Page 6 | A third of Britons don’t know that transgender women were born male

Coconaut · 07/08/2023 14:00

Really? The average 9-year-old reads as well as the average adult? That seems extremely unlikely. Do you have a source for this statistic?

This does seem odd - what does reading age mean then? I assumed a reading age of 9 meant "reading as well as the average 9 year old".

OldCrone · 07/08/2023 14:03

I said on that and I'll repeat on this thread: the average reading age of adults in the UK is nine.

@RedToothBrush
I just found the post I made last time someone made this claim here. This is from a survey from 2012 (I couldn't find anything more recent).

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/36000/12-p168-2011-skills-for-life-survey.pdf

Eighty five per cent of respondents achieved Level 1 or above in literacy, with 15 per cent performing at Entry Level 3 or below.

57 per cent of respondents achieved a Level 2 or above score in literacy

From the glossary: Entry Level 3 is the national school curriculum equivalent for attainment at age 9-11, Level 1 is equivalent to GCSE grades D-G and Level 2 is equivalent to GCSE grades A*-C.

So 57% of adults have literacy levels at or above the level of GCSE A*-C, and only 15% at or below the level of a 9-11 year old child. From this, the average (median) looks to be around GCSE grade C.

(Sorry about the derail.)

RedToothBrush · 07/08/2023 14:09

Entry Level 1 is equivalent to literacy levels at age 5-7. Adults below Entry Level 1 may not be able to write short messages to family or read a road sign.

Entry Level 2 is equivalent to literacy levels at age 7-9. Adults with below Entry Level 2 may not be able to describe a child’s symptoms to a doctor or read a label on a medicine bottle.

Entry Level 3 is equivalent to literacy levels at age 9-11. Adults with skills below Entry Level 3 may not be able to understand labels on pre-packaged food or understand household bills.

Level 1 is equivalent to GCSE grades D-G. Adults with skills below Level 1 may not be able to read bus or train timetables or understand their pay slip.

Level 2 is equivalent to GCSE grades A*-C. Adults with skills below Level 2 may not have the skills to spot fake news or bias in the media.

The government define literacy along these lines.

51.9% of pupils in England got a grade 5 or above in GCSE English and maths in the 2020 to 2021 academic year

Source:
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/11-to-16-years-old/a-to-c-in-english-and-maths-gcse-attainment-for-children-aged-14-to-16-key-stage-4/latest

(A grade 4 is a C rather than a grade 5)

That's just children educated in the UK and doesn't include adults educated elsewhere.

Can you see the problem?

It's not hard to see how there might be an issue.

VesperLind · 07/08/2023 14:16

MillicentBystandr · 07/08/2023 09:11

I’ve seen it on here, posters saying a transwoman is a woman who has transed into a man, and a transman is a man who has transed into a woman. I think quite a few people get confused about the terms.

I agree, and what’s more, I think it’s deliberately confusing. It makes much more sense to use Transman for male to female.

OldCrone · 07/08/2023 15:40

RedToothBrush · 07/08/2023 14:09

Entry Level 1 is equivalent to literacy levels at age 5-7. Adults below Entry Level 1 may not be able to write short messages to family or read a road sign.

Entry Level 2 is equivalent to literacy levels at age 7-9. Adults with below Entry Level 2 may not be able to describe a child’s symptoms to a doctor or read a label on a medicine bottle.

Entry Level 3 is equivalent to literacy levels at age 9-11. Adults with skills below Entry Level 3 may not be able to understand labels on pre-packaged food or understand household bills.

Level 1 is equivalent to GCSE grades D-G. Adults with skills below Level 1 may not be able to read bus or train timetables or understand their pay slip.

Level 2 is equivalent to GCSE grades A*-C. Adults with skills below Level 2 may not have the skills to spot fake news or bias in the media.

The government define literacy along these lines.

