UK Census guidance on how to answer sex question must be rewritten, High Court rules

[stumbledin]

Campaigners argued that the guidance allowed “self-identification through the back door” because the sex on someone’s passport can be altered without legally changing gender first.
Mr Justice Swift on Tuesday ruled in favour of the campaigners, granting them interim relief and ordering that the guidance should be rewritten to remove the words “such as” and “passport”.
Mr Justice Swift also gave the green light for the case to proceed forward to a full judicial review, which could be heard as early as next week.
Fair Play For Women, which crowdfunded £100,000 to bring the legal challenge against the guidance, argued that withdrawing it now would be the “safer option” given that the Census will go live on March 21.
The court heard that three million people - around one fifth of households - have already filled the questionnaire online.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/09/uk-census-guidance-answer-sex-question-must-rewritten-high-court/

Fair Play for Women tweet thread twitter.com/fairplaywomen/status/1369230649425596416

Fair Play for Women have been brilliant for starting the court case and fantastic so many have contributed to the costs.

More and more women are having to face the facts that in the era of SM bullying campaigning doesn't always work. And we are having to rely on the court system - if we can afford it!

If every transwoman in the UK puts female/female for the two questions, then the ONS will have to conclude there are no transwomen in England, Wales and NI. There will be no data to use for health resources, no data to use for planning of services. Statistically, transwomen wouldn’t exist. So why would anyone willingly do this and be so self-destructive on a document just for the purposes of self-validation?

I was pleased to see that the census asked for what sex we had been "registered" at birth rather than "assigned

That's a question I can live with.

@GottogetaGRC

I was pleased to see that the census asked for what sex we had been "registered" at birth rather than "assigned

That's a question I can live with.

Imagine our relief.

And since you were registered male, I assume you'll have no difficulty answering it, with it without a GRC.

@TirisfalPumpkin

Never underestimate the power of thousands of women brandishing tenners.

It’s my birthday today and the first thing I thought about when I woke up was the ONS result - HAPPY BIRTHDAY indeed!!!

I celebrated last night by helping Ann Sinnott with her gardening project. Sunlight, lawyers and the House of Lords all the way, I say!

Here’s wonderful Lord Phil on potential longer term fall out: twitter.com/lordphilofbrum/status/1369340363748605955?s=21

Huge thanks to all the grown ups, and let’s sort this mess out!

Happy Birthday ChoosandChips

Times article:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f9847dc4-811c-11eb-b718-da0821f7ec01?shareToken=2829e1088556d2ac121700b5e09fb741

Imagine our relief

Maybe you don't quite realise the difficulty many trans people will have with filling in that question when asked what their sex is.

Word it in a particular way and you will get a better response.

You would get different answers from a fair proportion of trans people if you asked either

a) what their sex is
b) What their sex registered at birth was?

@GottogetaGRC

Well - got my diagnosis 10 years ago. Had my surgery 5 years ago. I don't have a GRC. Never needed one. There is no way that I am going to put male down in the Census.

I am going to get a GRC because I can see the way the wind is blowing.
I don't see Boris making it any easier to get a GRC. Not that it's hard.

But no one will ever ask to see my GRC. It's a confidential document.
My passport says Female. As does my driving license. All my official documents.

I've had to start digging out evidence of my diagnosis, evidence of surgery.

As Shon Faye famously said, enjoy your erasure.

The census will be used to plan services for trans people now. Your individual details will not be released for a 100 years. You, and all the other trans people deliberately filling in the census incorrectly mean that transpeople will not be allocated the services they say they desperately need. Why? Why do that to yourselves?

This is great news, but I'm confused as to how it can ask both what your sex registered at birth is AND allow for sex to be recorded based on a GRC? Because if you have a GRC they'd be different, wouldn't they? So how will that help plan services?

Fantastic well done FPFW

The number of people who have a GRC is recorded so can be accounted for. Sex + gender identity should mean that transmen and transwomen can be counted so appropriate services can be provided. But for some reason many transpeople are trying to fuck it up for themselves.

