FairPlay for Women may take the ONS to court about the Census

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They've just tweeted:

"BREAKING: We're pleased to announce that Fair Play For Women has instructed a barrister to evaluate the lawfulness of the ONS approach regarding the definition of sex in the Census."

"If the ONS has broken the law we will hold them to account in the high court by judicial review"

This is great news! I hope they do have a case.

Although, as an aside I'm fed up that so many brilliant women are having to spend so much time, money and effort using the courts to get people who really should know better to do the basics of their jobs properly! It appears to be the only way, though. And a very effective one at that... ideology and bullying tactics don't fare so well in a court of law.

twitter.com/fairplaywomen/status/1361239632931921920

bumpette consider sending carrotts lawyers are expensive

Oh brilliant!

Just donated to FPFW. Such good work

This is all going ahead under a Tory government who ostensibly aren't in favour of gender ideology and yet again we see a department going full steam ahead with adopting it and us having to crowd fund to stop the steamroller. Can't they reign in departments supposedly under their control? We are effectively fighting the state.

By this action, the ONS is telling everyone that your accepted sex is that which is on your passport.

And to change that is a piece of piss. It's just a letter from from your doctor - no diagnosis.

It's self ID.

When the government has said that they will not be going ahead with self ID.

There is little point in talking about your legal sex, when your self ID sex, is used for the most quoted statistics in the land.

What a shower.

The ONS are independent though but you would hope that some high level conversations about this are taking place, though it's doubtful given other priorities.

Some might says it's even a little suspicious, given the flip-flopping on this question and the timing, but the census has to be done.

In a way the timing is quite good as it's slap bang in what could be a nice period of peak, with the Olympics next year and all the court cases to follow in the summer.

Donated I don’t understand why ONS are being so immune to reason on this issue. I mean, their raison d’etre is to collect useful data that accurately reflects the population and allows for important public policy and spending decisions to be made - why are ONS determined to hobble themselves?! Women have tried to hold them to account and many peers in data science fields have also pointed out the problem with their planned approach to confuse sex-based data collection, so why are they stubbornly refusing to look reality in the face??

I’m glad FPFW are investigating legal options and I hope something can be done because census data that accurately reflects the state of a country is vital for so many important reasons, and this data should not be mucked up because of ideological capture in the civil service and other branches of government.

More digging which I do gratefully. But it mightily pisses me off this is necessary.

Any one with an iota of common sense would recognise the importance of stating your birth sex according to your birth certificate (not your doctored GRC) alongside your trans status/gender identity if you have one.

To deliberately omit this sort of data gathering benefits who? Exactly? It certainly does not benefit women or trans people 🤷

Anyway good news FPFW there have been some incredible steps made recently.

Apparently a key reason they went ahead with this vague option rather than being clear and requesting "sex registered at birth" was fear of boycotts and complaints from LGBTQ community (obvs these opinions were canvassed from Stonewall and similar orgs).
Never mind that it renders the data useless and ignores women, since they never complain loudly enough... Win-win really.

Clearly the only way to get organisations to see sense is to be just as loud and making these things a PR headache so that erasing women isn't an option.

If there are enough of these legal challenges and the media starts to report on these organisations disregarding the law then they'll think twice.

So let "the LGBT community" (meaning a small number of TRAs who threaten such things as standard practice) boycott the census and receive a fine if there really are so many going to do this.

More money in the public purse to challenge this ridiculous ideology.

Plus grow a flipping backbone you're the ONS not a vegan cafe in Brighton!

@Gcnq

Any one with an iota of common sense would recognise the importance of stating your birth sex according to your birth certificate (not your doctored GRC) alongside your trans status/gender identity if you have one.

To deliberately omit this sort of data gathering benefits who? Exactly? It certainly does not benefit women or trans people 🤷

Great news.

Totally agree GCNQ.

On the face of it it's yet another institution purely pandering to the trans lobby, but what they propose to do doesn't benefit the trans community at all.

Just donated. Seriously who does gathering data where you can't even extract a clear meaning even benefit? Its worded to be warm and fuzzy but in ignoring birth sex renders the whole exercise pointless.

Just donated but arghhhhhh this makes me so angry!!

Clearly the only way to get organisations to see sense is to be just as loud and making these things a PR headache so that erasing women isn't an option.

Exactly.

Clearly the only way to get organisations to see sense is to be just as loud and making these things a PR headache so that erasing women isn't an option.

Quite.

The advice is often given from one woman to another on the relationships board: "stop being the easier one to upset".

We are going to need to support FPFW and the other grassroots groups to be as dreaded to provoke as SW and the rest.

While this is great news and a potentially effective tool of objection to self-ID for the sex question, could a legal person explain the implications given we are 1 month from the census?

Please go easy on the donations talk! Let's keep this thread alive so we can discuss the issues.

(Also ridiculous we can't discuss crowdfunding on a section of this website that's specifically for activism, but that's another thread... )

Good!

I don’t understand why ONS are being so immune to reason on this issue. I mean, their raison d’etre is to collect useful data that accurately reflects the population and allows for important public policy and spending decisions to be made - why are ONS determined to hobble themselves?! Women have tried to hold them to account and many peers in data science fields have also pointed out the problem with their planned approach to confuse sex-based data collection, so why are they stubbornly refusing to look reality in the face??

It's mind boggling, isn't it?

The ONS of all organisations should (and most certainly used to) understand the importance of accurate data and clear guidance for the public on how to submit the data.

@EightiesRobot

While this is great news and a potentially effective tool of objection to self-ID for the sex question, could a legal person explain the implications given we are 1 month from the census?

Good question.

They won't be able to get a High Court date in time, will they?

Will it apply pressure to the ONS to get their house in order to know a legal challenge is underway? Does anyone know?

Would the High Court be able to comment on the Census that's already happened or would they be looking at the next one, effectively?

What outcome could we hope for, realistically?

By doing this weird U turn surely they've actually increased the likelihood of bluehair boycott hashtags and tantrums. If the ONS had just stood firm on the ground of reality and calmly stated that the role of the Census is to record factual information without bias or prejudice, with the aim of facilitating suitable service provision for all demographics, the protests would surely have fizzled out by the end of March.

Now they've made it all so much harder for themselves. They'll have to defend the position they've chosen, and in doing so risk their credibility as an organisation. What fools.

This gets to me too - I keep seeing on twitter 'It's a tiny, tiny percentage of inaccurate data, what does it matter?'

Well for a start, it ends the census being impartial, factual information by law, and opens the door to it all being subjective preferred facts that make it a waste of time and money. The taxpayer cost of this is huge. It may be a tiny percentage this year, but that genie won't go back in the bottle once it's out, and what happens when it's 50%?

But if it's only a tiny percentage, then what did a boycott or people defiantly entering their preferred data anyway matter? Why was it important enough to risk alienating the majority of the population?

I don’t understand why ONS are being so immune to reason on this issue

They are a stonewall champion, it seems they are happy to collect meaningless data as long as they can keep their stonewall status.