Latest news with #SullivanReview
The National
21-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Civil servants union PCS 'silenced' debate on trans rights
The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) took legal advice and banned motions which related to the landmark ruling which found that sex is defined by biology in the Equality Act. Delegates had submitted motions for debate at the union's annual conference in Brighton, but these were binned by PCS high command after lawyers from Thompsons Solicitors said they put the union at risk. A delegate said: 'It feels like the legal advice and the rule that allows the complete rejection of motions under legal advice has been used to completely silence us.' (Image: Lucy North/PA Wire) One motion, which the delegate said had become a 'lightning rod' for attendees seeking a debate on trans rights after other pro-trans motions were knocked back, put the PCS at risk of being sued, lawyers argued. The motion, A57, called on the union's national executive committee (NEC), its ruling body, to 'oppose exclusionary ideologies' such as gender-critical beliefs. Lawyers said these beliefs were protected in law and coming out against them opened the union up to claims of discrimination and harassment. Another motion called on the NEC to 'ensure that trans women are not excluded from women's spaces within the union'. READ MORE: Scottish Labour MP in 'secretive' meeting with private healthcare lobbyists Lawyers warned that doing so could lay the PCS open to claims of 'harassment' if trans women were using spaces reserved for biological women. The letter said: 'This is on the basis that it encourages [trans women] to access biological women's spaces, which is unwanted, related to the protected characteristic of sex and violates her dignity and creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.' A delegate told The National: 'There's no logic to the legal advice because we hear motions on Palestine, Ukraine, racism, basic employment law and a lot of it is rejection of the law or disagreement with the law but, seemingly in this particular instance, the legal advice is that we're not even allowed to say that or even think it, or even discuss it.' (Image: Gordon Terris) The final standing orders of the conference allowed two motions pertaining to trans rights to be debated. One responded to the Supreme Court ruling and criticised the PCS's delay in responding to the judgment. It called on the union to create a process for faster communications to members to respond to 'emergent situations' balanced with 'the need not to expose the PCS to any legal liability'. The second called on the union to reject the findings of the Sullivan Review, which urged the Government to require people to give their sex and gender on official forms like their health records. The PCS union declined to comment.
Telegraph
01-04-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Trans activists urge doctors to fight NHS data overhaul
Trans activists are urging NHS staff to campaign against plans to protect women by collecting data on sex and not gender. They have posted on NHS England's LGBT intranet to implore doctors and nurses to show their 'allyship' by writing to their MP to oppose the proposed changes. In a report last month, Professor Alice Sullivan said police forces and the NHS should collect data on biological sex rather than a person's self-declared gender identity. Critics say that allowing public bodies to remove sex from statistical records compromises research into women's issues and makes it difficult for researchers to spot trends in rape cases, medical trials or gender pay gaps. Professor Sullivan's review found that cancer referrals had been missed and previous convictions overlooked because biological sex was not being recorded. The report was welcomed by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, who said having accurate data on sex was vital for patient safety. But activists have described it as 'biased, inadequate and potentially harmful'. 'Demonstrate your allyship' In a post on NHS England's LGBT network, one activist linked to a statement from the group TransActual which rejected the report. The post said: 'Leading transgender organisation TransActual together with academics from the Feminist Gender Equality Network (FGEN) today rejected the conclusion of a report on data collection by academic Professor Alice Sullivan as biased, inadequate and potentially harmful to all citizens of the UK, whether trans or not. 'For allies within the network, now is the time to take action. Demonstrate your allyship by writing to your local MP and urging them to oppose the recommendations of the report. 'Encourage them to speak out against it within their party and advocate for a more inclusive approach.' The activist then linked to TransActual's statement on the Sullivan Review, which claimed the idea that there are only two sexes is 'factually incorrect' and an 'incorrect dog-whistle assertion'. It also said Professor Sullivan was a 'prominent anti-trans activist'. Its strategy director, Keyne Walker, said: 'These recommendations would do nothing to support the Government's stated objectives regarding equality and diversity, nor on data use. It represents a deviation from the Government's stated position, and would be a U-turn should it be implemented. 'Worse, the experience of those working in the field suggests that far from improving data quality, the measures promoted by this report would make data collected on sex and gender far less reliable. 