This week’s memo is a back-to-school special.

Over the summer I went to the archives at the Bishopsgate Institute in the City of London. I delved into the records of 20 years of behind-the-scenes lobbying by organisations such as GIRES, Press for Change, Mermaids and Stonewall as they juggled from transsexuals to transgender to trans, and from adults to children.

On 1st September the Department of Education’s new statutory guidance for schools and colleges in England, Keeping children safe in education (KCSIE), came into effect. It is a significant step in pushing back against these long-embedded language games.

It makes clear that schools must not allow pupils into toilets, changing rooms or residential accommodation designated for the opposite sex and that every child’s sex must be recorded accurately wherever sex is recorded. (Northern Ireland has a short, simple policy to the same effect; Scottish guidance has been updated following For Women Scotland but still has a long way to go; and there is no statutory guidance in Wales.)

Mermaids said of the KCSIE guidance: “Much of the language around trans children… is confusing and contradictory.” It isn’t as long as you recognise that children are boys or girls, and that it is not safe, fair or practical for a school to try to mislead staff or other pupils about what sex any child is.

Mermaids continues to promote the idea that “not all staff and pupils should know about a trans child or young person’s sex assigned at birth”. This attempt to wriggle around the guidance shows why the language needs to be absolutely clear.

At the beginning of the summer the Equality and Human Rights Commission released new draft technical guidance on the Equality Act for schools in England, Scotland and Wales which seems to want to rewind back to the past.

In the EHRC’s world, children are not “gender questioning” but “trans boys” and “trans girls”. A boy’s school might have a policy for admitting “trans boys” (girls), and a mixed school might deem it appropriate for a boy who identifies as a girl to be banished to a teachers’ changing room instead of being included in the boys’ changing room.

This gets the Equality Act backwards. The EHRC draft guidance promotes discrimination by telling schools that it is okay to affirm that children are not welcome in facilities for their own sex because they are perceived to have a protected characteristic.

If you have a child at school in England, you can send your school our model policy, which is in line with KSCIE and the Equality Act.

Your homework this week is to think about responding to the EHRC consultation before the 30th September deadline. You don’t need to be a lawyer, teacher or expert to respond (though all these perspectives are welcome). The EHRC also wants to hear from parents and young people.

Read our analysis of the EHRC technical guidance (and watch this week’s podcast). We will publish more about the consultation next week.

Find out more

EHRC technical schools guidance is not fit for purpose

Analysis of EHRC draft technical guidance for schools

Safeguarding and trans identification in schools

KCSIE and EHRC technical guidance

As the autumn term begins, Maya Forstater and Fiona McAnena discuss statutory safeguarding guidance, as well as draft technical guidance on equality law for schools from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

Disappointingly, the EHRC’s guidance is riddled with serious legal errors. Unless it is significantly revised, it will mislead schools about their legal duties and what they must do in order to treat all pupils fairly and safely.

This draft guidance is open for consultation until Wednesday 30th September. It’s an important opportunity for parents, teachers and others concerned about protecting children from gender ideology to ensure that the equality regulator hears what they have to say.

In other news

Hospital ask schoolboy, 13, if he is PREGNANT before allowing X-ray as ‘ridiculous gender nonsense’ exposed

“Of course that clinician knew that the patient was a boy.” - Fiona McAnena

Mark McLaughlin • The Sun

Parkrun fury as transgender runners keep winning women’s category

“The message to women and girls is this: your achievements don’t matter. We put these men’s feelings ahead of yours.” - Fiona McAnena

Richard Ashmore • Daily Express

Women demand transgender Parkrun competitors born male are barred from female event – including one who has ‘finished first 100 times’

“The law is clear: when a sporting event offers a female category, that is a category for women. It shouldn’t include some men.” - Fiona McAnena

Janet Murray, Nicholas Pyke • Daily Mail

Events

Banned in Belfast? The Free Speech Union and Genspect are discussing conversion therapy, free speech and the new Northern Ireland in Belfast on Friday 25th September. Find out more or buy a ticket now.

The Battle of Ideas Festival is on Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th October in London. Helen Joyce is speaking on conversion practices on the Sunday. Find out more and book using the code SEXMATTERS26 to get an extra 20% off.

If you’d like this memo in your inbox every Friday at 5pm, join our mailing list now.

Sign up

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The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is consulting on new technical guidance for schools in England, Scotland and Wales about how the Equality Act 2010 applies. The deadline for responses is Wednesday 30th September.

This is an update of guidance that the EHRC first produced in 2014 and revised in 2023. Schools will use this guidance to inform how they think about sex discrimination and harassment, and transgender identification, and to make decisions about policies on sport, toilets, changing rooms and potentially about “social transition”. The Scottish and Welsh governments will use it when updating their own schools guidance, and the Department for Education (DfE) will take it into account when it updates the statutory safeguarding guidance Keeping children safe in education (KCSIE) next year.

The guidance is required to be in line with the Equality Act 2010. We think it has serious flaws.

1. It is completely inadequate on sport, barely addressing the legal obligation of schools to ensure girls receive a fair, equal offer of sport and PE.

2. It steers schools towards treating children who identify as transgender differently from their peers. We think this is likely to amount to unlawful gender-reassignment discrimination against those children, as well as sex and belief discrimination against other children.

3. It encourages schools to allow children to make inappropriate choices,and to invite into their school and take advice from organisations that will undermine safeguarding and compliance with the Equality Act.

We have analysed the draft in detail.

Analysis of EHRC draft technical guidance for schools

Girls’ sport provision

There is no dedicated section on school sport, only a short passage on after-school clubs and a section on “competitive sport” which focuses on the section of the Equality Act that relates to treatment of competitors in “gender affected” sporting activities. Children taking part in physical education, PE, at school are not “competitors”; they are pupils.

The guidance should explain clearly how equality law applies to PE, which is a compulsory part of general education. It should emphasise that the Equality Act protects equal access to all aspects of education, including PE and school sport for girls and boys. As the charity Women in Sport says, offering only mixed sport will tend to exclude, discourage and disadvantage girls.

The focus on Section 195 as the one part of the Equality Act relevant to sport is misguided (as we have pointed out more generally in our report on how the Equality Act protects women and girls in sport, Getting back on track). It is not true that this is the only, or primary part of the Act in relation to all sporting activity – its focus is participation as a competitor – and focusing just on this provision can distract from applying the basic principles about sex discrimination in relation to specific duty bearers.

When schools are thinking about sport, the most important part of the Equality Act remains Section 85, the overall requirement not to discriminate against any pupil in the way it provides education or affords access to a benefit, facility or service, and not to subject them to any other detriment.

If a school doesn’t provide an equal programme of physical education, coaching, facilities and support for girls and boys, it will be committing sex discrimination.

The 2018 Court of Appeal ruling in Al Hijrah School v Ofsted held that although complete segregation of male and female pupils “for all lessons, breaks, school clubs and trips” would be sex discrimination, “it is not the mere fact of segregation which gives rise to discrimination… but rather it is the impact on the quality of education”. Limited sex separation in school, such as for PE lessons, that improves rather than harms the quality of education is not likely to be unlawful (this is also recognised in guidance published by the DfE in 2018).

The EHRC guidance says nothing about this standard legal basis for allowing single-sex PE lessons, or about the indirect discrimination that can be suffered by girls by only having mixed sports sessions. Instead it offers three small, individualised examples focused on ad hoc extracurricular activities – a girl removed from a primary-school football team, discounted cricket tickets given only to boys, and a girl asking to join an under-7s boys’ team. It frames sex discrimination in sport as uncertain and complicated, and as about who is allowed onto which team, rather than emphasising the basic responsibility to ensure girls receive equal opportunity, time, coaching, funding and facilities.

By over-weighting s.195 (and saying it is uncertain), and staying silent on indirect discrimination, the guidance risks schools coming away with the false understanding that separate and equal provision for girls in PE is legally risky, when the reverse is true: the real legal risk is not providing it.

Children who identify as LGB or T

The starting point in the Equality Act is simple: a child who has, or is thought to have, a protected characteristic should be treated in the same way as other comparable children, except where the act creates a specific, narrow exception.

A boy who identifies as transgender, non-binary or gender-questioning, or who is effeminate or gender non-conforming, is a boy who might be perceived as having the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. He may in fact be a child that grows up to realise he is gay, or he might grow up and live as a transsexual. Treating that child differently — encouraging his exclusion from boys’ sports and facilities, requiring other pupils and staff to treat him as a girl and excluding him from the ordinary rules that apply to boys (while not allowing him access to girls’ sports and facilities)— is not “inclusion”. As the statutory safeguarding guidance from the DfE notes, children who try to live “in stealth” (that is, to conceal their sex from those around them) are likely to approach puberty in a fearful and anxious state.

Excluding children from facilities and systems designed to keep them safe is itself a form of direct discrimination related to gender reassignment, whatever the intention behind it. Boys’ facilities, accommodation and sports should be safe and welcoming for all boys at the school, and girls’ facilities, accommodation and sports should be safe and welcoming for all girls.

This again is supported by the Al Hijrah ruling, which found that by applying inappropriate segregation based on a protected characteristic the school was discriminating by depriving children of the opportunity to socialise confidently “in preparation for personal, educational and work-related contexts on leaving the School”. Children who believe that it is inappropriate for them to be in same-sex facilities or sport, that they have a right to use opposite-sex ones and that it is “transphobia” to stop them, are not being prepared for the reality of personal, educational and work-related contexts outside school.

• The draft guidance loses sight of the basic principle at several points. It tells schools they should consider a “preferred pronoun” policy and decide that some pupils can change pronouns. There is no basis for this in the Equality Act, and safeguarding guidance (including KCSIE) warns that children who present as the opposite sex at school can be left more vulnerable, not less.

• It says a school should not require a child who identifies as transgender to use the correct changing room, calling this “unlikely to be justified”, and suggests a staff facility instead. This gets the law backwards: requiring a pupil to use the changing facility that is safe and suitable for their sex is not discrimination. But it is discrimination to treat the child’s use of their own sex’s facilities as inappropriate, and to move the child to an inferior, less safe space. Schools should make sure there is zero tolerance of bullying, not agree that children who identify as (or are perceived to be) LGB or T should not be in facilities for their sex.

• It suggests that a pupil could be excluded from boarding accommodation for their own sex on a “case by case” basis because of unspecified “welfare considerations”. Singling a child out for exclusion from accommodation because of a protected characteristic is discrimination.

• It even gives an example of a boys’ school having a policy of accepting “trans boys” without considering whether a school could do this safely and fairly.

Schools abdicating responsibility

In recent years it has been recognised that children can suffer from “adultification”, a bias leading to perceptions that some groups of children are more adult-like or “streetwise” that results in discriminatory treatment and weaker safeguarding. This issue has most frequently been identified in relation to race. But schools should also take care that they do not similarly apply weaker safeguarding protections to children who identify as (or are perceived to be) LGB or T, or allow such children to make decisions that are inappropriate for their age.

The guidance includes an example intended to illustrate the general point that it is good practice for a school to “consult with groups of pupils who share the protected characteristic in question” when considering developing a programme of positive action. But it does much more than this, encouraging schools to abdicate responsibility to children and to outside groups:

A secondary school has lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) pupils and pupils whose parents are LGBT. The school wants to ensure that any barriers to learning that these pupils are facing, connected to those protected characteristics, are solved by appropriate measures. The school decides to run a small consultation group with the pupils, which is facilitated with the help of a local LGBT charity, to understand their needs better.

