Census ‘hugely overstated’ trans population - Telegraph article

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Census 'hugely overstated' trans population (telegraph.co.uk)

or

Census 'hugely overstated' trans population (archive.ph)

The Office for National Statistics “hugely overestimated” the number of transgender people in the UK, Whitehall sources have claimed, as the body admitted it could have carried out “additional probing” before releasing the controversial data.

An official inquiry by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) into the census finding that 260,000 people identified as transgender has drawn up several “lessons learned” from the way the data was handled by the ONS.

They include a conclusion the ONS should do more to communicate “uncertainty” about the data and should have sought external “quality assurance”.

Twitter thread here: Professor Alice Sullivan on X: ""The Office for National Statistics “hugely overestimated” the number of transgender people in the UK, Whitehall sources have claimed, as the body admitted it could have carried out “additional probing” before releasing the controversial data" t.co/kNtOqExFSq" / X (twitter.com)

@KnickerlessParsons I can't remember what answer I gave for sure either. The mad thing is, from a GC POV, you could make a case for answering 'yes' or 'no' to that question. Where what was needed was, loosely. "Do you believe in all this gender bollocks? If No, carry onto the next section. If Yes, see below..."

Exactly.

Another census fuckup comes to light.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/03/ons-corrects-census-pansexual-population-figure-inflated/

https://archive.ph/5YS9L archive link

Why were they even asking about pansexuals? What earthly reason...

There's no end to the potential for once respected organisations to look like incompetent idiots when they've signed up to Stonewall and their gender woowoo beliefs.

“The Office for National Statistics has corrected the census after it mistakenly inflated Britain’s “pansexual” population by more than half.
The latest census in 2021 had claimed that 112,000 people in Britain identified as “pansexual”, where one is attracted to people of all genders.
But this was incorrect and it has since been changed to 48,000 people.”

The figure they included (112,000) was over twice as high as the correct figure.

They inflated the figure by a lot more than half.

The leading and confusing question wording leading to overcounting was exactly what FWR posters predicted would happen. It’s now ruined a crucial national dataset. It serves nobody to obscure the full picture, whatever gender identity they have or don’t have. We all rely on there being accurate statistics about the population. Public service spending follows those statistics.

Funnily enough, it's hard to convince people that you are collecting serious and necessary data if you are so fucking coy and blasé about accurately reporting sex, which is after all pretty fundamental to most people's lives.

The one person I know who describes herself as pansexual is a youngish bisexual woman who has relationships with men and women, sometimes two or more at a time. Her most infamous relationship was with a woman and two brothers. At one point they all lived together and shared one giant bed. I always wanted to ask whether the two brothers were having sex with each other too, to complete the convention-busting nature of the household, but thought that might make me look gauche.

Her definition of pansexuality was about non-monogamy, non-coupledom and multiple partners of varying sexuality. I've never heard her use the word gender. But she might well have ticked the pansexual box.

Sex Matter have weighed in on the census fubar

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/11/19/ons-flawed-trans-census-data-calls-investigation/

Good to see that they've asked for an investigation. It's too important to allow this nonsense to stand - especially as the ONS had no coherent explanation. These organisations need to face consequences for their institutional capture.

Has anyone in government and the Upper echelons considered what the effects are on a society to have formerly respected institutions beclown themselves?

Anyone done a risk assessment of 'queering data'?

Ah but how many Jedi's are there this time around ?

Hahaha, my husband was a Jedi in 2011, but clearly his Force had run out by 2021!

The ONS Gender Identity question 'Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?' is tough for people with English as a first language to answer too - I mean, I don’t have a gender identity so neither 'No' nor 'Yes' would be accurate answers.

The question is a tortured use of English grammar and sentence construction too. Couldn’t they just ask 'Do you consider yourself to be transgender?' with a yes or no choice?

Accurate stats are more important than ideological framing, surely.

Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?

This is a baffling question that can't make up its mind whether sex and gender are the same thing or not. It assumes gender can be male or female, but they are sexes.

Is your age the same as your dress size? Is your race the same as your nationality? Is your star sign the same as your first name?

There's more

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/27/ons-worried-triggering-staff-transgender-census/

https://archive.ph/RLqjR

'spokesman'! I hope they didn't assume his gender!?

You'd swear Civil Servants in the ONS had never heard of the Nolan Principles of Public Life. Why did Woolford neither make a declaration of interest nor recuse Woolford's self from involvement?

Maya Forstater, the executive director of the gender-critical campaign group, Sex Matters, suggested that Ms Woolford was caught in a conflict of interests because “the same person responsible for defending the <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/RLqjR/www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/09/25/trans-rights-accuracy-census-office-of-national-statistics/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">unreliable census data on transgender identification to the public and regulator also leads the ONS’s internal transactivist lobby group”.
“Instead of upholding the principle of people who develop national statistics being truthful, impartial and independent, the ONS and its senior leadership is allowing emotional blackmail, compelled speech and ideological beliefs to corrupt work of vital importance to the UK,” she added.
And Michael Biggs, an Oxford University sociology professor who was one of the first to query the ONS data, said: “It is troubling that the ONS has treated scrutiny of its data as a threat to its staff.”

And, if they care about staff well-being, what about the well-being of any GC ONS staffers?

The question as drafted makes no sense for the GC. And it cannot be safe - in employment, rather than emotional, terms - to speak out at ONS about data quality in this domain if scrutiny is seen as harmful.

I hope the SEEN network exists at ONS to give those staff some support in standing up for, well, the Civil Service code for one thing. Honesty, integrity, objectivity and impartiality. Remember those, ONS?

Interesting this is out in the same week where a rape crisis centre had to admit in court that they couldn't do their core brief or the law or treat people equally because it might be or was too upsetting for their TQ+ staff.

Questions are going to have to be asked about compatibility and why capacity isn't being better managed when it comes to TQ+ employees if this goes on being used as an excuse in massive cock ups.

There is a cohort study of about 13000 people born in 2000-2001 run by University College London which has been carried out roughly every 3 years since they were born. This year the cohort members are being asked what their pronouns are.

I hope the answers to asking people about their use of pronouns are not overstated by UCL.
As we all know, some people use pronouns to signal ‘allyship’ but that doesn’t mean they are trans or non binary themselves, for example

Is this for the purposes of analysing the pronoun choices of the cohort, or is it for editorial reasons, i.e. if they pick out case studies in the write-up and want to refer to the subject by their preferred pronoun?

The former. They don't pick out individual case studies. Not for publication, at any rate.

Really, that sounds like a really roundabout way of doing it. I know we've all heard of questionnaires asking about "gender identity" so I'm surprised they've not just done that. Are they planning on presenting the data that way "50% of she/hers did their A-Levels, compared to 45% of he/hims - and 80% of they/thems! Ze/zirs were also likely to complete further education, with German being a popular subject choice..."

Is it really a place where GC people feel safe and can bring their 'full self' to work?