Update from Maya
Some of Sex Matters’ team of staff, volunteers and consultants: Left to right, back row – Nicole Jones, Helen Joyce, Sally Parkin, Jo Payton, Maya Forstater, Lucy Forbes, Beck Laxton; front row – Fiona McAnena, Helen Staniland and Emma Moore
The past few days have been some of the busiest for the Sex Matters team since the week of the For Women Scotland judgment.
Last Thursday, 8th October, the team took time out from furious activity to spend the day together preparing, plotting and planning for the year ahead. We are a human-rights charity, with a mission, a board and absolute clarity about what we are doing and why, and we were pleased to be welcomed at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations’ “Society Building” for our team meeting.
We talked about how government departments have been kicking the can down the road following the Supreme Court judgment, and about the actions we and others are taking to make sure they understand and implement the law. Finally this week, on 15th October, NHS England produced its updated policy on single-sex wards, and civil-service departments began releasing their updated workplace policies. They are all clear that single sex means single sex. But the civil-service policies remain bound up with gender-identity language and the unrealistic idea that people aren’t able to tell what sex their colleagues are.
I spent much of this week talking with our various legal teams and writing witness statements for cases we are bringing which seek to make sure that the clarity of the For Women Scotland judgment and the Equality Act’s protections for everyone’s rights are put into practice. Our case against the City of London on the Hampstead Ponds is in court on 3rd and 4th November, and there has been lots to do, including work on opposing the Good Law Project’s application to intervene.
On Thursday we got the good news that GLP had been turned down in its application to appeal against its lack of standing to challenge the EHRC interim guidance (a case we intervened in). This is one more nailed-down decision emphasising that the law is clear, and that the courts do not need to keep digging up the idea that gender self-ID replaces sex to check if it is still dead.
The parliamentary committee that is carrying out pre-legislative scrutiny of the Conversion Practices Bill for England and Wales began meeting this week. The bill is the most dangerous attack on freedom of speech, clarity about sex and protection of children and vulnerable people from gender ideology that we now face. If it becomes law, it will harm the very people it seeks to protect, and roll back the gains from Forstater and FWS. We, together with others such as LGB Alliance, Bayswater Group, the Gay Men’s Network, CAN-SG and the gender-critical political-party groups, are ready to fight it. We are asking questions, marshalling evidence and producing briefings to try to convince parliamentarians and the government to think again about this bill.
On Thursday I joined the Charity Commission’s annual public meeting to ask a question about whether the commission will act to make sure that charities understand and follow the Equality Act. While the chair of the commission said good things about the need for pluralism and for regulators to follow the law, my question was held in electronic limbo and was never asked. Two other charity leaders told me their questions on sex and the law were also swerved. I have written to the chair of the Charity Commission to complain.
This week we said goodbye to one of the longest-standing contributors to Sex Matters’ work, Beck Laxton, who has managed our publications and website for nearly five years. I am grateful for all Beck’s hard work (much of it created by me and my unerring ability to mis-spell names and put hyphens in the wrong place), and we wish her well in her next endeavours.
Several of the Sex Matters team will be at Battle of Ideas this weekend. If you are there, be sure to visit our stall to say hello, and pick up our new materials on the Conversion Practices Bill.
Find out more
Read our briefing on the bill and the pre-legislative scrutiny process.
Scrutiny starts on the Conversion Practices Bill
Media coverage
Trans people should use hospital spaces according to biological sex, NHS England says
“NHS patient data is a mess, with potentially thousands of trans-identifying people recorded as the opposite sex.” - Maya Forstater
Alison Holt, James Melley • BBC News
Trans women no longer to be placed on female-only wards under new NHS England guidance
Jessica Murray for The Guardian quotes Maya Forstater on the NHS single-sex guidance: the policies “represent a momentous shift back to reality”.
Jessica Murray • The Guardian
“Today’s new guidelines are very welcome… the policies themselves represent a momentous shift back to reality”. - Maya Forstater
Shaun Wooller, Martin Beckford • Daily Mail
NHS England tells hospitals to bar trans women from female wards
“A year and a half ago, the government said NHS England’s new policy would be out within ‘weeks’. In that time, female NHS employees have had to fight court battles to keep men out of their changing rooms, while female patients on single-sex wards have suffered the indignity and safety risk of having trans-identifying men accommodated with them.” - Maya Forstater
Eleanor Hayward • The Times
NHS finally bans trans women from female spaces
“After a decade of policies based on self-ID and the influence of trans activist campaigners, many NHS trusts have embedded a culture of gender ideology…. NHS England must now follow up with a clear directive to reverse trans ideology within trusts.” - Maya Forstater
Daniel Martin • The Telegraph
Parent of detransitioner warns against planned law
What the Conversion Practices Bill would mean for families
In this episode, Helen Joyce speaks to Sarah,* the mother of a daughter who identified as trans for seven years and has since desisted.
Sarah explains how her daughter’s identity took hold in early adolescence, influenced by bullying, undiagnosed autism, peer groups and online communities, and how those around the family affirmed it.
She explains what she believes helped her daughter find her way back to comfort with her biological sex, and warns that proposed conversion-practices legislation could result in families like hers facing criminal charges, simply for doing what is in their children’s interests in very difficult circumstances.
*To protect the family’s privacy, all names have been changed and Sarah’s identity has been obscured.
In other news
Girls’ school head donated to teacher’s ‘sex-change’ surgery fund
“The school must be very careful not to glorify surgical interventions for trans-identifying people, as we know that transgender ideation is contagious.” - Helen Joyce
Janet Murray • [Un]Captured
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