The group reports several barriers affecting these pupils’ full participation in school life. These include homophobic and transphobic bullying, which is contributing to underachievement, school anxiety and avoidance, and which is putting some pupils at risk of dropping out.

The group make several suggestions for activities to address these barriers, alongside a whole-school approach to tackling homophobic and transphobic bullying.

This includes inviting external speakers who are LGBT role models and running various activities for LGBT history month. These steps do not involve less favourable treatment of any group sharing another protected characteristic, so such actions would be lawful without having to rely on the positive action provisions within the Act.

The group also suggests setting up a special mentor programme for LGBT pupils and offering LGBT pupils a chance to meet with other pupils who are tackling homophobia and transphobia in their schools. While this involves more favourable treatment of LGBT pupils, it is likely to be a proportionate means of achieving the school’s aims. This means it would be lawful under the Act’s positive action provisions.

Anyone with safeguarding training should recognise several risks in this example. Adults (and older teenagers) who wish to talk to vulnerable children about their sexual orientation and feelings about their bodies may not have the child’s best interests at heart, or may simply be out of their depth. Without careful safeguarding such groups can attract predators and radicalisation, and spread socially contagious feelings of dysphoria, anxiety and introspection. Telling children that it is “transphobic” not to allow them into opposite-sex facilities can cause school anxiety and avoidance. Transgender Trend has written about the problem with school LGBT clubs.

The other risk is that schools abdicate their responsibility to activist (or simply upset, confused and ill-advised) parents, who may themselves be under pressure from their children and from organisations promoting childhood transition. KCSIE expects that schools will negotiate some form of social transition via decisions involving the school and the child’s parents.

However, schools must not undertake direct discrimination even if a parent requests it. This includes having a policy that treats children differently and less safely, or in ways that are detrimental to their education, because they have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

As the Al Hijrah case reflects, it is well-established that the motive for discrimination is irrelevant: “parental choice… plainly cannot negate the statutory right of a child to be educated in a non-discriminatory manner as required by EA 2010.”

Children and their parents may have a strong belief that some children are “born in the wrong body” and that they would be happier if allowed to live as if they are the opposite sex. But a school acceding to these wishes is subjecting those children to misinformation about the law and depriving them of an opportunity to learn to socialise confidently “in preparation for personal, educational and work-related contexts on leaving the School” (the criteria established in the Al Hijrah case).

Baroness Hilary Cass, speaking in the House of Lords, gave an illustrative example of parental consent to treating a child in a way that, Transgender Trend notes, is clearly detrimental to their development:

I ask noble lords to consider the case of a child who I will call Jo who was a biological male, socially transitioned at two and a half by his parents. At eleven, she – which I say advisedly because the chances of her reverting to her biological gender is vanishingly remote – she has been in stealth and will not go to secondary school because she is so afraid of being outed in that environment. She’s now refusing to come out of her room except very rarely and she now has weak bones, not as a result of puberty blockers but through inactivity. I ask the noble lady the minister should her subsequent treatment be decided by politicians or by the clinicians who are looking after her?

What you can do

The consultation closes at 11.59pm on Wednesday 30th September. Before then:

1. Respond to the consultation. You don’t need to be a lawyer, a teacher, or an expert – the EHRC needs to hear detransitioners’ and parents’ perspectives, and perspectives on behalf of children, alongside the legal detail.

2. Focus on specifics. You might want to focus just on girls’ sport or just on the way the guidance treats “gender reassignment”. You don’t have to write from scratch – pick two or three of the points above (the missing sport section, the pronoun-policy paragraphs, the changing-room example, the boarding-school example) and explain in your own words why they’re wrong.

3. Say what good guidance would look like. The EHRC needs to hear not just “this is wrong,” but “this is what would be right”: that girls are entitled to equal sporting opportunity, and that a child with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment should be treated the same as other children of their own sex save for narrow exceptions.

Once this guidance is finalised, it will shape how schools operate for years. If you think schools need clarity that girls deserve a fair, equal offer in PE and sport, and that no child should be set up by well-meaning but legally wrong guidance to be treated exceptionally, unsafely, or unlawfully, now is the time to say so.

The consultation asks about different areas of school life. You can use the opportunity to raise the issues that matter most to you.

You might have concerns about:

• sex and gender reassignment — are they clearly distinguished?

• admissions — is the position on single-sex schools clear?

• uniform — can schools apply their uniform rules consistently?

• toilets and changing rooms — is the importance of single-sex facilities properly explained?

• boarding and residential trips — does the guidance put safeguarding first?

• sport — does it recognise the importance of girls’ sport and lawful single-sex provision?

• bullying and harassment — does it properly protect children from bullying without treating ordinary sex-based rules as harassment?

• pronouns and social transition — does the guidance distinguish legal requirements from school policy?

• positive action — does it explain how schools can address sex-based disadvantage?

What if you don’t know the law?

That’s okay. The consultation asks whether the EHRC’s guidance is clear and useful. If you find something confusing, say so.

The consultation is quite long. You don’t have to write a long response to every question. Where you have something useful to say, explain it briefly.

Read our full analysis

Sex Matters has identified 25 specific changes we think the EHRC should make. Our analysis looks at the relevant paragraphs of the guidance and explains the problems in detail. You can read the full Sex Matters analysis before completing the consultation.

You don’t need to reproduce our analysis, but it might spark thoughts when you are writing your response.

Analysis of EHRC draft technical guidance for schools

“You must be sick of talking about this.” That’s what Steve N. Allen said to me on the Free Speech Nation show on GB News on Sunday night. He was talking about the latest rebellion against the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s revised code of practice that had come into force on 5th August.

The fight to make the Equality Act clear was won when the Supreme Court gave judgment in favour of grassroots campaigners For Women Scotland. But it seems like every week brings a new report of formerly law-abiding organisations declaring that women who want male-free spaces for any reason are hateful and bigoted. They claim that the law and EHRC guidance are complicated and unworkable – but also that these are clear enough to be actively flouted, and that they plan to do just that.

Six London councils have vowed to disobey the law. So have trade unions representing millions of workers. Next month the TUC will vote on a motion to “oppose the EHRC code of practice”. Meanwhile students (and a handful of staff) at Oxford University have demanded that the university use “its money, prestige, and power” to resist the EHRC code and to challenge its interpretation of the law.

But look beyond the news stories highlighting such shameless grandstanding and you will see a more positive story, one of quiet compliance. Organisations amending flawed policies tend not to shout about it, but the shift from two years ago, before the Supreme Court judgment, is massive.

As our sports timeline shows, the judgment precipitated a speedy shift in sport policy in the UK, restoring fairness for women in football, netball, cricket and others within weeks. Many other organisations claimed they were waiting for the EHRC code before deciding what to do. This feeble excuse was frustrating, but when the code finally came into force it triggered another round of policy updates.

A particularly good example is clear guidance from UK Active, the industry body for the leisure sector. Published earlier this month, it tells gym and swimming-pool operators that single-sex changing rooms are best, and must be run lawfully.

As more and more organisations come into line, the fightback by transactivists is getting more desperate. We are seeing disinformation spread by activist organisations and a handful of trans-identifying men who claim expertise. Their websites and LinkedIn pages provide “advice” that is simply wrong. Any employer or service provider following this advice is surely doing so because it’s what they want to believe. Inevitably, more legal challenges will follow.

So, yes, I am sick of it. I imagine we all are. It’s infuriating that we have to keep talking about something that should have been settled long ago. But the more we talk, the more change we see, and it’s only going in the right direction. The incoherent position promoted by transactivists looks shakier by the day.

Find out more

The councils and unions flouting the law

We’ve updated our guide, Providing single-sex services with confidence.

Media coverage

Female union members deserve better | Fiona McAnena on Talk TV

Duncan Barkes • Talk TV

Oxford staff and students rebel over single-sex space rules

“It’s worrying that some of the UK’s brightest minds can’t get their heads around the simple fact that the EHRC doesn’t make the law, but merely advises organisations on how to follow it.” - Helen Joyce

Bill Curtis • The Times

Trade unions vow to fight against single-sex spaces

“The mad rush by unions to prioritise the feelings of trans-identifying men over the rights of women to safety and dignity in the workplace is a shocking scandal.” - Fiona McAnena

Francine Wolfisz • Daily Mail

Conversion Practices Bill threatens ethical therapy

Proposed new law will drive away therapists and criminalise responsible parents

In this week’s episode, Helen Joyce speaks to psychotherapist Stella O’Malley, founder and director of Genspect, about how the government’s plans to criminalise so-called “conversion practices” would harm families and therapists.

Good therapy requires open, trusting conversations, Stella points out. But the planned law risks making discussions about trans identification taboo, and driving therapists away from working with gender-distressed young people, who will be left without support. Stella also explains how conversion-practices bans elsewhere have silenced parents and prevented them from giving their children honest, loving guidance.

Watch Stella’s conversation with Canadian writer Peter Gajdics about surviving abusive conversion therapy and why he now believes conversion-therapy bans are a Trojan horse.

Catch up on our conversation with non-practising barrister Dennis Kavanagh on the flaws of the draft Conversion Practices Bill.

Read our briefing on the bill.

In other news

Conflicting ideas of fairness in women’s sports fuel transgender participation debate

“If you have male pattern development, you shouldn’t be in women’s sport … That’s the only way it can exist as the category.” Emma Hilton

Reuters • Devdiscourse

Amnesty has been captured by a pernicious form of progressivism

An editorial in The Times said that Amnesty International had strayed from its founding human-rights principles by branding Sex Matters, For Women Scotland and other organisations defending sex-based rights as “anti-rights”. It added that a worryingly naive worldview has taken...

The Times View • The Times

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Without it, we simply wouldn’t exist.

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Good therapy requires open, trusting conversations, Stella points out. But the planned law risks making discussions about trans identification taboo, and driving therapists away from working with gender-distressed young people, who will be left without support. Stella also explains how conversion-practices bans elsewhere have silenced parents and prevented them from giving their children honest, loving guidance.

Watch Stella’s conversation with Canadian writer Peter Gajdics about surviving abusive conversion therapy and why he now believes conversion-therapy bans are a Trojan horse.

Catch up on our conversation with non-practising barrister Dennis Kavanagh on the flaws of the draft Conversion Practices Bill.

Read our briefing on the bill.

Donate

A worldwide survey of attitudes to “LGBT” issues published in June shows that most people oppose discrimination against gay, bisexual and trans-identifying people, but oppose trans-identifying men in women’s sport. British respondents go further, treating gay rights and “trans rights” differently.

The market research company Ipsos has conducted the same survey across 26 countries since 2021, making it easy to compare countries and to see how attitudes have changed over the past five years. It mostly uses “LGBT” as a single category, though it asks separately about LGB and transgender discrimination, and about specific transgender demands, such as options beyond M and F on passports and funding for gender-related medical procedures.

Its findings suggest that in the UK at least, more people are distinguishing between lesbian, gay and bisexual people, on the one hand, and trans on the other – and between tolerance and support for LGBT people and the demands of the trans lobby. That may help shed light on why corporate sponsorship for annual Pride events is falling. The survey also shows lukewarm public support for corporate LGBT activism, with only 44 percent of respondents agreeing that companies and brands should be “actively promoting equality for LGBT people”.