• You would get different answers from a fair proportion of trans people if you asked either

a) what their sex is
b) What their sex registered at birth was?*

That wouldn't work at all for the trans people who know that regardless of their gender identity and/or gender dysphoria, they are still the same sex as they were registered at birth. It's not really any good for nonbinaries either.

Sex registered at birth (plain fact) plus the gender identity question surely covers the bases most inclusively, unless the number of questions is increased. I'd agree it would be clearer if the first quest was just sex registered at birth but I suppose they're saddled with the 'legal fiction' of the GRC.

It absolutely is a relief. This is where TWAW & TMAM gets us - a complete denial of material reality and skewing of statistics so that even public service provisions can't be properly allocated. What on earth is achieved by not properly accounting for the number of transpeople who may require specialist services in any given area. Good luck to administrators in Brighton. It's time for us collectively grow up a bit and take the emotion out of this.

The census will be used to plan services for trans people now

So if someone answers "Is your gender identity the same as your sex registered at birth" and answers No to that, and then records their gender identity as Female, then surely that helps with service planning.

It's the gender identity question that is going to show how many trans people there are.

a) what their sex is
b) What their sex registered at birth was?

They are both questions about biological sex - as opposed to gender, so the answer will be the same.

@GottogetaGRC

The census will be used to plan services for trans people now

So if someone answers "Is your gender identity the same as your sex registered at birth" and answers No to that, and then records their gender identity as Female, then surely that helps with service planning.

It's the gender identity question that is going to show how many trans people there are.

Maybe, maybe not.

For the following reasons:

1. The gender identity question is voluntary. Statistically some trans people won't complete the gender identity question.

1. Some non trans people will answer "No" to the gender identity question because they do not subscribe to gender identity being a thing.

1. If a trans woman without a GRC decides to (illegally) answer the sex question as female, and also answers "No" to the gender identity question, then they will be presumed to be a FtM trans person. So although they will be picked up as trans, the figures for trans women and trans men will not be accurate.

Just to say, and haven't had time to check, but a newspaper article this morning is saying the Judge said:

" ... the guidance should be altered to make it clear the question can only be answered by reference to a birth certificate or gender recognition certificate ... "

And assuming this is what was said, this brings up back to the fact that the GRA created a legal fiction. That you can change sex. This is what in law a GRC says.

Maybe you don't quite realise the difficulty many trans people will have with filling in that question when asked what their sex is.

But the population doesn't consist entirely or even mostly of trans people. Many, many of the other 67 million or so people will have difficulty with answering the muddle that is the gender question.

I agree with others that the guidance has been improved and simplified, and could be further improved by removing references to a GRC, but also I am left wondering why the guidance retains the clause "If you are considering how to answer," and why it it was written in this way in the first place.

The conditional clause adds nothing except to make the guidance appear more complicated and to suggest that it only applies to certain people: those who are "considering how to answer". I doubt this will affect many people's responses, but it just seems very odd that that guidance should be made longer, more complicated and less clear for no good reason.

But the population doesn't consist entirely or even mostly of trans people. Many, many of the other 67 million or so people will have difficulty with answering the muddle that is the gender question

It's voluntary so easy to ignore.

You really are determined to get validation rather than appropriate recognition for health care, etc, aren't you?

@CuriousaboutSamphire

You really are determined to get validation rather than appropriate recognition for health care, etc, aren't you?

But trans people use services inline with their aquired gender except in a few very rare medical circumstances, so from a planning service provision perspective it is better that people record ther aquired gender than registered sex at birth.

I thought a GRC = GENDER recognition certificate. When did it become an SRC?

It's still a mess basically. People will fill in the fields in different ways, some based on old guidance, some based on new, some ignoring the guidance. Some will fill in the gender question, some won't. Users won't know what the data means so won't be able to use it.

A unique opportunity to get good quality data on the demographics of trans people has been missed.

The only win is that ONS have been stopped from officially instituting back door self ID by means of weighty precedent.

What should they do next time?
We need questions that both gender believers and gender atheists can answer honestly.

I love the way feminists are winning the arguments through evidence and reason in the courts. As opposed to just trying to intimidate and threaten people into craven submission.

Women are awesome!