Can you help me phrase something about gender very carefully for a work document

[AttillaThePlum]

I have been asked to comment on a colleague's thoughts about gender and EDI from my own (non legal) expert perspective.

Most of it I can do, because my advice is that as a company we should keep our heads down and stay out of it, not least because everything is going to go batshit around the election.

HOWEVER. I need to address this sentence. "we’ve included a simple sentence in our recent report: “while the language in this report speaks of young women and young men, these categories refer to gender identities and we recognise that gender is not binary.”].

I need to say that a) this is disputed and not everyone believes this and the right to say so is protected and b) I need to say this to someone who was once an equalities expert but has not worked as such for five years and so may not be across Maya Forstater etc but c) if I get one single thing wrong this person will jump on me like a lion that hasn't seen a gazelle in weeks and d) has recently shafted me massively over another project.

Which would be something like that this is an opinion, not a fact and it is an opinion which is protected - and then I run out of sensible words. Can you bring your collective expertise to bear and help me get it right?

Thank you.

I used to work in corporate and produced reports that would go No 10 and from my experience I'd always ask 'what is the message we are trying to convey and how could that be misconstrued?'

We had a company who was endlessly requesting freedom of information on everything we did and so every sentence I typed had to be with 'if I had to stand up in court would I be able to defend this'.

Sentences that don't make sense do tend to make you look a right twat when you have to defend what you meant. Always bear that in mind because you never know when this might happen to you. I'm sure Maya never thought it would happen to her.

I've got a similar work document where we say:
-sex- definition, male/female
-some people also consider themselves to have a gender identity (define)

We all feel that covers things off well, especially as we work with a wide range of audiences.

I sometimes write policies for a health organisation. This usually means putting something in the definitions section to the effect that sex refers to biological sex.

I then use patients, people, carers and other gender neutral terms in the main body of the policy.

I've got away with it. So far.