"Anti-trans views classed as misinformation in government report"

[UtopiaPlanitia]

So, in addition to Amnesty, we now have 7 academics writing a 136-page report for the Government Office for Science claiming that lack of support for Genderism is misinformation and misleading.

The report also calls for government use of 'psychology' to prevent the spread of narratives the report writers view as misleading.

Some highlights from the newspaper article below:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/0ea071d23809639a

'The study, from May 2026, was designed to inform government policy on “identifying and tackling harmful misinformation”.

It uses data compiled by EU-funded fact-checkers to identify 11 key categories of “false and misleading information”, backed up by a list of examples.

One of the categories included is defined as “anti-LGBTQ+ narratives, ‘gender ideology’ claims targeting schools and public institutions, Pride event misrepresentation and transgender athlete controversies”.

The examples – published alongside the report – include the case of Imane Khelif, the Olympic boxer who became embroiled in a row over biological sex when competing as a woman in Paris in 2024, despite allegedly failing sex tests the previous year.....The list suggests that saying “Imane Khelif is a man” would be an example of “racist/Islamophobic misinformation”.

...The authors also encourage the Government to ramp up its monitoring of misleading information and prioritise tackling the “harms” caused by certain claims, rather than focusing too much on the “intent” behind them.

To keep track of the problem, ministers are urged to create “a comprehensive, wide-ranging, and monthly updated database of false and misleading narratives spreading in the UK”.
...Mr Burghart, a former Tory minister, described the idea of “psychological inoculation” as “frankly terrifying”.

He said: “It could end up restricting speech from those fighting for biological women’s rights, telling the truth about grooming gangs or criticising the EU.'

You did, @Ereshkigalangcleg , I should have quoted you as well.

Surely the medical/ vet person knows what sex is? Bulls? Sheep?

Jfc

the idea of adding sex in as an extra category to the Hate crime legislation was mooted. But somehow that wasn’t acceptable. I forget why

At one point (I think related to English non-crime hate incidents rather than the Scottish bill) it was explicitly said that women were being left out of the protections because if they recorded the ones aimed at women there would be too many to handle.

Oh fantastic, that's a brilliant reason to leave them out 🙄

I despair, I really do

Just picking up on the point about how to "be in the room". One factor that hasn't been mentioned is the media who are now fully aware of the assault on women's rights and child safeguarding. They widely reported the Amnesty travesty, the grim Herbert and his actions have been widely showcased. The Telegraph exposed the Cabinet Office's "really secret guidelines about single sex spaces that mustn't be mentioned" All in the last week.

That gives me a bit of hope that with a media who join up the dots, the powerful trans lobbyists wedged at the heart of government will not have it all their own way. Hopefully.

@MrsOvertonsWindow absolutely right. The media are key to all of this. Too much happens in the dark when the public do not have access to information. We should be keeping an eye out for organizations infiltrating/targeting the media from without. Again. Is there a body like Sex Matters that deals strictly with the media?

(Not sure what's being done to deal with the activists already within. Perhaps SEEN in Journalism?)

1984 Orwell like

Could Sex Matters produce an equivalent report on the rise of sex-based hate and anti female activism?

A report on the volume of sex based hate would be great, I wonder if Sex Matters have the time or if Nick Wallis is aiming at something like that. Obviously it is something the minister for women could commission or the Equality and Human Rights Commission, not that either is very likely.

That would be amazing.

Below is an extract from Andrew Doyle's substack this morning. He has an interesting take on it I think.

"Yesterday saw the anointment of Andy Burnham as our new Prime Minister. He had not worked in parliament for over a decade, has no serious mandate from the public to lead the country, and has been helicoptered in by his colleagues in the hope that he can recover what is left of the reputation of the Labour Party. Given that Keir Starmer has presided over the most authoritarian government in living memory, is it possible that Burnham will see the error of his predecessor’s ways?

The early signs are not good. Burnham has already appointed two staff members from Hope Not Hate, a militant leftist organisation that has a habit of smearing people with mainstream opinions as ‘far right’. And the Telegraph has now revealed that a new report commissioned by the Government Office for Science early this year and published in May could end up influencing the Burnham government’s future direction on online misinformation and issues relating to free speech. It offers a guide to what it calls ‘psychological inoculation’ of the public. In other words, how to play mind games and manipulate the great unwashed into behaving themselves.

