Misinformation circulating re. apparent GRA public ‘vote’ (a vote that didn’t happen!)

[Dorotheaflood7]

Hi all, I’m new here :) today’s GRA good news motivated me to come out the shadows somewhat

I wanted to share with you something worrying you may have also seen on twitter. There is some bizarre misinformation widely circulating that there was a public UK vote on the GRA (a referendum?!) and that the government are ignoring the views of the 70% ‘majority’. I imagine this 70% figure stemmed from a misrepresentation of the original Sunday Times report, as 70% was stated in regards to the ratio of consultation responses.

This Carrd is being shared a lot , which I believe is where the misinformation is now coming from
t.co/GkHz4O2qIf

If you put in the search term ‘70% #uktransrights’ into twitter you will see what I mean re. this misinformation..! I even spotted someone who works for one of the UK’s largest book publishers tweeting this false information.

You’d think they would remember if there had been a vote!?!!

I’m reporting the tweets as much as possible - if you use twitter & see this you might wanna report them too!

Lovely to virtually meet you all ... pleased to finally be posting on Mumsnet after lots of lurking!

D x

I’m very pleased there’s that bit about waiting lists and the underfunding of the NHS as the more people who campaign for greater funding will mean everyone gets shorter waiting times.

None of this rhetoric can change the announcement, so I wouldn't stress out too much. Especially since this is bound to get worse as the week goes on.

The Gender Recognition Act is an Act of the UK Parliament. It can only be changed by another Act of Parliament. That was proposed by the government, who after a lengthy proceess designed to ascertain the pros and cons of reforming the original law have said the cons outweigh the pros.

The claim to 70% agreement to the consultation that is being called a survey here is dubious for two reasons:

1. every survey done on the question has shown a majority opposed to the reform plans. So this isn't merely a misrepresentation, it seems to be disinformation.

2. the 70% seems to be a top level figure bandied about. We haven't seen any actual data. I would expect data to be disaggregated by country of residence of people who made submissions and by duplicates. I wouldn't discount duplicates (those using an automated process to submit identical responses), but I would like to see the data presented accordingly:

X total number of submission, split into yes vs no;

Y number of individual responses from the UK, split into yes vs no;

Z number of automated responses via org 1, org 2, org 3 etc, split into yes vs no.

And then I would remind people, right at the beginning of discussing the data, that this consultation was deeply flawed and inherently biased in favour of those agreeing with it and that in any case, any such consultations are part of a fact-finding process that seeks to assess legislative proposals. The only votes considered decisive in this process are the final one in the House of Commons and the final one in the House of Lords. If the proposal ever gets that far. Most legislative proposals don't.

And welcome, Dorotheaflood7. I hope you join in as much as you can now you've delurked.

Hello and welcome to FWR!

I think the main thing TRA's missed is that it was a consultation not a vote.

The government was never bound to "accept" any specific position based on the volume of responses, rather the point of a consultation is to gauge public feedback based on the arguments contained within the responses.

In this sense the TRA's misunderstood the "goal" from the get go and tried to flood the consultation with pro-selfID responses by widely circulating pre- prepared responses and even encouraging people to make multiple submissions.

By contrast, women's groups offered documents to help people navigate the questions and explain the nuances and legalities contained within each question but encouraged individual responses.

It was a complex consultation and I remember it taking me at least a few hours to complete properly.

The end result being it might well be true that 70% of responses supported self ID but if the majority contained the same wording/arguments then it's probable that the 30% against offered more detailed and a wider set of views of why they opposed it.

Equally as a consultation it was one tool in the review. The government will have taken legal advice, considered the position of its MP's, spoken to various lobby groups and also taken the "pulse" of electorate on this issue.

TRA's are often surprised that outside of Twitter theirs is actually not the prevailing viewpoint being so rooted in an echo chamber of their own making (crowing about TERF blockers and mounting campaigns to get GC posters banned) they forget there's a real world out there that's not so easily silenced nor cowed into denying biology.

