THREAD: Today ONS has published a report on how it decided that the Census question "what is your sex" should *not* mean the sex you were born

The ONS considered 5 difference concepts of sex:
Sex registered at birth,
Sex recorded on birth certificate,
Sex recorded on legal/official documents,
living / presenting sex,
Self-identified sex.

/2
A big part of their evidence for why asking 'sex registered at birth' was unacceptable was that trans people won't like it and might boycott the Census. /3
From this they concluded "The highest negative impact on accuracy & reliability is anticipated if sex registered at birth was collected due to the likely negative impact on response rates caused by the perceived invasion of privacy" /4
and that "The data need [for birth sex] is not considered to be strong enough to justify collecting this" /5
So what was this important and influential piece of research they did to gauge the response of the trans community and women? /6
They interviewed 52 people; cisgender, transgender and trans allies.

.... some members of women's groups /7
They don't go into details but we know from elsewhere:

"participants were recruited through existing databases from those who had ‘opted-in’ to take part in future research *and via a professional agency*".

Who is this professional agency that supplies trans & trans allies? /8
And are these voices representative of ordinary trans people or are they selected trans activist voices? How many were there? Perhaps a dozen of each?

So many questions unanswered. /9
But these dozen or so views was enough to convince the ONS there was a risk of boycott if they asked people what sex they were born /10
Who were the 'women's groups' they interviewed to make sure they heard the other side?

Not us.... not any of the gender critical groups in fact.... /11
Again, they don't give detail in the report but we know from elsewhere that "14 women’s groups were represented, e.g.: Women’s league for peace and freedom, MIND Women's forum, Swarm Association, Women's Equality Party; amongst others)" /12
Has this really been a fair and transparent assessment by an independent organisation whose purpose is to collect accurate data?

We don't think so, do you? /13

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