BY: Nick Fulton
Published 9 hours ago
Sex Matters, a U.K.-based organization, claims to educate people about human rights and the law in relation to sex. The group’s true agenda is to exclude trans people from every facet of public life. From their founding to their recent Supreme Court advocacy, Sex Matters is unashamed of their transphobic “advocacy” framework.
Where It All Began
Maya Forstater was a fellow at the Centre for Global Development (CGD) from 2017 to 2019. In 2019, she learned that her contract would not be renewed. The reason: her highly public stance on biological sex and gender. Forstater had posted a series of tweets labeling trans women as males, cross-dressers, and frequently using other hateful anti-trans language.
Coworkers filed complaints about Forstater’s offensive language, but she doubled down. Forstater claimed that since her opinions on trans people happened to be true, she would not be changing them. After the fellow’s contract was not renewed, she sued CGD. In 2019, an employment tribunal ruled against Forstater, but in 2022 she won a landmark appeal. The judge stated that while Forstater’s views are “profoundly offensive and even distressing to many others, they are beliefs that are and must be tolerated in a pluralist society.”
Amid the legal proceedings, Forstater founded Sex Matters — a home for her trans-exclusionary beliefs and a group that remains a prominent conservative voice on gender in the U.K.
What Does Sex Matters Advocate For?
In simple terms, the organization exists to block accommodations for trans people. This includes preventing trans women from playing sports, placing trans people in prisons that don’t align with their gender identity, limiting health resources for trans people, and more.
Most recently, Sex Matters celebrated the U.K. Supreme Court’s ruling on a new and very limited definition of a woman. The ruling has a sweeping impact on the lives of trans and nonbinary people across the country. This decision by the court has the potential to prevent trans and nonbinary people from accessing gender-specific spaces, including public bathrooms, hospital wards, and more.
Sex Matters leadership cheered on the ruling, a decision they had been fighting for. Representatives for the organization even claimed that people who decide to transition are a “huge problem to a sane world” and that they hope to reduce the number of people who do transition.
Organizing Against Trans Exclusion
While the recent Supreme Court ruling in the U.K. is not encouraging for trans liberation, there are people doing the work to combat transphobia. Mermaids is a charity that offers support for trans, nonbinary, and gender-questioning children. TransActual is an organization that engages in national advocacy focused on trans inclusion in healthcare, legal protections, and media representation. Gendered Intelligence is a charitable organization that works to increase understanding of gender diversity while improving the lives of trans people in the U.K.
While Sex Matters continues to operate on exclusion, there are groups and individual activists who are working to mitigate harm and push for equity. There are hundreds of thousands of trans people in the U.K., all of whom deserve to be heard and seen.
