The idea that the reality of people’s biological sex is immaterial in society, and that it can be replaced by the concept of gender identity – whether someone feels male or female – is a highly contested belief system that does not reflect British equalities law. Yet in recent years, it has come to dominate sections of the public sphere spanning institutions as diverse as the NHS, the police and universities, as activists have sought to impose this personal belief on everyone.
The extent to which leaders in those institutions have caved in to activist pressures has led to real-world detriment. Gender-questioning children and young people have been prescribed untested drugs with harmful side effects by NHS clinicians. Rape crisis services have failed to provide women who have been sexually assaulted with single-sex services. Male rapists and sex offenders who say they believe they are really women have been locked up in female prisons with vulnerable women. The police have unlawfully tried to discourage people who believe biological sex is real from exercising their democratic right to free speech. Employment tribunal rulings illustrate how many people – particularly women – who have refused to comply with this belief system have been bullied and hounded out of their workplaces. And now a new government-commissioned review led by Prof Alice Sullivan of University College London has highlighted the extent to which official data sources have been corrupted by gender ideology.
Sullivan was commissioned to lead this review by the last government after the Office for National Statistics had to be taken to court by a grassroots feminist group to try to get it to collect accurate data on sex in the 2021 census.
Her report lays bare the extent to which ideologically captured institutions are today failing to collect critical data on sex in a way that allows us to understand how important social trends are affecting men and women differently, and the harms this is causing.
In healthcare, the NHS is failing to accurately record people’s sex on patient records so that trans people are not being called for their relevant sex-specific cancer screenings, while medical samples, such as blood tests, are incorrectly assessed or even rejected by laboratories. Many police forces are recording male crimes as committed by women on the basis of requests from male perpetrators saying they identify as female; in 2021 Police Scotland even explicitly said that in cases where male rapists who penetrate their victim with their penis say they identify as female, it would record those rapes as being perpetrated by a woman (only appearing to shift this policy late last year) This undermines societal understanding of male violence.
These are just a few examples of the harms caused by failing to collect data on sex. Organisations must collate data on sex and trans status separately, and not conflate the two. In its response to the review, the government has made clear it believes the collection of accurate data, including on sex, is vital to research, and to the provision of public services. That is most welcome, but ministers now need to promptly implement its recommendations; health secretary Wes Streeting has already instructed the NHS to stop issuing new health records with inaccurate sex markers for gender-questioning children.
It is important that society robustly upholds the Equality Act’s protections for trans people against discrimination. But too many organisations continue to labour under the misapprehension that this means they must behave as though sex is immaterial or unimportant, in a way that causes significant harm and discriminates against other groups. A course correction is much needed and long overdue.
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