To think it might be useful to know how many men and women we have in this country?

[busyboysmum]

The UK is to become one of the first countries in the world not to require its citizens to let officialdom know what sex they are.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is proposing to make the sex question in the next census voluntary, after protests that it discriminates against transgender and other non-binary people.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/no-sex-please-this-is-the-census-sswntgs5z?shareToken=77358bbde829f11d5748d07af324243a

AIBU to think that we need to know how many men and women there are in society - how on earth can we plan for health services like maternity services, cancers such as prostrate and cervical cancers etc if there isn't even a base line figure for the number of men and women in the country?

Yes, I still think it's important to try. Perhaps this committee can be approached: Who's accountable? Relationships between Government and arm's-length bodies

I understand that a petition to retain sex as a mandatory category in in the census has been submitted

good. can you post here if you see it go live?

Yes, I'd like to sign the petition too if it gets published.

I also will sign it

Anlaf, I definitely will. Mumsnet Spartaci will be the first to know.

the knots people on mumsnet tie themselves in to get all het up about transgender issues is hilarious at times.

I'm fairly sure the country will still keep turning just fine without a sex/gender/whatever question on the census!

Well, the UK will be in contravention of its commitment to SDG5 for starters.... but yeah, whatever.....

Also, recording data about sex is not really a transgender issue as such, it's an issue that affects everyone - and especially women.

Just marking place. A few of my friends are complaining about the Mail headline on Twitter, so I want to read the sensible counter-arguments here!

So why can't they ask about both biological sex, and gender?

Biological sex: male/female/intersex

Gender: masculine/feminine/fluid/non-binary/other/gender is a construct of a patriarchy designed to oppress biological women

Plonit I'm just starting to read about those, thank you for reminding me. I might come back with questions if that's ok

how on earth can we plan for health services

Ha ha.

Fairly thoughtful Mail opinion piece

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4961276/ROBERT-HARDMAN-Britains-gender-row.html

So why can't they ask about both biological sex, and gender?

They tested something like that:
...the retention of the word “sex” in the stem paired with “Other” in the options caused trans participants to be unsure whether they were being asked about their biological sex (when “Other” would be intersex) or their gender (when “Other” would be open to them).

However, asking about sex was again thought irrelevant and intrusive. The addition of “Other” caused respondent uncertainty as to whether the question was actually about gender. The “Other” category was thought to homogenise trans people and differentiate them from the rest of society.

Language matters - sex and gender have become wildly, (often deliberately) confused in many people's minds.

The report and what they tested are here www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/classificationsandstandards/measuringequality/genderidentity/qualitativeresearchongenderidentityphase1summaryreport

This is nuts. We don't need to know what people's gender is, we do absolutely need to know what people's sex is, if we are to properly plan.

If the census does in the end include a question about sex, they need to make it clear they are asking about biological sex, not as what gender people identify as.

If the census does in the end include a question about sex, they need to make it clear they are asking about biological sex, not as what gender people identify as.

I agree Annie, although I suspect most trans people will mark themselves down as the sex they identify as anyway.

I also think it would be useful to have a separate question about whether someone identifies as transgender, simply because it would be good to have a reliable measure of how big the trans population actually is. The usual statistic quoted is 0.3 per cent, but I'm not sure where this comes from and think it might refer to the US. In any case, I'd wager that now that 'trans' encompasses such a broad range of people, from transsexuals to transvestites to teens who are identifying as 'genderqueer' because they are uncomfortable with sex roles, that the population is now significantly larger.

FYI cross-posted on the FWR thread:

It's becoming clear that the overarching goal of the trans movement is to extinguish sex as a legal and ontological category. This has extremely sinister implications for women and indeed the whole of society. It's an astonishing, sweeping goal that is totalitarian in both nature and scope, and is in fact even more ambitious than attempts by totalitarian regimes to erase and rewrite the history of entire nations, such as the Khmer Rouge with their Year Zero,* since human sexual biology is such an immediately observable and ubiquitous phenomenon.

What's even more astonishing is how easily lawmakers and other policy makers are going along with it, as if passing laws and making policy that make it impossible to describe or legislate on the basis of sex is simply a minor adjustment of etiquette.

*Wikipedia on Year Zero:
The idea behind Year Zero is that all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed or discarded and a new revolutionary culture must replace it, starting from scratch. All history of a nation or people before Year Zero is deemed largely irrelevant, as it will ideally be purged and replaced from the ground up.

I notice (and welcome) that the government is launching an official website to gather data on racial inequalities:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/racial-divide-to-be-exposed-on-new-website-jcqz08tlr

For those without access to the Times, a few key snippets:

The site will bring together thousands of pieces of official data from across the public sector in fully searchable form for the first time.

It will also be continually updated as new information is gathered and enable pressure groups and academics to track government progress in tackling discrimination nationally and by region.

The project is thought to be the most ambitious of its type in the world.

The website, called ethnicity facts and figures, was developed as part of the “race audit” requested by Theresa May after she became prime minister.

Mrs May, who will launch the site tomorrow, described it as akin to Charles Booth’s poverty maps that exposed the gap between rich and poor in Victorian London. She said that it was important to draw attention as to how “ethnicity affects people’s lives”.

Kathleen Henehan, policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation think tank, said that it was right for the government to explore racial disparities fully and to put the information in the public domain.

Meanwhile, the UK is cutting back on capturing data on biological sex - in addition to the figures already being skewed because male-bodied people are included in the women's figures (for example, massively skewing data on female sex offenders and creating such anomalies as the army patting itself on the back for having its first 'woman' in a frontline role at a time when no biological woman could have reached that position: www.express.co.uk/news/uk/711590/Chloe-Allen-Army-transgender-front-line-soldier )

If this kind of data is valuable in understanding and tackling racial inequalities, why does it not matter when it comes to women and girls?

The report instead recommended that the existing census question “should not be mandatory, for the benefit of particularly intersex and non-binary people who cannot choose male or female as a reflection of their current sex or gender”.

I don't know what box intersex people have traditionally ticked, but perhaps it would be useful to include a box for intersex. And an additional space to explain which specific intersex condition.

Creating a box for non-binary people is ridiculous. You might as well just create a box that says confused and has issues. I can't think of a single reason why recording that someone is non-binary would be beneficial, other than the state of their mental health.

A mandatory box for sex at birth, and a further box if you are a transwoman or a transman, would also be useful, in terms of numbers. Except it would also include transvestites and cross dressers. In which case they may as well add a box for all the other fetishes.

And so it goes on, and on...

Or

Stick with the current arrangement. And stop catering to a handful of people who have a disproportionate amount to say (about themselves).

It needs to ask about chromosomes. Can transactivists deny they exist?

Also ffs:
The “Other” category was thought to homogenise trans people and differentiate them from the rest of society
A category for trans that doesn't allow them to report which of the 57 genders! Transphobic! Homogenising!

There's actually no logical response to such illogical nonsense. No wonder ONS have refused to prod the hornet's nest and just rolled over.

Transactivists are always complaining about being "erased"... Surely this is an erasing move?

Good question Rum.

There's a petition on the subject petition.parliament.uk/petitions/202435

I've seen this sort of thing already filtering in wrt job applications and GP health check-ups. I'm already a bit when I come across the question whether or not I am the same gender as I was at birth or whatever.
It's just sickening.