51.9% of pupils in England got a grade 5 or above in GCSE English and maths in the 2020 to 2021 academic year

Source:
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/11-to-16-years-old/a-to-c-in-english-and-maths-gcse-attainment-for-children-aged-14-to-16-key-stage-4/latest

(A grade 4 is a C rather than a grade 5)

That's just children educated in the UK and doesn't include adults educated elsewhere.

Can you see the problem?

It's not hard to see how there might be an issue.

I'm not sure why you're quoting anything about children's GCSE results. I was quoting figures from the Skills for Life survey (link in my earlier post), which was a survey of adults, and they claimed that this sample was representative of the UK adult population (age 16-65):

SfL2011 was designed to provide an accurate reflection of the skills, behaviours, and views of people aged between 16 and 65 in England during 2010/11. Consequently, the proportion of respondents in each age band and ethnic group, the relative numbers of each gender, and the proportion who were disabled, employed, or outside the labour market, was representative of the
broader population of 16-65 year-olds currently living in England

Can you see the problem?

It's not hard to see how there might be an issue.

Sorry, I'm really not sure what you're getting at here.

SinnerBoy · 07/08/2023 16:06

Helleofabore · Today 13:15

I still will get to look at the data, but football has my attention right at this moment !!

What was the score? An England player had just been sent off, just before extra time, when I turned my phone off, to board a plane.

SinnerBoy · 07/08/2023 16:15

Ah, I've looked up a report and see it was won on penalties.

ArabeIIaScott · 07/08/2023 16:17

Helleofabore · 07/08/2023 09:49

Thanks for stopping by. It is always great to have contributions from everyone.

Show quote history

Absolutely. I'll make a careful note that this poster does not care about this issue and doesn't wish to discuss it.

WFindianmom · 07/08/2023 16:36

Hmm interesting, because in India, there is a special word for trans women and I am pretty sure 100% of women understand what it means. so there is no confusion.

Ohthatsabitshit · 07/08/2023 16:46

WyrdyGrob · 07/08/2023 13:28

No offence, but a third of Britons don't care

i don’t think that’s quite the whole picture though. id think at least a third (likely more) don’t think it will ever matter to them, and are Live and Let Live about the whole thing.

right up until we have an incident like the Sheffield Swimming Competition. then people get what it actually means. Viscerally. Once we get a critical mass of these incidents, White Van Man will wake up and wade in. White van man isn’t feminist, and his beliefs don’t align very much with feminism, but he has a powerful sense of fair play, and will defend and women in his care. (Probably more from a sense of ownership, but his reasoning is irrelevant here)

More to the point, he isn’t going to wank about on Twitter when, as he sees it, some bloke in a wig wanders through the changing room his daughter is in. He will go in there and remove said bloke by the throat.

all the activists, and scolds who come on here, and who claim to be on the side of the sweet, gentle Transwomen we know and love should be gatekeeping transhood like fuck to prevent this happening. Because WVM won’t give a shiny shite if it is a sweet, sad womanly soul trapped in a man’s body.

i think the reason it hasnt happened yet is that swim parents aren’t usually in the WVM demographic. But it’s only a matter of time.

I think this is spot on. In all honesty it’s not just WVM.

JellySaurus · 07/08/2023 16:59

35 per cent wrongly believed that a transgender woman was someone born female, or they were unsure. Apparently, they're even more confused about the term “trans woman”, with 40 per cent either being unsure or believing it meant someone who was registered female at birth.

Of course they don't know that TWAM. It is entirely deliberate. It is the whole point of forcing the use of expressions such as transwoman upon the general population. Because of the way the English language works, people understand that the word preceding a noun is the adjective describing that noun. Therefore terms such as 'transwoman' and 'transgender woman' break the rules of English grammar. It is deliberate Newspeak.

Ironically, 'transgender' follows the rules of English grammar, as long as you accept the Newspeak definition of 'trans'.

IwantToRetire · 07/08/2023 17:33

I couldn't get .xls file to download. Not sure why.

