Census Email Campaign

[SusanSmithFWS]

The CTEEA meet tomorrow to discuss the census. While we are obvious delighted that Parliament voted to retain a binary question on sex, we are concerned that the NRS are testing guidance which could, potentially, reduce this to another gender identity question by allowing respondents to self-identify sex.

Trans activists have been "protesting" Parliament and are lobbying Government and demanding one-to-one meetings with committee members.

In light of this, we really need people to contact members of the committee prior to the meeting to express concern about the impact on women's rights. We have guidance, a suggested email, and addresses here and would be really grateful if as many as possible could contact them tonight. Thank you!

forwomen.scot/11/09/2019/census-email-campaign/#more-1499

Thanks all. We thought the committee session was really good!

It was but having watched the whole thing it was very bizarre. The main spokesperson from the census repeatedly stated that asking people for their birth or legal sex would give different results from previous censuses where the question was just sex and also repeatedly stated that while the answers from a birth / legal sex question would be useful for a subset of data users it would not be useful for other data users who would prefer a broader definition

I really want to know who these data users are who want to disaggregate data by sex, where both female and male may mean the opposite, but hey, we have no way of knowing...

Also not quite sure why the census people felt the need to bring a lawyer with them?

Just watching - NRS woman says that sex question doesn't need to be based on sex for analysing discrimination as much discrimination not based on biology but on perception hmm

How do they know this? Do they have any statistics comparing sex vs perception? How will they monitor this if they don’t know sex? How much discrimination is not based on sex?

thanks for posting links, ItsAll.

So the census producers have been caught by the transactivism push.

And now, the only thing standing in the way of the census being riddled with unscientific fallacies and reason is the Scottish Government...

TRAs are dug in so deep it’s frightening. It would be interesting to know exactly who lobbied for the last census to record self-ID. Like the GRA, it was brought in under the radar, without public discussion and is being crowbarred in now as “rolling back trans rights” even though “trying something out once, without any checks or balances”, hardly equates to “an established right.”

So the census producers have been caught by the transactivism push.

It appears so. If you watch the video they are pushing really hard to have sex in the census as self I'd, whereas I'd expect them to be more neutral about the form of the question, or at least be biased towards the sensible biological / legal sex based option.

I still find the fact that they brought a lawyer with them very odd - his main purpose seemed to be explaining why the equality act had nothing to do with the census, and that the equality act doesn't define sex anyway.

It is fascinating though, that orgs as esoteric as those that produce the census have been captured in this way.

There is another part, mentioned in the census thread, where the census people are testing questions and guidance to see how they work together. They are recruiting a few thousand sample of the population, plus using TRA orgs to recruit trans people to feed back on the sex and trans questions.

The committee rightly questioned them on the validity of these responses from people recruited in this way.

being crowbarred in now as “rolling back trans rights”

Right at the start Joan McAlpine got the head census person to state that Scotland was leading the world in trans inclusivity in the census (although she tried very hard not to)

I am guessing the lawyer was there because they have had TRAs threatening legal action?

Transcript of this meeting is up now for anyone interested:

www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/report.aspx?r=12252&i=110744

Some (out of order) quotes:

NRS:
The supposition in that is that discrimination only happens on a biological ground, which is not necessarily what many users will come back to say to us about what they are trying to measure, because discrimination can also take place on the basis of perception.

Through the census question, we are trying to meet a broad range of views, some of which might be more akin to someone’s biology but some of which might be much more to do with perceptions and how people are seen by others.

Joan McAlpine
You will recruit the trans respondents [for testing] through trans organisations. The committee is very aware that those organisations have strong views about the subject. You will recruit people for a testing exercise through organisations that already have very strong views about the questions. Is that not liable to damage how you collect the data and the outcomes of the testing?

Annabelle Ewing:
In the interest of consistency, how could you possibly have a definition of sex that is other than sex registered at birth?

^Kenneth Gibson (Cunninghame North) (SNP):
Surely it would be easier and much simpler if question 3 asked, “What was your sex registered at birth?” That would lead on to the wording in question 4.^

Amy Wilson: [replying to Kenneth Gibson - these two are connected]
We could ask that question, but it would need to be understood that that would be likely to lead to quite different data from what we have asked for in the past. Again, that would be asking a more specific question than the one that we are currently proposing—that is, “What is your sex?”

If we were to ask Kenny Gibson’s question, we would need to understand exactly what the effect of that would be. I think that we are reflecting data users’ needs. Yes, some data users would probably say that what you propose is what they need, but other data users would not say that and it would not meet their needs. We are trying to meet a broad range of needs through the sex question.

This ‘data users have different needs’ seems like a complete red herring to me. If you record biological sex in the sex question and trans status in the trans question then you have complete data that can be cut in different ways according to need - women as a biological sex class or women including transwomen. The argument about perception is entirely in the eye of the beholder and this won’t be captured in any census question. Some trans people pass as members of the opposite sex, some don’t, and may suffer discrimination of a different kind.

Not only that, but also not all trans people concider themselves to have changed sex so you would have some eg males recording sex as male and others as female and vice versa for females. As transgender people of different sexes will suffer different discrimination the data set produced would be useless.

Also I am sure some transgender people based on their assertion that they are actually the opposite sex will not concider themselves trans at all. As to be trans you would by the very name have to have changed. Trans people often stipulate that they have been the opposite sex from birth so therefore logically they would not concider themselves to be trans.

God this is all so stupid. What a guddle. When will they realise that GRA was a bad idea and will continue to be a bad idea for a very long time. Tell us your sex recorded at birth, then tell us if you're trans/identity. The likelihood of people lying would surely be the same margin as it always was.

I can't believe they're recruiting via the same organisations who lobbied for the change and no doubt contributed to the guidance notes too. Are these people honestly statistical and data collection experts?

This meeting is classic! Watching them all tie themselves in knots trying to answer the very straight forward questions from the committee. Does anyone know who has the final say on what the guidance will say?