Ludicrous Refuge survey

[RefugeSurveyWTF]

I’ve made a couple of donations to a Refuge in the past. So they just sent me an “8 question survey”.

The 8th question was, following on from a standard “what is your age bracket” question: “check one or more options that reflect your internal sense of gender”

The options were (in order): gender non conforming, intersex, woman, transgender, man, prefer not to say, something else (with free text field)

Obviously I ticked “something else” and wrote “I do not have an internal sense of gender but I am a biological woman if that is something that is still interesting to your organisation”.

But

AIBU to think WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!

I would agree with your reaction - what a bizarre question.

Do you know what the purpose of the survey was? I’m not 100% sure of regs around surveys like that but I’m sure that there may be GDPR issues if they hold that data for no good reason.

But intersex is not an internal feel of gender

People who have this from what I have heard hate bein* used like this

What interest or use to anyone is data collecting ‘internal sense of gender’?! Do these orgs even question why they are compelled to ask or phrase things in such a way? Why are the options in that order?

Ugh.

Do they ask a separate question about what is your sex?

If not, then I would question why they are allowed to provide services for victims of domestic violence who are primarily women.

It is totally unacceptable, even if their staff are all wokey, wokey, to try and impose this world view of those they provide services to.

I would return the survey and say their questions have undermined your faith in them, and please dont contact you again.

I'd like to do a survey to find out how many shelters have changed from housing women and children to being mixed sex and excluding children.

This kind of question annoys me so much. Given there are something like 4000 current 'genders' and many more being added everyday, surely this should, IF ANYTHING (which is debatable really) be an open text space.

Did my kids passport renewals yesterday and was internally raging at

Gender
Male
Female.

Neither. Of. those. Are. A Gender.

Nor is 'gender' something an airport would be interested in, in all honesty.

The options were (in order): gender non conforming, intersex, woman, transgender, man, prefer not to say, something else (with free text field)

Sounds as though their jargon generator got stuck on the bullshit setting.

There have been SO many spokespeople for intersex people asking that their medical condition not be hijacked for the political purposes of trans visibility.

I think it's important to point this out too

Yes I did notice the inclusion of intersex. I suppose if you now want to redefine that as an internal sense of gender that is closest to my true feeling - maybe I should select that as I have some stereotypically male and female preferences (like everyone else in the planet).

The other questions were

1 are you happy to take this survey? (Er yes that’s why I clicked on the link)

2 have you been affected by domestic abuse (personally/friends/no)

3 if there was one thing you could change To help people impacted by domestic abuse what would it be? (V strange question to ask Imo)

4 series of statements you had to say whether you agreed with (slight/strong scale etc), neither agree/disagree or don’t know:

• I consider myself a feminist
• domestic abuse will always exist in some form
• protecting children from abuse is particular important to me
• achieving gender equality is critical to ending domestic abuse
• psychological abuse can be as damaging as physical abuse (!!!!)
• you don’t need to be a feminist to want to protect women
• political campaigning is not for me, I just want to protect people from abuse
• some arguments for equal rights have gone too far
• society must fundamentally change to reduce domestic abuse

5 please pick up to 3 words that describes Refuge for you (long list, inc protector, empowered, feminist etc)

6 where would you like to see Refuge going further and faster to support people impacted by domestic abuse? What else could Refuge do better? (Free text box)

7 approximately how old are you? (Age brackets drop down list - if it had been free text I would have written “internally I feel about 25” )

8 aforementioned internal gender question

achieving gender equality is critical to ending domestic abuse

For fucks sake.

What else could Refuge do better?

Stop fudging sex and gender when you know they are not the same thing and using 'gender' instead of sex is going to fuck your figures, and thats the best part of what it will do really..when applied to real life situations, its not good for women. Those of the female sex I mean. Vulva people. Cervix havers. Whatever bolloxy language you decide on. The ones most affected by DV, anyway.

Yes I thought that was an odd question too. In fact I couldn’t figure out what the purpose of the survey was. Is it a campaign about not having to be a yucky feminist to care about protecting people (not women and children!) from domestic abuse? I don’t know.

“Approximately how old are you”? All these questions are so poorly written I’m inclined to think it’s somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing overthinking how they should be phrased.

I don't think we should be complaining about this survey I think we should be responding to it. Surely this is the ideal way of letting Refuge know what a large proportion of their supporters are thinking- that's the whole point of it after all. I imagine it was designed by someone with only a vague notion of what to us are very pertinent issues- but the results will go to senior people in the charity who are much more clued up.
So this looks to me like a golden opportunity.
OP, regarding psychological abuse and the question about it being worse than physical abuse. Many survivors, even those who have had life threatening injuries, say that the psychological abuse IS worse than the physical abuse. I think it's hard to understand that if you haven't been there, but that's what women say.

OP implied she was set the survey as she donated to them though? I have not the spare cash to make a donation specifically to fill out a survey that sunds ridiculous, in order to tell them why their questions are ridiculous and not helpful in any way in the fight against DV, infact the approach they are on about would actively make things worse... Unless it can be accessed other ways?

As you're a donor I'd ask them some questions, like why they are conflating intersex with feelings. If it purports to be a women's shelter, I'd ask for their definition of 'woman'. I probably wouldn't donate again.

It was a bit of a weird survey (FYI I’m not a huge strategic donor, I bung them £100 now and then).

It’s an exceptionally badly designed survey even apart from the nonsense gender feelings question - I can’t see what you will possibly do with the results

Under the “what can we do better” I put ensure single sex (not gender) shelter provision