But this explanation from MBM is one that I think is most useful and good to share on other platforms anyone might be on https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2023/08/07/clarity-matters-how-placating-lobbyists-obscures-public-understanding-of-sex-and-gender/ (sorry if already shared but didn't see it when reading through)

Also for those saying they can read the article, please remember that 99.9% of articles shared from newspapers on this board you will find if you go to https://archive.ph and copy in the article link as a readable copy.

Clarity matters: how placating lobbyists obscures public understanding of sex and gender - Murray Blackburn Mackenzie

This blog describes the results of polling we commissioned to test how well people understand what the terms ‘transgender woman’ and ‘trans woman’ tell them about a person’s sex. The findings show that there is substantial confusion about these terms,...

https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2023/08/07/clarity-matters-how-placating-lobbyists-obscures-public-understanding-of-sex-and-gender

IwantToRetire · 07/08/2023 17:38

Sorry forgot to add at the end of my post, that yet again part of the problem is the failure of the media to use words properly.

Dont forget it was when the media (within my life time) gave into queer pressure to stop using the word sex and start using the word gender. This has been one of their biggest victories. Confusing what words mean.

If you remember the UK Parliament was able to pass a law on Sex Discrimination. So all those silly suggestions that no one in polite society ever used the word sex is just rubbish. That is just more part of transing history.

caramacyears · 07/08/2023 19:05

WyrdyGrob · 07/08/2023 13:28

No offence, but a third of Britons don't care

i don’t think that’s quite the whole picture though. id think at least a third (likely more) don’t think it will ever matter to them, and are Live and Let Live about the whole thing.

right up until we have an incident like the Sheffield Swimming Competition. then people get what it actually means. Viscerally. Once we get a critical mass of these incidents, White Van Man will wake up and wade in. White van man isn’t feminist, and his beliefs don’t align very much with feminism, but he has a powerful sense of fair play, and will defend and women in his care. (Probably more from a sense of ownership, but his reasoning is irrelevant here)

More to the point, he isn’t going to wank about on Twitter when, as he sees it, some bloke in a wig wanders through the changing room his daughter is in. He will go in there and remove said bloke by the throat.

all the activists, and scolds who come on here, and who claim to be on the side of the sweet, gentle Transwomen we know and love should be gatekeeping transhood like fuck to prevent this happening. Because WVM won’t give a shiny shite if it is a sweet, sad womanly soul trapped in a man’s body.

i think the reason it hasnt happened yet is that swim parents aren’t usually in the WVM demographic. But it’s only a matter of time.

WVM or Amy George?

Helleofabore · 07/08/2023 19:25

Well that was a very focused and rather clear survey.

I am really surprised at the lack of knowledge in the 25-34 year old age group.

"Strikingly, of those aged 25-34, barely half gave the correct response, for both terms. Well over one-quarter (29%) of that group thought a ‘trans woman’ described someone who had been registered female/a girl at birth. As this effect was seen for both terms, separately sampled, it seems likely to be a real population effect. It may reflect more of the 25-34 respondents being uncomfortable with the idea sex is registered rather than ‘assigned’ at birth, or greater resistance to considering a person’s sex at birth entirely separately from their identity: but that would not immediately explain why the youngest age group records substantially better understanding of these terms than those aged 25-34. There is scope for further testing to understand what might explain this effect."

Especially considering that the younger cohort of 18-24 were only really average in answering the questions correctly as well. They were not as informed as other age groups were.

So it could be concluded loosely that the 18-28 year olds who were reported now from a couple of other surveys to be the least tolerant of different opinions, are actually doing this based on an inflated and false perception of their own knowledge.

I would love to see a survey that covered both of these sets of questions at the same time. That would be really interesting.

BaronMunchausen · 07/08/2023 19:43

Given that some respondents will have guessed the meaning of “trans woman" (with a 50:50 chance of guessing correctly), wouldn't the true figure who didn't know most likely be greater than 40 per cent?

