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JK Rowling has tweeted support for a petition calling on the government to amend the Equality Act to make clear that men are male, and women are female. 

Rowling tweeted for international women’s day:

“If you’re concerned about the erosion of women’s rights in the UK – the right to single sex spaces like domestic violence refuges, rape crisis centres and prisons – sign the Sex Matters petition to make the Equality Act clear.”

The petition was started by Maya Forstater, the researcher who Rowling tweeted about in 2019 when she lost her job for saying that sex is real. Forstater said:

“JK Rowling’s support means everything. She is standing up for ordinary women who are still frightened to say this in public. 

“There are two sexes. Everyone knows that, and it shouldn’t take courage to say so. The law should be simple and clear. We are calling on the government to clarify the Equality Act to protect single-sex services, single-sex schools, sports and associations.”

The petition has also received support from athletes. 

Olympian Daley Thompson said: “I’ve just signed this and would like to say out loud. SEX is REAL.”

“We must protect women’s sport so women and girls at all levels have fair competition.” Amelia Strickler, two-time British shot-put champion.

Joan Smith author of books including Misogynies and Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists said: 

“Women know what sex means – and why it’s important. Please sign the petition to make the law clear as well.”

Broadcaster Dame Jenni Murray said:

“Equality Act protects women and trans people but only if it’s made clear that sex means biological sex. I’ve signed the petition demanding clarity.”

The Equality Act 2010 includes provisions on sex discrimination, and defines sex as being male or female. But there is confusion about whether someone who has legally transitioned by acquiring a gender-recognition certificate (which does not require any medical treatment or surgery) is considered to be the opposite sex for the purposes of the Equality Act.

The Equality Act allows for single-sex services, such as women’s refuges, saunas and gym changing-rooms, accommodation such as youth hostel dormitories, single-sex schools and associations like Girlguiding. It also permits female-only sports for safety and fairness. 

However, research by Sex Matters, a human rights organisation co-founded by Forstater, has found that confusion and uncertainty about the law means that many organisations are afraid of setting clear sex-based rules. 

• UK Athletics has said that, based on scientific evidence, it recommends that male athletes who identify as transwomen should be included in an “open” category, which would replace the current male category, while the women’s category should remain for female athletes (those born female) “so that they can continue to compete fairly”. However, UK Athletics is afraid that the Equality Act does not allow this arrangement, and has called for legislative change.
• Girlguiding says that roles such as unit leader, which are open only to women, can be held by “trans women”, and that these people are under no obligation to tell girls or parents that they are in fact male. Parents may be told that their daughters are being supervised on trips away by female leaders who are in fact biological males. 
• Primark has recently re-introduced “women-only” changing rooms, but has shied away from saying that this means female, and says that it will not ask for proof of sex if someone identifies as a woman. 
• Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre employs a male CEO who identifies as a woman. A Brighton rape crisis centre is currently being sued by a woman who found herself in a women-only counselling group with a man who identified as a woman. 
• The Prisons and Probation Service is considering whether it should allow prison officers with a gender-recognition certificate to strip-search prisoners, visitors and staff of the opposite biological sex. 

The government issued an initial response to the petition on 26 January saying:

“it is entirely acceptable for providers of single-sex services to take account of the biological sex of their service users. Where it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, the Equality Act 2010 is clear that service providers can exclude, modify or limit access for transgender people, even where they have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).“

Sex Matters has responded that the petition does not limited to the  operation of single-sex spaces or services but concerns the broader question of the definition of sex in the Equality Act. They are calling for the law to be made coherent and consistent, including in relation to sex discrimination, single-sex associations, schools and charities. 

Notes for editors

For further information and quotes, contact Maya Forstater

JK Rowling’s statement: https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1633401094414925825 

The petition is hosted by the UK Parliament official petition site https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/623243 

Further information on the petition: https://sex-matters.org/take-action/make-the-equality-act-clear/

Government response to the petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/623243?reveal_response=yes#response-threshold 

UK Athletics statement: http://www.uka.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/UKA-Trans-Position-Statement_FINAL-03.02.23.pdf 

Primark policy: https://corporate.primark.com/en-gb/a/news/corporate-news/important-changes-to-fitting-room-uk 

Edinburgh Rape Crisis

Sussex Rape Crisis case

Prisons and Probation Service 

More from Naomi Cunningham, chair of Sex Matters, on single-sex sports and the Equality Act:

About Sex Matters

Sex Matters is a human-rights organisation co-founded in 2021 by Maya Forstater, who is its director, to campaign for sex-based rights. It lobbies for clarity on sex in law and institutions; publishes research, guidance and analysis; supports and mobilises people to speak up; and holds organisations accountable.

