ONS census: UK news outlets spread transphobic misinformation
Through fabrications, awful reporting, transphobic insinuations and soundbites from seemingly ignorant academics, UK media outlets weaponise the ONS census to continue stirring up transphobia.
This year, in the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 2021 census, there is a question that asks if your gender matches the sex you were registered with at birth. This is in addition to the regular question asking respondents what sex they are.
The addition of the new question will help give more accurate statistics about the number of Britons who are transgender. Previously, there was not the option for trans people to record that the sex they were registered with at birth was different to their actual gender. According to the ONS itself, ‘Responses to the sex question, which has been asked since the first UK Census in 1801, are used, together with age, as the basic variable, by which the full range of other characteristics, such as health, employment and unemployment in particular occupations and industries, education levels, migration, etc. are measured. Such characteristics have always been measured by the sex as reported subjectively by the respondent. Information on the category of transgender is not specifically collected in the census’. Specific ONS advice given regarding the 2001 census was that, ‘Should there be the traditional question on the individual’s Sex in the 2001 Census, it would be reasonable for you [a trans person] to respond by ticking either the ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ box whichever you believe to be correct, irrespective of the details recorded on your birth certificate’. And the guidance for the 2011 “What is your sex?” question said: “Please select either male or female for your sex. … select the answer which you identify yourself as. You can select either ‘male’ or ‘female’, whichever you believe is correct, irrespective of the details recorded on your birth certificate. You do not need to have a Gender Recognition Certificate”. As oral evidence given to the Scottish Parliament put it, this guidance ‘said that trans people were to answer the sex question in line with their self-identified sex. Therefore, trans men were able to select “Male” regardless of their biological sex characteristics at birth and what is on their birth certificate, and trans women were able to select “Female”’. So, in previous censuses with only one question, trans people often recorded their sex corresponding to their lived experience as adults filling in the census — a trans woman would mark that she is female and a trans man would mark that his is male — and there would be no information on whether the respondents were trans or cis. The new, additional question enables better statistics on how many cis and how many trans people make up the population of men and women. This data is also helpful in medical fields, for instance, because it helps the correct support and medical treatments be available to people who need them — for example, to make sure a trans man receives the right support should he have a miscarriage, or make sure the right drugs can be administered to best treat someone’s body.
Of course, news outlets have reported inaccurately on this move by the ONS, as if something terrible is happening. Getting it exactly backwards, The Telegraph reported in February 2021 that ‘Changes to Census data collection on biological sex could hamper clinical research’. The article quotes from transphobic group Fair Play for Women (FPW) who, incredibly, say, “Researchers need to be able to ask, ‘Which sex were you born?’ That needs to be okay”. While FPW’s version is ill-worded, this is exactly the information the additional question in the census is finding out. The article also quotes a clinical researcher, who says, “The ONS will make it more difficult to ask about sex registered at birth”. This statement makes no sense. The new question is exactly asking about sex registered at birth. It’s almost as if the clinical researcher doesn’t know what they’re talking about — and yet The Telegraph still published them as an authority. The new census question does not obscure but enables clarity. Apparently, the clinical researcher ‘asked to remain anonymous citing fears about a backlash’. Perhaps they should have asked to remain anonymous because of the damage making such a ridiculous, ignorant statement could have to their reputation.
Such little research was carried out by Telegraph reported Lucy Fisher that she writes, “the guidance for the 2021 Census has been updated to state that people may answer with the sex described in documents such as their passport or driving licence, which for transgender people may be different from their sex at birth”. As we’ve seen, there has been no such change in guidance: since 1801 people have responded to the “sex question” with the gender they are as an adult, not necessarily with the sex they were registered with at birth, and this has been in guidance for decades. Fisher is simply fearmongering (or is just shit at her job).
The purposeful targeting of trans people is clearly demonstrated in reporting about the 2021 census, with the media circus trying whatever angle they can to incite transphobia. Compare The Telegraph’s reporting above to The Time’s reporting from the month before: ‘Sex question back on census in blow to trans lobby’. Which is it now? Is the format of the new census a blow to the “trans lobby”, or has the ONS ‘bowed to pressure from transgender campaigners’ (as The Telegraph puts it)?
Incidentally, The Times changed the headline of their article to ‘Sex question back on census in blow to trans lobby’ from ‘Sex question back on census in blow to trans rights’. “Trans lobby” is a transphobic trope used to try and make trans people sound powerful and scary (cp. the canard “Jewish lobby”). Evidently, the original article in The Times wasn’t transphobic enough.
