Future of legal gender and mumsnet

@RuffleCrow - You rang?

Kings College London, like most universities has a research integrity statement of how their people will do research and details the governance around that.
www.kcl.ac.uk/research/support/rgei/research-integrity/research-integrity-statement

Honestly if I were them and had got the feedback (‘attacks’) that these researchers seem to have got on their survey from the public, I would probably be calling their local research office or the UK RIO for advice.... not calling for feminists to do their feminism differently.

ukrio.org/

‘ The UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) is an independent charity, offering support to the public, researchers and organisations to further good practice in academic, scientific and medical research. We promote integrity and high ethical standards in research, as well as robust and fair methods to address poor practice and misconduct. We pursue these aims through our publications on research practice, in-depth support and services for research employers, our education and training activities, and by providing expert guidance in response to requests for assistance from individuals and organisations.‘

Part of the problem here that people are raising is a normative language point, an everyday comprehension point, a serious problem that becomes inevitable if researchers make their own rarified, politicised and not clearly explained concepts (here: of what ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ mean), inherent to their survey of the public on complex questions (here: of gender and sex).

Good research shouldn’t require survey respondents or MNers or random Twitter users to have to point out that conflating sex with gender means the results of their surveys wont be interpretable, and will be unsafe to be used as an evidence basis for this projects aim of influencing policy making.

It always has to be made clear to the participant of any survey what they are being asked to comment on. Getting that right is good research 101 and forms a basis of consent to participate. This basic stuff is not solved by ‘adjust your feminism’.

Threads like this remind me what an obscene gravy train this lot are all on. Earning money that most people can only dream of to produce unethical, self serving, biased drivel all dressed up as "academic" research. And because of they're part of this 'sacred caste' nobody dares to challenge them for the most basic of errors and flaws.
That Julian Vigo piece How to stage a study that Ereshkigalangcleg linked to upthread is well worth a read - all the "inaccuracies", the bias and the influence of the usual suspects laid out in full :

medium.com/@julian.vigo/how-to-stage-a-study-the-transgender-lobby-in-british-academia-f196f4f686f1

Lots of these women fawn over Alex, desperate to gain approval, which is pretty sad

I can very much imagine this.

Alex Sharpe is awful. Lots of these women fawn over Alex, desperate to gain approval, which is pretty sad. Alex transitioned in mid 40s after becoming a professor as a white male so forgive me if I am not convinced they are an oppressed minority.

A scam, basically.

... qualifying to apply for public funds again... with no guarantee that the future "services" (paid for by public funds) are any less fraudulent.

I'd say it's not a failing of methodology or prefigurative reasearch. It's fraud. Falsifying an input to receive funds and with that "experience" qualifying for public funds

Yep.

Bookmarking the Julian Vigo link, there's an academic I have a great deal of respect for.

Miriel I totally agree with everything you said. Second wavers didn’t have to engage with what a woman was because people hadn’t quite reached this level of idiocy yet.

As for whether they are respected in academia, depends who you speak to. They (the members of the project) are part of quite a powerful clique and wield quite a lot of influence (esp Prof Cooper). However, I don’t see their work cited in court judgments or similar so it has quite a niche audience I think. Their general influence makes it quite hard to challenge them though because the repercussions could be very serious.

This is how so many things seem to be set up now. Foregone conclusions, and 'consultations' or 'investigations' just a formality, a process gone through to prop up the prevailing ideology, or even to 'educate' anyone who doesn't agree.

Prefigurative research? Just assume that everyone agree with you.

She was the "principal investigator" on the survey. Didn't get the responses she wanted. Was shocked that people objected to the framing of her questions (clearly not framed very well, then). Is now objecting to the results of her (and others') "investigation."

This is how so many things seem to be set up now. Foregone conclusions, and 'consultations' or 'investigations' just a formality, a process gone through to prop up the prevailing ideology, or even to 'educate' anyone who doesn't agree.

It's a failing of very basic research methodology, I would have said.

I agree, Chatty.

I don't see any effort made to engage with these concerns. If you see who the named research team are, as well as Cooper they all have a focus on trans/gender identity issues.

I suppose that's par for the course in academia at the moment.

The research associate who co wrote several of the blogs scolding women for objecting appears to be "non binary".

Co investigator Flora Renz' work is listed here. You'll see a theme

www.kent.ac.uk/law/people/1193/www.kent.ac.uk/law/people/1193/renz-flora

Julian Vigo wrote this about her concerns about the focus of this study and the research team's priorities. It's worth a read

link.medium.com/BELrH3PFD6

"Gender critical feminism is often equated with radical feminism. However, radical feminism – as popularised in the 1980s and ’90s by writers such as Catharine MacKinnon – placed sexuality and not bodily sex at the heart of women’s oppression. It was women’s socialisation into heterosexuality, and the eroticisation of male domination, that were identified as being key to women’s subordination to men."

