For what feels like an eternity, media outlets have been fervently thrashing out what they see as ‘both sides’ of the so-called ‘trans debate’. This ‘debate’ frequently involves aspects of law and society about which many fair-minded people might have concerns (or at least questions): the participation of trans women in sport; the inclusion of trans women in women-only services; the inclusion of trans men in women-only services; evidence-based care for gender-questioning children.
After years of toxicity, the recent UK Supreme Court case on the definition of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act, brought by grassroots women’s group For Women Scotland, was intended to bring clarity to such contentious issues. On 16 April, the Court ruled that “sex” referred to “biological sex” only, with the legal terms “man” and “women” not extending to trans people with gender recognition certificates in that sex.
Supreme Court ruling
Clarity or not, the practical implications of this ruling are potentially seismic, overturning 15 years of legal understanding and affecting UK trans and non-binary people in myriad ways.
For example, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) stated in its “interim update” following the ruling that trans people should no longer be admitted to the single-sex toilets, associations, hospital wards, and workplace facilities of their acquired gender, despite trans people having accessed these spaces for over a decade.
A key player in the Supreme Court case was human rights charity Sex Matters. Though only third-party interveners, the Court singled out the charity’s submissions as especially helpful (paragraph 35):
“We are particularly grateful to Ben Cooper KC for his written and oral submissions on behalf of Sex Matters, which gave focus and structure to the argument that ‘sex’, ‘man’ and ‘woman’ should be given a biological meaning, and who was able effectively to address the questions posed by members of the court.”
All about Sex Matters
So, who exactly are the people behind Sex Matters, and – beyond clarity in the Equality Act – what exactly do they want?
Sex Matters was established in 2021 by Maya Forstater, who secured an important legal win when her employment appeal tribunal established the protection of ‘gender critical’ beliefs under the UK’s Equality Act. This meant women (or men) who spoke out about the importance of ‘biological sex’ were no longer at risk of being fired from their jobs simply because of their beliefs – although the judge was also careful to emphasise that this did not provide a license to ‘misgender’, harass or otherwise discriminate in the expression of those beliefs. In the last few years, Sex Matters has become a prominent campaign group in the UK, frequently quoted in our mainstream media.
Sex Matters was delighted with the Supreme Court ruling. Just a few days later, the organisation sent a joint letter to the CEO of NHS England and the secretary for health and social care, Wes Streeting. The letter, written in light of the ruling and in conjunction with Transgender Trend, Genspect and another intervener in the case, LGB Alliance, calls for the planned NHS clinical trial of puberty blockers to be immediately halted.
The four co-authors present their rationale as follows:
“Children under the care of all gender services, both NHS and private, must now be told that they will never be able to access spaces or services for the opposite sex, no matter what legal or medical steps they take now or in the future.
“Passing as the opposite sex ceases to be a desirable goal to present to children when they will never be permitted to use spaces or services for the opposite sex, and may in future be restricted in employment in roles such as police officer or nurse.
“Instead it becomes a major, permanent social problem for those young people. We have always argued that it was unethical and a breach of human-rights principles to promise [young people] that they could intrude on other people’s privacy, safety and dignity … by using spaces for the opposite sex.”
Sex Matters’ rhetoric and strategy
In other words, according to Sex Matters and its associates, the Supreme Court ruling will prevent trans people from ever being accommodated in society, personally or professionally, in a way that matches their gender identities. In Sex Matters’ view, successful transition is therefore no longer desirable and, by their own reasoning, the ruling – which they of course fought for – now presents “a major, permanent social problem” to those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment ie anyone “proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign [their] sex”.
All this goes far beyond Sex Matters’ stated agenda of protecting single-sex spaces. Yet it has not come as a particular surprise to the trans community, who have been familiar with this type of rhetoric from Sex Matters for years.
In May 2022, Sex Matters’ director of advocacy Helen Joyce was interviewed by fellow gender critic Helen Staniland. During their conversation [time stamp 04.48], Joyce describes even happily transitioned people as a “huge problem to a sane world”, and advocates “reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition”, claiming “the fewer of those people there are, the better, in the sane world that I hope we will reach”.
