What Sex Matters to Quakers can teach us about transphobic hate in a religious context

If you go on X, one of many accounts you’ll find screaming into the void about trans people is operated by Sex Matters to Quakers. Sex Matters to Quakers self-describes as “an informal group of Friends” which first attempted to gain official recognition by Britain Yearly Meeting (the encompassing body of all Quaker meetings in Britain) in 2021. They regularly make statements on social media that I would personally characterise as both transphobic and hateful. The best illustration of their position is a quote-post of a thread comparing trans women to necrophiles. Until Meeting for Sufferings heard another application for them to become a Quaker Recognised Body on 6 December 2025, it wasn’t entirely clear to me whether or not they had many other activities. They advertised a webinar about safeguarding and they sent an unsolicited ‘Equality Impact Assessment’ on toilet policy to Britain Yearly Meeting’s trustees. However, as far as I was aware that was the extent of what they had achieved.

Their 2025 application was also denied, with the resulting minute reading “our corporate position as a yearly meeting is clear and it is not clear that it can be reconciled with the Group’s approach.” The minute also drew attention to unspecified “behaviours that are not in keeping with our corporate discipline.” In other words, Sex Matters to Quakers had either been found to not be acting in line with Quaker values or did not respect the basic principles of Quaker worship. It’s hard to say what, exactly, the issues brought up in Meeting for Sufferings might have been, and to what extent their social media presence was implicated. As I am not involved with Meeting for Sufferings I don’t have more to go on than the minutes and the preliminary documents, which were recently updated to contain all the documents that would have been available to attenders including those considered to be sensitive such as the Sex Matters to Quakers application.

Now, as of writing, Sex Matters to Quakers hasn’t published anything on X about being refused Quaker Recognised Body status. They quoted a post originally referring to the Bondi Beach massacre making allusions to how media censorship by the Nazi party prevented dissenting views with the simple caption “think about it” which contextually seems like an appropriation of the atrocities of the Holocaust and contemporary antisemitism for their own ends. The UK-based group have otherwise continued on posting about topics that are more typical for them, such as disavowing the existence of gender variant children through misrepresenting efforts to statistically account for intersex and transgender children in Canada. In Canada, unlike the UK, an ‘X’ marker to be used to designate a child’s sex on their birth certificate. They also quoted another post casting trans women as trying to “bypass women’s consent” while accusing unnamed others as acting in a manner that was ‘unquakerly’ through the use of ‘aggressive language.’

The ideas of not being “in keeping with [Quaker] corporate discipline” and “unquakerly” are closely related. Often, both can simply imply a lack of appropriate decorum from the accused party. Without further context of what the precise behaviour was, it can easily be understood as a form of tone policing, a way to give or take away legitimacy from a given statement by calling attention to its form rather than its content. While it is important to discuss what kind of behaviour can be justified within the bounds of the Quaker testimonies this is not always what ‘quakerly’ means or is taken to mean. Quakerly language, quakerly manners, and quakerly appearances can make stances that Quakers should wholly reject seem much more palatable. It is apparent from Sex Matters to Quakers’ application that they intended to come across as ‘quakerly’ and in the absence of public context for what transpired at Meeting for Sufferings I might assume that they might later attempt to use the framing of their application to demonstrate the reasonableness of their stances. Following this, there are two things I would like to do here. One is to air concerns that I have about the material effects of Sex Matters to Quakers’ activity. The other is to highlight the stances made by Sex Matters to Quakers on their social media accounts that were implicit in or left out of their Quaker Recognised Body application. Whether their conduct is considered quakerly or not, the content and consequences of their actions should not be.

Sex Matters to Quakers’ activities, as described, are (quoted directly from their application [page 61]):

• holding regular meetings for worship and study on topics like single-sex spaces, women’s sports, childcare and safeguarding
• issuing epistles or statements to Quaker gatherings to speak “truth to power” on the reality of sex, as part of a Quaker witness to social justice
• sharing information (e.g. legal, medical) so that Friends can discern how UK laws (such as the Equality Act 2010) define sex and how this affects Quaker practice
• providing pastoral and prayerful support to any Friend navigating questions of gender identity or sex-based rights.

I want to begin by questioning what this final activity means for those Friends ‘who identify as transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming, gender-questioning, or de-transitioned’ that Sex Matters to Quakers claims to welcome and value in Quaker meetings. It needs to be clear that Sex Matters to Quakers has made statements in favour of conversion therapy for transgender people: they frame it as ‘caring psychological help’ and deny that it is ‘conversion therapy’. What then is the pastoral care offered to trans, non-binary, and intersex Friends by Sex Matters to Quakers? If they have plans to offer this then they should make their practices open. Friends should have the opportunity to know what the nature of this ‘support’ is. While religious practices are not strictly considered ‘conversion therapy’, advocacy groups such as Mind consider it to be part of a wider umbrella of conversion practices which are also harmful. A report from galop on conversion practices stated that 22% of LGBT+ people from religious backgrounds had been subjected to them. Sex Matters to Quakers believes that transition is a form of conversion therapy. To them, it would not be “conversion” but rather affirmation of the truth to prayerfully dissuade trans people from socially or medically transitioning. As Quakers in Britain has made an official statement opposing conversion therapy, this possibility should be taken quite seriously, as it would mark the walking back of a serious commitment if endorsed.

