Oxford University covid research

[Scrabble]

So I've spent maybe a couple of years filling in occasional questionnaires from Oxford University. Fairly long ones. About how I and my family are affected by Covid. A lot of the questions are pretty intrusive - eg asking about feelings of depression and worthlessness, whether your children are unpopular or liars and thieves, relationship and money questions, etc. I've done this (despite often not wanting to) over and over again in the interests of research. With some faith that as carried out by prestigious Oxford University they might find out something useful and make good use of it.
Received yet another questionnaire the other day, and this time they required me to tell them what my gender is. The choice was: male / female / other / prefer not to say. There was no sex question. I know that on this board male and female are supposed to relate to sex, but here they were expressly stated to be genders.
I considered not answering the questionnaire, but in the end went for female. But surely sex is very important in the context of Covid and families? And they were clearly conflating sex and gender. I feel as though the whole thing has been a waste of time, and as though I've been cheated into thinking that these were reasonable, academic people with an interest in finding out the truth. So much for fucking Oxford.

People who have DSD, at least in the UK where there is universal health care of relatively high standard, will have many different presentations (though none will have both a complete vagina and a complete penis) and should know, through discussion with their doctors, what sex they are from a biological perspective.

I've had some correspondence with the survey people, further to my complaint. Their current position, having supposedly considered what I've said, is:

1. They will in future if asking about sex provide the options of "male, female or intersex". I have pointed out to them that "intersex" is not in fact a 3rd sex. They referred to "sex at birth". I have pointed out that that term makes no sense, since people don't change sex after birth.

2. They say that when asking in the survey about whether people are "male, female or other" they were in fact asking about gender, but should have phrased it in such a way that it wouldn't be mistaken for a question about sex. They say that their interest is in gender, not sex, because they want to find out about people's psychological and social experiences of the Covid pandemic, not people's medical experiences. I have pointed out that stating or believing that one is a woman when one is a man doesn't mean that one then takes on the psychology of a woman. And that transwomen rarely pass as women and are unlikely to be women "socially" either. Also because they don't experience eg. childbirth or menopause, which affects how women are treated socially.

3. They say that they will take the advice of their Equality and Diversity team on how to ask people about "gender". I can imagine where their E and D team are likely to get their approach from.

Despite their acknowledging that there is a difference between sex and gender, they come across to me as having no committed interest in the actual science / effects of Covid on people, but rather to be putting whatever is the currently acceptable ideology at the forefront of their concerns. They will believe what they are told to believe by their E and D team and will conduct their research accordingly.

Good you got a reply.

In practice for a large scale survey does it really matter?

Let’s take you survey 10,000 people, how much of a impact are the handful of transgender people going to have on the survey results?

I answered a survey about gynaecological cancers that asked the question about gender not sex FFS. What could be more important than sex In determining whether you're going to get a gynaecological cancer? They had non-binary as an answer choice but no way to tell what sex non-binary. I wrote a critical paragraph in one of the answer boxes at the end. There's a lot of "people with..." terminology in the literature too, which is fucking annoying when you're worrying about dying from something only women can get (I don't think I'm in danger of dying quite yet, hopefully cured, but still...).

@orbitalcrisis they must be ignored in the interests of obtaining purity.

Ah, it’s shroegingers trans people again innit?

only a handful of women get raped when they’re imprisoned with men role playing as women, no need to change anything

there’s only a handful of trans people, but nevertheless the whole of society should pretend that sex isn’t real and gender is relevant in any way to the questionnaire the OP was completing, because….reasons

So, I’m assuming you’re saying it wouldn’t make much of a difference. 99% of people filling in the form would write their sex and the impact would be pretty minimal.