'The Sullivan Review is rooted in factually incorrect assertions about the binary nature of sex and gender and antipathy towards trans people, despite lip-service towards respect for diverse gender identities. 'The Review's recommendation for both sex and gender characteristics to be collected is presented as in the interest of the welfare of trans people. 'However, the recommendations would effectively mean that trans people have no right to privacy, likely breaching human rights law, as well as codifying the incorrect dog-whistle assertion that sex is binary and immutable.' She went on: 'Despite its claims of impartiality, it was produced by leading members of an anti-trans campaign group and reflects their arguments. 'As such, it is an unsuitable basis for policymaking and we encourage DSIT to reject its findings entirely.' Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at women's rights charity Sex Matters, said the comments showed why Mr Streeting needed to 'get gender ideology out of the health service'. She said: 'It is shocking to see an NHS England employee amplifying calls from a trans activist group to ignore the recommendations of the Sullivan report. 'This should be a wake-up call to the [Health Secretary] to get gender ideology out of the health service, for everyone's sake. 'Whether a patient is male or female is vital information in healthcare, but this lobby group wants the NHS to record falsehoods instead of facts in people's health records. This is not good for anyone. It's no longer credible to claim that trans activist demands are no threat to anyone else.' A spokesman for NHS England did not comment on the campaign against the adoption of Prof Sullivan's recommendations. He said: 'The NHS has written to GPs to ensure that they immediately stop the process of changing NHS numbers and gender markers for children and young people under 18, following the Sullivan review and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care's direction.'
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
It's uncomfortable for a Leftie like me to admit, but Trump is right on trans issues
On my way to meet Prof Alice Sullivan it occurs to me that if Marvel were dreaming up a new franchise, it probably wouldn't alight on a quantitative data scientist as its new superhero. And that would be a terrible miscalculation. Her recently published Sullivan Review reveals that when it comes to liberating public bodies from 'institutional capture' by trans activists and highlighting the dangerous lunacy of conflating sex with gender, our doughtiest defence is data. Sullivan, a professor of sociology and a quantitative data scientist at University College London, was commissioned by the previous Conservative government to investigate how data on biological sex is collected by public bodies after deep concerns were raised about the stranglehold of gender ideology in our key organisations. She was chosen to do the review because of her specialist work on the topic and well-publicised views on the need to record accurate data on sex. 'Sex and gender identity are distinct characteristics and are not interchangeable,' has always been her message. 'But unfortunately people in a great many organisations don't understand data collection as a discipline and have been taking advice from other people who don't understand it either; the result is a mess. We need – we have a responsibility – to record both sex and gender identity'. She and her team carried out interviews, collated evidence and heard from whistleblowers too fearful of reprisals to speak out. What they uncovered was shocking; across key organisations like the NHS, schools, the police and civil service, factual information on biological sex has been replaced by subjective (and highly contested) feedback on gender identity since 2015. As a consequence 'robust accurate data' has been lost, the review concluded. Criminals – including sex offenders – are being permitted to choose a self-identified 'gender' rather than be identified by their biological sex, and the police and courts are complying. Then there are the schools that immediately change children's 'gender ' on IT systems if they self-identify as the opposite sex – often without consulting the parents – and civil servants hounded out for perfectly ordinary opinions on biological sex. It's absurd. Enter the Sullivan Review. For those longing to turn the tide on aggressive gender politics, this detailed 226-page document has drawn a long-overdue line in the sand. Maya Forstater, CEO of pressure group Sex Matters welcomed its findings: 'This review is devastatingly clear about the harms caused by carelessness with sex data and a decade-long failure of the Civil Service to maintain impartiality and uphold data standards. The destruction of data about sex has caused real harm to individuals and research, and undermined the integrity of policy-making. Conflating sex and gender identity is not a harmless act of kindness but a damaging dereliction of duty.' Or, as transgender lobbyists TransActual put it on their website; 'This review is providing an academic gloss on what is a political call to strip trans people of our hard-won rights to privacy, dignity, and respect in public spaces.' It's the sort of binary response that has landed Britain in such a nonsensical quagmire in the first place. Sullivan has, in fact, called on organisations to record gender preference as well as sex when gathering data – but nuance has gone the same way as common sense. Thankfully cometh the hour cometh the quantitative data scientist in the shape of Prof Alice Sullivan, who is as far from a Gradgrindian number-cruncher as you can imagine. To my mind it all feels terribly bleak. But when we meet, in her corner of north London, where the magnolia trees are in full creamy bloom and the local coffee shop is so vegan I almost cause a riot when I unwittingly ask for 'real milk', Sullivan is in surprisingly high spirits. 