Census guidance: let’s demand answers!

[Letsnotdothisplease]

I’m reading about this guidance for the sex question in the census which tells people to respond with their gender identity.

Surely that means this data will be a jumble of data on biological sex (the vast majority, I imagine) and data on gender identity, so what use will it be to public authorities etc?

I notice you can ask questions of the office of national statistics in live web chats so shall we all ask and post the responses we get?

I only want them to hold my data if it’s data about my bio sex.

www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/contactus/generalandstatisticalenquiries

Isn't it a voluntary question? I'm sure lots of people won't answer it anyway.

Sex is not a voluntary question, no. It's one of the most fundamental important ones.

Yes yes! We’re talking about the sex question here which is compulsory.

(There’s another new voluntary question on gender identity but that’s separate. I won’t be answering that one!)

This is what I’m on about:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7794657/amp/Academics-warn-allowing-people-self-identify-gender-2021-census-make-unreliable.html

The data will be meaningless. It is beyond absurd that an official document such as a census is framed in such a way that it won't elicit unambiguous answers about biological sex What is the point of a census if its results are invalidated because of woke language? The Conservatives have been in power for ten years. WTF is going on?

It’s going to be brilliant for all those times data users need to compare one mixed sex group of people with another mixed sex group of people

There’s no obvious channel for objections, unlike with the GRA consultation.

And when the census arrives, most people will answer that question without checking the guidance. It’s the perfect invisible action, so that when people finally realise and start to object, transactivists will claim it’s been done like that for years and we’re taking rights away.

I wrote to various MSPs when this was discussed in the Scottish parliament. I think the campaign was mentioned on here at the time.

I saw this update yesterday from MurrayBlackburnMackenzie about the letter sent in mid December and signed by 80 academics

As at 6 February 2020, Professor Sullivan reported to MurrayBlackburnMackenzie that she had not received any formal response to the multi-signatory letter from the directors of the three census authorities, nor the Prime Minister or the First Minister of Scotland.

So the sex question is compulsory BUT you are told you can answer it based on feelings not material reality?

If so I think this needs publicising.

The most obvious adverse outcome I can see is that the census will record there to be more young males than there actually are, which will have a negative effect on the planning for maternity services in the future, assuming a fair amount of young transmen desist early enough that they are still able to have children.

Anyone who's ever rocked up to their local hospital in labour and been told that all the rooms are full will know how anxiety producing this is! Maternity services are already totally stretched.

This is exactly it! We KNOW about the huge uptick in young women identifying as men. It could really skew the stats for things like disease rates for them too.

Bingo! Less resource for tackling a disease suffered by young women because there are fewer of them.

We have to fight this!

I see the live chat is only weekdays so I’ll log in next week to ask if they can guarantee my data from the sex question will ONLY be recorded as my bio sex.

I’ll post the reply I get.

It seems ludicrous. If you must, record biological sex AND gender identity, boom, job done - data ok and a picture of how far woke disease has spread in one fell swoop.

murrayblackburnmackenzie.org have some fantastic research and analysis on this in relation to the Scottish census (the issues essentially are identical to those for England and Wales). Joan McAlpine is chair of the Scottish Parliament committee in charge of scrutinising this - it's worth watching the streaming of the committee hearings too.

I've already written to my MP.

Can we also write to ONS? I don't see the point really as they lost Stonewall as a Stakeholder (I think Mermaids too if I remember correctly).

Who do ONS report to?

Bumping this having seen today’s Sunday Times story:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stonewalls-new-boss-nancy-kelley-let-census-expert-be-no-platformed-ljsnw6v3r

Anybody got a share token link?

Also this thread on the same issue.

twitter.com/johnarmstrong5/status/1264487744677588992

If someone has a share token then maybe this post can be deleted?

Sharetoken/archive of the Stonewall/census article:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/95ace3a4-9cca-11ea-9a66-d2c4ad4f40d4?shareToken=502c7909f420db340df4a833517041f5
archive.vn/CGK1J

Also the letter, and list of signatories, from Times article last September:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e2ccc028-1db8-11ea-aa74-16c5e3bdce26?shareToken=6cbfde9bcd124091ffce41f28c458cd7
archive.vn/iNiqL

The letter was also raised by Joan McAlpine, as convener for the committee looking at the census amendment, at a Parliamentary meeting last January.

Pete Whitehouse from the National Records of Scotland refused to say who the data users were, whose evidence he preferred over those listed in Alice Sullivan's letter. If you can get through his waffle you'll be doing well!
www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/report.aspx?r=12451&i=112561&c=2229304#ScotParlOR