This opposition to transition is what “speaking truth to power” may refer to. The willingness of governments to allow people to legally transition is something Sex Matters to Quakers opposes. Professional organisations such as the British Medical Association, which supports social and medical transition may also be considered as powerful organisations. There are numerous reasons why such bodies may affirm trans people: the main one being that transition is shown to improve outcomes for trans people. However, Sex Matters to Quakers has posted about the existence of a “trans lobby” that is, presumably, also powerful. The word “lobby” implies a moneyed group of people directly impacting the right functioning of organisations and governments in the same manner as the tobacco lobby or the gambling lobby. Trans people who are engaged in activism may write to their MP or participate in demonstrations in a way that could be described as “lobbying” in a more neutral capacity in the same manner as, for example, people who are concerned about the climate might. Presenting a marginalised group as “a lobby” with an outsized amount of power is a way to further marginalise them. But by taking this perspective, Sex Matters to Quakers can frame anything they say in opposition to any trans people as “speaking truth to power.” After all, those trans people might either be acting on behalf of a disingenuous lobby or be swayed by one.

As for “sharing information” on legal and medical topics, Sex Matters to Quakers’s activity in this area, at least on X, consists broadly of speculation on the outcomes of hypothetical court cases and appeals to assist legal challenges against trans-inclusive services as well as sharing fearmongering and gross-out content about gender-affirming surgeries. We might also consider the quote-post they made comparing trans women to necrophiles as an attempt to ‘share information’, considering that their addition to the post contained a link to a piece of legal evidence attempting to portray trans women as particularly prone to committing violent crimes. The linked document itself relies on faulty data and reasoning to make its point: other academics as well as the BBC’s Reality Check team have made responses to the same publications it cites demonstrating that the data collection methodology is either poor or not generalisable.

Based on the low rigour of this ‘information’ I personally think it is likely that the quality of whatever study sessions Sex Matters to Quakers might be holding is likely to be similarly poor. Sex Matters to Quakers don’t qualify the resources they use to study the topics of “single-sex spaces, women’s sports, childcare and safeguarding” but one can assume that they post the same resources they share amongst themselves: if there was something more credible to be seen then surely they would post that instead. It also does not seem to have occurred to them during their worship or study that even if the statistics they cited had been accurate, it isn’t right to describe an entire minority group as “more dangerous” because of a disproportionality in crime statistics. Sex Matters to Quakers hasn’t made their materials on safeguarding public, simply stating their interest on the topic, but if they sincerely believe the things that they are posting then it would stand to reason that what they are leaving silent in their application is that they see trans people, trans women especially, as a risk to others’ safety.

Sex Matters to Quakers also lists their publications and activities as (quoted directly from their application [page 60]):

• Zoom meetings (typically monthly) for worshipful discussion
• website
• occasional blogs
• private discussion groups on Facebook and WhatsApp
• X posts
• working with a group of London Quakers for four years on the ‘To thine own self be true’ (TTOSBT) Epistle, which was approved at a Meeting at Friends House in February 2024, and ensuing follow-up activities in the same spirit.

I couldn’t find Sex Matters to Quakers’s website, or more than one blog post specifically by Sex Matters to Quakers (unless you count Robbie Spence’s personal Substack) so some of these activities may be planned instead of current. Their private discussion groups and Zoom calls are not something I am privy to. Their X posts are, well, extensive. Their claim to the To Thine Own Self Be True epistle is interesting, because I had suspected their involvement in its creation since I first read it but had not been able to find evidence as to what that involvement might have been. It’s also interesting because on London Quakers’ website, there’s a request “not to share the epistle on Social Media.” This is a blog, not social media, so I am going to link to the epistle and encourage you to read it and make your own mind up about what Sex Matters to Quakers’s input might have been.

The core of the TTOSBT epistle and Sex Matters to Quakers’s application to become a Quaker Recognised Body are roughly the same: both make the claim that it is possible to welcome trans people into Quaker meetings and insist on the disputable nature of their identities at the same time. The TTOSBT epistle takes the binary nature of sex as a given, describing it as “physical and rational.” It does this without reference to intersex people or the manner in which transgender people can have physical characteristics typically associated with the gender they identify as. It repeatedly makes assertions along the lines of its third statement:

3. We are at a time now where the acceptance of trans individuals seems to imply a direction of travel that risks diminishing the hard-won freedoms of women and gay / bisexual people. This epistle seeks to bring light at this time.

Throughout the epistle, the terms “lesbian,” “gay,” and “bisexual” are used in a manner that seems to imply that transgender people are somehow outside these identities. There is no mention of how a trans woman might be in a lesbian relationship or a trans man might be in a gay relationship, or any explanation of how a bisexual person in a relationship with a trans person might hypothetically be impacted at all. The implication, based on the only quote from a participant in the entire epistle, seems to be that such relationships must be based on some form of coercion:

Simply replacing ‘sex’ with ‘gender identity’ in policy erases a fundamental sense of self for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. One participant said: ‘I am a lesbian because I am attracted to people of the same sex… the assertion that people born male can be lesbians is both hurtful and traumatising… lesbians are asked to reframe their sexual attraction to include men, so as not to be “transphobic”.