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George Jamieson was born in 1935. At 18, in hospital for depression, he was diagnosed as “a constitutional homosexual who says he wants to become a woman”. He later became a female impersonator at the Carousel Nightclub in Paris, described as “the Mecca of every female impersonator in the world”. After a period of taking oestrogen, at 25 he underwent a “sex change operation” which consisted of “amputation of the testicles and most of the scrotum, and the construction of a so-called ’artificial vagina‘.” 

Six months later Jamieson met the aristocrat Captain Arthur Corbett, the third Baron Rowallan. Corbett, 40, was unhappily married, a father of four, and a transvestite who kept his habit – and his sexual liaisons with other women and with men – secret from his wife. Corbett’s cross-dressing was not as effective as Jamieson’s: he said of himself “I didn’t like what I saw. You want the fantasy to appear right. It utterly failed to appear right in my eyes.” On meeting Jameison, he said, he was mesmerised. “This was so much more than I could ever hope to be. […] It far outstripped any fantasy for myself.” 

Over the next three years Corbett became obsessed with Jamieson. They had an on-off relationship (but with no intimacy). With Corbett’s assistance, Jamieson changed his name to April Ashley and obtained a passport. “Attempts to persuade the superintendent registrar to change [her] birth certificate, however, failed.” The Ministry of National Insurance issued a woman’s insurance card, and now treated Ashley as a woman for national insurance purposes.

Ashley was described as living as and passing as a woman “more or less successfully”. Mr Justice Ormrod said:

“[Her] outward appearance, at first sight, was convincingly feminine, but on closer and longer examination in the witness box it was much less so. The voice, manner, gestures and attitude became increasingly reminiscent of the accomplished female impersonator.”

Following Corbett’s divorce from his first wife in 1963, the couple married in Gibraltar, under a “special licence”: there was no legal advice on the validity of the marriage. After the marriage they spent no more than 14 days together, and attempts at sexual intercourse were unsuccessful. As fantasy became reality Ashley and Corbett decided to call it off, and Corbett asked the court to declare that there had been no marriage, since Ashley was in fact a man. Ashley disagreed, saying he was a woman (and thus if the marriage ended in divorce he would be entitled to some of Corbett’s estate). The court considered medical evidence from a range of sources and decided that Ashley remained a man.

“It has been established that the respondent is not, and was not, a woman at the date of the ceremony of marriage, but was, at all times, a male.”

This was the first occasion on which a court in England has been called on to decide the sex of an individual (the technique of vagino-plasty had recently been invented). This case established features which establish a person’s sex in English Law that still stand, namely:

• chromosomes (having XX, XY or some other anomalous combination)
• gonads (having, or having had, testicles or ovaries)
• genitals and internal sex organs.

The judge and the medical experts considered the question of whether if these features are congruent but psychological factors are ‘abnormal’, the person should be classified as a case of inter-sex. Mr Justice Ormrod decided not.

Ormrod concluded:

“The respondent has been shown to have XY chromosomes and, therefore, to be of male chromosomal sex; to have had testicles prior to the operation and, therefore, to be of male gonadal sex; to have had male external genitalia without any evidence of internal or external female sex organs and, therefore, to be of male genital sex; and psychologically to be a transsexual.”

Commentary

The court used the term “gender” as meaning the sex which someone is treated as by society, but said that while this could be used for some purposes, there were others, such as marriage, in this case, where sex matters.

The judgment considers the difference between a transvestite and a transsexual, and also notes that areas of life and law can be classified into those in which the sex of the individuals concerned is irrelevant, relevant or an essential determinant of the nature of the relationship.

“Sex change operations” were still in their infancy and the court noted that “The purpose of these operations is, of course, to help relieve the patient’s symptoms and to assist in the management of their disorder; it is not to change their patient’s sex…”, further noting that the signed consent doctors required from their patients stated:

“’I … of … do consent to undergo the removal of the male genital organs and fashioning of an artificial vagina as explained to me by … (surgeon). I understand it will not alter my male sex and that it is being done to prevent deterioration in my mental health. […]

(Signature of Patient)’”

Contemporary comments from medical professionals show doubt about the therapeutic efficacy of these procedures and they were rarely recommended. 

Judgment

2nd February 1970: Corbett v Corbett (otherwise Ashley)

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