'I'm optimistic. I think this review marks a watershed. It has taken a long time but I really do believe we are beyond the point where we can be silenced. It's the beginning of the end for no debate.' Wouldn't that be nice? I can't help suggesting that Donald Trump of all people may have had a part to play in changing the proverbial mood music surrounding gender issues. 'As a life-long Leftie, it feels uncomfortable to be put in the position of agreeing with Donald Trump. But the fact is that he is simply saying that there are two sexes and that this matters, for example in prisons and sports. If Donald Trump says that the earth is round, should Leftists claim it is flat just to avoid being on the same side as him? This kind of tribal thinking has been horribly damaging to the Left. The idiotic positions that the Democrats took on these issues helped to gift the election to Trump. Mainstream politicians of all stripes need to learn from this that denying observable facts about the world is dangerous.' For years now Sullivan has refused to be silenced by gender militants who have bullied and threatened her online. Instead she has continued to focus on 'biological truth' and has striven – not always successfully – to staunch the tide of 'ideological capture', which has seen LGBTQ+ networks within our key organisations mount successful, sustained campaigns to change the culture within them. 'As a result, an atmosphere of fear has been created making people scared to speak out against or even discuss issues surrounding gender,' she says. 'Bad decisions have been made by management because they have erroneously assumed these highly vocal activists represent far greater numbers than they do.' Later, Sullivan happily confides she hasn't had any death threats recently, which tells us everything we need to know about the toxic tactics employed by some trans militants who have somehow managed to weaponise 'hurt feelings' and bully public servants into accepting a parallel reality. We meet in the week that the University of Sussex was handed a record fine of £585,000 by the Office for Students (OfS) for failing to uphold freedom of speech. It came following a lengthy investigation into the university's handling of the case of Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor who resigned after being targeted by protests over her views on gender. 'Kathleen Stock had a horrific level of abuse, and I've received nothing like that. By and large my peers have been very supportive but there have been exceptions and it is totally unacceptable that women are being horribly intimidated just for believing in biological sex.' But back to Sullivan. Five feet tall with bleached pixie-cut hair, when we meet at her north London home she is wearing a teal-coloured dress that matches the extravagant Designer's Guild wallpaper in her straight-from-the-pages-of-Living etc dining room. She takes me through the hallway hung with interesting art to the bold moderniste kitchen where on the breakfast table there are two lovely patterned plates, the sort most of us would keep for visitors, and a recipe for linguine with fresh crab is open on a book stand – and it's not even midweek! She laughs at my chippy indignation. But it later transpires she's half Spanish (hence the good food) and has never wanted children (hence the glamorous colour supplement interiors) so I am forced to retract my remarks about her being 'a member of the metropolitan elite'. Sullivan, who lives with her mathematician husband John Armstrong, an academic at King's College London laughs a surprising amount. I find myself wondering aloud if that's because it's physically, or indeed metaphysically impossible to be cancelled twice? She was famously 'no-platformed' in late 2019 when a research methods seminar where she was due to speak, held by the National Centre for Social Research was axed on the grounds 'the topic was of too much public interest'. Sullivan rolls her eyes at the ridiculousness. 'That is what I was initially told, although I'd never heard of something being called off because it was deemed too interesting,' she says. Her perceived misdemeanour was that of having 'anti-trans views' because she had raised her head above the parapet and criticised the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for failing to collect data on biological sex. When she was bluntly told she was the reason for the cancellation she broke down. 'I cried,' she says. 'I'm normally Captain Calm but I felt utterly bewildered that this was happening in my world, a world of sober data science. Data is about trust and once you lose trust, democracy itself is at risk. That way lies authoritarianism.' Sullivan was born and raised in Bristol. Her late Glaswegian father left school at 14 but became involved in the Trades Union movement. He took opportunities offered by the Workers' Educational Association and moved to London, where he took five A levels – he had no idea that three was the norm – and later completed a degree and then a PhD as a mature student, during which time he met Sullivan's mother, who was from the Basque region. 