Sex Matters at the Battle of Ideas

The three Sex Matters directors, Fiona McAnena, Maya Forstater and Helen Joyce, all spoke at the Battle of Ideas on Saturday 19th October. This is what they said. 

Fiona McAnena: “Gender Wars: no end in sight?”

I’m going to talk about three things:

• the success of the feminist movement
• biological reality
• male violence.

The first female driver of a London tube train was in 1978, because of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. Rape in marriage was first judged to be criminal in 1991. That’s within the lifetime of most people here. So finally that meant that a woman is a full human being with autonomy over her own body. Even a married woman. 

There was a lot still to do – female representation in politics for example. Still not done. 

But the principle was agreed. I thought the sex war was all over bar the shouting. In fact, there were even some special measures to try to close the gap, like women’s prizes in the arts and women’s scholarships.

Then there is biological reality. We can be intellectually equal, some women can be stronger than some men, maybe, but the reality is that on average men are bigger and stronger than women. That’s why we need separate sports categories for women. Because otherwise we’d almost never win. 

Don’t believe any of that nonsense about women closing the gap. One woman won an ultra marathon so now men can box against women? Nope. In boxing, the difference between male and female of the same weight – the sex difference – is equivalent to EIGHT weight classes. You can’t train your way out of that.

That’s biological reality. And that takes me to male violence, and in particular male sexual violence against women. I don’t know why most violence is committed by men, but it is. Of those prosecuted for violent crimes in the UK, 91% are men. For sexual crime, it’s 98%. Men are also victims, and yes #NotAllMen, but women have much less chance of fighting off a male attacker. So even though women avoid behaviours that put us at risk – gangs, fights, late-night walks, telling complete strangers who tell you to smile to f*** off – we are still at risk. For every reported male rape victim there are at least 10 female victims.

We have to remember this because it’s one reason single-sex spaces are standard across society, anywhere where strangers mix. This was never contested until recently. Yes, privacy and dignity matter too. Men mostly don’t want women walking in on them having a wee. Those new “gender-neutral with urinals” facilities: no-one likes them. But for women and girls single sex is even more important. 

And somehow that fundamental understanding is all being eroded now because of some men’s feelings. This is terrifying to me. I did not realise how much ground we had lost. Before we have even gained equality, we are losing territory on multiple fronts. And in effect we are being asked to make the case all over again for single-sex provision. Even in sport we’re expected to negotiate over how much we can get back: to compromise, to give up some of the territory that was ours by right, like being allowed to play sport in male-free teams and changing rooms. So in cricket, the settlement from the ECB is that top women can have faIrness but other women and girls cannot. This is not progress.

So could there be an end to the gender wars? What would that look like? The idea that flared briefly in the 90s, then faded. When there’s no need for gender pay-gap reporting, or women’s prizes, or all-women shortlists. And yet it seems to me that those modest successes achieved by feminism have been overtaken by a new threat. And now we are having to fight just to be allowed to define ourselves. 

The fight for women’s rights started with fighting to be heard. In this round of the gender wars, everyone listens to the men who claim to be women, while carefully not listening to the “other” women… almost as if they know the difference. The gains of feminism are being undone by infiltration rather than by direct challenge, and some women are helping the infiltrators.

We in the UK have put up a good fight. We fought off self-ID, twice. The conversation is out in the open, and that gives us a chance of resisting more bad legislation and changing bad policies. We’ve had a lot of gains lately. Three years ago, every sport in the UK except boxing allowed men into women’s events. Now, about half of women and girls will play sport knowing it’s fair for them – athletics, cycling and swimming are the most popular sports and they’ve all changed their rules. Plus a few more, and more to come. 

But I am sorry to say, that does not mean we are winning. It means we are regaining some lost ground but we are still way behind where we were 20 years ago. In the current battle, we in the UK have largely stemmed the losses. We have reversed a few. It feels as if the tide is turning. But across the USA and Canada, violent men are still being put in women’s prisons. Self-ID has just been introduced in Germany and in some Australian states, so the turning tide isn’t worldwide, yet.

Where does that leave us? My conclusion is that the gender wars will never be done, but we in the UK are leading the world in winning this round. That’s the best we can do, and we can be proud of that.

Maya Forstater: “Equality Law: freedom’s friend or foe?”

If anyone doesn’t know: I lost my job in 2019 for saying that sex is real and for the thoughtcrime of “misgendering.” In 2021 I won a case in the Employment Appeal Tribunal which said that the belief that sex is real, immutable and important is “worthy of respect in a democratic society”. And I co-founded Sex Matters as a human-rights charity which campaigns for clarity on sex in law and policy. To misquote George Orwell: 

“Freedom is the freedom to say that men are not women. If that is granted, all else follows.”

