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!

The question of a GRC as evidence of sex is for the JR not the interim relief. The interim relief addressed the harm that the guidance was using document where the holder could specify the sex marker. So the judge froze the situation to those documents where the state has legislated/controls the sex markers ie official documents where the sex market cannot be selected by an individual.

Sex marker sigh. Thank you autocorrect.

@jj1968:

May I ask what "few rare medical circumstances" you are thinking of?

And are you aware of all the health problems that affect trans people? (Some of which I suspect we hardly even know about because presumably we don't know the long term affects of the treatments that trans people are given currently)

For this reason I would think that it's really important that we have an accurate picture of the number of trans people in the UK. Do you not think this is important?

But trans people use services inline with their aquired gender except in a few very rare medical circumstances

Differences between male and female bodies are not "rare".

The question was your sex. That's whether you are biologically male or female.

There are TRAs on Twitter claiming that they lied about their biological sex on the census. I'm pretty sure that knowingly giving false information is a criminal offence.

So much for nobody's saying sex doesn't exist eh?

@jj rare differences?

It only takes one to be fatal.

And you know you're talking twaddle again.

It benefits nobody to have their body medically treated with the wrong protocols.

But trans people use services inline with their aquired gender except in a few very rare medical circumstances

Really?
Specifically thinking about medical services....
Most - the vast majority - of the medical services I've needed in my 60 years have been directly as a consequence of being female rather than male. I'd imagine this is actually the norm for most women, and anyone who was a woman would know that. It's mostly routine but vital stuff - contraception, smear tests but also fertility issues and then pregnancy.

So, apart from the likelihood that a heck of a lot of women use medical services in line with their sex extremely commonly. The same would apply to female nonbinary people (hopefully most of those will answer the census sex question accurately) but I'd guess also to a significant proportion of transmen.

contraception, smear tests but also fertility issues and then pregnancy
...and mastitis, birth damage repair (my only ever surgery!), breast screening, menopausal symptoms.

I'm honestly not sure I've been to the GP or hospital for any NON-specifically-female issues over the past 40 years or so. Not on my own behalf, anyway.

Weird, when you look at it that way.

[quote CuriousaboutSamphire]@jj rare differences?

It only takes one to be fatal.

And you know you're talking twaddle again.

It benefits nobody to have their body medically treated with the wrong protocols. [/quote]
Nobody's talking about being treated with the wrong protocols, it's about resourcing, and given trans women currently outnumber trans men then the only possible result of trans women saying they are women in the census if woman's specific healthcare being over-resourced. The alternative, could be things like breast cancer screening, which is relevant to trans women on hormones, or public toilet provision, or other gender based services being under resourced if trans women declared themselves to be men.

So it's in everybody's interest for transwomen to say, accurately, that their sex is male and their preferred gender is feminine.

It isn't just medical treatment, though; it's representation, too.

If a trans woman records their sex as female and their gender as feminine, that's one less trans woman, according to the statistics. It makes the minority even smaller.

Government will wonder why on earth they should have to pander to such a tiny group - and they'll have the stats to prove how tiny it is.

We are talking protocols. Stop trying to obfuscate with a single issue - which by the way, is nowhere near Gotcha! status, @jj

Transwomen on hormones will need healthcare over and above that which other men require.

So a transwoman putting Male Sex and Female Gender is signalling precisely which kind of what service they require. They can achieve a far more accurate representation in all parts of every day life if they do this.

Anything else muddies everyone's waters.

It isn't rocket science!

trans women currently outnumber trans men then the only possible result of trans women saying they are women in the census if woman's specific healthcare
being over-resourced

And, with the nhs as it is, this, by definition means another area is under-resourced. That is not ok.

@TirisfalPumpkin

Never underestimate the power of thousands of women brandishing tenners.

I love that!

The ruling is fantastic, the purpose of the census is to count people and gather information and it needs to be accurate. The poorly thought out guidelines just made it a farce. The last Census had the campaign for people to write Jedi as their religion. I doubt this group of people will have much impact on future planning, are there any specific social or healthcare needs amongst the Jedi?

It seems if the GRC was easier to obtain (this is the argument I have read for the small take-up) then it would be easier to weight the census data against this, or the other way around I don’t use my stats knowledge anymore. But it is going to be one big mess.

Would have been really interesting to see the change in the trans population in 10 or 20 years time but we won’t be able to reliably track it now. (Also the Jedi community.)

Am disappointed and saddened to see the spin placed on this ruling in community FB groups for women, it has been portrayed as an attack on trans women by women and the money raised was taken away from violence against women groups. 😢. No mention of trans men.

The census should be about facts for boring practical planning, social research and for family historians in 100 years time, if we survive that long.

Yes I too saw something about the £100k being spent on refuges instead. But if self ID comes in the backdoor there won't be any refuges (for females only). I think it is lack of understanding or a way to distract and make those of us who donated look mean and petty.

surely deliberately and persistently misrepresenting the law to multiple public organisations and companies has to be unlawful.

You’d think so, Gardenbird. I don’t understand how they — or the lazy organisations that don’t bother to check the information — keep getting away with it.

@FemaleAndLearning

Yes I too saw something about the £100k being spent on refuges instead. But if self ID comes in the backdoor there won't be any refuges (for females only). I think it is lack of understanding or a way to distract and make those of us who donated look mean and petty.

I couldn’t quite believe that statement, very underhand, could say any donations to any cause is taking money away from refuges. 🤔 Sadly, the whole argument was lapped up, mean women not people wanting clear data. At least this is how I am viewing it.

and to Fair Play for Women

I might be stupid but I don't understand what the problem is. I just filled it in and answered the questions?

Shannara, that is what most people do.
Problem is via the guidance the question you thought was straightforward sex was actually being recorded as a miss mash of biological sex, legal sex and self identified sex.
This has wide implications.