This weekend’s Manchester Pride, for example, will be much more modest than previous years’ extravaganzas after the company that ran them went into voluntary liquidation owing more than £1 million. According to the UK Pride Organisers Network, three-quarters of more than 100 Pride organisers around the UK have seen corporate partnerships decline this year.

Widespread support for protection from discrimination

80 percent of British respondents, and 75 percent across all 26 countries, agreed that “lesbian, gay and bisexual people should be protected from discrimination in employment, housing, and access to businesses such as restaurants and stores”. Likewise, most agreed that transgender people should have the same protections from discrimination – 74 percent of British respondents, 73 percent across all 26 countries.

It’s no surprise that Turkey, a conservative Muslim country, shows the lowest acceptance of gay and transgender rights at 51 percent, while Thailand is consistently at the top.

Great Britain is generally near the top on gay, lesbian and bisexual acceptance, and at the bottom on trans demands such as access to female sport.

Ipsos says:

“Majorities in the 26 countries surveyed continue to support legal measures to prevent discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Meanwhile, support for same-sex marriage remains a global cornerstone of acceptance.

“Where we continue to find diverging views is on transgender access to single-sex facilities, healthcare provision and participation in sport.”

Britain is increasingly trans-sceptical

British respondents are strongly in favour of protection from discrimination for LGB and T, and slightly ahead of the global average. But when it comes to specific trans-related demands, like access to single-sex facilities and sport based on gender identity, British respondents are much less accepting.

Support for specific transgender demands is falling steadily

Support globally for laws to protect transgender people from discrimination has risen from a 55 percent average in 2021 to a 73 percent average in 2026, but this is not reflected in demands for special provision.

Ipsos says:

“We see widespread agreement that transgender individuals face discrimination, but divergence on policy-related matters such as access to single-sex facilities and participation in sports, highlighting ongoing societal debates. For instance, support for trans athletes competing based on their gender identity has dropped from 32 percent in 2021 to 22 percent in 2026, with opposition the dominant view in almost all countries, including historically supportive ones.”

Increasingly strong support for single-sex sport

Support for “transgender athletes competing based on the gender they identify with rather than the sex they were assigned at birth” averages 22 percent across all countries, a much lower level than for any other question in the survey. This support has fallen steadily since the survey began in 2021. Britain is near the bottom at 15 percent.

Watch an animation of changing support for transgender athletes competing based on gender identity.

Has growing awareness led to growing resistance?

The survey does not address awareness or understanding of the issues, or the media context. But it shows that British respondents distinguish between gay and trans demands. It may indicate, too, that they grasp the difference between “free from” and “free to”, with strong support for protections but very little support for people being permitted to enter opposite-sex provision based on identity.

It may be that increasing awareness of transgender demands in the UK, and perhaps the high profile of legal cases such as the Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland, has helped to clarify that being free to live as you wish has limits, where other people’s rights are affected.

Read the full LGBT+ Pride Report.

On 5th August, as new statutory guidance on single-sex services was finally published, the leaders of six London councils wrote an open letter to Minister for Women and Equalities Bridget Phillipson saying they did not intend to comply with the Equality Act’s provisions on single-sex spaces and services, as clarified by the Supreme Court last year and detailed in the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s Code of practice for services, public functions and associations.

Describing themselves as “a group of London boroughs with collectively some of the largest Trans+ communities anywhere in the UK”, the six councils – Lambeth, Hackney, Haringey, Lewisham, Southwark and Waltham Forest – wrote:

“We say this to you in no uncertain terms: Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary identities are fundamentally valid.

“It is simply unacceptable that the Code of Practice is harmful to the rights of trans people and will make their exclusion from public life more likely, not less. This will feel like an attack to the countless trans people in our communities who are simply trying to live their lives in safety and wish to be treated with respect.”

When local authorities fail to protect single-sex spaces, their residents suffer. They are responsible for social care, community safety, changing and toilet facilities in places like sports centres, gyms and parks that they own and run, and many state schools. They are also responsible for inspecting health and safety at local businesses.

Research published last year by Women’s Rights Network shows that sexual predation by men against women and children is more common in leisure centres with mixed-sex changing rooms or changing villages, which enable male voyeurism, exhibitionism and assault despite being described as “family friendly”. WRN concluded:

“The safest changing room is a single-sex changing room.”

Councils also play a vital role in safeguarding children through social services and their work with state schools. The six signatories of the open letter are among London’s most deprived boroughs: all have substantial populations suffering domestic violence, addiction and homelessness. Eligibility rules that permit trans-identifying men to access these services harm female users of domestic and homeless refuges and rape crisis services, who have nowhere else to turn.

The Women Only One Stop Hub (WOOSH) run by Haringey council, for example, offers various services including sexual-health advice, support for addiction and other mental and physical health issues and shelter from domestic abuse. But despite the name, WOOSH is not women only: the council describes it as a “safe space for all women, including cis and trans women”. A woman traumatised by male sexual violence who attends a women-only support group or counselling session cannot be sure she won’t be confronted by a man – and one, moreover, she will have to pretend she thinks is a woman. Gaslighting victims of male sexual violence in this manner isn’t just unlawful, it’s cruel.

In October 2025 Miranda Newsom, a 60-year-old resident of Southwark, encountered a trans-identifying man using the female changing room in Castle Gym, a council-run leisure centre. Rather than apologising to her and fixing its rules to make clear that no male people may use the female changing room, the council investigated her and then banned her. Sex Matters, Women’s Rights Network and local campaigners demonstrated against the suspension. Miranda has now been allowed back to the gym, but Southwark has not changed its policies. Instead, it has told her that she can use the accessible changing room instead of the women’s changing room if she doesn’t want to risk changing with men. She is continuing to challenge this policy.

Local authorities are required to follow the law as it is. But some seem to be putting party policy first and taking the opportunity to grandstand. Hackney, Lewisham and Waltham Forest have Green majorities. In Lambeth, Haringey and Southwark, no party has overall control but the Green Party is the largest. Its position is that the EHRC guidance should be withdrawn and the Equality Act reformed to bring in gender self-ID. Hackney’s mayor, a Green, has said that single-sex spaces and services in the borough will remain “trans inclusive” and that she has told council staff not to “police access”.

In contrast the Conservatives have stated that they support single-sex provisions based on biology. On 15th April 2026, the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said she had asked Conservative-run councils to “adopt and publish clear, lawful policies on single-sex spaces across the services they run and fund”.

An injury to one…

Eight unions, with a combined membership of 3.6 million, have also criticised the EHRC code of practice. After a meeting on 19th August with “trans, non-binary and gender diverse members”, Andrea Egen, Unison’s general secretary, said she would work with them to “change the law for legal gender recognition”. In January, when supporters of Miranda Newsom protested outside Castle Gym against Southwark’s policy of allowing trans-identifying men to use women’s changing rooms, Unison organised a counter-protest (pictured above).

But unions too must follow the Equality Act. Among other things that means not discriminating against their gender-critical members – and three live court cases suggest they are not taking this duty seriously.

The first to come to a hearing will be that of Nurse Sandie Peggie, who took NHS Fife to the employment tribunal last year for allowing a male colleague to use the women’s changing room. She is suing her union, the Royal College of Nursing, alleging that it failed to support her in her dispute with NHS Fife and “contributed to her mistreatment”. The hearing starts in September.

Stephanie Pratt, a biomedical scientist working in the NHS, is suing Unite, the largest union in the UK. She says Unite refused to support her when she raised concerns about self-ID policies in her workplace and shared materials portraying gender-critical people as bigoted.

And Fiona Macdonald, a retired civil servant, is suing the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents government employees, for not inviting her to its annual conference to be presented with an award she has received – she says because it disapproves of her openly expressing gender-critical beliefs.

The government says it is committed to the Equality Act as clarified by the Supreme Court. On 6th August Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham’s newly appointed health minister, told Times Radio that “if there are single-sex provisions, then that has to be on the basis of biological sex”. On 14th August Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities, said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that local authorities had been given a “clear direction as to what they need to do” by the EHRC guidance. She did not say, however, what the government planned to do if councils failed to step into line.

Most ordinary people, across the political spectrum, support the Supreme Court ruling that “sex” in the Equality Act means biology:

Having a council that respects the Equality Act and provides single-sex services shouldn’t be a postcode lottery. And people who have paid into their union for years shouldn’t face discrimination.

Related content

Sandie Peggie v NHS Fife and Beth Upton

Miranda Newsom, gym-goer

The Green Party manifesto – human rights: not for women

Maya with Professor Jo Phoenix at the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond

Even though the memo has been on holiday, I haven’t been. One of the things I have been working on is Sex Matters’ case against the City of London about the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond and Highgate Men’s Pond, two of the best-known single-sex services in the country.

The case will be heard in the High Court on 3rd and 4th November. Part of the City’s defence is that “trans inclusion” has been the rule since at least 2017. Before the Supreme Court put a stop to it, the City used to tell everyone that “trans inclusion” was required by the Equality Act, but it now admits that that was a misinterpretation of the law.

So I have spent a few lovely mornings swimming around in the dark, murky waters of the Ladies’ Pond – and several days delving into the records of the City’s even murkier decision-making, as well as looking back at the stories of some of the women who dived in headfirst to challenge it in creative ways.

You can read about what happened in 2017 and since on our website. It involves Edward Lord, a non-binary activist and city councillor; Gendered Intelligence; trans-identifying man Jane Fae of TransActual; Stonewall; several City of London committees, journalist Andrew Gilligan; the Sunday Times; IPSO, the press regulator; and indefatigable activists including Julia Long, Venice Allan, Janice Williams and an anonymous Mumsnetter who went undercover to a TRA conference – oh, and a lime-green mankini.

Our hearing has been a long time coming. We have argued that it is in the public interest for everyone to have clarity about the law, while the City has tried everything to stop the core question being answered by the court. It argued that our legal challenge was both “too early” (because it was carrying out an irrelevant consultation) and “too late” (because the initial decision to allow men into the Ladies’ Pond was made years ago). And if there was any case to answer, it argued, it was for individual women to bring personal claims, not for Sex Matters to challenge the policy itself.

Initially, the court agreed that we should not be granted permission. In November the decision to refuse us permission was overturned, meaning we were finally set to ask the High Court to rule definitively on whether any version of the City of London’s “trans inclusive” rules at the Hampstead Ponds is lawful.

Swimming in circles around a cold, dark pond where you can’t put your foot down to rest, and you don’t like to think what is at the bottom, is not for everyone. But this is more than a battle for a tiny oasis for a few hardy women in North London; the City of London Corporation is the governing body of the Square Mile, London’s financial centre, and is hugely influential. It is frightening just how easily its decision-making was captured, and how much work it has taken by so many women to get even this far towards winning it back.

Thank you to everyone who has spoken up about the ponds, and who continues to support our work on this case. We hope to see some of you in court!

Please donate

Women in Northern Ireland speak up

What a cancelled panel says about the discussion on women’s rights

In this week’s podcast, Fiona, Maya and Helen discuss the cancellation of a panel organised by Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland at the Féile an Phobail arts festival in Belfast.

They discuss how the event was successfully relocated, drawing greater public attention, and what the controversy reveals about the challenges facing gender-critical women.

They also examine media coverage of sex and gender issues, including recent updates to BBC reporting guidance and the frustrating way that even when gender-critical women are invited on broadcast shows, the discussion often stalls at disputes over “preferred pronouns” rather than progressing to substantive issues of women’s rights.