'My parents were both socialists,' she says. 'But my dad, who died twenty years ago, also had a built-in bulls--t detector which I think he passed on to me. He also had a mischievous sense of humour and there have been times when I would really have appreciated him being around so he could help me find the funny side of the more stressful things that have happened. After reading PPE (politics, philosophy and economics) at Balliol College, Oxford, Sullivan undertook a masters in sociology and then a PhD in the sociology of education. She took a job at the Institute of Education which became part of University College London and worked her way up from research officer to professor. And from 2010 to 2020 she was also director of the hugely important ongoing 1970 British Cohort Study, which followed the lives of around 17,000 people born in England, Scotland and Wales in a single week of 1970. Her involvement with gender issues began, as is so often the case, on a personal note. Both she and her husband are keen runners and often use the track at Hampstead Heath. In 2018, Sullivan discovered that moves were afoot to allow individuals to access areas such as the Women's Pond and other facilities based on self identification. This gave her pause. 'I use the changing rooms there and I thought 'that's a bit much, you can't just ID yourself into a woman's space'. Then I saw the consultation document which was a really badly written questionnaire – and I care a lot about questionnaires. Having thought long and hard about going public, she felt it was important, so she contacted the local paper in Camden who ran a story. But despite her best efforts, self identification was introduced, giving transgender women the right to use the Ladies' Pond and other facilities, a policy that still persists today. Meanwhile as she became more familiar with grassroots feminist movements who were taking a stance against the eradication of sex in officialdom, the ONS announced that it was rolling out a new, 'inclusive' version of the sex question on the 2021 national census. This would allow respondents to answer according to their self-identified gender rather than their physical sex – thereby making a nonsense of its data collection. Sullivan took a stand – and garnered hate mail – when she criticised this bias in an open letter she organised in 2019. It was signed by more than 80 eminent academics from Oxbridge and Russell Group universities, pointing out that it would 'undermine data reliability on a key demographic variable and damage our ability to capture and remedy sex-based discrimination and inequality'. The ONS refused to back down and in 2021 was taken to court by the feminist group Fair Play for Women and the judge found in the group's favour, ordering changes to the census – only this week the ONS admitted that the number of trans people was 'incorrectly recorded' in the latest census The case highlighted just how tightly gender ideology had taken hold. 'I was so young and naive,' she laughs, ruefully. 'I genuinely thought that getting eminent data scientists and academics to sign an open letter would sort everything out. Surely everyone would agree? Then came the backlash.' Cue a volley of unpleasant messages on what was then Twitter, intimations of violence and death threats on Facebook. 'It's easy to ignore random strangers online but when it's someone from the academic world, or professional people who should know better, amplifying the voices of abusive trolls, it's disappointing'. Throughout all this, Sullivan had no regrets. In 2023 she co-edited a book, Sex and Gender: a Contemporary Reader with the Oxford historian Selina Todd and has organised events on the subject – which other academics have sought to cancel, giving a lie to notions of free speech. But her commitment is undiminished. As a sociologist she is fascinated, among other aspects, by the sex divide when it comes to gender identity; at present there seems to be a spike in the number of biological girls choosing to identify as male. But without accurate data this can't be understood. Similarly, without reliable data on sex, the world would have no idea about the gender imbalances in some societies where female babies are aborted. 'One of the recommendations in the review is that the nonsensical expression '[sex] assigned at birth' should no longer be used,' she says, which will have a great many punching the air in jubilation, myself included. 'It's a term that comes from the postmodern philosophical idea that sex is a purely social construct and is not real but assigned at birth. This is just bonkers. Sex is determined at conception and the fact it is observable in-utero is why there were so many sex-selective abortions in China under the one child policy.' But here in the West there are those who stubbornly insist on denying biology. Of all the outrageous instances of gender gerrymandering, one in particular stands out for Sullivan. During research for her eponymous review a paediatrician cited a mother who 'changed' the sex of her child when it was still a baby. Within weeks of the birth she decided she wanted to bring up her newborn as the opposite sex and went to her GP to request a new NHS number and have it officially recognised in the sex she had chosen. The GP complied. When children's social care was alerted, they denied there was any safeguarding issue. 'When I heard about that case, I felt physically sick,' admits Sullivan. 