Statistics

[niadainud]

I'm doing an evening class at an adult education college and as it's apparently Trans Awareness Week (when isn't it?, some might ask...) there's a big display up claiming that 1% of people are trans and a further 2% identify as non-binary. 3% of the entire population? Are the figures really as high as that??

Obviously I can google the answer to this, so I did - and this is what the UK Parliament website had to say (figures taken from the 2021 census):

"Around 262,000 people (0.5%) said their gender identity and sex registered at birth were different.
Not all of those 262,000 people identified explicitly as transgender. Around 48,000 people (0.1%) gave their identity as ‘trans man’ and another 48,000 (0.1%) gave their identity as ‘trans woman’.
118,000 (0.2%) did not provide a write-in response. A further 30,000 identified as non-binary and 18,000 wrote in a different gender identity."

So it sounds like this campaign has massively inflated the figures (quelle surprise).

There are questions about the data from the 2021 census. This gives an idea of why there may have been over reporting of things hat statistic. Such that it's not an accredited official statistic. So it's likely not as high as 0.5%.

"The Census reported there were 262,000 trans people, equivalent to 0.5 per cent of the population, or one in 200 people. It was the first time the survey had asked whether people identified as a gender that was different from their registered birth sex.
People whose first language was not English were four times more likely to say they were trans than those with English as their main language.
It led to anomalies such as a greater proportion of people in the London boroughs of Newham and Brent declaring themselves trans than that in places such as Brighton.
Despite this, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) declared it still had “confidence in the gender identity estimates at a national level”.
‘Potential for bias’
However, on Thursday the ONS admitted that there was potential for bias and has requested a reclassification of the gender identity estimates from accredited official statistics to “official statistics in development”.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/12/trans-population-britain-could-smaller-previously-thought/

Quite frankly, whether it's 0.5 per cent or less (most likely) or 3 per cent, it's a tiny number and shows up the absolute nonsense that is that around 50 per cent of my teenager's friendship group identifying as trans. But we are told there can't possibly be an element of social contagion going on here.......ffs.

@Retiredfromthere - so it's actually even lower?! Honestly, what a farce. Except it's not, because that suggests it's just silly nonsense rather than a serious issue.

I don't understand why people with English as a second language were more likely to say they were trans. Am I missing something obvious here?

Indeed. And of course it would be transphobic to suggest such an idea (like everything else that doesn't 100% affirm and promote the "pure" idea of trans).

I don't understand why people with English as a second language were more likely to say they were trans. Am I missing something obvious here?

It's possible that they didn't understand the question.

The question was so convoluted and confusing they just ticked 'yes'.

Well I would suggest that it's so convoluted that some with English as first language may not have understood either. (From the ONS website https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/genderidentity/bulletins/genderidentityenglandandwales/census2021)

• The census question on gender identity was a voluntary question asked of those aged 16 years and over. The question asked “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?”.
• Overall, 45.7 million (94.0% of the population aged 16 years and over) answered the question.
• In total, 45.4 million (93.5%) answered “Yes” and 262,000 (0.5%) answered “No”.
• The remaining 2.9 million (6.0%) did not answer the question.

If you don't 'identify with' a gender might you say No?

I get that, but why was the default that they were [thing they didn't properly understand] rather than thinking, well I don't recognise these terms so they probably don't apply to me?

Plenty of people won't really grasp what a 'gender' actually is. Or know.if they have one.

If you said 'No ' then you were assumed to be ( counted as) trans.
So 'No, I don't have a gender id ' = counted as not having a gender id that aligns with birth sex. Sigh.

For us nerds, there's a more extended academic discussion here - I think it's open access
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00380385241240441
The author concludes that respondents unfamiliar with English were apt to be confused by the question.

I suspect TRA don't want a definitive number of trans people to be known. It's in their interest to have different numbers for different scenarios.

But the census was never about determining the number of trans people, it was about introducing the idea self id onto government statistics.

The government know the number of people within the GRC system, they know the number of people diagnosed with GD in the nhs and the number on waiting lists.

If they wanted to find out the number of people protected by gender reassignment, the language in the EqA is clearer - "proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign your sex".

I can't take the census seriously anymore because they obviously allowed activists to ask a question knowing the question was confusing and the answers wouldnt help government planning.

It wasn't - the answer "no" - which as you say, you would probably give if you didn't understand the question - is the one that would indicate a trans identity.

Worth pointing out that the Office of National Statistics had to be taken to court to force them to use a straightforward question about sex in the last census. They've been trans captured at the highest level so also beclowned themselves with the nonsense question mentioned upthread.

Sad to see a once respected organisation dealing with statistics looking unhinged in this way and producing unreliable statistics, But as we see everywhere, once you sign up to the gender woowoo you must abandon facts, science and lose your credibility.

If they wanted to know how many people are trans, they would have asked an optional question "are you trans?".

The way it was framed is like wanting to know who is a goth, but asking the question "do you wear a lot of black clothes".

They dont ask "is your religion the one you were born into - yes or no" because is assumes everyone has a religion and the answers wouldn't any meaningful information.

The ONS know this.

Who was it recently who asked the question as "Do you have a transgender history" or similar, which seems open to confusion.

Even IF (big IF) the campaign's figures are correct, far too much time and money and advertising and general nonsense is being spent on the percentages!

I said 'no' because I don't believe in gender identity and think it's unscientific bollocks. Presumably the ONS has therefore forcibly and without my consent therefore assigned me as trans. Ironically quite a transphobic action. I just don't think gender identity is a thing and I certainly don't have one to align with anything.

The ONS has lost the plot and is politically biased as this question clearly demonstrates.

Civil Service, innit? Totally, scarily captured. Activists suing colleagues for saying things like 'only women menstruate'. Taking the employer to tribunal because the employer has allowed a gender-critical staff network to exist. Sending dozens and dozens of FOIs about such networks. Campaigning (and succeeding) in having menstrual products available in the gents' loos (at least they haven't been successful yet in having all the loos turned mixed sex).

That sounds almost like it was contrived to elicit a particular answer...