It is not only that the survey was badly designed (or rather contrived to lead towards outcome) but it also that the consultation came about because Parliament prioritised LGBTQ++++++++++++++++++++ rights before women's rights.

The then newish Tory Womens and Equalities Committee made one of its first task was to look at LGBT++++++++++ rights and health and social care. (Soory too late at night to check actual tittle). And from this then said that reform of the GRA was a priority. Again this was put through and presented as an LGBT++++++++++ issue. There was no glimmer of understanding of the consequences for women's rights.

The 70% figure comes from what seems to be endless leaks to the Times, (from someone in Government?) and have consistently said that in the response to the GRA consultation the majority wanted self id. But the Government also said that the disregarded the majority of these as they were either said to be repeat responses or clearly people just copying and pasting from one source. (Thank goodness so many mumsnetters took time out to answer questions as individuals - with the help of prompt sheets from WPUK FRfW etc.)

But if who ever it was hadn't spotted that the GRA consultation (as sort of after thought from the original Health survey needs of the LGBT++++++++++ community) women might have been totally erased as we know one of the objectives was to get rid of the protected characteristic of Sex in the EA.

Sorry meant to includ this quote from Times article today:

"More than 100,000 responses were received to the consultation. Insiders say 70% backed the idea that anyone should be allowed to self-identify. However, officials believe the results were skewed by responses generated by trans rights groups.” www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/changing-gender-to-get-cheaper-but-self-identify-scheme-is-off-0twtdw5fr

The thing is, a consultation (as opposed to a vote/survey) is not (or not just) seeking to find out what people want, but to collect EVIDENCE for why one course of action might be better than another, or what issues could arise, what needs to be considered, etc.

I suspect the responses from the TRAs, as well as being in many cases automated (and possibly many from outside the UK, from children etc) just said what they WANT, but were low on quality evidence to back up why that was a good idea. Whereas many of the women and womens' groups who responded had put a lot of time and effort into gathering actual evidence, stats, examples and well-reasoned, hard-to-refute arguments as to why this was NOT a good idea. Ultimately I think our stronger arguments, and evidence to back them up, tipped the balance.

Twitter Sunday was even more nonsensical than normal. I saw “GRC cheaper” translated as “trans surgeries cheaper”.

The surveys commissioned by the likes of Pink News, that showed the public still expected a medical cert, but weren’t published in full, and were only headlined with “majority support trans rights” were again being lied about by Stonewall, then further muddled with the consultation responses.

Lots of “trans rights being taken away, do this petition”, followed by “If you need a UK password use this one” (begins with W), followed by a link to a random UK postcode generator. Then someone saying the UK Gov could detect iP addresses & etc....

Stonewall tweeted
“Even though the majority of the public support introducing a simplified process for trans people to get legal recognition of their gender”

The actual UKGov survey said: following a brief explanation, exact wording below, 47% to 23% thought the process should not be made easier...
The explanation was three sentences, which meant some surveyed were still “don’t know“. This question also followed Pink News’s other questions along the lines of Yes Minister’s “how to get the right response to a survey” sketch... So even when paying for a survey designed to get a supportive result, they didn’t get it..

Misinformation is the game in town. What misinformation on twitter doesn't do, is reach all the sane people out there.

It can’t have been a vote because so few people knew about it. And certain organisations made sure that this remained the case.

I shared with a few people including a sports club. Even then I was very careful to frame it as something that might have an inadvertent effect on women’s sport, and suggested people look an the specific sports question, and whilst they were about it they might respond to the prisons question. The public noise about “terfs” and hatefulness was such that I felt unable to express broader concerns. A couple of unexpected people thanked me, and asked if they could forward.