Watch the full panel discussion or read about it on our website.

In other news

Green fury after transgender woman appointed to party’s governing body as ‘female representative’

“Sex matters in politics, particularly when it comes to the representation of women. It’s completely inappropriate for a man who says he is a woman to take a female place in the Green Party’s leadership team in the east of... - Fiona McAnena

Fintan Starkey • GB News

Unions pledge to resist EHRC guidance on single-sex spaces

“The mad rush by unions to prioritise the feelings of trans-identifying men over the rights of women to safety and dignity in the workplace is a shocking scandal. Many of them have failed female members in their hour of need,... - Fiona McAnena

Bill Curtis • The Times

The British institutions defying the Supreme Court’s trans ruling

“That the City of London is willing to put its own reputation and respectability on the line rather than comply with a clear and simple law, and point people who don’t want a single-sex swim to the mixed pond, shows... - Maya Forstater

Jill Foster • The Telegraph

Ministers accused of ‘passing the buck’ over rebellious councils breaking toilet rules

“The Minister in charge of the department should not try to pass the buck to the EHRC in tackling councils that plan to make a mockery of the law.” - Maya Forstater

Sophia Sleigh • The Sun

Amnesty claims against Sex Matters ‘no isolated error’

“We hope that Amnesty will take responsibility for what is not simply a rogue briefing but a frequently and strongly expressed institutional view”. - Maya Forstater

Sanchez Manning • The Times

City giants tighten trans policies

Ali Lyon for City AM follows up on our Sex-based rights in the City report on the financial sector’s compliance failure, revealing that several major city firms have updated their policies on single-sex facilities since we published in May.

Ali Lyon • City AM

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Without it, we simply wouldn’t exist.

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They discuss how the event was successfully relocated, drawing greater public attention, and what the controversy reveals about the challenges facing gender-critical women.

They also examine media coverage of sex and gender issues, including recent updates to BBC reporting guidance and the frustrating way that even when gender-critical women are invited on broadcast shows, the discussion often stalls at disputes over “preferred pronouns” rather than progressing to substantive issues of women’s rights.

Watch the full panel discussion or read about it on our website.

Donate

BBC Radio Ulster covered the cancellation of the Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland’s panel planned for the Belfast arts festival, Féile an Phobail, several times in the fortnight running up to the event. But that coverage was far from balanced.

The cancellation was first reported on the BBC NI website on 21st July. The next day The Nolan Show, the station’s big morning show, hosted Nora Calder of WRN NI, opposed by a local councillor called Fiona Ferguson from People Before Profit, a small political party.

Speaking to stand-in presenter Chris Buckler, Calder did a good job of explaining what the panel was about and why cancelling it was wrong, but Buckler allowed Ferguson to say several defamatory and false things about members of the Sex Matters team and about gender-critical groups in general, without any challenge. Ferguson also repeated discredited, scaremongering claims about suicide among young people who identify as transgender.

Later that day Talkback had Ruth Paterson of WRN NI against a local solicitor called Sarah Creighton who claimed that “transgender people had lost a lot of rights” and implied that WRN had targeted Féile in order to engineer a legal case, and that gender-critical campaigners “do not want trans people to exist or to have rights”. She named Sex Matters and said: “I cannot debate with people who think that my family members do not have the right to exist.” The presenter did not challenge her hyperbole and she repeated it, calling us “people that have no respect”.

Nolan returned to the issue on 24th July, moderating a discussion about the legal issues in Féile’s cancellation, with Maya Forstater and Robin Moira White.

On 27th July the Belfast Telegraph ran an opinion column by Allison Morris which referred to “anti-trans” groups and said “enthusiastically parroting and trying to import Trumpian-style moral panic is as far removed from feminism as you can possibly get”. Morris slurred WRN NI as “aligned with right-wing, misogynist political agitators”, and falsely claimed they were “heavily funded”.

On 28th July, Talkback gave Helen Joyce the opportunity to respond to Allison Morris. In a startling pre-emptive attack, Morris declared that Joyce had a “nasty attitude”, interrupted her constantly and made many false claims.

She said: “You couldn’t get a sheet of paper between them [gender-critical feminists and their supporters] and the far right”, that our supporters were “the same people that were cheering on attacks on migrants” and that we believe “all trans women are deviants and sex offenders”. We do not, of course, just as we do not believe all men are. We merely point out that since no-one can reliably distinguish between the good and the bad until after the fact, all men must stay out of women’s single-sex spaces. She said our beliefs were “toxic”.

Following complaints to the BBC about Ferguson’s unchallenged falsehoods on Nolan on 22nd July, Fiona McAnena was given the opportunity to speak to the same presenter, Chris Buckler, one to one for The Nolan Show on 4th August. This was just before the WRN NI panel went ahead at a new venue, as reported on BBC NI television news that evening.

Buckler put it to McAnena that she really had said the things Ferguson had attributed to her, and showed no interest when she explained that the context was a violent protest against women’s rights in which women were physically attacked and injured. Instead, he challenged her on why campaigners like her couldn’t use a better tone. He asked for her thoughts on an interview he’d conducted with a trans-identifying young man, Tristan Morrow, and demanded to know why she did not use female pronouns for him.

What does this coverage show?

Neither The Nolan Show nor Talkback shied away from the issue, to their credit. They platformed a wide range of guests, including two from WRN NI and all three directors of Sex Matters. The freedom-of-speech aspect of the story was aired and debated pretty well.

But in all that coverage, the fundamental issue – women’s rights and the need to speak about how they are under threat – was not explored with any openness or curiosity from the journalists.

Gender-critical campaigners were dealt personal slurs about our attitude. We were accused of guilt by association. The audience was told we were “far-right”. Claims were made that were simply false: that we wanted genital inspections at the doors to public toilets, that we did not believe trans people existed, that we want them to have no rights. Most of our airtime was spent denying these lies and defending our work and our right to speak plainly. In almost every interview, a woman had to point out that we were trying to talk about women, but the interviewer kept talking about trans people.

As some on social media observed, Chris Buckler interviewing Fiona McAnena appeared to equate “hurty words from women with physical violence from men”. The expectation that women advocating for our rights must show verbal restraint seemed baked in. The extensive challenge on McAnena’s use of male pronouns for a gay man was not matched by any challenge to the young man himself. He was handled with kid gloves, and was not asked why he believes he is a woman now, or what that means. As a vulnerable young man, perhaps Morrow should not have been put in that position at all.

The result was a fortnight of coverage in which the default assumption was that the campaigning women are intolerant of trans people, who themselves are harmless and vulnerable. The standard set for us was not truth and impartiality but a demand for concessions on our use of language and a focus on the needs of trans-identifying people.

The idea of “respectful debate” — meaning that trans-identifying men must be accorded female pronouns — was ever-present. The implication is that women who use accurate language have lost the right to be heard.

This shows how far we still have to go to reset the norm on something that many of us thought was settled years ago: that women and girls need male-free spaces and services, and that it is perfectly acceptable to say so.

What did listeners make of it?

Both Nolan and Talkback take calls from listeners. The producers select who gets on air, but in Northern Ireland there is always a majority in favour of sex-based reality. Among politicians, the issue has a sectarian bias along the same left-right axis as in other Western democracies, but with the addition of the local tribal politics of Republican (left/Catholic/green) versus Unionist (right/Protestant/orange). This is largely absent among callers to the shows.

People in Northern Ireland are the same as everyone else on this issue. They know there are only two sexes and they know about male violence. A poll by the Belfast Telegraph showed strong support for the Supreme Court judgment in the For Women Scotland case, supporting the point Helen Joyce made to Allison Morris that most people across the political spectrum hold sex-realist views.

What next in Northern Ireland?

The Equality Commission of Northern Ireland (ECNI) has applied to the NI high court to determine how it should interpret Northern Ireland’s equality laws in light of the decision in For Women Scotland. Both WRN and Good Law Project (GLP) have filed cases against the ECNI. WRN is challenging ECNI’s failure to issue guidance, while GLP is challenging an interim statement made by ECNI and later withdrawn. Hearings on all three cases are scheduled for September and November. The September hearing relates to procedural matters. The November hearing will determine whether leave should be given to proceed. If given approval to proceed, a court hearing to determine whether the definition of sex in Northern Ireland's sex-discrimination law is the same as in the rest of the UK should be scheduled for some time in 2027. Sex Matters has been granted leave to intervene in the ECNI case.

Related content

Speaking up for respect, rights and reality in Northern Ireland

Letter to Féile an Phobail

When will the BBC face up to the truth?

When Belfast’s publicly funded arts festival, Féile an Phobail, decided to cancel a panel organised by the community group Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland, it reckoned without the strength, resilience and fury of rebellious women.

Refused both a spot at on the festival programme at St Mary’s College on the Falls Road and a meeting space in the Stormont Parliament, and falsely slurred as being “aligned with right wing, misogynist political agitators”, the group bounced back and found its own venue at the last minute.

The fringe meeting not only went ahead and sold out, but it was one of the most talked-about events of the festival, breaking through to Radio Ulster and the BBC News, and drawing commentary from the head of the Equality Commission of Northern Ireland (ECNI), Geraldine McGahey, who called for respectful public debate and respect for legal protections against belief discrimination.

The event took place on 4th August 2026, in a room packed with local women and a few men, as well as Maya Forstater and Helen Joyce from the Sex Matters team, women from Scotland who travelled to show solidarity with the women of Northern Ireland, and other visitors including Róisín Michaux from Brussels. Catherine McGinty, a journalist with The Derry News, moderated the event.

Each of the five women on the panel spoke movingly and passionately about why and how they are holding the line for sex-based rights for women and girls in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the UK and Europe, and about the attempts to subdue them and why they refused to be quiet.

Nora Calder of WRN NI introduced the organisation. “We are your mothers, your sisters, your daughters, your friends…,” she said. “Those of us who speak publicly do so on behalf of all the many women who cannot.”

She keeps “her toaster in the cupboard”, she said (a reference to the TV show The Derry Girls – it signifies Protestantism), but added that this issue transcends Northern Ireland’s sectarian divisions. “This is not a Green or Orange issue. WRN NI is non-partisan, with women from all parties and political allegiances, all backgrounds and races and all ages.” To warm applause, she added: “Attempts have been made to silence us – we won’t be silenced.”

Nora gave a shout-out to Sara Morrison, whose case, though unsuccessful at first instance, was the first time the Fair Employment Tribunal in Northern Ireland accepted that “gender critical” beliefs are protected as political opinion for the purpose of Northern Ireland’s equality laws, which differ somewhat from those in the rest of the UK.

Daniella Loughrey from Gaels for Fair Play, a group of grassroots players, coaches, volunteers and parents seeking fairness for women and girls in Gaelic games, spoke next. “It’s hard to believe that we are still arguing that men and boys should stick to their own sex category when it comes to sport but on we go,” she said. She spoke about female players who have been injured by men allowed into the women’s game, and who have too little faith in the sports associations to make a complaint. “The sad consequence,” she said, “is not only dangerous injuries but also that females will self-exclude.”

This theme of fear of exposure was even more darkly explained by the next speaker, Sorcha Nic Lochlainn from The Countess, a grassroots group from the Republic of Ireland. It was set up in 2019 to focus attention on the conflict of rights and child-safeguarding issues caused by Ireland’s Gender Recognition Act 2015, which passed without public debate or political scrutiny. For the past decade, any man in the Republic who says he’s a woman can apply for a gender-recognition certificate, change the sex on his birth certificate, count as a woman for all legal and administrative purposes and access women’s spaces by right.

