Observer readers respond to last week's editorial about sex and gender data integrity

[theilltemperedqueenofspacetime]

The Observer published two letters about last Sunday's editorial:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/23/the-observer-view-on-gender-failure-to-accurately-record-biological-sex-harms-us-all

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2025/mar/30/its-time-to-end-the-toxic-and-divisive-debate-on-sex-and-gender

The first suggests adopting a 2021 proposal from the LGBT Foundation that organisations ask people if their gender identity is the same as the sex they were assigned at birth. "If this was recorded, organisations such as the NHS could still identify the sex of individuals, regardless of the gender they identify as. If people did not want that information shared they could elect to opt out, understanding it may put them at risk of missing out on screening programmes etc."

Thus, lying about one's sex, and concealing one's birth sex, are presented as individual choices, rather than something that will undermine data integrity, with possible bad consequences for other people.

The second letter is even more annoying, starting with the superficially reasonable (but fundamentally dishonest) "gender identity is ..... relevant. A trans woman who has been on hormones for several years will have different medical requirements to (sic) a cisgender male." True, but how is that a reason ever to record him as female?

She concludes with this massive bit of irrelevant point-missing:

We have a huge issue with male on female violence, but demonising trans people is not the answer. Women have enough to be scared of already, let’s not give them another reason to fear without reason.

The first letter also doesn't recognise the awful position it puts medical staff, who cannot rely on the information they have and may put their patients in danger.

If someone gets private hormone treatment or surgery does that appear on their NHS medical record?

Edited because second letter does sort of recognise this.

It is not possible to deal with male on female violence without clearly defining male and female.

It is equally absurd to suggest that the problem with male violence diminishes when males announce they are women.

The Observer has been great on this issue so I am relaxed if they feel the need to publish a few dissenting views for balance.

Overall my reaction is "is that the best tou have got"

It really is risible how little TRAs have got when confronted with sound arguments

We need both.

💯

I found the letters disturbing because they implicitly endorse the view that stopping trans people from concealing their birth sex = demonising them. How did ordinary people come to believe this?

The letters are worth scrolling through to see the one from the great great niece of Elsie Inglis. We had a Glaswegian English teacher called Mrs. Inglis, I now wonder if they were related?

What makes you think these are ordinary people? I should imagine both are active transactivists.

That said, it has been drummed into society with an astonishing level of reach, that it is essential at all times to pretend that men are women if they say they are. In my workplace (civil service) I am exhorted through various email signatures and blogs, to view pronoun announcement and use to be a matter of “basic respect”. It matters not that it is difficult for some - there’s no excuse for not making the effort. If you don’t, it can only be because you’re a bigot. It is brought into discourse as if it is not a matter for doubt or questioning. There are mutterings in the lower echelons about how nonsensical it all is, but nobody challenges it.

Unless you have cleared your mind, through a long process of discussion, as has occurred here for many women, some of it seeps in, because it is so ubiquitous. As long as you don’t question, it will be understood that “here is something I don’t really understand, but they do, and they say it’s important. I’d better be careful. Better to be quiet than insult someone.”

I don't think they are TRAs: their insistence on acknowledging birth sex as a real thing is positively transphobic. Perhaps they have been brainwashed by the sort of environment you describe.

The TransActual take on it is much more obscure, and unlikely to make the Guardian letters page, revealing, as it does, that they are as mad as a box of frogs:

The Sullivan Review is rooted in factually incorrect assertions about the binary nature of sex and gender and antipathy towards trans people despite lip-service towards respect for diverse gender identities.
The Review’s recommendation for both sex and gender characteristics to be collected is presented as in the interest of the welfare of trans people. However the recommendations would effectively mean that trans people have no right to privacy, likely breaching human rights law, as well as codifying the incorrect dog-whistle assertion that sex is binary and immutable.

Absolutely agree to which I would add;

The risk of violence towards women and girls increases when males [of any presentation] think they have the right to invade single sex spaces.

I'll admit I haven't read the Guardian articles & associated comments but the point made about adopting the suggestion made by the LGBT Foundation in 2021in the first letter is wrong.

If you ask a question like 'is your gender ID the same as the sex you were assigned at birth' you'll have problems. An obvious one to most of us here is that we wouldn't accept that our sex was assigned at birth, it was observed & recorded, and we don't have or don't recognise the existence of any 'gender identity'. So how could we answer it?

Also, you could simply answer that as 'yes' or 'no'. Maybe the writer goes on to offer follow-up questions which would be needed in order to get any meaningful data, but that question in itself isn't helpful in the least.

Well, just let me stop you right there, mate.

The Sullivan Review is rooted in factually incorrect assertions about the binary nature of sex...

As every rational person on the planet knows, sex IS binary in humans and other mammals. When you lie before the end of your first sentence, how can we possibly have a discussion?

I believe something similar was used in the last census.

I answered “no” to the question “is your gender identity the same as your sex assigned at birth?” - because I do not have a gender identity, and the difference is that sex is real & gender identity made up.

No doubt that had me wrongly listed as trans…

We have a huge issue with male on female violence, but demonising trans people is not the answer. Women have enough to be scared of already, let’s not give them another reason to fear without reason.

A magnificent blend of patronising (“mustn’t frighten the poor little ladies”), irrelevant (nobody is demonising trans people) and stunningly blasé: fear of men who are determined to break women’s boundaries is not ‘without reason’ but absolutely justified.