UK not polarised over trans equality

[SlouchingTowardsBethlehemAgain]

The British public are not bitterly polarised over trans equality, according to new research, which found a majority agreed schools should talk to pupils about transgender issues and that one in four knows a trans person personally.
Thought to be the most in-depth UK study to date of public attitudes to what has become a notoriously toxic discourse in politics and on social media, the report from More in Common identifies a radically different attitude among ordinary people, who approach issues of gender identity from a position of compassion and fairness, often informed by their own relationships with trans people. www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/16/britons-not-bitterly-polarised-over-trans-equality-research-finds

Leave aside the trans issue for the moment. The more I think about this More in Common think tank, the more annoyed I get.

If your aim as a think tank is to find out that people have more in common than not, then that is what you will find out. You can apply that methodology to anything: race, immigration, refugees, the EU, the monarchy, taxation, benefits, unemployment etc etc.

Because, how do you tell whether people have more in common? Is it numbers? eg if 50% of people think that sending asylum seekers to Rwanda is a good thing and 50% don't, what does that tell you? What if 90% want to send asylum seekers to Rwanda? What if only 20% do? I can't see that numbers tell you very much at all about polarisation/more-in-commonness, except that you'll never get 100% of people agreeing on an issue.

The big measure, surely, is how strongly people feel about something. Do you really really want to send/not send asylum seekers to Rwanda, or don't you much care either way?

Now in this trans survey they seem to have found that a lot of people weren't that bothered about the trans issue. Fine - they don't care enough about the issue to have polarised opinions. But all that really tells you is that most people aren't very well-informed about it, which therefore makes their answers unreliable. If people were aware that a trans woman might be someone who has had no surgery, no hormones and no GRC, might they still be quite so relaxed about letting them into women's spaces?

I'm not sure I've explained this very well but I hope people see what I'm getting at.

When you say 'transman' do you mean a person born female? I get a bit confused

Thanks for those links, ChristinaXYZ.

There are special sections of the GRA relating to Scotland, but only because the pieces of legislation it impacts on have different names north of the border (e.g. "The Divorce (Scotland) Act 1976 (c. 39) is amended as follows", and so on). They don't have an effect on the overall way that the Act operates (unless and until the Scottish government reforms it, of course).

I expect that there are some significant get-out provisions for Northern Ireland, but IADNAL, so I'm not certain.

Yes @16HamstersCalledThemAllDave a biological female who identifies as male

I hate this one, and you see it when discussing quite a few different issues. The starting point seems to be the assumption that if anyone wants to discuss ideas being pushed, legal frameworks, science, in a rigorous or specific way, must somehow be unaware that there are real people involved.

The logical conclusion seems to be that since we might affect people in some way that might be seen or felt to be negative, it's better to be a bit lax about it all.

And it's so infantalizing, as if people are unable to cope with issues which relate to them being given serious attention.

The "British Seven" categories they come up with, providing zero evidence for them that I can see, are very unconvincing. Those in the Progress Activists category have "much lower reliance on the moral foundations of purity [...] They have the lowest authoritarian tendencies of any group". Yeah, right!

Also interesting that they define "gender reassignment" [footnote 3, pg. 7] as "the surgery by which a transgender person's physical attributes are altered [...]". It would be interesting to use that definition for the Equality Act's protected characteristic.

There must be sources on how these were arrived at somewhere? I read the study itself but didn't see anything about the raw data or even about the questions themselves, just the final report.

Does anyone know if the British Seven categories used in the study still work as a numerically representative sample of the overall adult population, or are some in that list of seven stressed more than their population size?

I'm just posting the link to the full report as it does answer the points made by some posters, such as the number of people involved and the actual questions that were asked. 'Know' is a very loose word. It could apply to a work acquaintance or someone who attends the same place of worship so 24% seems a believable percentage to me.

www.moreincommon.org.uk/our-work/research/britons-and-gender-identity/

I personally think the authors have done a reasonable job.

