Fuming about this survey re violence against women and girls

[TamzinGrey]

I was delighted to receive an email from my local council promising to create ways to reduce VAWG in the borough and asking me to complete a survey.
I clicked on the link and answered all of the questions which were mainly about my experiences of male violence and aggression. It brought back horrible memories for me but it did appear to be a helpful survey.

When I got to the end I was expecting to be asked to tick a box asking whether I was female or male (for some reason men had also been invited to complete this survey about women's experiences)
Here's what came up:

Which of the following options best describes how you think of yourself?

Woman (including trans women)
Man (including trans man)
Non-binary
In another way

Is your gender identity the same as the gender you were registered at birth?

I'm bloody fuming. In a survey about violence against women and girls I wasn't allowed to describe myself as an actual woman. They just want to know how I "think" of myself.

I did make a comment about not believing that the council are taking VAWG seriously as I wasn't even given the opportunity to describe my sex as female.

Here's a link to the survey. Anyone can complete it but they do ask for a postcode at the end.

https://online1.snapsurveys.com/Interview/942ffa79-febf-44cb-
ada2-7d1b9ef608d3

Yes I know they are.
the main point of this thread is that they shouldn’t be - it is an ambiguous category which won’t facilitate intersectional analysis of protected characteristics nearly as easily and reliably as if they used those characteristics in the first place rather than one which mixes things up. It’s not helpful to women and it really doesn’t serve the best interests of trans people (dont forget transmen and non binary!) very well.

I think it's perfectly fine. You don't have to agree.

Obviously.
And you may think your position is as logically and legally coherent as mine - again we will have to disagree.

You are mistaken. The primary definitions of boy and girl are sex based.

No it definitely says gender. I looked at them yesterday or the day before.

UK Birth Certificates used to state "Girl" or "Boy" - meaning "sex" - but that changed to "Female" or "Male" in 1969.

"The General Register Office, part of HM Passport Office can confirm that the wording on birth certificates changed from Boy and Girl to Male and Female to correspond with the 1968 regulations which changed the format of birth certificates from landscape to portrait"

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/birth_certificate_policy_change/response/2256909/attach/html/3/FOI%2074855.pdf.html

"The General Register Office (GRO), part of HM Passport Office confirmed on our previous letter that the wording on birth certificates changed from Boy and Girl to Male and Female to correspond with a change in the format of birth certificates (from landscape to portrait) in accordance with the Registration of Births and Deaths Regulations 1968. These regulations came into operation on 1 April 1969. The GRO does not hold any paperwork or information from that period which might explain the reason this change was made."

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/birth_certificate_policy_change/response/2265708/attach/html/3/FOICR%2075158%20Liam%20Davis%20final%20response.pdf.html

@JadeSquid if your kids were born in the UK before 1st April 1969 then each of them was either born a boy and is therefore male or was born a girl and is therefore female. No one, including you and your kids, can change sex: so a boy can never become a girl and a man can never become a woman.

In times gone by, before "gender" as we know it now was a thing, the terms "sex" and "gender" were synonymous and were used interchangeably. They both referred to biological sex.

Old Parish Registers of Births often state "daughter" or "son" rather than "girl" or "boy". Same thing: daughters are female and sons are male.

Same with animals. Fillies are female, colts are male; mares are female, stallions are male.

Those terms refer to biological sex, not "gender" aka "socially constructed, sex-stereotyped roles".

Geldings: castrated male horses. They don't become fillies and grow up to be mares, they remain geldings: castrated males.

Why don't they have a belief section that includes gender and religions?

If religion isn't included, then the belief concept of gender can be left off too.

Obviously nobody is asking a newborn baby what gender they identify with. If anything you're given in the hospital says gender, it is using the word gender as a polite synonym for sex, not as a shorthand for gender identity.

Who would even want to assign a gender identity to a baby? Neither side of the argument that I can see. If you're a gender believer, you wouldn't assign a gender to someone else, you'd wait for the baby to grow up and to tell you. If you're a sex realist, you aren't interested in assigning a gender to anyone either.

I am a man who loves to be a man.

My hospital discharge papers say boy or girl. I dont know why you keep banging on about birth certificates. It wasn't the registrar who assigned my children's gender. It was the midwife.

I've said numerous times that sex and gender were used interchangeably and I do not know what my own paperwork said. My kids say gender: boy/girl.

It wasn't the registrar who assigned my children's gender. It was the midwife.

Nobody assigned anything. If the midwife has said the wrong sex you'd have corrected her based on your own observation. You wouldn't have said hey ho, most babies with penises are boys but the midwife assigned this one a a girl so it's all good and I'll go off and stick that on her birth certificate.

I had a survey from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. One of the questions was what was my gender identity. Options were male, female etc, plus other. Ticked other and wrote I didn't have a gender identity, I had a sex. As a presumably science-based organisation it's sloppy thinking at the very least.

Yes it was assigned according to their perceived anatomy.

Women are not small men.
Women are not men with lower testosterone.
Women are not one homogenous group with a set type of womanly feeling
Women are not the sum of a skirt and make up and swishy hair
Woman do not act like teenage girls in 1950's movies
An estimated 11.9 million missing women in China are not missing because they felt they were female when they were conceived.
1 in 4 women being assaulted or raped in their lifetime by men is not because they were feeling female when it happened.
The global estimation of 1 woman being murdered in her own home every 10 mins is not because she is feeling female the day she was murdered.

this was from another thread but relevant

Just completed and thought this was appropriate to leave in the additional comments box:
Every female I know, without exception has experience some form of male violence. Most of the time, these incidents go unreported as there is inadequate support or a lack of belief from Police etc. In addition, classing male bodied people as women, no matter how they 'present' is unhelpful, allows incorrect recording of crimes and belittles actual women. It is highly offensive and misogynistic. Maybe it is time we should consider handing out curfews to men instead of making male violence a female problem to solve.

You mean their sex was observed. If there was any ambiguity they’d have investigated genes etc for potential DSD.
If ‘gender’ is being used in the context of a newborn, it is being used as a euphemism for sex (as one of your posts implies). The midwife isn’t trying to saddle a child with a gender identity.