'I was appalled that an infant could simply be erased from NHS records and given a new identity with a new NHS number. It's unbelievable, but it happened. The vast majority of parents are loving and responsible but it's inevitable there will always be some who are attention-seeking and abusive – the scandal is that our institutions are not protecting children, because somewhere along the line it became taboo to challenge gender-identity theory.' Sullivan wasn't the only one to react with visceral horror. The day after publication, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced that from now on, no-one under the age of 18 will be given a new NHS record. 'It's completely wrong that children's NHS numbers can be changed if they change gender, and I've made it clear this must not happen,' he said.'We must deliver safe and holistic care for both adults and children when it comes to gender, and that also means accurately recording biological sex – not just for research and insight, but also for patient safety.' He acted swiftly but many commentators feel the rest of the Government has a long way to go when it comes to stamping out this extraordinary bias towards gender self-identification. 'I'm delighted with the strong leadership that Wes Streeting has shown. It's important that the Government as a whole tackles this issue systematically, as the need for accurate data doesn't only apply to health.' But damningly – disappointingly – Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has refused to issue an order compelling all police forces in England and Wales to collect data specifically on sex. 'Sex is a powerful predictor of both offending and victimisation,' urges Sullivan. 'This is particularly obvious when it comes to violent and sexual crime. It's vital that the home secretary acts to issue a mandatory requirement for all police forces to record data on sex.' Sullivan won't be drawn on whether a Tory government would have adopted all her review recommendations wholesale. 'The fact is that this problem was apparent under the previous Conservative government, and the likes of Teresa May and Boris Johnson facilitated it. Michelle Donelan [former secretary of state for science, innovation and technology] deserves great credit for commissioning the review, but this isn't a Left-Right issue, it's a matter of common sense. Accurate data benefits us all.' How many times will she have to say it? A great many more, I expect. But the mere fact the Sullivan Review was commissioned spurs her on. 'I've been working in this area for years so being given the opportunity to undertake research in this way was almost like an answer to a prayer; I've been over the moon with the reception for it. It was even written about in The Sun.' For now, her focus is on the forthcoming second part of her review which looks at barriers to research on sex and gender, primarily in universities. The quantitative data scientists may not inherit the earth, but it seems we desperately need them to make sense of it. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
30-03-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
It's uncomfortable for a Leftie like me to admit, but Trump is right on trans issues
On my way to meet Prof Alice Sullivan it occurs to me that if Marvel were dreaming up a new franchise, it probably wouldn't alight on a quantitative data scientist as its new superhero. And that would be a terrible miscalculation. Her recently published Sullivan Review reveals that when it comes to liberating public bodies from 'institutional capture' by trans activists and highlighting the dangerous lunacy of conflating sex with gender, our doughtiest defence is data. Sullivan, a professor of sociology and a quantitative data scientist at University College London, was commissioned by the previous Conservative government to investigate how data on biological sex is collected by public bodies after deep concerns were raised about the stranglehold of gender ideology in our key organisations. She was chosen to do the review because of her specialist work on the topic and well-publicised views on the need to record accurate data on sex. 'Sex and gender identity are distinct characteristics and are not interchangeable,' has always been her message. 'But unfortunately people in a great many organisations don't understand data collection as a discipline and have been taking advice from other people who don't understand it either; the result is a mess. We need – we have a responsibility – to record both sex and gender identity'. She and her team carried out interviews, collated evidence and heard from whistleblowers too fearful of reprisals to speak out. What they uncovered was shocking; across key organisations like the NHS, schools, the police and civil service, factual information on biological sex has been replaced by subjective (and highly contested) feedback on gender identity since 2015. As a consequence 'robust accurate data' has been lost, the review concluded. Criminals – including sex offenders – are being permitted to choose a self-identified 'gender' rather than be identified by their biological sex, and the police and courts are complying. Then there are the schools that immediately change children's 'gender ' on IT systems if they self-identify as the opposite sex – often without consulting the parents – and civil servants hounded out for perfectly ordinary opinions on biological sex. It's absurd. Enter the Sullivan Review. For those longing to turn the tide on aggressive gender politics, this detailed 226-page document has drawn a long-overdue line in the sand. Maya Forstater, CEO of pressure group Sex Matters welcomed its findings: 'This review is devastatingly clear about the harms caused by carelessness with sex data and a decade-long failure of the Civil Service to maintain impartiality and uphold data standards. The destruction of data about sex has caused real harm to individuals and research, and undermined the integrity of policy-making. Conflating sex and gender identity is not a harmless act of kindness but a damaging dereliction of duty.' Or, as transgender lobbyists TransActual put it on their website; 'This review is providing an academic gloss on what is a political call to strip trans people of our hard-won rights to privacy, dignity, and respect in public spaces.' 