“Campaigners have launched a legal challenge against the Office for National Statistics over the question of sex in next month’s census” /2
“The ten-yearly survey has asked if a person is male or female since 1801, but in 2011 people were allowed to answer according to whichever gender identity they felt best described them, rather than their biological sex” /3
“Campaigners and statisticians said that approach eroded the quality of sex data that the government needed to plan, run and fund services” /4
“The census on March 21 will for the first time include a voluntary question asking a person’s gender identity, as well as asking a person’s sex” /5
“Fair Play for Women is seeking a judicial review to challenge the question’s small print, which says: “If you are considering how to answer, use the sex recorded on one of your legal documents such as a birth certificate, gender recognition certificate or passport”. /6
“The campaigners say this guidance is unlawful because it allows people to answer the question according to their preferred gender identity, which might be recorded on documents that do not meet the threshold for legal sex.” /7
“Only birth certificates and gender recognition certificates record a person’s legal sex. Other documents, such as passports, can be updated to include a gender identity that is different from your legal sex” /8
“The small print, they say, means the census will effectively have two questions on gender identity, and none that strictly collects data on legal sex. FPFW is calling on the ONS to withdraw the sentence and if not it will apply to the High Court for the judicial review.” /9
“Dr Nicola Williams, of Fair Play for Women, said: “If we don’t have good data on sex we can’t monitor inequalities due to sex.... we can’t remedy it. Sex matters. A lack of sex-disaggregated data often leads to the needs of women and girls being ignored.” /10
“The ONS said: “The guidance makes clear we are referring to government-issued documents. This is not self-identification.”” /11
The ONS press office are still muddled about what their policy actually means and why there’s a problem.
They say it’s “not self identification” but their guidance says people can answer according to “legal documents such as...passports”.
Legal documents ARE self-ID! /13
Their twitter account is getting it totally wrong. Yesterday they were repeatedly telling people the sex question was about birth sex!
If only it was! Then there would be no legal challenge /14
It’s hardly surprising the press office and twitter handle don’t know what’s going on. Even the head of @ONS was recently getting it wrong on the @BBCr4today /15
“In 2020 we were delighted to collaborate with Oxford University to support research into the Political Erasure of Sex. The report from this project, Sex and the Census by Jane Clare Jones, with Lisa Mackenzie” /19
Despite all these hundreds of hours given by women to make sure @ONS get it right here they are in a muddle with the census just a few weeks away and faced with getting dragged into court /22
Yesterday @ONS were served with our preaction letter from our barrister. They must withdraw the unlawful guidance otherwise we will be lodging a request for an emergency judicial review in the court next week asking for the case to be heard in two weeks /26
We are working at phenomenal speed to get this before the high court before census day on March 12.
The @ONS have listened to Stonewall and ignored women and data experts. The will not be able to ignore us in court.
@ONS got mesmerised by the allure of woke points. It’s now waking up to this shocker just one month before its £1 billion Census day. A lesson for Stonewall champions everywhere. /1
“Civil servants have been accused of caving in to last-minute pressure from transgender activists that will make it easier for people to pick their sex in the UK Census”. /2
“The campaign group Fair Play For Women has launched a High Court challenge against the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for letting respondents to the Census on March 21 choose the sex that appears on legal documents such as their passport”. /3
Why are groups who claim to advocate for the transgender community arguing *against* the collection of high quality data that can benefit them? There is a paucity of evidence-based research on trans outcomes like surgery regret, suicide rates and health /1
A full and rich data set on trans people will help any inequalities to be identified and policy makers to make trans lives better. Instead transactivist like Stonewall appear more bothered with pushing gender ideology that actual helping trans people /2
Stonewall says transgender people should be allowed to answer BOTH the gender identity question AND the sex question according to gender identity. They say it’s simply too offensive and hurtful to ask a trans person a factual question about the sex they were born /3
Our legal challenge against the ONS isn’t just to help women. It’s for the gay and lesbian community too. Sex matters for data on sexual orientation too /1 crowdfunder.co.uk/sexinthecensus…
For the first time in the census there will be a voluntary question asking about sexual orientation. The question lumps all homosexual people together into one group of ‘gay or lesbian’. /2
But we know forms of discrimination against lesbian women will be different from forms of discrimination against gay men. So we need to be able to split the data by sex to pull out data on lesbians and data on gay men. /3
Oh what a shambles. The @ONS don’t have a clue what they are doing. Here’s their twitter account reassuring people the sex question is about birth sex! This is despite their guidance saying the complete opposite!
Someone else is tweeting from @Census2021 saying the complete opposite one hour later 😂
ONS don’t have a clue do they. 🤯
It sounds comical. But it’s deadly serious. This is the OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATISTICS!
The public needs to trust that the body in charge of U.K. national statistics is competent.
They need to get their act together. Help us hold them to account /3
For over 200 years the Census has asked “What is your sex”. This year there will also be an *extra* question asking about gender identity. That’s great. Two questions about two different concepts - lots of useful information /1
One question about facts – the sex you were born.
One question about feelings – how people identity and live.
The extra question will give us our first accurate indication of the size of the trans community. A move welcomed by everyone /2
So what's the problem? It's that trans pressure groups such as Stonewall say it's not enough that trans people have their own gender identity question. They think trans people should be allowed to answer BOTH questions according to gender identity /3
Even the Zoe COVID symptom tracker app were forced to change their wording about sex. When it launched last year it asked the simple and straightforward question "your sex at birth?" with two answers Male or Female. /1
One month later they been put under pressure to change this to confirm with gender ideological language "What sex were you assigned at birth". With a series of options including 'prefer not to say' /2
Covid scientists need facts. Biological sex is a fundamental variable in all their work. They ask age, height and weight without problems but 'sex you were born' is optional and so data gets lost. /3