Survey at work

That post reminds me of the Mat Walsh "What is a Woman" film, and in particular the TW surgeon who said how tiny the number of detransitioners were in a really dismissive way.

Walsh referred to that surgeon a trans woman and the surgeon replied something like "I am a woman".

I wish he'd followed up. If you are a woman then what word should we use to distinguish women from trans women? If you are no longer "trans" them presumably you have become literally indistinguishable from other women - you have literally got an actually vagina and XX chromosomes? Is your body still releasing eggs or have you gone through the menopause?

I would say that is good clear question on sex. You could push for 'no gender identity' option on the gender idenity question to be fully inclusive! Like they ask religion on the census. Or it could be a two part question, 1a do you have a gender identity (yes, no, prefer not to say) 1b if yes, are you a transwoman, transman, non binary prefer not to say, prefer to self describe.

I think that the'identifies as disabled' is a long standing one and isn't meant to be controversial. More related to the fact that some people are impacted by disability but haven't been formally diagnosed.

I hadn't thought about the "history of trans" in the context of detransitioners so yes that question could be confusing and fail to gather accurate date. I've seen it used by people who transition and view being trans as part of their history because they are now a man or woman opposite to the sex they were born as.

Does seem OTT but to be fair their questions do seem close to being "good questions". I posted one a month or two back that asked "gender" and the options included male, female, interssex and trans.

Then:
sex (3 options, including prefer not to say) - seems fair.
gender identity (5 options, including prefer not to say) - needs "none" and should probably be simply "do you have a gender identity? Y/N. If yes, what is it? Fill in the blank or prefer not to say".
sexuality (9 options, including prefer not to say) - Surely there are only three - gay straight and bi?
religion (if yes, 8 options) - seems fair.
ethnicity (19 options, including prefer not to say) - seems fair.

and...
"Are you trans or have a history of trans?" - surely do you identify as trans? Y/N and do you identify as a detransitioner? Y/N would be the two questions to ask?
(3 options, including prefer not to say)
(what does 'history of trans' even mean? I doubt they mean detransitioners....)

Being generous, I would say that they are including all those questions so that they can analyse the demographic of respondents ie, 90% of respondants are white non-disabled males , when they know that demographic only makes up 5% of the total workforce. You do often get asked these kind of things on other forms or questionnaires, but it states that these questions are entirely voluntary.

Being cycnical, It does look a bit like they are bending over backwards to be gender woo inclusionary.. Have they been stonewalled? My employer has, and the pride group gets input into what questions get asked on surveys, hence we don't get to declare our sex, only our gender identity.

I would push back too because as you say, the responses could identify individuals.

These work surveys are driving me mad with anger. I'm sick of being asked what is your gender with the choices make, female, non binary or prefer not to say. If you don't have a gender identity you have to put prefer not to say as you have to put an answer.

At least your survey asked sex, but do they seriously think non binary is a third sex?

Ugh. The really stupid thing about this is that it is presumably supposed to be an anonymous survey. But once you have that number of fields (ethnicity, sex, gender identity, disability, WFH status etc) you are almost certain to inadvertently de-anonymise quite a few people, possibly almost everyone: the non-binary person with a 3:2 hybrid working model, or the Black man who only WFH on Wednesday, or the White woman with caring responsibilities and a disability who is still fully WFH.

I'd push back on that basis. It's really irresponsible for the company not to have realised that the amount of demographic info they are asking for compromises responder anonymity to this extent.