To think that the vast majority of people do not feel they have a gender identity?

[Galvantulang]

My company has recently started suggesting that we can record our gender identity and preferred pronouns (these would be publicly displayed on the intranet) on our HR record system. It's optional for now, but almost everyone I asked at work when the email came out went "eh?".

Apart from the data protection issues of collecting all this extra information, AIBU to think that the majority of people don't consider themselves to have a gender identity, just their sex?

i.e. you don't identify as a man or woman, you just... are one?

Watching laws and amendments to bills being proposed (especially in Scotland) based on recognising gender identity rather than biological sex, seems somewhat unreal.

Um...

Yabu = I feel like I have a gender identity.
Yanbu = I do not feel like I have a gender identity.

[334bu]

Not all males are sexual predators but some are, hence they are not housed with female prisoners. Males who identify as women are according to all evidence available just as likely or not to be sexual predators as other males. So if male prisoners are too high risk to be with female prisoners why are the subset who identify as women allowed to transfer to the female prison estate. This is totally illogical and completely disregards women's needs and human rights.

[Lifeaintalwaysempty]

This is a case in point of how important questions that matter, cannot be answered, when we record gender instead of biological sex.

[Ereshkigalangcleg]

The only thing I found interesting was that only 6% of the self identifying trans prisoners were BAME people, compared to 27% of the overall prison population, which makes me question whether trans is much more of a white issue.

I think in this country it likely is.

[Ereshkigalangcleg]

It's really poor that they don't have the biological sex information which is important for a number of reasons.

[SophocIestheFox]

Again, I think all of this “how many prisoners are trans”, while interesting, is fundamentally irrelevant.

We’re focusing on the wrong set of rights. We can argue all day about whether this transwoman with a GRC should be moved to the female estate, or that transwoman who only identified as trans post conviction, or the other transwoman who is vulnerable in some other way, and it’s always going to end up in a debate over who has “earned” the “right” to the female estate.

I’m dropping the rope on that fight. I want to help women in prison assert their undeniable right to single sex accommodation. The question is “do women have the right not to be locked up in cells with male bodies?”. And if you answer “no” to that then I have questions.

[334bu]

The lack of proper sex disaggregated data is very indicative of women's subordinate role in society. Women die, receive inappropriate medication amongst many other things because it is not considered important to have such data. Therefore it is hardly surprising that when it comes to the safeguarding of some of the most vulnerable women; female prisoners forced to share intimate spaces with male prisoners nobody gives a damn.

[334bu]

The question is “do women have the right not to be locked up in cells with male bodies?”. And if you answer “no” to that then I have questions.

👏👏👏👏

[Stripesnomore]

I don’t think any transwomen should be in the female estate, but I still think it is important to know how many trans prisoners there are when people are claiming that trans women do not have the same offending patterns as males.

[OldCrone]

[quote Lifeaintalwaysempty]@Stripesnomore they know how many transgender prisoners without a GRC there are. They don’t seem to say anywhere what biological sex they are (which is astonishing) and they don’t record how many transgender inmates with a GRC there are, as they are ‘legally’ the sex they have transitioned to.[/quote]
They give a self-declared 'legal gender'. I assumed this to be their legal sex which is the sex they were born as if they don't have a GRC. But then the numbers of prisoners identifying as male/female don't make sense as I posted earlier. So if it's self-reported legal sex/gender are some of the prisoners lying about this in the survey?

[Datun]

There were 34 transgender prisoners in women’s prisons: 30 reported their legal gender as female and 4 as male. When asked about the gender with which the prisoner identified, 11 identified as female, 20 as male and 3 did not provide a response.

And this is why not having the correct information is deliberately sought.

[Lifeaintalwaysempty]

If you look at ‘legal’ gender and gender identified with, it makes no sense whatsoever, and clearly one or the other I’d both are not being filled out correctly. You need the corresponding biological sex data. We don’t know how many natal men are in prisons (including those with a GRC who are aren’t included in transgender numbers). Don’t we have statisticians who are supposed to advise governments on what information they need to record and hold?

Would a FOI request be able to tell us how many natal men (regardless of legal gender or gender identity) are in women’s prisons?

[BraxtonChic]

Don’t we have statisticians who are supposed to advise governments on what information they need to record and hold?

This link on the ONS website is interesting, depressing, and just demonstrates why things are in such chaos.

But...leave no one behind, right?

[BraxtonChic]

Sorry, here

www.ons.gov.uk/releases/whatisthedifferencebetweensexandgender

[ArabellaScott]

Wait, Braxton, is that very simple and straightforward question STILL PENDING?

Next release:
To be announced

Previous date:
6 November 2019 09:30
Reason for change:
To coincide with another output.

Previous date:
6 November 2018 09:30
Reason for change:
To coincide with another output.

Previous date:
2 March 2018 09:30
Reason for change:
Date moved for operational reasons.

Previous date:
18 January 2018 09:30
Reason for change:
Further quality assurance needed.

Previous date:
18 January 2018 09:30
Reason for change:
Further quality assurance needed.

[ArabellaScott]

So - looking at this poll, almost nobody feels they have a gender identity, the government can't tell us what gender is, yet we are now having laws created around this nebulous, contested, unknown term?

Fab.

[OldCrone]

From Braxton's link. This takes you straight to the latest update: www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/articles/whatisthedifferencebetweensexandgender/2019-02-21

----

The UK government defines sex as:

• referring to the biological aspects of an individual as determined by their anatomy, which is produced by their chromosomes, hormones and their interactions
  

• generally male or female
  

• something that is assigned at birth
  

The UK government defines gender as:

• a social construction relating to behaviours and attributes based on labels of masculinity and femininity; gender identity is a personal, internal perception of oneself and so the gender category someone identifies with may not match the sex they were assigned at birth
  

• where an individual may see themselves as a man, a woman, as having no gender, or as having a non-binary gender – where people identify as somewhere on a spectrum between man and woman
  

------

So sex is biological and gender is a load of waffly bollocks to do with stereotypes.

[midgedude]

Social construction isn't a load of bollocks

In fact in this case it's anything but

[ArabellaScott]

Ah, thanks, I missed that link.

somewhere on a spectrum between man and woman

[blinks]

But this:

'UK government defines gender as:

• a social construction relating to behaviours and attributes based on labels of masculinity and femininity; gender identity is a personal, internal perception of oneself'
  

looks like a definition! It's meaningless, but it's a start!

[ArabellaScott]

based on labels of masculinity and femininity

Now they just need to define these labels.

[midgedude]

What is the purpose behind worrying about definition of gender identity , masculine, feminine ?

So some people feel an affinity with the concept and if you are truthful most people will know what you mean if you describe someone as masculine and feminine

So what ? It should change nothing it's irrelevant

[Lifeaintalwaysempty]

Noting with disdain that the U.K. government defines sex as being ‘assigned’ at birth.

[CharlieParley]

Yup. The experts can agree that the concept of gender identity is not the same across the planet. They cannot come up with a non-circular definition. Which leads to confused stuff like the key findings on gender identity published by the UN's independent expert on SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity).

www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/SexualOrientation/GenderIdentityReport_SOGI.pdf

They come so close and yet remain so far from understanding...

[CharlieParley]

"An A identity refers to a person's deeply felt internal and individual experience of A."

[OldCrone]

They've taken that definition of gender identity straight from the Yogyakarta Principles

yogyakartaprinciples.org/introduction/

Gender identity is understood to refer to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms.

It's still just stereotypes.