A third of Britons don’t know that transgender women were born male

Survey reveals ‘high levels of misunderstanding and confusion’ around terms commonly used to refer to trans people

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/06/third-of-britons-dont-know-trans-women-born-male

CaramelMac · 07/08/2023 20:06

heathspeedwell · 07/08/2023 12:17

I think a lot of the general public still think of Hayley Cropper when they hear 'transwoman'. This character was played by a petite woman and is in no way representative of the average male person who identifies as a transwoman.

I also think there's a huge number of people who would be shocked to realise that the vast majority of transwomen have a fully functioning penis. You so often hear naïve comments along the lines of, "why would someone go to all the trouble to transition just to get into women's showers?"

They obviously don't realise that grabbing pink leggings and a wig from Primark is literally all you need to do to transition.

Considering that at least 6% of Catholic priests in Boston were found to have abused children, and it takes many years to become a priest, it's obvious that some bad men go to huge lengths in order to access victims.

I agree with this! I think Hayley Cropper has got a lot to answer for.

I used to spend a lot of time in gay clubs when I was in my late teens and so I have always been very aware of what real life TW look like.

Its funny because if you use the old fashioned terms transsexual or transvestite no one is in any doubt that you’re talking about men.

Heliotroper · 07/08/2023 22:24

BaronMunchausen · 07/08/2023 19:43

Given that some respondents will have guessed the meaning of “trans woman" (with a 50:50 chance of guessing correctly), wouldn't the true figure who didn't know most likely be greater than 40 per cent?

Yes

hallouminatus · 08/08/2023 09:28

Its funny because if you use the old fashioned terms transsexual or transvestite no one is in any doubt that you’re talking about men.
"Transsexual woman" is every bit as unclear as "transgender woman". I think the terms "transsexual" and "transvestite" only become less ambiguous when preceded by "male" or "female". If we could say "a male transgender", for example, it would be just as clear as "a male transsexual", but for some reason, "transgender" is not normally used as a noun.

Grammarnut · 08/08/2023 13:05

WVM certainly takes his children swimming - they go on holidays where swimming, scuba diving, going out in boats etc., feature heavily. So swimming is a must - if WVM's wife/partner/daughter reports man in a wig in changing room Hell will break loose - so far it has not happened since WVM generally goes to places that segregate changing rooms by sex, not gender...so far.

Grammarnut · 08/08/2023 13:12

The average 9-year-old reads as well as the average adult? That seems extremely unlikely. Do you have a source for this statistic?

Good statistics from 2012, RedToothBrush. You would hope that more people were reaching higher reading levels since the introduction of systematic synthetic phonics and the Phonics Check. One can but hope, and that Labour will not, at the behest of the teaching unions, undo this progress by returning to 'balanced' or 'whole word' instruction, which amounts to teaching children to guess at the words on the page.

OldCrone · 08/08/2023 13:39

Good statistics from 2012, RedToothBrush.

I posted a link to the 2012 report about adult literacy and numeracy. RedToothBrush posted a link to a report from 2022 about children's GCSE results. As far as I can see, she hasn't provided a source for the statement that the average reading ability of adults in the UK is that of the average nine-year-old, which wasn't true in 2012 according to the report I posted a link to.

This isn't the first time someone has posted that exact 'statistic' on here, but they never provide any evidence. The last time I commented on it, on this thread the other posted admitted it was only 'hearsay'.

IwantToRetire · 08/08/2023 17:08

You do wonder in light of this report by MBM how the census was able to get away with saying there was no problem with their gender identity question.

Particularly given the London statistics in both instance.

EmeraldDuck · 08/08/2023 17:19

Maybe a third of Britons don’t know how to correctly fill in a survey 🤔🤦‍♀️

agent765 · 08/08/2023 17:34

flyingbuttress43 · 07/08/2023 11:06

If a third believe trans women were born women, what do they think they transed from?

Mermaids? Unicorns? Fairies?

Any made-up/mythological creature seems fine and perfectly normal to a lot of people these days.