If Burnham has any sense at all, he will denounce this report at the earliest opportunity. Its fundamental ethos is illiberal and anti-democratic. It is called False and Misleading Information: An Evidence Summary and Map for Policy and Practice, and it was produced by a consortium called Behavioural Research UK. It is without a doubt one of the most chilling and authoritarian documents that has ever been commissioned by a British government. It’s worth looking closely at its contents, because it might well become a roadmap for Burnham’s policies.

The report is Orwellian not simply in its recommendations, but in how it presents itself. The authors repeatedly describe it as an ‘evidence review’, but it actually contains numerous policy recommendations. Perhaps the most egregious is the suggestion that the public should be ‘inoculated’ against misinformation through a process of ‘prebunking’; a sinister euphemism for censorship. It describes prebunking as the ‘first line of defence’. Here is the relevant passage as it appears in the report:

‘Prebunking refers to a broad category of strategies aimed at stopping people from accepting false and misleading information before they encounter it. The most widely employed of these strategies is psychological inoculation, the core idea is that presenting someone with a weakened form of a misleading claim builds psychological resistance against future manipulation. Psychological inoculation typically consists of two elements: alerting someone in advance that their beliefs may come under attack (e.g., “warning: someone might try to influence you by claiming X”), and offering a preemptive counter-argument that undermines the false claim before it takes hold (e.g., “this is misleading, because Y”; van der Linden, 2025).’

The report offers vague guidance to the government on how to psychologically manipulate the public so that it is not susceptible to ‘misinformation’. It does not address the key problem: that ‘misinformation’ is often the term used by those in power to describe information that is accurate but inconvenient. The report does not consider the ethical aspects of treating the public like toddlers who can be tricked into certain modes of behaviour. Moreover, it refuses to specify how the manipulation might work in practice."

Article by Victoria Smith discussing the report's 'gender blind spot':

https://unherd.com/newsroom/government-misinformation-report-has-a-gender-blind-spot/

This is really an expansion of the Nudge Unit and needs to be vigourously countered. I've never been so scared of where we're heading.

Thanks for the link, it's a good article, one of the comments made me laugh, about being flat earth critical 😂

👏 👏 👏

I think the issue is more depressing than this.

Given all the events over the past few years, court cases, how in the world was it possible to recruit ONLY academics who are all TRAs.

Even the Court Case that established that GC views are "worthy of respect" means that whoever wrote the brief, or did the recruitment has totally ignores this.

That's what the issue is.

How is it that within Government, this dominance by rainbow alliance is still allowed to be in charge.

I appreciate the comments about the contents, but until we challenge the fact that the TRA view is THE view nothing will change.

But it is encouraging that we are not the only ones who have noticed this. At least, it gives me some comfort, because sometimes I do feel that we here are busy posting into the abyss.

I think it is really sad that we have to rely on the Telegraph who were no doubt leaked the report by someone whose motives probably have little in common with FWR interests. ie it will have been an anti Labour move.

Good article, thanks!

This doesn’t just affect gender critical feminists. They used that as the headline because it gets them clicks and is topical with the Amnesty report.

Andrew is spot on.

Well I'm glad someone's leaking it.

If we have to rely on people who's motives aren't to our taste, that's better than not seeing it at all.

Agree. I don't care why it was leaked. More leaking please.

But also

where the content is true, but the purpose is to cause harm.

I’m trying to wrap my head around this idea… that something truthful is harmful.

The only thing that I can think might, in their mind, justifying such an incredible claim would be reporting a crime undertaken by an immigrant or asylum seeker. So ‘true’ but the purpose, real or imagined, is to inflame tensions and incite violence against asylum seekers.

Even so, it’s Orwellian and erroneous to think suppressing truth is a useful objective. Are these academics advocating Chinese-level social surveillance? If not, rumours get out and truth becomes even more distorted.

Edited to add: it’s written by psychologists, the most unscientific of the social sciences and, apologies to ethical psychologists, often attracts questionable people. We only have to look back through a litany of unethical psychology experiments to appreciate its genesis.

where the content is true, but the purpose is to cause harm.
I’m trying to wrap my head around this idea… that something truthful is harmful.

This is the problem with society now, in a nutshell, I think. Too much fragility, too many echo chambers, not enough ability to reason and debate, or even hold views that you thought up yourself. Protesting has been reduced to shouting slogans one doesn't even understand. Every cause has to fit into the Omnicause, or it's not worth fighting for. And too much Truth makes one have to think outside of the bubble, and Thinking is Hard Work, so let's just not have any Truth.

Oh, and just to prevent some Truth from being spoken or heard, let's just stop people saying anything that isn't pre-approved. Simples.

Welcome to North Korea.