Sex Matters are breaking charity law with transphobic hate – we’re taking action

Content warning: transphobic hate

The anti-trans charity Sex Matters are spreading hate – so we’ve sent a formal complaint to the Charity Commission and raised our concerns with the government.

Using social media and the rightwing press, Sex Matters, their staff, and their trustees keep pumping out hateful, dehumanising narratives about trans people. Charities should work in the public interest, and in return they benefit from tax breaks. But there’s nothing charitable about transphobia. 

Our complaint includes 46 incidents of inappropriate and offensive conduct – which we’ve presented to the regulator. Taken together, we believe these amount to misconduct and mismanagement of the charity. This simply isn’t how charities should behave.

But this is also a much wider problem. That’s why we’re writing to the culture minister – as well as the head of the Charity Commission – asking them how they plan to tackle charities who use their charitable status to spread hate. 

We think Sex Matters are breaking charity law, going beyond anything that could be deemed charitable. They target individuals, offensively conflate trans people with predators and fetishists, and seem set on dehumanising an already vulnerable minority.

Earlier this year, a viral video showed a “gender critical” customer confronting an M&S employee over the store’s gender neutral changing rooms. The customer argued with and filmed the employee, but the employee responded politely. One of Sex Matters’ trustees tracked down the employee on LinkedIn, and posted his name and picture on X, saying that he needed “remedial customer service training”.

We also found evidence of Sex Matters insinuating that trans people are dangerous predators and fetishists. In a 2024 speech, director of advocacy Helen Joyce said that trans women being allowed to use women’s communal changing rooms was “a state-sanctioned sex crime – voyeurism and indecent exposure”. Their CEO has suggested that trans women continuing to use women’s services and facilities are engaging in “deviant behaviour”.

Hampstead ponds have remained trans-inclusive despite a legal challenge by Sex Matters – but their CEO has also suggested that trans women using the facilities, and happening to see other women in the showers, is “harassment”. Meanwhile, their director of campaigns said that allowing trans women to access Hampstead women’s pond was “an intentional act of violation of women’s boundaries” for male gratification.

Those involved with Sex Matters have also depicted trans people and allies as a threat to children. In 2025, the then chair of the charity spoke about gender-affirming care for trans children, describing that essential support as “the grooming of children into mental ill-health and physical mutilation”. This echoes historical rhetoric around gay people seeking to “recruit” children.

Even trans kids are posed as a threat to their peers. After Girlguiding UK ended inclusion for trans girls, Joyce described their previous policy as a “shameful episode of harming children” and “a real human rights abuse against vulnerable children”. But Girlguiding said it had changed its policy “with a heavy heart”, due to its understanding of its legal obligations – not because trans girl guides pose any danger. These comments paint trans people, including trans children, as an inherent threat to others.

Some of the language used is particularly chilling. One staff member has portrayed transness as an “infection” being spread through schools. This language of disease is reflective of some of the darkest moments in human history, dehumanising marginalised groups.

None of this hate seems like it is necessary or appropriate for Sex Matters in seeking to achieve their supposed charitable objectives – promoting human rights as they relate to “biological sex”. 

Charities enjoy tax breaks and access to exclusive funding – much of it subsidised by public money. Crucially for a controversial group like Sex Matters, charity donors remain anonymous, leaving us all in the dark about who funds their activities. But these privileges come with responsibilities, including a commitment to help the general public. Sex Matters have ignored these responsibilities, and we believe they are acting outside of their stated charitable aims.

Those in power may have chosen to look the other way, but we never will. We can stop Sex Matters spreading more hate about trans people – but only if we force the Charity Commission and the government to confront the facts.