They were very strange times. Stonewall‘s Ruth Hunt refusing to debate on Women’s Hour. The day before the deadline I could not access the FPfW via Virgin Broadband. I spoke to a lovely woman in a call centre in India and said that men were trying to prevent women from having a voice. She sympathised and put me straight through to some technical person in the U.K, who confirmed that FPfW had been reported as a hate site, and who promptly reinstated it.

Now those same people who tried to silence us, claim to have won “the vote”.

If “the vote” were held now, there would be an awful lot more GC responses. The tactic had always been to get this through on the quiet. Stonewall know this. The Government know this.

(The list of people who should be congratulated is long and diverse. Thank you all.)

This whole political ideology is rooted in the idea that personal belief and internal emotion as to what is real being the prioritised, better truth over objective factual and shared reality.

When it starts from that position, there isn't much point expecting objective fact to play much of a part anywhere else in it.

Wasn't a vote.
It was a consultation.
The purpose of a consultation is to gauge public response and collect evidence.
You could have 100 people agreeing and 1 person pointing out a flaw which would make a proposal unworkable. You need to listen to the 1.

Something as fundamental as wholly redefining half the human race in law and removing the rights based on that half should involve a referendum.

About the consultation, my university’s LGBTQ group had a pizza night where you could go and fill out the consultation in favour of self id. Loads of people turned up and they were all encouraged to copy the LGBTQ group’s set answers. So there were a couple of hundred identical responses at least. I don’t think they realise a consultation works like a petition. The government only has a duty to take into account the substance of the replies, so if the same answers have been spammed multiple times it’s just a waste really.

It still blows my mind that women weren't considered stake holders in whether or not they continued to exist as a legal catagory seperate in every way from men. And that goes for the introduction of the GRA in the first place as well as these proposed reforms. The brazeness of the lies and the endless bad faith, intellectually dishonest arguments from the TRAs has done more than campaigns from "our side" ever could to cement my belief that these men are dangerous and unhinged and need to be kept far away from all women. So I guess, thanks TRA twitter, thanks for doing more harm to your own movement than we ever could. And to all the dysphoric "real" transpeople out there whose equality movement has been so badly derailed and damaged by the insane mostly non trans TRAs, you have some sympathy from me but not much because you sat back and let this happen. You let these people speak for you. You let women being attacked for defending our rights. So, sorry if this isn't the outcome you wanted, but you had your chance to stand beside women and stop this craziness in its infancy, and you chose (with a few exceptions) to stay silent and let us do the hard work. My concern is just for women now. It didn't have to be this way, but that's how it is. Happy delurking OP :)

I went to see what the fail has to say about all this.

The comments section shows overwhelming support for dumping self-id.

Interestingly, more than one person doesn't realise that birth certificates can be changed - they seem to think that this is what this was about.

This is one issue on which “the fail” has not failed women.

Perhaps time for a switch round. New name for the Grauniad?

A consultation is not a vote, and they can throw their toys out of the pram as much as they want, the fact remains that consultations are not meant to be a yes/no thing. And even if 70% of the responses 'voted yes', if they just spammed the same reply, they will be discounted..fairly sure that would apply on all consultations. Its not about how many people you can convince to click your link. Its about people thinking carefully and answering from their own mind.

Unfortunately too, it's a bit of a political habit of local and national government that a consultation is something you hold merely as a formality after you've already decided what you're going to do anyway and put the plans in motion. It's not supposed to work like that according to policy but the idea in practice is generally that you may get a bit of evidence that helps, but it doesn't really matter either way. It's a gesture rather than any real engagement to seek opinion.

This one went drastically wrong. Whittle has explained that this was supposed to go like the earlier stages, essentially without anyone noticing and certainly without anything like proper democratic scrutiny or anyone else's opinions or rights being properly considered. I suspect by the time the govt woke up to the fact it had been gently led up a garden path that was signposted 'lovely inclusion with no issues or downsides' but turned out to be 'end female sex based rights' and a lot of other mess, they were in a situation there was no easy way out of.