My understanding is that More in Common developed the categories to use in all their research. They will have piloted these categories and you can take a quiz to see which category you are so you can see what it's based on:

www.britainschoice.uk/segments/

Why @KimMumsnet ?

The whole point of the survey itself was to try and canvas a wider range of opinion, and the whole analysis of the survey centres on whether the survey asked a broad selection of people or biased groups, such as a group in Brighton, and what does Mumsnet do? Moves the thread away from a broad selection of people into a forum where everyone has a biased view. You have defeated the purpose of the survey itself. Why?

If More in Common approached MNHQ and asked to survey its users on this issues, presumably you’d say they could only ask in the sex and gender discussions forum?

An organisation tries, or pretends to try to get a range of views, and MNHQ doesn’t even pretend: no range of views allowed. Can you explain whether anything ever related to sex/gender discussions that impact everyone can be posted elsewhere?

My understanding is that More in Common developed the categories to use in all their research. They will have piloted these categories and you can take a quiz to see which category you are so you can see what it's based on:
www.britainschoice.uk/segments/

Thanks, nettie434 - I found that on their website, but couldn't find any of the underlying research supporting how the seven groups were devised and the descriptions decided on, etc. I also couldn't find the transcripts of the focus groups mentioned at the end of the report either. It would have been easy for them to include the necessary links in the main report.

It irritates me immensely that both trans activists and media figures are trying to spin this as pro what TRAs want. It is not. They want total compliance with their demands regardless of what women think. It is exactly what many GC feminists have been saying for years.

I found that on their website, but couldn't find any of the underlying research supporting how the seven groups were devised and the descriptions decided on, etc. I also couldn't find the transcripts of the focus groups mentioned at the end of the report either. It would have been easy for them to include the necessary links in the main report.

it's interesting you should say that TheBiologyStupid because, in my opinion, this is where there is a difference between research carried out by market researchers/think tanks/charities etc and that done by university researchers. They do mention in the report that psychologists were involved in developing and testing the categories but they don't report these data in the same detail that would be expected in an article in a peer review journal. From a market research company perspective (and think tank research has similarities to market research because they both need striking and snappy messages) this sort of information is often treated as being commercially sensitive.

I don't say this to criticise More in Common because I think it is clear that traditional divisions on political party lines don't work on many topics any more. We see this a lot on this board, especially with ex Labour voters. It's clear that other categories like income or age aren't entirely accurate either so they need a different way of analysing participants' views.

I know the but 'we are all people' plea can grate on some people, as MangyInseam suggests, but I think the report has been helpful in saying that the 'total annihilation of any opposition' approach is undemocratic and not supported by the general public.

The word woman is defined in the Equality Act as a female of any age and a man is defined as a male of any age. Our right no to be discriminated against of the basis of sex depends on us being able to define what that is. I do not think its unreasonable to ask politicians questions to establish what they mean when they use the words man and woman. To characterise such a question as a "gotcha" suggests we are not being given information from an impartial source here.

Exactly. This jumped out at me from the report. The writers are trying to sound impartial, but slips like this make their real bias very clear.

Exactly. This jumped out at me from the report. The writers are trying to sound impartial, but slips like this make their real bias very clear.

Absolutely. All the snarky references to "elite debate" got wearisome very quickly, too.

Do the people agreeing TWAW and TMAM realise that all you have to do is say you’re the opposite sex rather than have surgery? I doubt it.

You hit the nail on the head there. I think it's not something which many people have given a lot of thought to, and I doubt whether 1 in 4 people really know a transperson. Most people would think of someone like James Morris who became Jan Morris after surgery, and not realise that this was unusual.

Most would be like me, and not really become aware until we had the failed male weight lifter entered as a female in the Olympics (to fail again but not after a place had been taken from a woman), or Lia Thomas and Emily Bridges. At this point we would think, this just isn't right, this person is still a man.