Constructing a genuinely neutral set of questions is a challenge for surveys on this topic but using the starting point that these *are* ‘rights’, which you either oppose or support is not neutral. Avoiding asking about the most controversial spaces & situations is not neutral >
either. Toilets & changing rooms are the terrain which proponents of selfID prefer to limit discussion to in order to try to trivialise the issues, but in general, though rightly an important concern for feminists, the greater concern is for women in rape crisis, prisons, >
domestic violence shelters, about who is able to perform smear tests and other intimate examinations, it’s about fair competition for women in sport and about the right of women to organise autonomously ie; to have feminism, the movement that centres females in their struggle >
against a sexist society. If you are not asking these questions you are not conducting a politically neutral survey or getting accurate answers to the main question at hand. Do the public support or oppose selfID? >
Do the public support or oppose it even when they understand the full extent of just the uncontested implications alone? We just can’t tell from your survey which despite those deficiencies still *at best*, shows only minority support from the public >
Why is it that the framing is never equally a question of women’s rights, or the rights of GLB’s to same-SEX attraction, it’s only framed as trans rights? Asking whether we support ‘transgender rights’ given that the dispute is essentially about whether specific demands >
being made in relation to selfID & women’s spaces, language & autonomous rights are actual rights, or not, is meaningless if you don’t fully explain what ‘rights claims’ you’re talking about. I support trans rights unwaveringly & unequivocally, to be equal citizens, to be>
free from prejudice, violence and unjust discrimination and to have access to prompt and well resourced, evidence based services like mental health support & general healthcare and so do the vast majority of anti-selfID feminists and the population in general. >
However I and many others, including dozens of trans people fiercely oppose the notion of selfID. We oppose the highly ideological ideas/claims which have been constructed around the contested & in our view, regressive concept of fixed, innate gender identity *and* crucially, >
the absurd & sexist demand that this unproven concept should now subordinate & replace the concept of biological sex for all legal and social purposes. As for question 3, it shows two very striking things. Firstly it shows your survey continues to favour the language & framing>
of the pro-selfID side of the ‘debate’- talking about a persons sex being ‘assigned at birth’ as if midwives make arbitrary choices or use a magic sorting hat instead of medical expertise to simply *recognise* a material fact, a newborn’s sex, via established biological science.>
Secondly the question itself, posited as often being “at the heart” of the ‘trans rights’ debate shows a fundamental misunderstanding & a troubling misrepresentation of the central feminist and socialist objection to the gender identity narrative being used to push selfID. >
It is emphatically *not* that we don’t accept that some biologically Male people beleive themselves to be (ie: ‘identify as’) women. It’s that we dispute the meaning, the origins, content & the significance in regards to women’s rights of these passionate but mistaken beliefs. >
In other words we reject the underlying premise of both alternatives in this question because we reject the whole paradigm of gender identity, as it’s being used by zealots & mentally vulnerable people in emotional denial of sexual reality, as a fixed, innate, essential quality >
more profound than & therefore superceding sex. Instead many of us beleive such ‘identities’ are in part the rationalisations of feminine boys & masculine girls in a world which wrongly, oppressively & *systematically* punishes/ridicules/stigmatises/ostracises them for their >
perfectly natural & healthy behaviour interests & attributes because they do not conform to socially constructed & sexist gender role stereotypes that evolved to keep women subordinate. We beleive that ‘gender identity’ is a social construction & that people should >
be free to develop their personalities and interests free from all gender norm straightjackets, that people with gender dysphoria deserve compassion and evidenced based support but we do not beleive that a persons feelings/gender identity means that their sex is irrelevant. >
Still less do we beleive that socially constructed identity should over-rule the significance of biological sex or the profound effects of socialisation, particularly for women & girls living in a deeply & often brutally sexist world. >
Question 3 only makes sense if you beleive (quite laughably in the UK context) that the main impetus of the objection to ‘gender’ is a socially conservative or Christian fundamentalist one. In the UK at least this is propaganda & a demonstrable falsehood, certainly as >
it pertains to the core orgs of the new women’s movement. It further suggests you are currently compromised as a neutral party on this question. I wonder if @IpsosMORI have had ‘equalities’ training from Stonewall or aligned orgs? That would certainly explain a lot.