'We are beyond the point where we can be silenced' It's the sort of binary response that has landed Britain in such a nonsensical quagmire in the first place. Sullivan has, in fact, called on organisations to record gender preference as well as sex when gathering data – but nuance has gone the same way as common sense. Thankfully cometh the hour cometh the quantitative data scientist in the shape of Prof Alice Sullivan, who is as far from a Gradgrindian number-cruncher as you can imagine. To my mind it all feels terribly bleak. But when we meet, in her corner of north London, where the magnolia trees are in full creamy bloom and the local coffee shop is so vegan I almost cause a riot when I unwittingly ask for 'real milk', Sullivan is in surprisingly high spirits. 'I'm optimistic. I think this review marks a watershed. It has taken a long time but I really do believe we are beyond the point where we can be silenced. It's the beginning of the end for no debate.' Wouldn't that be nice? I can't help suggesting that Donald Trump of all people may have had a part to play in changing the proverbial mood music surrounding gender issues. 'As a life-long Leftie, it feels uncomfortable to be put in the position of agreeing with Donald Trump. But the fact is that he is simply saying that there are two sexes and that this matters, for example in prisons and sports. If Donald Trump says that the earth is round, should Leftists claim it is flat just to avoid being on the same side as him? This kind of tribal thinking has been horribly damaging to the Left. The idiotic positions that the Democrats took on these issues helped to gift the election to Trump. Mainstream politicians of all stripes need to learn from this that denying observable facts about the world is dangerous.' Above: Trump signed an executive order banning transgender women from female sport in February For years now Sullivan has refused to be silenced by gender militants who have bullied and threatened her online. Instead she has continued to focus on 'biological truth' and has striven – not always successfully – to staunch the tide of 'ideological capture', which has seen LGBTQ+ networks within our key organisations mount successful, sustained campaigns to change the culture within them. 'As a result, an atmosphere of fear has been created making people scared to speak out against or even discuss issues surrounding gender,' she says. 'Bad decisions have been made by management because they have erroneously assumed these highly vocal activists represent far greater numbers than they do.' Later, Sullivan happily confides she hasn't had any death threats recently, which tells us everything we need to know about the toxic tactics employed by some trans militants who have somehow managed to weaponise 'hurt feelings' and bully public servants into accepting a parallel reality. We meet in the week that the University of Sussex was handed a record fine of £585,000 by the Office for Students (OfS) for failing to uphold freedom of speech. It came following a lengthy investigation into the university's handling of the case of Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor who resigned after being targeted by protests over her views on gender. 'Kathleen Stock had a horrific level of abuse, and I've received nothing like that. By and large my peers have been very supportive but there have been exceptions and it is totally unacceptable that women are being horribly intimidated just for believing in biological sex.' A Left-wing upbringing But back to Sullivan. Five feet tall with bleached pixie-cut hair, when we meet at her north London home she is wearing a teal-coloured dress that matches the extravagant Designer's Guild wallpaper in her straight-from-the-pages-of- Living etc dining room. She takes me through the hallway hung with interesting art to the bold moderniste kitchen where on the breakfast table there are two lovely patterned plates, the sort most of us would keep for visitors, and a recipe for linguine with fresh crab is open on a book stand – and it's not even midweek! She laughs at my chippy indignation. But it later transpires she's half Spanish (hence the good food) and has never wanted children (hence the glamorous colour supplement interiors) so I am forced to retract my remarks about her being 'a member of the metropolitan elite'. Sullivan, who lives with her mathematician husband John Armstrong, an academic at King's College London laughs a surprising amount. I find myself wondering aloud if that's because it's physically, or indeed metaphysically impossible to be cancelled twice? She was famously 'no-platformed' in late 2019 when a research methods seminar where she was due to speak, held by the National Centre for Social Research was axed on the grounds 'the topic was of too much public interest'. Sullivan rolls her eyes at the ridiculousness. 