Sex Matters (advocacy group)
Sex Matters is a British anti-transgender advocacy group. The organization was founded in 2021. Sex Matters became a registered charity on 3 April 2024. Sex Matters intervened in the case of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers at the UK Supreme Court.
History
Sex Matters is a campaign group co-founded in 2021 by Maya Forstater, Rebecca Bull, Naomi Cunningham, and Emma Hilton, with Forstater becoming the CEO of the organisation upon its founding.Forstater had previously won an Employment Tribunal case against her prior employer in Forstater v Centre for Global Development Europe in 2019, which set a precedent in the United Kingdom that gender-critical beliefs were legally protected under the UK Equality Act 2010.
The lobbying group opposes transgender rights and has been involved in several legal cases against trans-inclusive legislation in the United Kingdom. Sex Matters's stated aims are to "promote clarity about sex in law, policy and language in order to protect everybody’s rights".
The Charity Commission registered Sex Matters as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation in England and Wales on 3 April 2024.
Sex Matters has been described variously as "anti-trans", a "human rights charity", "gender-critical", and a "women's rights group".
Sociologists McLean and Stretesky describe Sex Matters as part of "a veritable miasma of anti-trans campaign groups united in their antipathy toward transgender people", alongside CitizenGo, FiLiA, Fair Play for Women, Get the L Out, LGB Alliance, and Transgender Trend.
In September 2025, the Starmer government appointed Tim Allan, previously a trustee of Sex Matters, as director of communications.
Activities
Advocacy
In 2021, Sex Matters wrote an open letter to the Committee on Standards in Public Life complaining the passport office did not record how many people changed sex on the passport. In October 2023, Sex Matters released guidance advising public bodies to ask about sex as opposed to self-identified gender. In other documents, Sex Matters has called for trans peoples' assigned sex at birth to be on all medical records at all times and for the sex of trans doctors and hospital workers to be a matter of public record. It was presented as common sense without explanation of why such tracking was necessary. This has been described as "invasive surveillance" and "disregarding any right to privacy".Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters has appeared as a speaker at Genspect's conference in 2023.
In June 2024, the Labour Party published a manifesto including a promise to ban conversion therapy, calling it "abuse" and by banning the practice, create "freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity".
In July 2024, King Charles III announced the new government's plans during his King's Speech including the ban on conversion therapy.
Responding to the announcement, in July 2024, Sex Matters called on incoming Prime Minister Keir Starmer not to give Anneliese Dodds, Minister of State for Women and Equalities the responsibility for Labour's pledge to implement a "full trans-inclusive" ban on conversion therapy, claiming it may be "used to criminalise dissent with gender ideology".
In May 2025, Fiona McAnena, Sex Matters's director of campaigns, welcomed the Football Association ruling to ban transgender women from playing women's football in England. Later, after a controversy in which a trans woman working as a shop assistant at Marks & Spencer approached a teenage customer and her mother in the underwear section and asked if they needed any assistance, McAnena issued a statement saying "M&S needs to rethink its priorities and remember that women and girls have rights too, and that this man should not be permitted to hang around in the women's underwear department". M&S subsequently apologized, and later added that the store's bra fitting service would only be offered to customers who are "biological females" and only carried out by employees who are the same.
In August 2025, Sex Matters supported GB News host Michelle Dewberry in issuing a legal threat against gym chain Virgin Active, resulting in the chain banning trans women from female changing rooms within the United Kingdom.
After the resignation of Tim Davie from the BBC, Sex Matters wrote an open letter to the BBC in which they demanded that it "Stop referring to ‘transgender women' When ‘woman’ or ‘female’ is used, the only clear understanding is biology. No prefix including ‘trans’ or ‘transgender’ can change this, and to use those terms is to mislead the public".