Sex Matters Podcast

On this week’s podcast, Maya Forstater talks to Akua Reindorf KC, barrister and former commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission. With Baroness Kishwer Falkner, she has written a new Policy Exchange report on the draft Conversion Practices Bill.The report concludes that the draft bill leaves key terms undefined and risks criminalising ordinary parenting, teaching and pastoral care.The joint committee scrutinising the bill is taking written evidence until 5pm on Monday 16th November. Anyone can respond, and you don’t need to be a lawyer. Our guide in the show notes suggests answering three short questions and one longer one about your own experience.



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sex-matters-news.org

Helen Joyce speaks to Tess Hackett, an Australian mother estranged from her trans-identifying daughter. Tess set up Australia’s first support group for parents of children who identify as trans, now a nationwide network she still runs.She describes life under conversion-practices bans in Australian states: detransitioners in Victoria having to go interstate for medical help; psychologists turning away teenagers; and parents too scared to seek help.As the UK’s draft Conversion Practices Bill goes through pre-legislative scrutiny, this is a look at what such laws mean in practice.
Read our briefing, Who will be criminalised



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sex-matters-news.org

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.
Read our briefing on the draft Conversion Practices Bill.



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sex-matters-news.org

In this week’s episode, Helen Joyce is joined by social scientist Matilda Gosling, who was commissioned by Sex Matters to write Criminalising conversations, a new report on the government’s proposed Conversion Practices Bill and how it would affect parents, therapists and gender-distressed young people.
The report is the first of its kind to document the serious problems with the planned new law foreseen by experienced therapists who work with gender-distressed young people. Matilda discusses the risk that experienced therapists stop working with gender-distressed people for fear of prosecution, and the knock-on impacts on children and parents, lesbian and gay people, and detransitioners.



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sex-matters-news.org

Why does it matter whether we collect data on sex? In this episode of the Sex Matters podcast, Helen Joyce talks to sociologist Professor Alice Sullivan of University College London about her forthcoming book Sex, Lies and Statistics, due out in November.
Alice explains why sex has always been an essential statistical variable, and how conflating it with “gender identity” conceals differences in health, crime and life outcomes. They discuss preference falsification: how the vilification of the commonplace understanding of sex as real and biological has led many people to conceal their true views. They look at how public and private organisations, from the Office for National Statistics to sports governing bodies, came to adopt fringe ideas that few people share, and why so many institutions have treated people who raise concerns as the problem.
Finally, Alice discusses the need for stronger free-speech protections and an end to the culture of impunity if sex-based data and evidence-based policy-making are to be restored.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sex-matters-news.org