'That is what I was initially told, although I'd never heard of something being called off because it was deemed too interesting,' she says. Her perceived misdemeanour was that of having 'anti-trans views' because she had raised her head above the parapet and criticised the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for failing to collect data on biological sex. When she was bluntly told she was the reason for the cancellation she broke down. 'I cried,' she says. 'I'm normally Captain Calm but I felt utterly bewildered that this was happening in my world, a world of sober data science. Data is about trust and once you lose trust, democracy itself is at risk. That way lies authoritarianism.' Sullivan was born and raised in Bristol. Her late Glaswegian father left school at 14 but became involved in the Trades Union movement. He took opportunities offered by the Workers' Educational Association and moved to London, where he took five A levels – he had no idea that three was the norm – and later completed a degree and then a PhD as a mature student, during which time he met Sullivan's mother, who was from the Basque region. 'My parents were both socialists,' she says. 'But my dad, who died twenty years ago, also had a built-in bulls--t detector which I think he passed on to me. He also had a mischievous sense of humour and there have been times when I would really have appreciated him being around so he could help me find the funny side of the more stressful things that have happened. After reading PPE (politics, philosophy and economics) at Balliol College, Oxford, Sullivan undertook a masters in sociology and then a PhD in the sociology of education. She took a job at the Institute of Education which became part of University College London and worked her way up from research officer to professor. And from 2010 to 2020 she was also director of the hugely important ongoing 1970 British Cohort Study, which followed the lives of around 17,000 people born in England, Scotland and Wales in a single week of 1970. Sullivan's cancellation Her involvement with gender issues began, as is so often the case, on a personal note. Both she and her husband are keen runners and often use the track at Hampstead Heath. In 2018, Sullivan discovered that moves were afoot to allow individuals to access areas such as the Women's Pond and other facilities based on self identification. This gave her pause. 'I use the changing rooms there and I thought 'that's a bit much, you can't just ID yourself into a woman's space'. Then I saw the consultation document which was a really badly written questionnaire – and I care a lot about questionnaires. Having thought long and hard about going public, she felt it was important, so she contacted the local paper in Camden who ran a story. But despite her best efforts, self identification was introduced, giving transgender women the right to use the Ladies' Pond and other facilities, a policy that still persists today. Meanwhile as she became more familiar with grassroots feminist movements who were taking a stance against the eradication of sex in officialdom, the ONS announced that it was rolling out a new, 'inclusive' version of the sex question on the 2021 national census. This would allow respondents to answer according to their self-identified gender rather than their physical sex – thereby making a nonsense of its data collection. Sullivan took a stand – and garnered hate mail – when she criticised this bias in an open letter she organised in 2019. It was signed by more than 80 eminent academics from Oxbridge and Russell Group universities, pointing out that it would 'undermine data reliability on a key demographic variable and damage our ability to capture and remedy sex-based discrimination and inequality'. The ONS refused to back down and in 2021 was taken to court by the feminist group Fair Play for Women and the judge found in the group's favour, ordering changes to the census – only this week the ONS admitted that the number of trans people was 'incorrectly recorded' in the latest census The case highlighted just how tightly gender ideology had taken hold. 'I was so young and naive,' she laughs, ruefully. 'I genuinely thought that getting eminent data scientists and academics to sign an open letter would sort everything out. Surely everyone would agree? Then came the backlash.' Cue a volley of unpleasant messages on what was then Twitter, intimations of violence and death threats on Facebook. 'It's easy to ignore random strangers online but when it's someone from the academic world, or professional people who should know better, amplifying the voices of abusive trolls, it's disappointing'. Throughout all this, Sullivan had no regrets. In 2023 she co-edited a book, Sex and Gender: a Contemporary Reader with the Oxford historian Selina Todd and has organised events on the subject – which other academics have sought to cancel, giving a lie to notions of free speech. But her commitment is undiminished. As a sociologist she is fascinated, among other aspects, by the sex divide when it comes to gender identity; at present there seems to be a spike in the number of biological girls choosing to identify as male. But without accurate data this can't be understood. Similarly, without reliable data on sex, the world would have no idea about the gender imbalances in some societies where female babies are aborted. 