Interesting article on why sex-based data collection is critical for women

[Manyanamanyana]

This article from "The unmoved feminist" articulates this issue so well: If the category of sex disappears from data, analysts and policymakers are effectively pushed back towards examining individual ‘wires’ again: isolated incidents, particular identities, discrete services. The pattern—the birdcage—slips out of view. That makes it harder to explain why women need structural responses such as sex‑based protections, female‑only spaces, or targeted services for victim‑survivors of male violence.
https://womensadvocacy.net/2026/06/12/counting-women-why-sex-based-data-still-matters-the-unmoved-feminist/

Thankyou, this is really important

Professor Alice Sullivan is notable for her focus in this area

Thanks, I'll check it out later, it did lead me to another site The Woman's Advocate, which seems to be based in Australia, which I'll also check out. There's another thread that's being bombed by a Gender Idiot from Aus, they seem to think women's right's are just leftovers from the 'far right funded' imperialist, colonialists yada, yada yada, maybe I should post a link to them.

I have found this when collecting data on sexually assaults and rapes in toilets. British Transport Police classify the victim by their sex but the perpetrator by their preferred gender descriptor.

Edited to say the reason it matters is I was trying to research safety and safeguarding in toilets. You need the correct data.

Excellent article, thank you.

All very obvious points so depressing this needs to be argued for at all, but given apparently it does this article makes the case very clearly. The birdcage metaphor is great.

Have only skimmed responses, but a thought came to me as I drink tea and recover from a full-on week. (I am not a statistician or any kind of -ologist, and this is not meant as derailment.) Since the dimorphic species Homo sapiens is roughly 52/48 per cent female/male, should not the majority set be the norm? Why isn't it, and what would follow if it were?

Prof Sullivan has a book on this . I can’t believe I am looking forward to a book about statistics https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Sex-Lies-and-Statistics-by-Alice-Sullivan/9781509566792

Thank you for this. Appalling that women still have to point out the need for the bleeding obvious.

Yeah great question! We are actually the majority!

They do some great podcasts and lots of really great advocacy work at the political layer as well.

Thank you for the link, OP, it looks v interesting.

There was a bit of a breakthrough in Ireland this week - a official-ish report on adult sexual violence was published, which actually reported that guess what? women were the major victims and guess what? men are the major perpetrators, so it obviously used sex as a category.

It adds to my belief that the thin coat of gender ideology is flaking off and some of the original paintwork is reappearing, There is more and more talk in the media and in political circles about women's issues, women's health, violence against women etc.

OK so we can wonder how they are defining 'woman', but it's noticeable that at least the word 'woman' is back in use in a number of contexts.
Patterns of victimisation among victims of adult sexual violence in Ireland | ESRI

The report is also useful because of its focus:
'adult' sexual violence i.e. it does not include childhood sexual abuse, which skews the figures because of the number of men who report having been abused as children;
adult 'sexual' violence - it specifically defines the kind of abuse, from touching to rape; and

adult sexual 'violence' - it does not include the broader term 'abuse' which can also includes men who experience domestic abuse, but not violence.

None of this is to downplay in any way the seriousness of CSA, or non-violent abuse such as coercion and control or emotional abuse - it needs to be documented and survivors supported.

But by focusing specifically on 'adult sexual violence', the extent of male violence against women is more starkly revealed - the cage rather than the wires...

@MarieDeGournay Quite. Intersectionality.

From the article:
Whose reality counts?
Catharine MacKinnon has long argued that law tends to take men’s reality as the default human reality.

My question is why this is so when there are more women than there are men. It is, in part, because for centuries the lass were written, debated, applied by men.

But there must be other reasons. Is it that we as the 52 percent, have not seen this clearly?

presumably it is not just that laws were written by men - but all the other elements of patriarchal societies - women are a possession of men / men have the vote, women don't, men are 'head of the household', men have more worth because they earn the money, etc. etc. - think back through the centuries and men were always prioritised, from the focus on men in medieval times in their training to be knight etc. - to victorian times when boys got an education and girls didn't etc.

it is hardly surprising that men are the framework for so much...

there are some societies which are more matriarchal - are they different?

Majority rule has only been a thing for a couple of hundred years. The concept that because there are more of you, you should have some sort of say is a newish idea.

Before that I think it's fair to say that it was really, just about 100%, men talking to themselves. In the Middle Ages I've seen quotes of men saying women don't really speak or mean anything. They just witter on like birds. (Convenient. You have a comfy system where women do the scut work and produce and raise all the future humans, and then when the proletariat has anything to say about it, they're inaudible and incomprehensible. To you.)

The notion that women might have something to say that's worth listening to is even more recent than majority rule. It hasn't quite seeped into cultural understanding (all the dominant cultures...) yet.

There is a fantastic interview of Prof AS by Helen Joyce. I think it’s on YouTube - but a quick search for both names should lead you to it.

@akkakk and @quixote9 I remember thinking in the 70s, 80s, 90s, that we were just about there. Now I'm too old... I am nearer 80 than 70.

It seems to me that many young women are ignorant of, and therefire uninterested in taking forward what happened from about the final quarter of the 19th century right through the 20th century as women in 'modern' societies began to achieve social and economic independence of men. What are the reasons for this?

Leaving that to one side: if the default model of being a member of Homo sapiens were female rather than male, what would follow from that?