The concepts that anyone might be in a relationship with a trans person because they wanted to be, and that not everyone bases their sexual identity strictly on a binary understanding of sex and gender, do not make mention. Neither is any challenge made to the implication that transgender women are asking other women to be attracted to them through identifying as lesbians. The epistle is presented in a “quakerly” manner, having been drafted through Quaker meetings and using language that is not only understood by Quakers but broadly accepted by the trans community: it refers to “trans people” rather than “trans identified women and men” as Sex Matters to Quakers’s application does. The latter is a phrase that firstly marks transness as an identity secondary to sex (as opposed to, e.g. a trait or a way of being or a lived experience) and secondly allows the writers the leeway to covertly refer to, e.g. transfeminine people as “trans identified men” and transmasculine people as “trans identified women”. This is a phrase which Sex Matters to Quakers has used in order to misgender trans women.

It’s clear that there was an effort to use respectful language in the epistle whereas a possible goal of the Quaker Recognised Body application might have been to push the limits of what language might have been seen as acceptable in Quaker spaces. But this surface-level respect isn’t there when you look at whose voices are elevated and what positions are given unquestioning recognition. While the word “valid” is never used in the epistle, the general sentiment seems to be that trans identities may be valid in that they are known and not chosen but that trans people who live those identities are doing so in a way that isn’t valid and is potentially coercive and degrading to others. The sense you get is that trans people are meant to be happy with the language used even as that language is used to push rhetoric and actions that exclude them from public life and disallow them from expressing their sexuality in a way that makes sense to them and their partners. It’s similar to how gay people are sometimes given the recognition that their sexuality is not a choice but are asked regardless to be celibate. In a response to the To Thine Own Self Be True epistle that pre-dates this revelation from Sex Matters to Quakers, Clare Flourish says “meetings cannot both welcome trans people and treat our human subjectivity- our inner light- as a cause of suspicion and fear.” When we talk about what is and isn’t quakerly, yes, decorum matters, but it should matter less than developing an understanding of the meaning of what is being communicated. Otherwise, the next time Sex Matters to Quakers makes an application, they can simply write their ideas down slightly differently, wordsmithing their exclusionary viewpoints until they are deemed respectful.

Now, Sex Matters to Quakers would likely object to being referred to as holding “transphobic” viewpoints and are probably not motivated by the actual emotion of hate. If we take their word for it, from their perspective, they are communicating a truth about the world to people who do not believe in the truth. Their stance is not very far off from the saying “love the sinner, hate the sin”: so-called “trans identified men and women” should be welcomed to worship as humans but otherwise discouraged and prevented from living their lives in a way that reflects their experiences. If Sex Matters to Quakers do perceive anything they do or say as hateful, they probably see themselves as enacting what Berit Brogaard would refer to as “critical hatred.” That would be, hatred directed at the right things for the greater good. However, I think it’s more likely that they simply believe that they are acting on behalf of “lesbian, gay, and bisexual” people who are (apparently) being beleaguered and pressured by trans people into doing and saying things they don’t want to.

I believe that hatred is often experienced as and presented as a compassionate worry for one group that is callous toward another. Whenever the callous side becomes too apparent, the compassionate end can be invoked, either to shield the person holding the hateful belief from feelings of guilt or to justify the belief to others as necessary. I think this is how hate is fostered in a religious environment such as in Quaker meetings. It is too often seen as a contradiction of terms when in fact it is the dark side of trying to meet the wants and needs of a particular group while positioning another as in opposition to them. This consideration should be made of statements coming from anyone, not just people who are affiliated with Sex Matters to Quakers. This dynamic is most apparent when a non-sequitur comment is made appealing to the needs of the party that compassion is being directed towards when it is not relevant to the topic. An illustrative example can be found in the same December 2025 session of Meeting for Sufferings where Sex Matters to Quakers’s application was heard. Quaker Committee for Christian and Interfaith Relations presented a paper on the theology of trans and non-binary inclusion and affirmation. During discernment on that paper, a Friend raised that cisgender disabled women may want to have intimate care provided by a cisgender woman. One can imagine contexts where this might be a pertinent thing to raise but it contextually makes the offensive implication that, if unopposed, trans acceptance would lead to violations of a woman’s choice about who touches her intimately. It’s the same idea that Sex Matters to Quakers push, only less overt.

In the end, Sex Matters to Quakers’s position is a twisted knot of contradictions and oppositions. Trans people are loved and cherished, but are dangerous and liable to cause others harm. They are victims of powerful medical and legal bodies that encourage them in their actions, while being powerful enough to lobby and shape those bodies into allowing them to do whatever they want. They are sympathetic victims as children and invasive predators as adults. The religious framework they use to justify this is, counterintuitively, still one based in compassion. They come to this as Quakers. As Quakers, how do we respond without falling back to the idea that good intentions override material harms, or that respectful-sounding language always conveys a will to make peace? That is something we are all going to have to figure out.