Interesting question on daughter's college application form

[lifeturnsonadime]

I've become pretty used to being asked what gender I am when it comes to forms given the recent activities of Stonewall and the TRAs but I was quite surprised by my daughter being asked her 'legal sex' on a college application.

I wonder when that wording was first used?

It's better imo than being asked gender but not much.

Just musing really because I've not come across that wording before.

I’ve also encountered this in an an academic context. Legal sex means birth certificate and would include those with a GRC which provides you with a new birth certificate. It is a handy way of including men in the female category and vice versa, pretending that e.g. women (females) and men with a GRC have something in common when in reality they don’t.

I think some clever university administrators thought this might be a way of being ‘inclusive’ after the first For Women Scotland judgment which made clear that men without a GRC should always be excluded from the female category. After the SC ruling it is questionable whether ‘legal sex’ is a useful term as the judgment speaks of ‘certificated sex’ . Only men ever need a certificate to say that the state acknowledges that they pretend to be women.

Nevertheless for the vast vast majority of people "legal sex" means their actual sex. The number of university applicants with a GRC must be close to zero. I'd see it as a way of getting at the actual sex of students whilst trying to get round trans people playing their games of "I really am the sex I identify as!"

That's interesting so do you think this wording has come in as a result of the SC judgement or have you seen it before?

I see what you mean, it's playing lip service to the activists but presumably 0% of students in a post 16 college will have a legal sex different from their birth sex?

I can never understand why

-people with a GRC are able to get a new birth certificate with their sex recorded as that on the GRC - ie not the sex they were at birth.

-adopted people are not able to get a full birth certificate with their new name and new parent details. They just get a short BC and an adoption certificate.

Why can the state create a legal fiction in one case and not in the other?

I've seen legal sex before. It's been around for years.

That's interesting, I wonder what the thought process was behind that question.

Where I used to work HR collected it from nee starters because it was relevant to NI contribution for pensions or something like that. Not sure of why though.

Exactly.

So they're saying they want to know the student's actual sex rather than their imaginary one.

I thought the UKSC had ruled that 'legal sex' = 'biological sex' as far as equality legislation is concerned, and presumably that's the only reason a college would need to know?
So it should disappear from future forms, 'sex' should be sufficient, and the only answers would be 'male' or 'female'

it is a weird way to put it. I don't have a legal sex - I have a sex, and it's one of the two possible ones, but I don't have some separate sense of legal sex in the way some people might have a legal name and a professional name, birth name etc.

I do hope so.

As long as there is a significant minority of students who believe they identify as the opposite sex, I think it's wise for the question to make it clear that they want to know the real answer and not the gender woo answer.

It sounds quite good to me. My legal sex is female and my actual sex is too. I think it's a way of avoiding getting 100 different answers to just "sex".

Not only should “sex” be sufficient, but following the SC ruling, I should imagine it will be impossible for educational establishments to get away with not collecting data on biological sex (once the relevant policies have filtered down from regulators, etc).

Most colleges and universities are subject to the EA’s Public Sector Equality Duty, so they will have to collect data that aligns with the EA definition of various protected characteristics, including sex - they can ask all sorts of gender identity questions if they like too, but they must also ask for sex as defined in the EA.

The latest new employee starter form issued by HMRC asks for sex as shown on your birth certificate or GRC. No mention of legal sex

Legal sex has been around for a while. I was referring to the earlier FWS judgment, the one before they went all the way up to the SC. The earlier judgment said that a man with a GRC should be regarded as a woman for the purpose of the EA. But now we know that this is not lawful.

IANAL but I also think legal sex is now redundant in an equalities context.

It would be interesting to know when universities will absorb the judgment with all its implications. Not holding my breath …

We kicked up a stink when my step daughter was going after a scholarship for girls in STEM. She is in the USA and applied to, among others, CalTech.the women in STEM was also open to TiM - i mean wtf?? She abandoned it, she said there is no point as the TiM is more important than just the old fashioned type of girl. I felt so sad for her, anyway she got into baby Ivy college where it was open for biological females only whoo hooo.