This panel asks: “Is it time to repeal, or at least amend, the Equality Act in order to protect freedom?” My answer is NO – except for a single-line amendment to sort out the definition of sex. 

Before you start talking about repealing a law you have to ask how it got there, and what the problem is that you are trying to solve.

In the Equality Act we have two different principles and sets of ideas that are in tension – this is a necessary tension.

• The idea of universal human rights – says everyone has these rights – freedom of expression, freedom of belief, freedom from torture, the right to privacy etc. These are individual and inalienable. 
• The protection of equality – it is not enough to simply say that everyone has these rights, if in practice some groups are excluded from exercising their rights. Historically this has been because they are not seen as fully human and entitled to the same rights – groups including black people, women, Jews, Catholics, gay people. Or because the world is not built for us: again women, pregnant women, old people, disabled people. We really do have different needs. We really are different in meaningful ways, and a world that is built for able-bodied men who have wives to look after their children will exclude many of us from full participation. Equality doesn’t mean sameness.

The Equality Act 2010 replaced and consolidated hundreds of years of laws which protect different groups who have faced discrimination – it calls these “protected characteristics”, such as age, race, sex, disability and so on – they each work differently and the law in each case is trying to solve something slightly different. 

This is why the Equality Act is 250 pages long and the European Convention is only about 15 pages long. The Equality Act basically says – don’t discriminate against people based on nine protected characteristics (that is one page). And then 250 pages of – “except in this situation, for this protected characteristic…”.

Belief-discrimination protection is the one that underpins my case, and which has been used to protect freedom of speech. The protected characteristic of belief (religious or philosophical) – is particularly odd (but all the characteristics are odd in their own way). But protection against belief discrimination is not new. The very first anti-discrimination acts in the UK related to belief: the Papists Act 1778, the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829 and the Religious Opinions Act 1846. These were later followed by laws to recognise and protect women’s rights, race, sexual orientation, disability and so on. 

Belief is odd for two main reasons:

• Beliefs and the practice of beliefs are often designed to help their adherents stick together. The clothes they wear and the things they eat and don’t eat are ways to signal their belief and to stay within a community. Belief systems are means by which people self-exclude from the mainstream. And they should be free to do that to a large extent, without being unfairly discriminated against. But there is a limit to how much they can demand that the rest of secular society changes to accommodate expression of religious (or non-religious) belief. 
• The content of beliefs is important for freedom of thought and expression – we want to be able to say to each other – sometimes vehemently – that we disagree with each other’s beliefs: that you are wrong, you are stupid; your belief in the Holy Trinity, or in Marxism, or in feminism, or what have you is wrong-headed. These kinds of conversations are why we are all here at the Battle of Ideas! But they are not necessarily appropriate at work.

The complications and exclusions in the Equality Act are aimed at workable solutions to the problem of stopping societyes excluding and harassing people because they are Jewish, or Muslim or gender-critical or what have you, but also not have any sacred idea that cannot be criticised. 

If the Equality Act were to be repealed, what would happen? Would we revert back to all the laws and case law the Equality Act replaced? That is 90% of the Equality Act, just in a messier and more confusing form. 

One thing we should recognise is that all anti-discrimination laws constrain freedom – they constrain your freedom to be racist, sexist or xenophobic, or just to pick and choose the people you associate with based on them being more like you. Not in your personal life, or your love life: you can be as prejudiced as you like and it is none of the state’s business. But in certain spheres, such as if you set up a business or an association, or if you provide services or employ people. 

So this is not new. The tensions are not avoidable. And if you are not a hardline libertarian you accept these constraints for the greater good, because you recognise that it is no good having liberty if you don’t have a job, if you can’t get served in a shop, or if your kids can’t get an education. And the important thing about the rule of law is that these protections apply equally. We all have protected characteristics. Your freedoms are my freedoms, your protections are my protections.

One of the scariest, stupidest things I hear from people when I talk about this (and people think this is a clever or middle-of-the-road statement): “You have freedom of speech, but not freedom from consequences.” Do you know who said that? Idi Amin. His exact words were: “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” This is not a liberal position! 

So on the whole I think the Equality Act is a good thing. Getting rid of the Equality Act strikes me as about as sensible as saying: “Let’s get rid of road traffic rules.” 

But there three things I do think we need to solve particular problems:

• Clarity on the protected characteristic of sex. Male and female should have their natural meaning. This may be decided by the Supreme Court in the For Women Scotland case next month, or it could be done by Parliament with a one-line amendment.
• Better guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, particularly on single-sex services.
• More court cases. I think we are going to need these. Ending up in court is not a lot of fun, but it is for the common good. That is part of how these tensions are worked out in a democratic society. 