Going back a way to point out that this, as a starting point, is what is technically known as "A LIE" and therefore makes subsequent steps likely to be wrong 😉

People who are trying to derail this thread by talking about intersex conditions would be advised to read this interview with Claire Graham, who has a DSD known as MRKH. She explains what it means to have a DSD and how many people actually have one (not many, and certainly not the 1.7% cited by some).

womansplaceuk.org/2019/10/21/biological-sex-is-not-a-spectrum-there-are-only-two-sexes-in-humans-with-claire-graham/

Perhaps, but the more that concepts of gender replace the concept of sex in the population the less you will be able to rely on this.

And you end up with a bunch of research where you have no reliable data about the sex of the participants

sounds mucho scientific

what could possibly go wrong?

in research (as in life, frankly) precision is important

Well done Scrabble for getting them to think a bit. I expect they'll have experienced considerable cognitive dissonance if they're real scientists/ medics / researchers (as opposed to self identified ). When you know you're stating a lie but daren't face it, there's a lot of self denial / justification that goes on. Passing it on the the dubious E & D lot is all part of it.

I’m guessing not much. Realistically, you will have reliable data. The nature of the surveys doesn’t look especially foolproof to begin with .

‘I think this data is accurate and reliable’ ?

your research sounds super 👍👍👍

This is scientifically inaccurate. The proportion is far, far smaller than you state, about .018%. I think you may have got the decimal point in the wrong place.

By ’intersex’ people ( a derogatory or prejudiced term) , I presume you mean people with a chromosomal abnormality which affects their sexual function and presentation. The sufferers are still clearly male or female at the chromosomal level, and most of the characteristics which are dictated by that are unaffected. The conditions caused by the abnormalities at chromosomal level are clearly distinguished and present differently between males and females who are affected.

I'd be more choosy about the surveys as a result. I don't think the social and psychological impact is as interesting as the medical stuff, especially given the kinds of questions they are asking.

Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry are demonstrating they don't have much to offer.

’I’m going to deliberately design my survey so I won’t have a clue if covid had a disproportionate affect on people who identify as trans, tra la la’

👍👍👍

’but not only that, because of the uncertainty I’ve baked in, I won’t even be able to make any 100% reliable inferences around sex either’

what a waste of everyone’s fucking time

Excellent.

Sorry, I meant excellent that you've complained .

@BernardBlacksMolluscs

but ‘ other ‘ doesn’t capture any scientific ie verifiable data collection. If you want to find out whether Covid affected trans people differently from other demographics, you need to ask them to identify themselves as transgender, then you would have a valid sector definition ( although it would probably be too small for robust statistical analysis).

the main problem with this argument, however, is that as I understand it, FTM people would identify themselves as male, and MTF people would identify them selves ( that is, tick the box labelled ) as female. That’s the whole point, surely. So if you are going down the politically correct route of TWAW TMAM , you don’t need an ‘ other ‘ box.

unless you mean things like furries, but I think they are still male or female furries? So the two categories still apply.

This red hair stat always really annoys me. What’s the baseline population? Because the 1-2% figure for red hair is going to be very different if your baseline is Scotland and Ireland, where red hair is relatively common, or the whole world, which would include populous and dark-haired countries like India and China. So using it as a comparator for DSDs is meaningless.

Of course they should be asking 'sex', they won't be able to get any accurate useable data otherwise.

I wonder what they do with the 'prefer not to say', I wonder if they look at the name and then just assign it according to that e.g 'Jane' - must be a woman!

I won't fill these forms in now but it will require vast numbers to refuse to give the data to make a difference.

Yep

you can’t force people to be honest with you (or indeed themselves) about their sex

however deliberately baking in ambiguity in the way the OP describes just leads to totally unreliable data

1. if you’re going to ask for people’s gender’, don’t provide answers like male or female to choose from that relate to sex. Use masculine/feminine/whatever instead

2. we know that where data isn’t sex disaggregated it normally leads to women getting the shitty end of the stick. Therefore always ask for people’s sex unless there’s a jolly good reason why not. And provide appropriate selections to choose from. ‘Other’ is not a sex

it appears that I feel unusually strongly about this today!