who...

19th October 2022
Sex Matters launches survey

Sex Matters is launching a survey about being gender-critical at work in the UK. Please take the survey and share your experiences

17th October 2022
New media handbook on sex and gender

Sex Matters is publishing a handbook today, which aims to give journalists the confidence to write accurately, clearly and professionally about sex and gender. The past decade has seen a determined effort by transactivists and gender-identity lobby groups to make it impossible to talk about biological sex in a...

14th October 2022
Teenagers and gender identity

A trickle of teenagers, and especially girls, identifying out of their sex has become a torrent in recent years. Our new publication, part one of a series of three, is aimed at the parents of those teenagers. The authors, Matilda Gosling and Stella O’Malley, combine research expertise with practical professional...

10th October 2022
Being wrong about sex

By Naomi Cunningham, Sex Matters Chair

27th September 2022
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