These aren’t the kind of statements typically made by Sex Matters when approached for comment by the BBC, The Guardian, The Independentor The Times. Rather, in mainstream media interviews, Sex Matters’ spokespeople typically sound much more reasonable, sticking to whichever talking points are most likely to get the public on board.
It’s an effective strategy.
And it is a deliberate strategy, as candidly laid out by Joyce at a 2024 conference hosted by Genspect – one of the co-authors of the NHS England letter mentioned above. It is worth noting here that Genspect have been flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) for their connection to a network of organisations actively campaigning against LGBTQ+ rights and health care, through the promotion of anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience such as the widely criticised ‘rapid onset gender dysphoria’ theory. In 2024, SPLC added Genspect to their list of anti-LGBTQ+ “hate groups”.
In her speech, Joyce claims that “it’s all connected”, meaning if you start from a trans-related issue that people already have misgivings about, such as sports or child gender medicine, you can use that as “a rhetorical and argumentative device” to unravel the rest of “gender-identity ideology”.
The full transcript of Joyce’s speech is well worth reading, since it very much says the quiet part out loud when it comes to the extremes of the gender-critical movement. She likens gender-affirming care to “evil tooth fairy medicine”, while dismissing the fundamental concept of gender identity as an “idiotic idea”, and urging her audience to fight back against “trans bullshit”.
These views, remember, belong to the current director of advocacy of Sex Matters, who in 2022 was also happy to share a conference panel with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The ADF has been covered extensively by the SPLC and since 2016 has also been listed by them as an anti-LGBTQ+ “hate group”, due to (among other things) the ADF’s support for the coercive sterilisation of transgender Europeans.
Friends in high places
And yet despite these views and associations – or perhaps because until now they have hidden them well – Sex Matters are by no means a ‘fringe group’. Rather, they have friends in very high places.
Years before the Supreme Court ruling, Sex Matters were meeting with the EHRC behind closed doors to discuss a redefinition of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act to mean ‘biological sex’. The close ties between the two groups are further evidenced by the fact that EHRC Commissioner Akua Reindorf KC has fought three gender-critical legal cases on behalf of Sex Matters within just the last year.
Meanwhile, the government’s highly influential independent review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender recommends that “biological sex” be included in all administrative and in-service process data across health and care settings, police, courts and prison, in all research and data collection commissioned by government and quasi-governmental organisations, and in all general research, including clinical trials. This is despite the fact that in many settings ‘biological’ (or ‘birth’) sex is simply not relevant, and in some settings, such as healthcare, for trans patients it can actually be misleading. The review also recommends that trans people be banned from changing their NHS gender markers, a trans-inclusive policy that leading healthcare bodies have supported for years.
The review was written by Professor Alice Sullivan, a member of the advisory group for Sex Matters, with legal analysis by Tim Pitt-Payne, husband of Naomi Cunningham of Sex Matters and input from Murray Hunter Blackburn, policy analysts with direct ties to Sex Matters.
Amendments to the government’s data (use and access) bill tabled in both the House of Commons and House of Lords requiring “sex data” to specify “sex at birth” were raised following the lobbying of Sex Matters members, who have fought for years against the rights of trans people to update their sex markers on passports, driving licenses and NHS records.
The real threat trans people are facing
So, again: who are the people behind Sex Matters and what do they want?
Sex Matters is a powerful gender-critical organisation with explicit connections to organisations listed by the SPLC as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups, actively courted by our mainstream media, and influentially enmeshed within our parliament, legal system and human rights commission.
The organisation’s true agenda is, I believe, best described as ‘eliminationist’: seeking through legislative bans, data policies, and the curtailing of gender-affirming care to relegate trans people in life and law to their sex at birth and make transitioning so difficult, dangerous or pointless as to functionally eliminate trans people from public life and society.
When you understand this, you understand that ‘both sides’ of the trans debate is not trans people fighting for extra rights at the expense of others’. More and more, it is trans people fighting tooth and nail against well-funded, well-connected extremists, whose true agenda strikes at the heart of their dignity, rights and very existence.