This includes prisons. In the sole standalone women’s prison in the Republic of Ireland, in Limerick, Barbie Kardashian – a violent and sexually abusive man – was locked up with women from 2022 to 2025. The dogma that people are men or women according to what they say isn’t grassroots, but enforced from the top down, Sorcha said, and results in women being totally silenced: required to lower their boundaries and demonised if they protest.

The next speaker was Marianne Driessen, who had travelled from her home in the Netherlands. She is part of Athena Forum, which advocates for sex-based right in the EU and Council of Europe. “The EU continues to find new implements to enforce gender ideology,” she said, “and one of the most profoundly affected fields is education, where it’s made its way into teaching materials for children as young as four.”

The final speaker was Sex Matters’ director of campaigns, Fiona McAnena, who was born in Derry. She spoke about her mother Josie, who had trained as a teacher at St Mary’s College (the venue for the cancelled talk), and gone on to become a headteacher while raising five children. “If she’d been born three years sooner she couldn’t have done that because of the ‘marriage bar’,” Fiona explained: until 1959 Catholic schools in Northern Ireland required female teachers to resign upon marriage. (The civil service did the same until the early 1970s.) “No one ever said of the marriage bar: ‘But how will we know who’s female?’,” Fiona pointed out. “Women couldn’t identify out of it. As far as I know, no one ever identified into it.”

This sort of sex discrimination is now thankfully outlawed, Fiona said, but the law also recognises that sometimes what’s fair or safe is to treat men and women differently or separately. She expressed her fury that single-sex spaces have become a negotiation. Saying that a space or service excludes all men “isn’t branding ‘all men’ as predators,” she said. “It’s ‘all men’ because it’s some men and we can’t tell which ones.”

Most men understand this perfectly well, and don’t object that being kept out of women’s spaces is some sort of insult, Fiona said. “They understand and accept the social contract.The problem is that if anyone can claim to be a woman then any man, even the wrong ’uns, can access women’s private spaces, single-sex services and sport by claiming to be trans. It’s not opening the door to a small number of trans people – it’s opening the door to all men. So, for the sake of 51% of the population, the boundaries must be based on sex, not identity.”

After the event the Sex Matters team went to meet our Northern Irish lawyers to discuss our prospects for challenging Féile’s belief discrimination in cancelling the panel.

We also talked about the next steps in judicial-review proceedings being brought by the ECNI, in which the regulator is asking the court to clarify how equality and related laws in Northern Ireland should be interpreted following the For Women Scotland judgment and in light of Article 2 of the Windsor Framework, which requires there to be no reduction in human rights and equality protections in Northern Ireland as a result of Brexit.

This case is dragging on slowly, and costing more public money. And when you focus on women’s rights, rather than the demands of men who wish they were women, it’s hard to understand why. As Nora Calder put it succinctly during the panel, it makes no sense to talk about people losing the right to access opposite-sex spaces, services and sports. This was never a right in the first place.

Helen, Maya and Fiona outside the High Court on 16th June before the hearing

The High Court has ruled against Sex Matters in our case against the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and British Transport Police (BTP) over their “consensual” searching policies.

It isn’t over yet.

We think that the judgment is wrong in law and we are applying for permission to appeal.

It’s been a long road to get here and we aren’t giving up.

The answer to whether male officers should be allowed to strip-search women, or female officers asked to strip-search male detainees, should be clear, simple and obvious. Whatever their pronouns, whatever they like to wear, whatever hormones or cosmetic surgery they may have had, it should be No.

Women have rights. But those in charge have again and again put trans-identifying men’s feelings and desires above the safety, dignity and autonomy of women.

In 2004 the House of Lords (which was then the Supreme Court) ruled in the case of A v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police that a man who “has done everything that she possibly could do to align her physical identity with her psychological identity” should be allowed to forcibly strip-search women. Lady Hale said that it would not be “rational” for women to object.

In 2012 the LGBTQ+ lead for the Association of Chief Police Officers wrote to all chief constables sharing advice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission which drew on that case and said that what mattered for lawful searching was a person’s “legal gender”. In 2019 the next LGBTQ+ lead wrote to all chief constables encouraging them to permit officers to search detainees “without proof of their legal sex status”.

In July 2021 Standing for Women produced the first report challenging this practice. The NPCC doubled down. It got “independent legal advice” and issued guidance that trans officers be permitted to strip-search and even intimately search suspects of the opposite sex. ​The policy was adopted and implemented by the majority of police forces across the country.

By January 2024 the tide of public opinion had turned, so that when Women’s Rights Network (WRN) produced a report in January 2024 calling this “state sanctioned sexual assault” the government and police chiefs paid attention. The policy was withdrawn. But the policing minister said that gender-recognition certificates should allow cross-sex searching. Together with WRN and Fair Play For Women, we wrote to him and explained that this is not the law, and it is not fair or safe for women.

The NPCC doubled down again. In April 2024 it told us it was going to be consulting on new searching guidance and that it had an independent barrister advising on the law. This turned out to be trans-identifying male barrister Robin Moira White, who had advised on the policy the NPCC had just had to withdraw. I wrote to Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, pointing out that White is an activist in gender-identity politics. I sent screenshots of White comparing gender-critical women to Nazis and calling Sex Matters a “hate group” and the Minister for Women and Equalities “evil”.

The NPCC just doubled down some more. Gavin Stephens said: “The NPCC has considered at great length who is best placed to provide legal advice and given the subject matter.”

In November 2024, when British Transport Police issued its new policy based on the NPCC approach, we started down the road to legal action. After the FWS judgment the NPCC, BTP and other police forces withdrew their faulty policies, but didn’t say Sorry. Instead they developed new policies to let trans-identifying detainees request that an officer of the opposite sex would search them “consensually”.

When we raised concerns about female officers being put under pressure to strip-search trans-identifying men, the NPCC and BTP said that officers who refused to search trans-identifying detainees of the opposite sex would not face career detriment.

We know from experience that sometimes you have to continue up the court system to find judges willing to see past the years of exceptional practice and declare that ordinary truth and ordinary laws apply to everyone. It is infuriating. But we will keep going.

Why we’re continuing this legal fight

Read more about why we think this judgment is wrong in law, why we are seeking permission to appeal and why this case matters for female police officers, detainees and the rule of law.

Media coverage

Our searching case was referenced by The Telegraph (Hayley Dixon), who reported earlier in the week that Staffordshire Police force is treating trans-identifying male detainees as women, in defiance of the Supreme Court judgment.

Helen commented on the case in a wide-ranging interview with Alex Phillips on Talk TV, in which she also discussed transactivists’ threats and aggression and the failure of public institutions to tackle this intimidation.

Breaking news

As we were preparing to send this week’s memo, news broke that Bayswater Support Group, Keira Bell and James Esses have been refused permission to bring a judicial review seeking to halt the puberty-blocker trial.

The High Court’s decision is both devastating and inexplicable. These drugs have been blocked for use in gender treatment in both the NHS and private practice because of increasing evidence that they cause serious, permanent harm to vulnerable children. And yet a trial so badly designed that it cannot possibly produce any useful scientific data has irresponsibly been given the go-ahead.

Interrupting children’s development into healthy, fully functional adults is a human-rights abuse. Doing it with no more substantial goal than finding out whether it cheers them up briefly, as the planned trial does, is ethically monstrous.

The history of medicine is littered with tragic stories of researchers and doctors convinced by faulty theories doing terrible harm in the name of healthcare. Years later, public inquiries declare that “lessons must be learned”, but that is little comfort to the people whose bodies have been irreversibly harmed.

No more excuses: guidance on single-sex spaces comes into force

The EHRC code of practice finally comes into force on 5th August. In this week’s podcast, Helen Joyce and Maya Forstater discuss what it will mean for single-sex services, charities and associations. They make some predictions for the coming autumn, when organisations will no longer be able to claim they’re “waiting for guidance”, new school safeguarding policy will come into force and legal battles on conversion practices and the planned puberty-blocker trial will only become more fierce.

What the Supreme Court ruling means for charities

Can a single-sex charity become “trans-inclusive”? Our new briefing explains what charity law, freedom of association and safeguarding principles, taken together with last year’s Supreme Court judgment, mean for charities like the Women’s Institute and Girlguiding, and for single-sex associations more generally.

In other news

Helen’s debate with Northern Irish columnist Allison Morris on BBC Radio Ulster about the Féile an Phobail festival cancelling the event of Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland resulted in considerable criticism of Morris for her inaccurate claims and misrepresentation of WRN’s positions.

The Liberal Democrats have been accused of softening their stance on sex-based rights after taking more than £200,000 in donations from Simon Ruddick, who has a trans-identifying child, as reported by The Times (Geraldine Scott). Helen said that it’s impossible to know whether the noticeable change in the party line is linked to donations from any individual, but that its timing is remarkably aligned with donations from someone who has a significant personal interest in transactivism.

Coverage of the fallout from Amnesty International UK’s report continued, with The Times (Marc Horne) reporting that the charity’s chief executive has agreed to meet Maya in the autumn, following Sex Matters being named in the now-withdrawn report.

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Sex Matters survives on your support.
Without it, we simply wouldn’t exist.

Sex Matters can deliver essential research and analysis, help shape the debate, and empower people with clear, published guidance on their rights – but only with your support. Please contribute what you can to keep us going.

Donate

The High Court has ruled against Sex Matters in our case against the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and British Transport Police (BTP) over their “consensual” searching policies.

Mr Justice Linden accepted a series of extraordinary legal arguments from the police, which included that constables can enter into consensual agreements with people in custody in the same way that private citizens can enter into consensual agreements with each other. It accepted an analogy drawn by counsel for the police between such “consensual” searches and private citizens consenting to sadomasochistic acts.

We will be seeking permission to appeal this judgment, which we believe is wrong in law.

Police searching and the law

When someone is being told by a police officer to remove their clothes, sex matters. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), strip searches are only to be carried out on a same-sex basis. PACE also covers other aspects of searching, such as when suspects may be photographed and who else can be present during a search.

Our case challenges guidance issued by the NPCC and BTP following the For Women Scotland judgment. This guidance seeks to circumvent PACE’s clear legal provisions by introducing a “shadow” searching regime based on consent.

Following an earlier challenge brought by Sex Matters, the NPCC and BTP had already withdrawn previous policies, which allowed trans-identifying officers to search detainees of the opposite sex. They also accepted that possession of a gender-recognition certificate has no bearing on who may search whom.

When we raised concerns about female officers being put under pressure to strip search trans-identifying men, the NPCC and BTP conceded further safeguards. They agreed in writing that an opposite-sex strip search “is very likely to be refused” by the senior officer in charge when there is nothing to suggest the detainee is trans, when the suspect had been arrested for a sexual offence or has a history of sexual offending, or if there is anything to suggest a sexual motive for requesting an opposite-sex search.

But none of these safeguards appear in the guidance. And the NPCC and BTP still insist that it is lawful to have a policy that envisages female officers being asked to strip search trans-identifying men, and male officers to strip search trans-identifying women, as long as both detainee and officer consent.

