Volunteer form asks if I am a woman (includes transwoman)

[Grammarnut]

I decided I'd like to volunteer with the Adult Education team in my city. I have completed the form and got to the 'diversity' section, where I was flummoxed. It asked my 'gender' and my choices were 'prefer not to say', 'woman (includes transwoman)', 'other', 'man (includes transman)', 'non-binary'. I thought about this and it seemed my only choices really were 'prefer not to say' or 'non-binary' i.e. I have no gender, only sex.
Have other MNs come across diversity questions like this? It seems to me highly dangerous, because many adults requiring Adult Education can be vulnerable (i.e. Special Needs, ESOL, refugees etc as well as having dislocated backgrounds). How does it make sense not to ask the SEX of a volunteer? They do not know who they are accepting for these voluntary posts, do they! And further down it asks about sexual orientation. This means a transwoman could list himself as a Lesbian, another safeguarding issue.
Thoughts anyone? I've decided to say 'prefer not to say' though 'non-binary' has the appearance of truth in my case, since (like most people) I have no gender ID.

This sounds like an equality monitoring section, which should be assessed separately from your application to volunteer.

I agree they need to know who their volunteers are, but theoretically the people accepting or declining your application don't even see the equality monitoring section.

They are trying to hoodwink us into accepting a trans woman as woman rather than a male pretending to be a female. Therefore they replace sex with gender just to bamboozle everyone.

If it’s an equality monitoring form it should be mirroring the PCs of EA2010, so should ask sex and gender identity separately, not conflate them.

This sounds like another of those admin jobs that have been farmed out to someone not qualified to do the job. ie they probably consulted TikTok.

As said above if it is equality monitoring then they should be collecting data in line with data as collected by the censor (yes I know it was a mess) but the point is you are supposed to look at whether your recruitment has reached all sections of the community. ie in this instance how will they know if their recruiting has been equally sucessful in terms of sex discrimination.

Equality monitoring forms aren't meant to be an expression of the politics of whoever is designing the form.

I go with other and usually there is a Freeform box to enter I don’t have a gender my sex is female.

On all these forms, there's never, ever, a "I don't believe in this gender bollix" option, is there?

Not everyone uses the same language, and putting "gender" rather than "sex" to me, has always seemed a more polite word, more appropriate for something like this too. Now, I am a transwoman, so I'm going to disagree with some of the points you've made, but the biggest one would be the implication that transwomen are a threat to other women. We're no more a threat to women than any other woman.

Who is they?

When gender was a synonym for sex I would have agreed - but that’s no longer the case which is why I will always raise with the designers of any survey if they now ask for gender but not sex. Also your assertion that trans women are no more dangerous than women is not backed up by the prison statistics. ( And that’s even allowing for the fact that the recording of crimes by trans women are now sometimes recorded as by women - as evidenced by the current case).

To OP I would question why they are not asking for information around the protected characteristic of sex. You can then decide how you want to proceed by their response.

We're no more a threat to women than any other woman.

Transwomen are not a subset of women, they are a subset of men. There is no "other woman" here.

Anyway, we're not discussing threat. We're discussing terminology. I have a sex, I have no gender. The OP may well be the same.

OP, I wouldn't be volunteering for this organisation if they can't get their equalities terms right

Yes OP you do need to write and question this firmly. I am currently engaging with my local NHS Trust on a survey they are running on women's health where it really does matter what your sex is. And to the pp who said they were a transwoman, it might be important to collect gender as well, but not to collect sex data properly could lead to harmful conclusions.

@oopster74 is on fire tonight!
Breast milk is the same whether it comes from a male or a female, and now transwomen are no danger to women.
Lol 🙄

Sadly, this is not true. Transwomen ARE more of a risk to women than cis-men are, given the proportions of sex offenders in each group.

I’ve not volunteered for anything, so my response might be different if that was the case, but I routinely tick “other” then give my thoughts in the box that pops up.

I do agree though, that if I was intending to volunteer, I might challenge it more openly and ask them why they are listing items that are not protected characteristics. It is important.

trsns activists

I write “I do not have a gender. My sex is female.”

But you are just as much a threat to women as any other man.

So stalking my username on a forum doesn't come off as being a bit creepy to you? Ffs

Trans people are at more risk than any risk they pose. Ask Brianna Ghey if she's a risk to others, oh wait, you can't, because she was murdered by 2 15 year olds.

@oopster74 whilst Brianna is a sad case it is far rarer than transwomen being the aggressor. This is born out by the statistics which indicate transwomen follow male patterns of offending. A few examples Scarlott Blake, Isla Bryson, Karen White, Andrew Miller, Tiffany Scott etc.

Brianna's death was a tragedy, but it is not proof that transwomen are more likely to be victims than offenders. The only other transwoman victim I can think of in the UK is Destiny Lauren, who was murdered in 2010. I notice you didn't mention her. You probably don't even know who she is.

While every death is a tragedy and not to be played down, 2 murders in 13 years is not statistically significant when you compare it to the numbers of women murdered every single year.

@oopster74 you are incorrect. Men are far more dangerous to women than women are. "Transwomen" (using current terminology, which I think is highly misleading) are by definition men and so they fall into the more dangerous group.

And as PP have mentioned, "transwomen" are also greatly overrepresented in the sex offender population. A population whose victims are overwhelmingly female.

Stalking? 🤣
I tend to read the FWR threads and was amused by the ridiculousness of your posts on a couple of them. You are doing it just to goad, aren’t you? Please don’t say you actually believe the crap you are spouting?!