Guardian piece on More in Common research

[DameHelena]

www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/16/britons-not-bitterly-polarised-over-trans-equality-research-finds

Anyone know anything about More in Common? I'm wondering how impartial they are; their representative referring to “the latest ‘gotcha’ trend of posing questions to senior politicians about whether or not women can have penises”. sounds a little... not unbiased.

I had this article presented to me this morning.
It's almost meaningless in some ways, because even of the public is broadly pragmatic, the direction of policy and institutional capture is dogmatic.

Very biased spin on that, not surprising as Luke Tryl was head of education at Stonewall.

www.gov.uk/government/people/luke-tryl

Entirely unsurprising that Tryl comes from Stonewall.

More in Common seem to have something to do with the Jo Cox Foundation, which is fully TWAW.

I think More in Common wanted to find out that the public were fully supportive of the idea that TWAW and has decided to pretend that that's what the results showed, even though they show nothing of the sort. And the Guardian, being the Guardian, has swallowed it uncritically.

I saw the Luke Tyl article and he definitely has that stonewall lilt audible through his prose.

A look at their funding and meet the team pages makes me sceptical about their impartiality.

Arisa joined More in Common having recently completed a Master’s Degree in Transnational Studies at UCL, with her dissertation focusing on the relationship between right-wing populism and gender in the UK and France. She has been assisting More in Common’s research studies in the US and Europe.

Hmm

It's quite instructive to compare the two different reports on this - one in the Guardian linked above and the other in The Times linked from this thread.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4570160-public-want-trans-women-kept-out-of-female-sport-times-16622

In contrast to the advice last month of the attorney general, Suella Braverman, that schools do not have to accommodate pupils who want to change gender, there is also broad agreement that schools should support young people exploring their identity.

Exploring, and accommodating change (affirmation) are two very different things so how can you contrast them?

Published on Thursday, the report reveals widespread acceptance that a trans woman is a woman and a trans man is a man, with 46% agreeing, 32% disagreeing, and 22% who don’t know, with agreement highest among younger generations

That looks pretty polarised to me, less than half think TWAW and TMAM. Maybe luke/guardian headline writers struggle with maths?

Also.... the question of whether trans women are women, trans men are men - 46 agree v 32 disagree - is seen as not polarised.

But trans women in sport - 19% agree and 57% do not agree - is seen as "one area where the public are at risk of becoming polarised"

....if I wrote this rubbish at work I'd be sent back and told to start again!

Must be a new definition of the word polarised, does it now mean, on the naughty step for wrongthink?

So their working definition of "polarised" is "too many people disagree with the correct view"?

Probably comes from a similar place to their definition of "toxic" - "too many people disagree with the correct view and get abuse hurled at them".

How can they describe the public as broadly relaxed about the toilet 'flashpoint issue' and use of unisex loos, then casually throw in the stat that support for trans use of women's facilities without reassignment surgery is only 29%, and then pitched as a positive thing how it goes to 53% WITH surgery.

I mean even I think with full surgery they should have access to women's toilets and changing rooms. But only 53% of the general public do? I wouldn't paint that as positive for the cause. While hiding the very poor support for access to self identified people.

I downloaded the report and find that the polling uses a very odd method of segmenting the population NOT based on age geography class and race... but things like 'engaged politicos' and 'over the hill out of touch oldie's' I exaggerate only slightly but there is no indication on how this was done what they used to do it ...., ANYWAY DOES MUMSNET HAVE A SOCIAL SCIENTIST who could give an opinion? I used to work at Ipsos Mori and we never used any other method apart from age sex geography class and race.

Indeed. It's interesting that The Times took me trouble to mention the author's Stonewall connection, whilst The Grauniad didn't bother.

The Methodology section says "Surveys have been conducted ... using representative samples of the adult population of Great Britain, recruited and weighted by gender, age, education and geographic region"

Note "by gender", which suggests where they're coming from. It also begs the question as to how they are matching standard national statistics as the census data is based on sex, not gender.

What's more, they started with 10,300 people who were "a nationally representative sample" but then only followed through on about half of them who were deemed to be in "distinctive clusters ... based on their core beliefs". It makes you wonder what the other half thought.

I think the fact that we have this survey which does highlight the concerns that people have even if many were clearly framed in a way to be positive to Trans Rights is useful.

We are reasonable. We want dignity and respect for all. Shock, horror, all includes female.

What is clear to me from that survey, is that people do not have a clue what being Trans means now.

Stonewall have done so much damage here and it must be heartbreaking for some transexuals who have gone through so much to get where they are now. There is no separation now between transsexuals and transvestites and even men who want to use womans spaces.

Maybe one of the questions should have been:-

Are you happy for a Trans woman who had had no grs to use the same facilities as your teenage daughter?

I imagine the disagree would be even stronger.

Try as they might to spin it, this poll very clearly shows that gender critical views are those of the majority.
Most people don't want to get into the details and are generally "yeah, whatever, live and let live". But when you ask them about intact males in safe spaces for women and males in women's sport, the majority says no. Which makes them terfs, according to TRAs

....if I wrote this rubbish at work I'd be sent back and told to start again!

It's astonishingly bad, the data doesn't support the headline findings.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.
The author has decided what they want the findings to be and has shoehorned these into the report regardless.

I also think the views of people are hardening.

Which is really not what we want.

I can feel myself getting angrier and angrier at the lack of consideration for woman

Previously I would have perhaps said - TW who have had GRS should perhaps be able to use the single sex female provision in certain instances (toilets for example) but now I think there should be no exceptions because so many TW / males do not respect our boundaries

Once people not engaged in this debate realise that their views about fairness and safeguarding make them "terf bigots", this will shock them.
The normal pattern as per Liveline on RTÉ over the past few days to have a sensible and sensitive debate about the impact on women's rights, only to have the whole thing characterised as a debate about the very existence of trans people and therefore, by word of mouth, the propagation of hate speech.
They can only play this game so many times before it gets noticed. And it's getting noticed.

I agree@Live4weekend , views are hardening. When push comes to shove, people will not accept the destruction of women's boundaries. My fear, as I have said before, is a backlash against LGB people and trans people

Yep it's extremely worrying.

I don't know how we counter it as its brewing and Stonewall and their cronies are complicit in it. But then, that's what generates their income. If we are all living happily together they are out of business.

Yep it's extremely worrying.

Being kind got us to where we are now, when women are kind our boundaries get trampled over.

The backlash has been predicted for a while and people were worried about how far the pendulum would swing. But I don't think it's our responsibility to counter it, we certainly aren't responsible for it.

Much of the responsibility lies with stonewall and all other 'no debate' organisations.

The author has decided what they want the findings to be and has shoehorned these into the report regardless.

This is exactly right. The premise of the research - and indeed of the think tank - seems to be that people are nice, not nasty, and they mostly agree with each other about stuff.

This is nonsense. It's nonsense in general, and it's nonsense specifically in regard to this research.

How do you decide if people are "polarised" or not? The research found that people had different opinions. As dino said, it makes no sense to say that on a question where 46% agree and 32% disagree, people are not polarised, whereas on one where 19% agree and 57% disagree, there is a "risk" of becoming polarised.

Obviously it depends how you define "polarised", but I'd say a situation where people are equally divided on an issue (eg the EU referendum) is more polarised than one where the majority of people agree about something.