Why we say the policy is unlawful

Our case is simply that such a policy is unlawful: a police officer has no power to conduct a strip search other than in accordance with PACE. That law, which was brought in following the report of a royal commission on criminal procedure published in 1981, carefully balances state power and individual rights. It protects both officers and suspects by establishing clear rules and lawful powers.

The legal team representing the police seemed willing to overturn this whole meticulous framework of legal protections and safeguards, simply to avoid saying No to people who don’t want the law to apply to them.

The arguments they put forward did not concern human rights. Bizarrely, they argued that even while at work police officers are ordinary citizens who can enter into agreements that go outside of the rules governing police conduct, and that being detained does not prevent a citizen from being capable of entering into consensual arrangements with officers who are detaining them. They cited precedent establishing that people can consent to bodily harm in the context of sadomasochistic sexual encounters.

During the hearing, the judge asked several times whether it might be better to base the policy on a less extreme legal argument: that opposite-sex “consensual” searches are still being carried out under PACE, with only the same-sex rule waived. However, counsel for the police was adamant that an officer carrying out such a search would be acting outside PACE altogether, and instead within the world of consensual acts between private citizens involving removal of clothing.

The judgment sets all of this out, and then comes to the incoherent conclusion that the searches are not against the public interest “provided the consent is genuine and the search is lawful in all other respects”.

Read the judgment

Under pressure, police forces and the NPCC abandoned the illogical slogan that “trans women are women”. But instead of returning to reality and the law as written, they have taken refuge in an equally false and legally incoherent equation: “lawless searches are lawful searches”.

As counsel for the police admitted, when an officer steps outside PACE there are no longer any rules about what is lawful. The only constraints on an officer’s actions are those agreed on a consensual, voluntary basis. Perhaps similar arguments could be used to justify officers and detainees engaging in sexual or violent acts, or providing financial gifts or loans or other favours, with the sole question consideration being whether both parties “consented”.

We believe this judgment is wrong in law and we will be applying for permission to appeal.

Why this case matters

Our case is important because PACE protects female police officers from being pressured into searching male suspects. Evidence we placed before the court showed that some male detainees will request such searches for all sorts of reasons, including to humiliate female officers, to cause difficulties for police in custody suites and for sexual gratification.

PACE also stops male officers agreeing to search trans-identifying females, including young and vulnerable women who believe they must submit to this as a test of the authenticity of their gender identity. And finally, it protects officers of both sexes from later accusations that they acted unlawfully by carrying out a search not permitted under PACE.

One police officer we who we interviewed as part of our evidence said:

“I can’t understand how people are expected to give true consent while under duress to what essentially amounts to a sexual assault, if not just a physical assault.”

Another male officer spoke of a female detainee seeking consensual sexual relations:

“Where I have had a sexual approach in a professional capacity, it might be what she wanted but that does not make it right.”

The officers we spoke to did not think that the reassurance that refusal to carry out an opposite-sex search would not cause any career detriment to an officer was adequate:

“If you are seen as a troublemaker or somebody who won’t toe the line, then you won’t get any further.”

Some officers made the point that refusing to carry out an opposite-sex search on a trans-identifying detainee would, in effect, “out” an officer as holding “gender critical” beliefs that are widely regarded by policing leaders to be bigoted and even unlawful, and which have been described in training and guidance provided to officers as “transphobic”. The depth of these fears is evidenced by the fact that every serving officer with whom we spoke was willing to do so only on condition of strict anonymity.

More broadly than protecting individual officers and detainees, our case seeks to protect the rule of law. If Parliament had wanted to allow people in custody to request to be strip-searched by an officer of the opposite sex, it would have written this into PACE. It didn’t, and it is not for the National Police Chiefs’ Council or individual police forces to seek to subvert the law by creating a shadow searching regime.

Related content

Police strip-searching: Sex Matters’ judicial review

Police forces withdraw unlawful search policies

Sex Matters is challenging BTP’s abusive strip-search policy

During the past decade many charities for women or girls, among them the Women’s Institute and Girlguiding, became “trans inclusive”, meaning that they started to admit trans-identifying men and boys, and to regard such men and boys as beneficiaries of their charitable objects.

They did this not by rewriting their membership rules or going through the formal process required to change a charity’s objects, but by simply claiming that the words “girl”, “woman” and “female” included trans-identifying boys and men. This was never lawful. But girls and women who complained directly to charities generally discovered that the boys and men were allowed to stay, that they were subjected to disciplinary action and sometimes excluded – and that the rules were left unchanged. Meanwhile, instead of holding these charities to their objects the Charity Commission deferred to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which misinterpreted the law.

Since the Supreme Court judgment of April 2025 on the meaning of “sex”, many charities and other not-for-profit membership associations are revisiting such decisions.

• Both the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and Girlguiding have accepted that they got the law wrong, and are in the process of requiring trans-identifying male members to leave.

• KENRIC, the UK’s longest-running social group for lesbians, held a consultation with its members regarding membership criteria and announced in June that it would return to being open only to biological women who identify as lesbian.

• Women’s Aid Federation has reaffirmed that it exists “to promote the protection of women and children survivors of domestic abuse”. It has welcomed the EHRC guidance, recognising that some services that are female-only will no longer be able to support “Trans +” survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence and saying that these survivors may need alternate caring, expert and reliable sources of support into which they can be referred.

• Similarly, Rape Crisis England and Wales says its purpose is “is to relieve the trauma and distress of women and girls who have experienced any form of sexual violence and abuse”. Some rape crisis centres offer services to men and boys (including those that identify as trans) while others offer services just to women.

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Some of these organisations are now experiencing a backlash. They are coming under pressure, both internally and externally, to become formally “trans inclusive” – that is, to make explicit what had previously been done by linguistic trickery.

Organisations such as the Good Law Project argue that Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom of association, as well as the way the Equality Act is drafted mean that it would be lawful for women’s charities to remain “trans inclusive” (that is, to include trans-identifying men among their beneficiaries).

This is not the case.

As the EHRC Code of practice for services, public functions and associations makes clear, associations can limit membership to particular groups, but beyond that they must not discriminate.

For a single-sex association, becoming “trans inclusive” means changing the admission rules – if it doesn’t do this, it becomes vulnerable to discrimination claims. It may have articles of association that set out how to do this (for example, after consulting members or holding a vote). There is no need to justify the change (or indeed the original admission rules); this reflects the right to freedom of association.

However, this does not mean that single-sex charities can simply decide to become “trans inclusive”. In order to be a charity, an organisation must meet the “public benefit” test, which means it must have charitable objects that ensure it benefits the public and not just a group of individuals. Any restriction of benefits (such as being only for women) established in the charity’s objects must be either to tackle a specific disadvantage shared by that group or a proportionate means to a legitimate aim related to that group.

The Charity Commission has reminded charities that they must be compliant with the Equality Act and the EHRC code, and that “unreasonable delays in taking steps towards compliance may be considered a breach of those responsibilities.”

The rules for charities are stricter than associations because a charity doesn’t exist for its trustees or staff, or as a business for its customers. It exists for its beneficiaries, who are described in its objects. The assets it holds and the money it raises must be used solely in pursuit of those objects. It is fraudulent to raise money to benefit one group and then spend it on another. The fraud isn’t just against beneficiaries and donors, but against taxpayers, since charities receive generous tax breaks.

Charities can change their objects with permission from the Charity Commission, but they must continue to meet the public-interest test and the original beneficiary group must not be disadvantaged by the change. An example is the Scout Association, which went mixed sex in stages between 1976 and 1991. For the Women’s Institute, Girlguiding or any other single-sex charity to go “trans inclusive”, it too would have to show that its objects meet the public benefit test, and that the change is in the interests of its original beneficiaries.

But it is not obvious, to say the least, that men and boys with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment share any of the sorts of interests with women and girls that such charities were set up to meet. Girlguiding, for example, was set up to give girls an independent space away from boys, on the basis that in mixed-sex groups girls are often squeezed to the margins and see boys take up a disproportionate amount of time and airspace. Girl-only spaces give girls somewhere to be confident and outspoken, to gain leadership skills and to escape sexism and harassment. Since “trans girls” are boys, admitting them isn’t just incompatible with the charity’s objects, it undermines them.

As the Supreme Court said:

“The purpose of addressing the particular needs, disadvantages or participation levels of women as a group with the protected characteristic of sex, is undermined if women as a group includes trans women with a GRC (in other words, biological men who are legally female).”

Charities that serve children and vulnerable groups also have safeguarding responsibilities. Admitting boys with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment to Girlguiding, and permitting men with that characteristic to be Guide Leaders, would not only mean using the charity’s resources for a group other than the one it was set up to support; it would also put those girls at heightened risk by giving male people access to spaces that were previously female-only.

Girlguiding’s safeguarding procedures are built around being an organisation for girls. Although some specific volunteer roles can be held by both men and women, guide leaders are female, and toilets, washing facilities and accommodation on overnight trips are female-only. Including some men and boys would require a complete rethink of safeguarding procedures – and would simply be impossible if everyone was required to pretend that those boys and men were in fact female.

Any change to a charity’s objects or beneficiaries that harms the original beneficiaries like this will not be in that group’s interests. Organisations like Girlguiding are right to return to focusing on their purpose.

Sex Matters has published a detailed briefing on sex and the law for associations and charities. Policy analysts Murray Blackburn Mackenzie have also published a report on charities and a legal opinion from Karon Monaghan KC.

Read our briefing on post-FWS associations

The updated version of Keeping children safe in education (KCSIE), which comes into force across England at the start of the autumn term, is a big step forward, even though it is not perfect.

It says that “schools and colleges should consider whether pupils would be best supported by a policy on social transition which explains the steps that a school or college will go through when a child requests support.” School governors and leadership teams will therefore be thinking about what policy to adopt, in line with the guidance, over the summer holidays and at the start of the autumn term.

But the most important aspect of the new guidance is extremely positive: it places significant constraints on what a school can accommodate in response to a family’s or child’s idea of “social transition”. It does this by placing for the first time, three vital principles within the statutory safeguarding framework:

1. All children’s sex must be recorded accurately in every situation throughout their school career.

2. All relevant staff must be aware of every child’s sex.

3. Schools must never allow any child to use toilets or changing rooms for the opposite sex.

Taken together, these three principles mean that schools will need to refer to all children by their sex routinely. Since KCSIE constitutes part of the statutory framework within which Ofsted operates, any policy that contradicts these principles is likely to come up during school inspections, either because the inspector spots the infraction or because parents bring it to the inspector’s attention.

However, the guidance still suggests schools respond to requests to accommodate “social transition” by working through complex legal justification exercises on a case-by-case basis. Its biggest flaw is that it suggests “full social transition” (which it doesn’t define) may be undertaken by a school, albeit “very rarely”.

Our model policy is designed to help schools set clear expectations for all pupils, families and staff, and to explain the legal constraints which mean they cannot accommodate requests to be treated as the opposite sex. School and college leaders who follow it can feel confident that their policies are in line with KCSIE and do not subject any children to unlawful direct or indirect discrimination under the Equality Act 2010.

Sex-based rules and record-keeping – a whole-school model policy

If you are a school governor, work in a school or have a child in school in England, you can send our model policy to the senior leadership team and share it with the governing body. It is published under a creative commons licence, which means that they are free to adopt it and adapt it as they wish.

Send a school our model policy

Related content

Send a school our model policy based on new statutory safeguarding rules

Keeping children safe in education: better than before

What guidance from the Department for Education needs to say

Send our model policy to a school you have a connection with to help it make updates in line with the new guidance, which comes into force across England at the start of the autumn term.

