Fairplay for women take ONS to judicial review for redefining sex in census

[fatblackcatspaw]

fairplayforwomen.com/

@viques

My new credit card arrived this morning. I can think of nothing better to christen it with!

Half way there in 48 hours! I hope the ONS are bricking it. I worry about the timescales. Could a judge delay the census pending verdict if it isn't settled?

Aw thanks @FindtheTruth. I needed a bit of positivity!

You are right. Amazing things HAVE happened in the past year. And none of us are giving up on this one.

Solidarity and cake.

FPFW have put out an an update and summary. I'll paste a key paragraph below, but there's a lot more to it, so please read the whole thing on their crowdfunder page.

FPFW will argue that it is very clear that "sex” does not mean, in that legislation, self-identified sex. It means birth sex; and the very most it could mean is sex as shown on a Gender Recognition Certificate (if a person has been issued with one), although FPFW does not accept that it means that.

This is one Daily Mail link I’m NOT apologising for posting! www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9282761/Civil-servants-caved-trans-lobby-census-sex-question.html

Worrying that according to DM “The Passport Office said it did not know how many people had changed sex on their documents.” The Passport Office said it did not know how many people had changed sex on their documents.

They don’t know??? They just don’t know? But they are the ones who administer these requests. And they don’t know how many they’ve done?

What is it with public bodies and shoddy record keeping on issues around gender.

Thanks you @hallouminatus

The update is well worth a read.

Very alarming that the Passport office don’t know how many people have changed their sex on their documents. Someone should do a FOI request for that.

@Cwenthryth

Worrying that according to DM “The Passport Office said it did not know how many people had changed sex on their documents.” The Passport Office said it did not know how many people had changed sex on their documents.

They don’t know??? They just don’t know? But they are the ones who administer these requests. And they don’t know how many they’ve done?

What is it with public bodies and shoddy record keeping on issues around gender.

It appears to be because either they don't have electronic records, which I struggle to believe in 2021, or whatever system they do have doesn't enable this kind of search criteria.

Seems like a massive oversight.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/sex_change_on_passport#incoming-1724866

The information you have requested on how many passports have been approved by changing the sex marker on their British passport is not held in a readily available format.
To determine whether an applicant has changed their gender on a passport would involve manually searching all our passport records. This would not be possible within the cost limit as it would involve searching millions of passport records.

@Leafstamp

Thanks you *@hallouminatus*

The update is well worth a read.

Very alarming that the Passport office don’t know how many people have changed their sex on their documents. Someone should do a FOI request for that.

Somebody has. See my above post.

I wonder if a similar FOI for how many people have applied to change their name would yield a similar response, or whether they manage to accurately track that data.

(Obv this would not be directly linked to number of gender change requests, plenty of people change their names for a myriad of reasons unrelated to gender - merely wondering if the capability is there to answer a comparable request not to do with gender).

Worrying that according to DM “The Passport Office said it did not know how many people had changed sex on their documents.” The Passport Office said it did not know how many people had changed sex on their documents

This is incredible.

How can they not gather that data? Wow. Seems like the sort of data that would be useful, the kind of thing the ONS census could be used for ...

Isn’t that FOIA response quite helpful to FPFW’s case? I saw someone comment that ONS could marry up census data with the GRC records to get a biological sex. If the Passport Office have no idea, the census team can’t understand the scale of issue if passports are included in the official documents list.

What could be reason for the sex change on passport FOI refusal ????. . . .

1. perhaps someone at Her Majesty's Passport Office, made the decision in the 'Changing passport information gender' service, to not make the information accessible. It was a choice or incompetence - which was it? www.gov.uk/changing-passport-information/gender

2 Or, if it was a choice they may have misinterpreted guidelines or were stonewalled or decided they don't want the public to know how many users of the service there are - i.e the number of people who have changed their gender on their passport. If so who influenced this decision?

3. There are guidelines not to ask for 'sex' unless you can't run the service without it. But that's about reducing steps for people and making it easy to use by removing unnecessary questions. Quite different to storing data when processing the passport change in gender service. So is that the information can technically be accessed (without searching millions of passports) and they simply haven't talked to the techies or asked the right questions?

Ive now got 60% of the vegetables planted in my allotment . Which is a lot considering I only started a few days ago.

I’m on a pretty tight timescale to get it done before March.

”The Passport Office said it did not know how many people had changed sex on their documents.”

The information you have requested on how many passports have been approved by changing the sex marker on their British passport is not held in a readily available format.

To determine whether an applicant has changed their gender on a passport would involve manually searching all our passport records. This would not be possible within the cost limit as it would involve searching millions of passport records.

This is almost unbelievable. I’m shocked at this.

I did some gardening this morning...

I agree that the passport office professing to have no clue as to how many people have changed the sex marker in their passport only strengthens FPFW’s case that people need to answer the census with the sex on their birth certificate and nowhere else though. This is a data gathering exercise, and the data doesn’t exist elsewhere apparently!

Does anyone know what the gender identity question is, has that been published anywhere? Will we be able to record accurately that we have no gender identity?

Does anyone know what the gender identity question is, has that been published anywhere? Will we be able to record accurately that we have no gender identity?

"Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?"

People over 16 can tick yes or no and specify their gender identity.

It's a shame that the way the question is worded assumes that everyone must identify with a gender, which is so obviously untrue.

If you don't answer the gender question, it won't be clear whether you identify with a gender, but don't want to disclose it, or you don't identify with any gender at all (which is probably the case for most people). The question could easily have been phrase to avoid this ambiguity.

That passport FOI is worth a thread in its own right imo.

"Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?"
What an appallingly worded question! Surely everyone has to answer no by definition to this as sex≠gender. And the assumption that everyone identifies with a gender/has a gender. Awful. This effectively excludes people who do not believe in gender identity - is that not a problem?

What else are they asking.
Is your religion the same as your mother’s favourite colour?
Is your favourite sport the same as your first pet?

That passport FOI is worth a thread in its own right imo.

Definitely.

Nosquirrels, I agree with you about the change to birth certificates. The UK government were essentially made to put some kind of provision in place to alter birth certificates to protect the privacy of those who had had genital surgery, following a series of European court cases culminating in the Goodwin case. The judges were unable to envisage any plausible negative consequences for this provision of a legal fiction for a tiny number of people. When the UK government actually went ahead with this by 2004, the lobbying of Press for Change and the change to a Labour government who saw themselves as progressive and pro-LGB, meant the minimum legal requirements were enthusiastically overshot in the GRA. Of course the GRA is now thought to be ridiculously outdated as it frames being trans as a disorder requiring some kind of medical input. It's a useful reminder of just how recent the idea that it is against your human rights to submit to there being factual information in existence about you.

Sheesh I'm only an amateur at business reporting but even i could work out some formula's or measures to estimate the number of changes of sex