Helen Joyce joins Sex Matters as Director of Advocacy

Helen’s best-selling book has played a critical role in making the phenomenon of gender identity, and the political and policy debates around it, accessible and understandable for thousands of people. Last year Sex Matters supporters sponsored copies to be sent to every MP, MSP and Member of the Welsh Parliament. 

Helen has taken a leave of absence from her position as senior staff journalist at The Economist to join Sex Matters at this crucial stage in our development as an ambitious start-up human rights organisation, dedicated to bringing clarity on sex to law and and policy-making in the UK. 

Helen will be working together with Executive Director Maya Forstater to achieve our goals of informing public debate, influencing institutions and enabling people to take action, in order to create a world where: 

• the everyday truth about the two sexes can be articulated without stigma or confusion
• law and policy are clear about the sexes
• belief, and lack of belief, in gender identity are respected in the same way as any other belief systems in a secular, multicultural society
• protections for women are understood as important
• children and vulnerable people are protected, and not encouraged to believe that they should modify healthy bodies or that they can choose their sex.

“I’m enormously grateful to The Economist for its support while I wrote my book” says Helen Joyce, “and for giving me a leave of absence to work with Sex Matters. The coming year will be decisive in protecting sex-based rights, and I am delighted that I will be where I can be most effective in that fight. Immediate action is needed on many fronts: to protect single-sex spaces and women’s sports, to oppose gender-identity ideology in schools and to shine a light on the scandal unfolding in paediatric gender medicine.”

Maya Forstater, Executive Director of Sex Matters, says: “Sex Matters is now one year old and has proved itself an organisation that is worthy of respect. Having Helen join us is hugely exciting and enables us to shift up a gear. We will be bigger and better in 2022 and will develop practical tools to support more people to speak up effectively, whether they are CEOs, politicians or parents.”

“Helen’s is one of the most well-informed, authoritative and humane voices in this debate,” says Naomi Cunningham, Chair of Sex Matters.

“We’re completely thrilled that she is joining us. Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts.”

Sex Matters is hosting an event tonight in London, which will, for the first time, bring together many of “The Claimants” who have brought legal cases to protect the definition of sex and the human rights of everyone, whatever their sex or gender identity. 

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