Send to your child‘s school

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Maya on a visit to Belfast in 2024

One of the things we say to each other inside Sex Matters is that you know you’re over the target when you start catching flak. And this week it has been relentless.

Fiona is due to speak in Belfast on 4th August at a panel arranged by Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland as part of the Féile an Phobail arts festival. On Monday the names of the four women on the panel were announced, and transactivists began to whip up an online campaign against them. The mob called for the charity to cancel WRN NI’s panel, and shamefully it did so.

This is belief discrimination and it is unlawful.

I’ve written to Féile spelling out the law and asking it to reinstate the event and apologise to WRN NI, Sex Matters, Fiona and the other speakers. Otherwise we will see them in court.

On Friday Gordon Lyons, the Northern Irish communities minister, weighed in saying that if the charity refuses to follow the law then it should lose public funding. This is quite right.

The reason that Féile and so many other charities commit unlawful discrimination so recklessly is that sensible voices among their staff and on their boards who might notice the legal risk have been silenced. In large parts of the voluntary sector – and the public sector and academia – people who dare to express facts as commonplace and evidence-based as the fact that men are statistically more dangerous to other people than women are, and that doesn’t change if those men call themselves women or non-binary, have been demonised.

This week For Women Scotland published a meticulous analysis of how public money has been used to embed the position often labelled “trans rights”, which can fairly be summarised as the demand that people and institutions ignore what they know about the dangers men pose when those men say they aren’t men.

Also this week, policy analysts Murray Blackburn Mackenzie mapped out Amnesty International’s role in this process. For almost a decade, Amnesty has used its good reputation to lend credibility to those who describe recognising facts that are necessary for safeguarding as “hateful” and “anti-rights”. It has repeatedly been shown to be wrong about human rights and the law, but it refuses to budge.

Now Amnesty is claiming that the Growing threat report it withdrew after widespread criticism was an isolated incident rather than indicative of any wider pattern. In response to my email asking for a meeting, Amnesty UK’s chief executive, Kerry Moscogiuri, said she could find time in September or October. Perhaps by then she will have worked out her organisation’s position.

While Amnesty has realised that it went too far in naming the target organisations to be cancelled, the Good Law Project (which claims to be “like a charity”, although it is controlled by one man, unregulated and owned by a trust based in Jersey) is less cautious. It has leapt into the role vacated by Amnesty and launched a campaign against Sex Matters, accusing us of running a “campaign of hate” and “spewing abuse online and in the media”. It says it has submitted 46 examples of this to the Charity Commission, but has been coy about the evidence for this claim.

From the few examples GLP has published, it seems that what it counts as “hate” is any clear articulation of the fact that men are statistically more dangerous than women, and that this doesn’t change if those men call themselves women or non-binary.

For those who regard this fact as taboo, what is “hateful” about saying it isn’t how you say it, but that you say it at all. In fact, if you say it politely, reasonably, calmly and with evidence, in ways that can be heard by politicians, journalists and employers, that makes it worse. If you say it while being a middle-aged woman, that is worst of all.

As Helen Joyce said in a speech GLP described as hateful (which you should watch if you haven’t already):

“When a lie is embedded in a system, over time it propagates throughout that system, and then everyone working within it has to try to protect the lie by staying well away from it. It’s worse than a loophole, which over time tends to get bigger – it’s a loophole you have to avert your eyes from and avoid mentioning.”

Helen gave the example of Sonia Appleby, the safeguarding lead at the now-closed GIDS clinic at the Tavistock in London, who successfully took the clinic to the employment tribunal after being disciplined for raising safeguarding concerns. It was two words she said that got her into trouble: Jimmy Savile.

Three are three lesson we should all take from Jimmy Savile, and from Wayne Couzens, the grooming gangs and every other institutional abuse scandal that has happened in plain sight:

1. Men are statistically more dangerous than women, and this doesn’t change no matter who they are or what positions they hold. This includes but is not limited to male celebrities, scout leaders, teachers, religious leaders, therapists, charity workers, dads, cousins, uncles, transwomen, non-binary people, LGBTQ+ allies, police officers, members of ethnic minorities, gym coaches, Hollywood moguls and politicians.

2. Situations where individuals or groups of men are excluded from the ordinary rules, scrutiny and safeguards that apply to other men are likely to attract men who are particularly dangerous.

3. Organisations where these facts cannot be stated are institutionally corrupt.

The discomfort you feel about saying this is real and justified. It means you are over the target and about to come under fire.

46 reasons to keep going

Here is some of our work defending safeguarding, human rights and women’s rights, which GLP describes as “hateful”. We invite you to judge for yourself:

• Fiona on GB News discussing the High Court ruling on Sex Matters v City of London

• Helen on sex, gender identity and human rights

• Letter to the Minister for Women and Equalities about the EHRC code of practice.

Media coverage

BBC News (Robbie Meredith) broke the news of the Féile cancellation, quoting Maya saying the festival was discriminating against WRN NI and Sex Matters. The News Letter (David Thompson) reported on our letter warning of legal action if the event was not reinstated. Maya joined BBC Radio Ulster’s The Nolan Show with Robin Moira White, a trans-identifying male barrister, to discuss the festival’s decision.

In the Daily Mail, David Churchill highlighted an Amnesty report published in May, which Maya said showed a longstanding pattern of misrepresenting those who recognise the importance of the two sexes, and Noor Qurashi reported that the Charity Commission had opened a regulatory compliance case into Amnesty.

The Telegraph (Ruby Cline) and the Daily Mail (Will Hallowell) focused on JK Rowling’s offer to support legal action for organisations Amnesty had branded “anti-rights”. The Times (Marc Horne) quoted Maya saying Amnesty should have reported itself to the Charity Commission after promoting an interpretation of equality law that the Supreme Court later found to be unworkable.

In The Scotsman, Jenny Lindsay’s column teased out the lessons of the Amnesty report for other institutions captured by gender ideology. International coverage included the Washington Post (Andrew Doyle) and the National Post (Amy Hamm).

Keeping children safe in education

In this week’s episode, Maya and Helen discuss the updated version of Keeping children safe in education (KCSIE), which places guidance for schools on dealing with trans issues within the statutory safeguarding framework.

The most important change is the addition of three clear safeguarding principles that constrain how schools can respond to requests for “social transition”.

Schools in England are updating their policies and training in time for September, when the KCSIE update comes into force. You can help them get this right by sending a school you know our updated whole-school model policy on sex-based rules.

Send a school our model policy

In other news

The Telegraph (Madeleine Ross) broke the story that the Cabinet Office has refused to publish its new model policy for trans-identifying civil servants. The story was followed up by GB News (Dan McDonald). Maya said the previous policy had done untold harm by embedding unlawful practices across the public sector and that its replacement should be developed with utmost transparency.

In the Daily Mail Sam Merriman revealed what was in the policy. Maya welcomed its protection of single-sex facilities but warned that it remains shockingly biased on pronouns and misgendering, and that threatening to punish staff for recognising biological sex is unjustified and discriminatory. Maya was also interviewed by Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk TV about the leaked guidance.

The Daily Mail (Nicholas Pyke and Janet Murray) published an investigation based on Through the looking glass, a report by SEEN in Publishing exposing gender ideology in children’s books and schools. Helen was quoted saying that young children are especially vulnerable to believing the false idea that changing clothes or appearance can change their sex.

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The Good Law Project (GLP) has started a campaign against Sex Matters, saying that it has identified “46 examples” of Sex Matters “spewing hate”, including “harassment and discrimination”, which it says “breaks charity law”. It says it has submitted a formal complaint to the Charity Commission.

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Sex Matters was founded as a human-rights charity to create space for debate and understanding of laws and rights concerning sex and gender identity. We think that there are conflicts of rights and that it should be possible to talk about them openly and freely. We believe that this is how everyone’s rights can be protected, and institutions can be held to account.

As Akua Reindorf KC wrote in the Reindorf Review in 2020:

“The mere discussion of what ‘trans rights’ entail cannot be regarded as a violation of those rights in a context where the proper extent of those rights is clearly not settled either in law or in public opinion… and where there is a potential conflict of rights.”

Sex Matters and the wider movement we are part of have had some success in making it easier and safer to talk: in person and online, at work and in Parliament, in the media and in courts. And some people don’t like that.

What does GLP think is “hateful”?

GLP has not published its complaint or shared its 46 examples with us but it has published a selection of quotes and links on its website. When we looked at what it had identified as “inappropriate and offensive” conduct it was simply a set of examples of us pointing out the serious harms done by those promoting gender identity.

They include a powerful and insightful speech given by Sex Matters’ director of advocacy, Helen Joyce, at the Genspect Bigger Picture conference in September 2024, where she argued that the new belief system based on gender self-ID has co-opted and corrupted the language of rights and is harming women, children and vulnerable people, and breaking medical and scientific thinking.

As Helen explained (emphasis here and throughout added by GLP):

“Self-ID means that a man who strips off in front of naked women in a supposedly women-only space is doing something right and proper if he identifies as a woman… This is not just a destruction of human rights, it’s a full reversal. And it’s not just any old human-rights violation, it’s state-sanctioned sex crime – voyeurism and indecent exposure – and an Article 3 violation. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that being forced to undress in front of someone of the opposite sex violates Article 3 – the right not to suffer torture, inhuman or degrading treatment. And note that Article 3 is an absolute, not qualified, right.”

We published the speech, together with the one she gave at the first Genspect conference, in Killarney in 2023, in a booklet called Sex, gender identity and human rights, which we sent out with our Christmas cards in 2024.

GLP also highlights a letter from Sex Matters to Bridget Phillipson, at the time the Minister for Women and Equalities, sent in May 2026 to welcome the new EHRC Code of practice on services, public functions and associations.

In the letter, Sex Matters’ chief executive, Maya Forstater, raises concerns about the section in the new code on “asking about sex”. The section warns service providers against challenging people who appear to be using the wrong facilities. As the letter explains, this will enable situations where sex-based harassment is allowed. We said:

“There is no legal basis for this instruction, which in effect licenses men to enter women’s facilities and claim that it is inappropriate, and possibly unlawful, to challenge them. Telling women (and staff supervising single-sex spaces) that they must second-guess themselves when they become aware of a man engaging in the deviant behaviour of accessing a female-only space is unwanted conduct related to the protected characteristic of sex. It ‘violates a person’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment’. Section 111 of the Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful to instruct, cause, or induce another person to commit an act of discrimination, harassment or victimisation.”

GLP also complained about an interview of Maya Forstater on Talk TV in January 2026 concerning the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond.

In the interview she answers the interviewer’s question about what the problem is if a man who “feels they’re in the wrong body” uses the women’s pond, but changes “discreetly” in a cubicle:

“The ponds aren’t very discreet. They’re communal, open changing rooms and open showers. What you can’t do is let someone in and then say: ‘But you can’t use those changing rooms. You have to use a discreet changing room.’ If you let someone in, you let them in on the same rules as everyone else. At the same time, if there are women using the communal changing rooms and showers, they’re naked. If somebody walks past, the man might be dressed, but he’s walking past naked women. That’s a situation of harassment. You can’t let that happen. You have to have clear rules about who’s allowed into those kind of situations, and it’s really obvious what the decent rules are.”

GLP also highlights an interview of Sex Matters’ director of campaigns, Fiona McAnena, in January 2026 on GB News.