The Time’s article is also transphobic in its implication that the question about sex was removed from previous censuses — or that it had been removed in a draft version of the 2021 census — and that the “trans lobby” was instrumental in its removal. The “sex question” has been on the census since the very first one in 1801 (here it is in the 2011 census) and was in the drafts of the 2021 census — it’s never been removed. But why let a googleable fact get in the way of some transphobia.
Unsurprisingly, Mail Online also joined in, reporting with The Times in January that ‘The new changes in 2021 are a setback for transgender rights campaigners’. As it happens, LGBT charity Stonewall welcomes the additions to the census. The article indicated that the change was also a relief to ‘Some academics [who] had been concerned that not recording legal sex would make the figures less useful’, quoting specifically, like The Times, from transphobic academic Alice Sullivan. Sullivan (who we’ve seen before might not be as much of an expert on these things as she makes out) seems, however, to equivocate more than the media over where the new census is an improvement. Along with a few other academics, she then wrote to The Times in February to express her concern that, no, actually we’re ‘on the brink of losing robust, high quality data on sex in the UK’, writing that the ‘Office for National Statistics is conflating the two distinct variables of biological sex and gender identity in next month’s census’. Of course, professor Sullivan seems ignorant that the census has been allowing people to self-ID since 1801, so we’re hardly ‘on the brink of losing robust, high quality data on sex in the UK’. If the 2021 census didn’t have the new, additional question, we would simply be in the same situation as with all previous censuses, which — without enabling the collection of data on how many respondents reporting ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ were registered as a different sex at birth — somehow still comprise Sullivan’s ‘robust, high quality data’. With the additional question, Sullivan should still be cheering. But transphobia addles the mind, it seems.
It should be simple for someone like professor Sullivan to understand how this census data is useful and will provide the information she says she so desperate wants. Guidance for the 2021 census’ “What is your sex?” can be found here. People might fill in the two sex and gender questions in the following ways. If someone is a cisgender man, for example, they could respond ‘Male’ to the first question and ‘Yes’ to the second, informing the statisticians that their gender identity is the same as the sex they were registered with at birth (if they skip the voluntary, second question they are not telling the statisticians if they are trans or cis; the statisticians will likely interpret the data to be from someone cisgendered). If someone is a trans man, for instance, they could respond in three ways, one of which is in line with how things stood in previous censuses, so wouldn’t change anything from those previous years of ‘robust, high quality data’ gathering, with the other two providing even more detailed and nuanced data:
(a.) Answer ‘Male’ to the first question and skip the voluntary, second question (if you’re transphobic and think this is wrong, you needn’t worry because trans people make up only a small percentage of the population so answering in this way wouldn’t “skew” the data. Needless to say, it is also an accurate way of filling in the form because it gives accurate information about someone and indicates the challenges they face because of their gender. It would also simply be a continuation of how people have filled in the census in previous years, when there was only the question about sex (Sullivan seems to indicate she’s happy with how the previous censuses went, providing ‘robust, high quality data’, but it’s hard to think she would actually be happy with this — it’s almost as if she’s trying to manufacture outrage, making it sound like there’s a new, dangerous problem when, actually, there’s better data)).
(b.) Answer ‘Female’ to the first question and ‘No’ to the second, writing ‘Man’ or ‘Male’ in the box provided to articulate his gender (this would indicate, firstly, that he was registered as female at birth and, secondly, that his gender is different to that).
(c.) Answer ‘Male’ to the first question and ‘No’ to the second, also writing ‘Man’ or ‘Male’ in the box provided — from this, too, statisticians can extrapolate that the respondent was registered as female at birth and that that doesn’t match his gender.
Voila — more robust, higher quality data! But The Telegraph, Sullivan and her ilk seem less concerned about robust, high quality data, and more concerned about stirring up hatred towards trans people.
The following is likely to become a standard postscript:
Incredibly, many transphobic people, TERFs and Gender Critical, believe — or at least make the claim — that trans people have control over the media. As you can see from the transphobic misinformation reported in these national papers, this is far from the case. News outlets, far more often than not, are hostile to trans people.
If you’d like to make a complaint about any of this misleading reporting — or any of the other transphobic reporting you see — you can contact the Independent Press Standards Organisation (if the reporting is in a newspaper that’s an IPSO member (all of the above papers are)). To complain about a broadcaster, contact Ofcom.