Well, yes, a critique of the gendered roles and expectations in heterosexual relationships is a part of radical feminism. However, arguing that radical feminism was about critiquing heterosexuality is missing the fundamental ontological point. Who are the people who are being socialised into accepting submissive or subordinate roles. Women. What is a woman? If your answer is 'anyone who identifies with or as the gender marked "woman"' then you can't make a critique, because you're saying that 'women' identify with their own subordination and are happy with it. Any person who doesn't must be some kind of non-binary individual and not a woman. You see this with the historical revisionism suggesting that any insufficiently feminine woman in history must have really been a transman, even when conforming to femininity meant incredibly limited horizons.

The second-wavers could write critiques of heterosexuality and gender roles in the way they did because they were unpicking the assumption that gender roles were innate or natural - a viewpoint only held by strong conservatives now. I can only imagine their reaction if someone had said at the time that yes, gender (or sex role stereotype, as it was called then) and biological sex are different, but biological sex is unimportant, and gender, instead of being harmful and limiting to both men and women, is some integral and valuable part of one's identity.

They didn't have to address that nonsense. They didn't have to argue that biological sex mattered. We, sadly, do, and so we have to return again and again to 'what is a woman?'

I’m really curious to know how supervisions, projects, grant applications, lectures, seminars, writing for publication, meeting discussions, conference presentations, marking essays and exams, awarding grades, or just you know, having a conversation about work, can go ahead when critique is construed as attack?
Isn’t having a debate to form consensus (that can be challenged at any time by new evidence) how academia works?

If someone appears to be producing work below the standard level for their post, would they just not say anything then? What would be an acceptable way to challenge that?

Oh look, another TRA who thinks they're entitled to co-opt the experience of infertile females in the service of their grotesque argument.

It's so clueless. Causes and treatment of infertility are obviously completely different for men and women, as have been the historical social consequences.

How can anybody have a legal gender when nobody can explain what gender is or why it needs to be recognised?

Its all so daft. Surely other academics have zero respect for all this, too?
It’s not ‘attacking’ to point out when surveys are poorly constructed and won’t be able to show the answers that they said they were looking for.

She was the "principal investigator" on the survey. Didn't get the responses she wanted. Was shocked that people objected to the framing of her questions (clearly not framed very well, then). Is now objecting to the results of her (and others') "investigation."

This is "shoot the messenger", "the voters were wrong, but we won the argument" stuff.

It's incredibly worrying that public money is going to this sort of manipulation, and that the manipulation is being fed back in to public policy (which will affect even more public spending).

Oh look, another TRA who thinks they're entitled to co-opt the experience of infertile females in the service of their grotesque argument.

For anyone not familiar with the project aims it's worth reading the earlier threads that Stumbledin linked to.

The following summary I've linked below is by the KCL law department to lay out the justification for the project. I've pulled out some key points.

It reveals that you've guessed it- a) Stonewall were on the advisory group and b) a "draft reform bill to focus further policy and wider public discussion on the legal regulation and recognition of gender identity in England and Wales" is supposed to be produced.

As a major piece of law reform research, this project is intended to significantly contribute to debates about gender identity reform. While current agendas focus on the experiences of people whose birth gender does not "fit", this research addresses more broadly the implications of reforming a binary legal structure currently anchored in gender designation at birth.

Also:

Many representatives from stakeholder groups have already agreed to participate (see Pathways to Impact).

Where do these representatives come from I wonder and what are these "stakeholder groups"?

A) Advisory Group (AG): Including representatives from the EHRC, Stonewall and EDF. It will meet at key stages to advise on research design, dissemination, and assessment of research methodology. Members will also assist in reaching research participants.

This gives an idea of what they are intending to facilitate and why Stonewall is on the AG for this academic legal research exercise.

3. GOVERNMENT, PARLIAMENT AND LEGAL PROFESSION. The Women and Equalities Select Committee report on Transgender Equality (2016) recommended comprehensive action including addressing needs of people who identify as non-binary. Given the timing of this project, its research findings are ideally placed to influence future legal and policy debate. The research team will work with specialist lawyers, and policy-makers (including on the AG) drawing on research findings to respond to proposed law reforms and, where necessary, outline alternatives for government departments and shadow ministers.

https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FP008968%2F1

They believe that is we say sex is an element of reproduction, that sex exists for reproduction, then we must believe that all individual men and women have to reproduce or at least be able to. An infertile women would not really be a woman.

I think people are told that that's what the crazy radical feminists believe (just like the religious right), and once the seed of the idea has been planted, it winds its roots round the idea of sex == reproduction and they can't hear that that's not what the crazy radical feminists think at all - in fact they just have the very plain and normal idea that women are adult, human, females, and females are the ones with the large gametes.