Sunday Times - Sex question catapults census into trans war

[mcduffy]

Sex question catapults census into trans war

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sex-question-catapults-census-into-trans-war-vq29nfvsg

I'm not sure how to do share tokens (or if I can from the app)
Letter sent to the Sunday Times today from >70 academics, some of whom have opted to be anonymous.

I hope they have a big enough box for gender identity otherwise I'm going to have to write very small to explain my feelings on my 'gender identity'.

your sex is your sex, regardless of how desperate you are to be a different sex, you can't be and must answer honestly

This is the absolute heart of it. This, to the extremists, is pure transphobia. The idea is to enable someone to never encounter any information or boundary suggesting to them that their sex hasn't changed in line with their preferences: what they say is what they are, and anything that ever provides that jolt back to reality is harmful/wrong.

The problem is that other people and society have needs and rights too. There has to be the line as PP says above that says, transition is great, transition is fine, it will be protected from discrimination as other protected characteristics are, but the boundary is that no one can change sex and you must be honest about that sex, and in some situations that truthful birth sex is the deciding factor. Third spaces are an option to facilities for birth sex in the few situations where it matters. Confidentiality and data protection is in place for those whose birth sex is highly sensitive information to them. And support and help needs to be provided to people who struggle to tolerate the reality of their birth sex. That reality unfortunately isn't going to go away and the falsifying of legal documents and statistics cannot be an answer.

I really don’t understand why they don’t want accurate info on this. Surely transpeople might be interested in how many transpeople there are? Why can’t we just have a separate box for trans woman, trans man, gender fluid or whatever?!

Good question oncemorewithfeeling99 (although I wouldn’t say you need to consider it any challenge to your personal liberal-ness or not if you happen to disagree that human beings are capable of changing sex. It’s just how things are, like gravity or the tides. No human being can change sex and that’s that.

The short answer to this (in some people’s genderist terms) is if TWAW then why is a second box to indicate transgender or non binary status needed, because TWAW.
So if the form implied that TWANW but in fact TWATW, then that would not be sufficiently validating and therefore not acceptable.

Also we have the Gender Recognition Act which gives the UK the a legal fiction that the holder of a GRCertificate is now (legally) of the opposite sex than what they were born as. So if you’ve got a GRC you might also want to tick the (say) W box rather than TW box, even though biologically you’d be fine to be ticking M box..

We have to find a form of words that is understandable and acceptable to everyone that allows people to fill out their sex accurately, and their gender status if they want to add that, but I can’t work out what that wording would be because there is such fundamental category-level disagreement about what words mean.

If this goes ahead I shall be putting variable depending on mood and zeitgeist as my answer

This is perfect, I'd like to do this too. Or I might just write something like: I don't understand how to answer this next to the question on sex. Because I don't, if you can self-ID there should be far more options.

I think putting gender critical as a religion is an excellent idea
I don't think being GC is the religion. I think the trans ideology should fall under a belief system.
Being GC is adhering to fact.

The sex question should be: “What is your birth sex?” (do away with the assigned/observed equivocation) and provide additional guidance in the notes for intersex/DSD individuals about which box to tick. Record gender separately.

I don't think being GC is the religion. I think the trans ideology should fall under a belief system.

Agree 100%.
Most people don't even know what gender-critical means. I'm not wild about the term myself, because in some respects it panders to queer theory, which has no place in real-world policymaking processes.
By all means have gender identity as a voluntary question, but really, what purpose does it serve?

It's astonishing how we have gone from the GRA 'there are only about 5,000 trans people in the UK, let's create these exceptions for them' to assuming that something called 'gender identity' needs to be a census question.

If you say 'what is your birth sex' you will have those insisting they were born the sex they identify as, just with interesting but normal variations of biology, such as 'outie vagina'.

What was recorded on your original birth certificate pins it down. No need to get into arguments over whether that sex was observed or assigned via sorting hat, in pretty much all cases that will be accurate. There can then be following options for pages of options and text boxes permitting people to record further issued birth certificates and to identify away to their hearts content.

Although I think the census organisers need to realise that if they start presenting lots of interesting boxes to tick that many people will not understand it, many will certainly not take it seriously and some will be irritated by it all, and as a result they may find themselves with a population of thousands of frostgendered and ferngendered and Goliathgendered people like the UK has a massive fictional population of Jedi Knights.

some people choose a gender identity.

You don’t choose a gender identity. You know if you’re a man or a woman.

Of course transitioned people are going to put the sex they identify as.

Surely transpeople might be interested in how many transpeople there are?

Some might. Others might just get on with their lives as the sex they’ve transitioned to and not have any interest whatsoever.

What was recorded on your original birth certificate pins it down.

People have a right to privacy. Protected in law.

So, again, the census should record the sex people actually are, because accurate statistics are important. If there's a perceived need to also record gender identity then that can be done too, with the proviso that most people don't have one and thus don't need to fill in that question.

You shouldn't be allowed to meddle with your birth certificate.
The GRA should be repealed.
Your unchangeable biological sex should be recorded in the census.
Anything else is denial of reality.

Of course transitioned people are going to put the sex they identify as.

Why? Why can't they put the sex they actually are?

What are non-binary people going to put, Field?

It's astonishing how we have gone from the GRA 'there are only about 5,000 trans people in the UK, let's create these exceptions for them' to assuming that something called 'gender identity' needs to be a census question

ThePurported

Isn’t that quite incredible? In 15 years. And the Oxfordshire school case, Maya Forstater, Dr. Louise Moody, Harry Miller, the relentless attack on freedom of speech. A niche lobby that most people don’t know exists have colonized the civil service. I think the speed and success of their lobbying will lead to downfall because the more this affects people in their everyday life, the more resistance there will be to this incoherent ideology

People have a right to privacy. Protected in law.

The census protects people's privacy. Personal information in the census cannot be released.

I really don't know how one would gently and kindly point out that in the vast majority of cases the privacy/disclosure argument only applies if everyone the trans person in question meets is blind and deaf, because humans are generally rather good at discerning sex.

If it comes to that, the whole census is a massive invasion of privacy.

In other countries, including Holland and some Scandi countries, the state is prevented in law from asking questions about things like sexual preference and many of the characteristics in our EqA.

Why? Why can't they put the sex they actually are?

Good question.

The census exists to plan public services. Public services need to know how many male, and how many female people there are, particularly health services.

They have absolutely no reason to know how many people 'feel masculine' or 'feel feminine'.

Only sex, as determined at conception and observed at birth, is relevant to the census.

That is what should be asked and frankly it should be a criminal offense to lie about it punishable by a huge fine.

I cannot for the life of me understand how such law got through. That the sex of anyone can change. Based on what scientific reality.

Sex is a biological fact and it makes an absolute ass of the law.

How is it possible to 'gender' someone without making sexist comment...

What are non-binary people going to put,

Sex is a binary but gender identity can be a spectrum.
I’m not sure what non binary people should do. They’ll have to come to terms with the binary nature of sex I suppose, or stick to gender.

Public services need to know how many male, and how many female people there are, particularly health services.

Wasn’t it the ONS (or EHRC?) that said the relatively small number of transitioned people won’t affect the validity of this sort of health planning from a census sex question.

Sex is a binary but gender identity can be a spectrum.
I’m not sure what non binary people should do. They’ll have to come to terms with the binary nature of sex I suppose, or stick to gender.

No reason why everyone else on the planet can't also come to terms with the binary, immutable nature of sex too, then.