The interviewer asks why some men insist on using the Ladies’ Pond instead of accepting the “amicable” solution of the mixed pond. Fiona says:

“I think there are a number of answers to that. Some people would say that this is a voyeurs’ charter. If any man can declare he’s a woman, it’s not the nice, decent, respectful men who are going to come into the Ladies’ Pond. It’s a different kind of man. There may be some men who genuinely think that what they feel makes them like a woman. But we can’t see their thoughts or their feelings. All we can see is their bodies and their behaviour. Some women would say it is an intentional act of violation of women’s boundaries, and that those men enjoy it. I couldn’t say. All I know is that, as you say, they have a choice. They could be respectful. They could allow us all our privacy, and they’re making a conscious choice not to.”

GLP included in its complaint a personal interview of barrister Naomi Cunningham in Holyrood magazine while she was chair of Sex Matters, which Sex Matters’ CEO had promoted. In the personal and moving interview she talks about her journey and what motivated her to get involved in legal work in this area. Naomi said:

“Rage does still fuel me because there are so many things to be profoundly angry about: the grooming of children into mental ill-health and physical mutilation; the gas-lighting; the bullying and silencing and cancelling; the corruption of so many of our institutions; the sheer waste of time, money and energy on dealing with such obvious nonsense.”

And GLP complained about a quote from Helen about Girlguiding in an article in The Telegraph:

“By thinking it could redefine sex and make up its own rules, Girlguiding UK showed no concern or understanding for girls’ rights and boundaries. But it also failed to think clearly about what boys confused about their sex really need, which isn’t validation in a falsehood. This shameful episode of harming children in the name of ‘inclusion’ went on for far too long, but at least it is now drawing to an end.”

It also complained about an interview on Talk TV in which Helen said it was wicked to lie to children and to subject them to sterilising medical treatment:

“You don’t put people in boxes just because of what sex they are, but you do not lie to them either. So these people committed real human rights abuse against vulnerable children. And now that they’re really dragging their feet on admitting that fact. Children need honesty, and they need boundaries from the adults around them. They need adults to keep the world safe and accurate for them. To tell them what’s what, to make sure that they grow up safe and secure and confident.”

GLP complained about an article on Helen’s personal Substack about schools too. Helen wrote:

“In this issue I’m going to pick up the question of how to stop schools spreading genderism. Schools are by no means the only place children are picking up this neo-religion, and I don’t underestimate the difficulty – teachers have been indoctrinated in it for at least a decade, and in some countries for much longer. But the education system is the main vector of infection that is, at least theoretically, under the direction of authorities and open to the influence of parents and voters.”

Sex Matters is proud of its work

The governing document of Sex Matters commits it to three aims:

1. to promote human rights where they relate to biological sex

2. to advance education about sex and the law

3. to promote the sound administration of the law in relation to sex and equality in the law.

We take our charitable purpose and the human-rights framework seriously. We don’t say things to be offensive but to raise awareness of harms and of human-rights issues. We hope the Charity Commission watches and reads our output.

There is nothing in the clips and quotes we have seen from GLP that we are not proud of saying. We believe that lying to children and vulnerable people about sex undermines safeguarding, that subjecting them to sterilising treatment based on a false promise of changing sex is a grave human-rights abuse, and that allowing men who wish they were women to use women-only services undermines women’s human rights to fairness, safety and dignity.

We set this all out in our human-rights framework, which we submitted to the regulator when we applied to be a charity. As we explained:

“These abuses of human rights and patterns of discrimination often arise from misunderstandings and misrepresentations of human rights and equality frameworks themselves. For example any recognition of the sex of a person who identifies as transgender is labelled as ‘harassment’.

“In order to resolve conflicts between the rights of women and those of transgender people, these conflicts need to be identified and discussed openly and clearly. Where conflicts or rights are ignored or made unspeakable, rights may be undermined.”

We explained why clarity about sex matters for human rights again in the Supreme Court in 2025, when we intervened in support of For Women Scotland:

“For example, in the case of a rape crisis service, it is self-evident that women using the service would want and reasonably expect to find a female-only space. The presence of a biological man in such a situation effectively destroys the purpose of such a service and, worse still, can serve to retraumatise the very women for whom the service is intended to be provided. The impact on women of facing (or hearing) male individuals in women’s refuges or counselling services can be devastating. Many women self-exclude from the services, or are compelled to pretend that men are women, at great cost to their mental health.”

Our arguments were accepted by the Supreme Court, and we were specifically thanked for making them.

And we are preparing to make the case again in November 2026 when the Hampstead Ponds case comes back to court.

We have published long-form legal analysis explaining why the Supreme Court judgment does not remove, diminish or breach the rights and protections of trans people, and an illustrated easy-reading version of the law. We have produced a model policy for schools in line with statutory safeguarding guidance, as well as guidance for the media on reporting on sex and gender identity. Every week we discuss issues on our podcast and we answer hundreds of email queries every month.

GLP says we have ignored our responsibility to serve the general public. We think that what it actually objects to is that we have done too much.

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Last week I was in Birmingham at the global summit run by the International Working Group on Women and Sport, which is held every four years in a different location. Several hundred women and some men spent three days discussing participation and representation of women in all levels of sport and everything sport-related, including coaching, media and management.

On the first morning, a panel host I’d never heard of called Michelle Moore said in her introduction: “When I talk about women I include trans and DSD athletes in that, just to make that clear.” There was a smattering of loud applause.

Two of the most powerful people in sport, Kirsty Coventry, the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and Lord Coe, chair of World Athletics, separately addressed the conference and both mentioned the importance of protecting the female category. Coe said: “Gender cannot trump biology.”

That should have given attendees courage, but the mood was more “don’t ask, don’t tell”. When I told people about the work of Sex Matters, a few said they agreed. Others said, variously, that it was complicated, that of course transwomen should not be in elite sport but… and that trans people have difficult lives so…. The implication was that women should make room for trans-identifying men, regardless of the impact on women. This was a hall full of sports specialists, who know about sex differences in sport and sexism in sport. They were supposedly advocating for women. But still they couldn’t put women first. They couldn’t even name the elephant in the room.

Someone who was at the previous event, in New Zealand in 2022, told me that transgender inclusion had been a major agenda item, with a big push to make everything more trans-inclusive. This time it was not mentioned, although I had lobbied the organisers for months to get it onto the agenda.

Eventually, as the programme was being finalised, Dr Emma Hilton was invited to be on the panel for a workshop called “Tested to compete: the science, the politics and the price”. This was about sex testing in sport, though that was not obvious from the name; it could have been about anti-doping.

Emma explained where male advantage comes from, and the other three speakers argued that there is no evidence it exists. The researcher said that more research is needed; the sociologist said transwomen are women.

A woman in the workshop audience asked how “we” can oppose the new IOC policy, which restricts the female category to those who pass a sex screen – this means undergoing a once-in-a-lifetime cheek swab to show they are female. A speaker said: “We must fight it together.” No one said that maybe protecting the female category is a good thing. Neither Emma nor I had the opportunity to comment.

I went to the conference to advocate for male-free sport for women and girls. Some people I spoke to there quietly agreed, but overall the subject was still treated as taboo. More than one woman told me that the Sport England staffers are afraid of us. It’s hard to know what they’re afraid of.

I asked a couple of senior people from Sport England about their transgender guidance but didn’t get a straight answer. I can’t help thinking that anyone who was confident of their position would be willing and able to speak to me about it. These people were not.

I think this shows that everyone knows that it is not fair to allow male participants in a female category, but despite the clarity from the IOC they can’t speak the truth. Maybe they have spent so long pretending it’s complicated that they can’t believe it never was. Perhaps they can’t let go of the image of themselves as virtuous people who advocate for the most marginalised – and that doesn’t mean women and girls.

There can be no doubt that we are winning the argument: in global sports policy from the IOC down, in the US and UK Supreme Courts, and in public opinion. Who’d have thought the last people to get the message would be those advocating for women and girls? When you’ve denied the obvious for years and called it “the right side of history”, how do you find your way back to reality? We still have work to do.

The action we need to see is spelled out in our new sport report, Getting back on track, which I handed out to anyone who showed an interest. I’ve come back from the event with new contacts and as determined as ever to keep pressing for those in authority to restore fair policies.

Podcast

The Amnesty report

The charity is in trouble for defaming gender-critical organisations

A major row has erupted after Amnesty International UK published — and then quickly withdrew — a report labeling more than 100 organisations as “anti-rights”, including women’s rights groups, charities, support services, and campaigning organisations. Maya Forstater and Fiona McAnena talk about the parlous state of democratic debate on human rights, when organisations are branded as threats simply for advocating sex-based rights. Amnesty is now facing demands for answers, calls for apologies and potential legal action.

Amnesty must answer

Amnesty is facing growing pressure after publishing a report branding organisations defending sex-based rights as “anti-rights”. This week, we joined 40 organisations targeted by Amnesty International in calling on the Charity Commission to uphold the Equality Act and end the culture of intolerance towards gender-critical views.

Find out more

Amnesty faces backlash

The Charity Commission must act

Media coverage

Amnesty International UK came under heavy criticism for branding Sex Matters and other organisations defending sex-based rights as part of an “anti-rights movement”. The Times (Alex Massie) and The Telegraph (Suzanne Moore) argued that the groups named had instead challenged unlawful claims and helped secure clarity that sex in the Equality Act means biological sex. Helen discussed the report on GB News’s Free Speech Nation with Josh Howie. Amnesty’s hasty retraction of the report was covered by The Telegraph (Jacob Freedland), GB News (Dan McDonald) and the Scottish Daily Mail (Dan Barker, print only).

The Telegraph (Jacob Freedland) reported on the joint letter from Sex Matters and others calling to the Charity Commission. The Times (Aaliyah Ahmed) and the Daily Mail (Dan Barker and Tom Gordon) confirmed that the commission is assessing concerns about Amnesty International and that its charitable trust has submitted a serious incident report. The Times (Aaliyah Ahmed) also drew attention to a second report portraying gender-critical people as opposed to LGBT rights. Maya said this showed a longstanding pattern of misrepresenting and denigrating those who recognise the biological and legal importance of the two sexes.

In other news

The Telegraph (Sabrina Miller) reported that the Green Party is considering adopting a policy to oppose sex-based exclusions in sport and support “trans-inclusive” sporting projects. Fiona said that, in practice, this means allowing men into the female category and denying women and girls fair competition, and that the party is once again prioritising the feelings of trans-identifying men over women’s rights.

The Telegraph (Janet Murray) revealed, with follow-up coverage in the Daily Mail (Shaun Wooller), that South East Coast Ambulance Service issued a policy allowing trans-identifying staff to use single-sex facilities according to gender identity since the Supreme Court ruling. Fiona said the trust was breaking the law by denying female paramedics privacy from men.

Calls for the Scottish Government to introduce a broader ban on conversion practices than proposed in England and Wales were covered by the Scottish Daily Express (Ben Borland). The article referred to our warning that the draft Conversion Practices Bill could lead to parents, teachers and therapists being investigated by police for lawful, loving actions such as telling a child they will not pay for puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.

The Telegraph (Daniel Martin) wrote about the EHRC’s long-delayed code of practice for service providers, which has finally been laid before Parliament.. Maya welcomed the fact that organisations can no longer use the lack of guidance as an excuse for failing to bring their policies in line with the law.

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