Helen Joyce: “Academic freedom: still under threat”

Almost exactly two years ago, I was asked if I would come to talk at Caius College, Cambridge. An email went out to all staff and students from the Master and the Senior Tutor of the college, saying: 

“Freedom of expression is a fundamental principle which we wholeheartedly support. Individuals should be able to speak freely, within the law. Views should then be challenged by debate, key in academic freedom. This is the case no matter the subject or topic.”

Sounds like something that Baroness Claire Fox could have said as she introduced this event, doesn’t it? But it continues…

“However, on some issues which affect our community we cannot stay neutral… we do not condone or endorse views that Helen Joyce has expressed on transgender people, which we consider offensive, insulting and hateful to members of our community.

We have worked hard and we will continue to strive to make Caius an inclusive, diverse and welcoming home for our students, staff and Fellows. We feel events such as this do not contribute to this aim.”

They refused to allow my host, Arif Ahmed, to use the college email system to notify people of the event. A day beforehand, it was decided that the event was now to be ticketed, not first come first served, as planned. That sent us into a scramble and resulted in seats being block-booked by people who only wanted to stop other people listening. We had to set up an overflow room in order to allow people to come hours early to avoid the protesters and so walk-ins could take empty but booked seats. A breakaway group came in and banged on the doors so loudly that at times they drowned me out.

I wrote an open letter to the Master and Senior Tutor, and never got an answer. I invited them to come and tell me what I had said that was so terrible. They didn’t. And they continue to defame me. In no fewer than three recent issues of the Cambridge University magazine Varsity, one of them a valedictory interview with the Master, it is repeated that I’m transphobic and hateful. 

The Education Act of 1986 requires universities to take reasonably practicable steps to secure free speech, but there’s no remedy if they don’t. That’s what the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, or Hefosa, was supposed to change. Universities would have had to lodge free-speech protection plans with the Office for Students (OfS), and people – including visiting speakers – would be able to make complaints if they didn’t. OfS could, for example, have said that the university had to arrange another event for me. I think the senior leaders wouldn’t have behaved the way they did if they hadn’t felt they had impunity. 

The claim is that Hefosa would legitimise “hate speech”. But this isn’t accurate – Hefosa doesn’t change the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable speech. It’s just not true that it would be a “hate speech charter” or mean Holocaust denial on campus.

From this and other experiences, I’ve learned that most people really don’t care about free speech. They think that they will never urgently want to say something that other people are trying to stop them saying. A leftwing friend tells me that the word association with “free speech” in her circles is “racism”. Some people really seem to think the only reason someone might care about having freedom of speech is because they want to use the n-word.

Sami Berkoff, president of the Union of Jewish Students, claimed that Hefosa would legitimise antisemitism on campus. This is an extraordinary claim. There’s an immense amount of antisemitism currently, without Hefosa, that universities aren’t tackling, so the problem seems to me to be one of lack of will. Moreover, Jewish people need free speech too. Alongside gender-critical, or sex-realist, campaigners, I’d say the people currently least likely to have their free speech protected on campus are Zionists.

Berkoff wrote an article for The Times – she finished it with: “Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence.” That’s very close to a gag by former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who said his opponents had freedom of speech but not freedom after it. It’s amazing to me that people are willing to say this. Of course, freedom of speech doesn’t mean other people can’t disagree with you, argue against you, refuse to listen to you, and so on! But it precisely means freedom from certain consequences – like being shouted down, harassed, fired, discriminated against or cast into penury. 

Greg Lukianoff, the author of The Canceling of the American Mind, calls free speech the “eternally radical idea”. It’s always and everywhere despised by the powerful, who think it will be easier to silence opponents than to win them over. That the left has fallen out of love with free speech in recent years is the clearest possible sign of its cultural ascendancy.

Free speech doesn’t only protect underdogs; it protects societies from error. Two decades ago whistleblowers first revealed the outrages being perpetrated against children in gender clinics. Not until the publication in April of Dr Hilary Cass’s review of NHS child gender medicine were they vindicated. For many years, Cass said, researchers and healthcare providers had been too afraid to share their views or discuss alternative treatment models.

The organisers of the panel asked me to say something about how we can persuade students that free speech matters, and not to feel so threatened by it. Honestly, I think we can’t even start talking about culture change and equipping students to debate and think until we have strong protections for holding our talks. Until that happens we don’t even get out of the starting blocks. The students can shout outside – though not so loudly that we can’t be heard: that’s the heckler’s veto, not free speech. Or, better, they can come in and ask questions. But the university has to back event-holders to the hilt. 

Until Hefosa is passed – and to be honest for a long time afterwards – we are going to have to be provocative if we want to keep free speech alive. There are plenty of things I wouldn’t previously have bothered saying, or could easily enough have been persuaded to avoid saying in order to be polite. But now that we are being silenced I’m not feeling anything like as accommodating. If you don’t speak out now, then don’t expect to be able to for much longer.