'One of the recommendations in the review is that the nonsensical expression '[sex] assigned at birth' should no longer be used,' she says, which will have a great many punching the air in jubilation, myself included. 'It's a term that comes from the postmodern philosophical idea that sex is a purely social construct and is not real but assigned at birth. This is just bonkers. Sex is determined at conception and the fact it is observable in-utero is why there were so many sex-selective abortions in China under the one child policy.' Gender gerrymandering But here in the West there are those who stubbornly insist on denying biology. Of all the outrageous instances of gender gerrymandering, one in particular stands out for Sullivan. During research for her eponymous review a paediatrician cited a mother who 'changed' the sex of her child when it was still a baby. Within weeks of the birth she decided she wanted to bring up her newborn as the opposite sex and went to her GP to request a new NHS number and have it officially recognised in the sex she had chosen. The GP complied. When children's social care was alerted, they denied there was any safeguarding issue. 'When I heard about that case, I felt physically sick,' admits Sullivan. 'I was appalled that an infant could simply be erased from NHS records and given a new identity with a new NHS number. It's unbelievable, but it happened. The vast majority of parents are loving and responsible but it's inevitable there will always be some who are attention-seeking and abusive – the scandal is that our institutions are not protecting children, because somewhere along the line it became taboo to challenge gender-identity theory.' Sullivan wasn't the only one to react with visceral horror. The day after publication, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced that from now on, no-one under the age of 18 will be given a new NHS record. 'It's completely wrong that children's NHS numbers can be changed if they change gender, and I've made it clear this must not happen,' he said. 'We must deliver safe and holistic care for both adults and children when it comes to gender, and that also means accurately recording biological sex – not just for research and insight, but also for patient safety.' He acted swiftly but many commentators feel the rest of the Government has a long way to go when it comes to stamping out this extraordinary bias towards gender self-identification. 'I'm delighted with the strong leadership that Wes Streeting has shown. It's important that the Government as a whole tackles this issue systematically, as the need for accurate data doesn't only apply to health.' But damningly – disappointingly – Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has refused to issue an order compelling all police forces in England and Wales to collect data specifically on sex. 'Sex is a powerful predictor of both offending and victimisation,' urges Sullivan. 'This is particularly obvious when it comes to violent and sexual crime. It's vital that the home secretary acts to issue a mandatory requirement for all police forces to record data on sex.' Sullivan won't be drawn on whether a Tory government would have adopted all her review recommendations wholesale. 'The fact is that this problem was apparent under the previous Conservative government, and the likes of Teresa May and Boris Johnson facilitated it. Michelle Donelan [former secretary of state for science, innovation and technology] deserves great credit for commissioning the review, but this isn't a Left-Right issue, it's a matter of common sense. Accurate data benefits us all.' How many times will she have to say it? A great many more, I expect. But the mere fact the Sullivan Review was commissioned spurs her on. 'I've been working in this area for years so being given the opportunity to undertake research in this way was almost like an answer to a prayer; I've been over the moon with the reception for it. It was even written about in The Sun.' For now, her focus is on the forthcoming second part of her review which looks at barriers to research on sex and gender, primarily in universities. The quantitative data scientists may not inherit the earth, but it seems we desperately need them to make sense of it.
Telegraph
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The woke institutions backpedalling on trans ideology owe the public a huge apology
Elton John once sang that 'sorry seems to be the hardest word': he was referring to a love affair gone wrong, but those words seem apt when we now see all the backpedalling going on around trans rights. It is obvious that certain trans activists, and those who have trans-ed their own children, will never back down from their cult-like beliefs that a mystical 'gender identity' is always more important than biological sex. But now that this belief lies in tatters in mainstream thinking, we are now in the era of those who promoted trans ideology, stepping back from it in awkward regret, trying to rewrite their history. For years we've had to contend with years of woe-fully inaccurate news reporting when it comes to trans-related crimes. In a story about a registered sex offender who was born a man being jailed for recording hundreds of men using the toilet in Aldi, the BBC, Metro and the local press all referred to the perpetrator in their headlines as a woman, or she, alongside a picture of a man. It was enough to make you roll your eyes. Even in court, this person was referred to as 'she'. A lot has been said about media distrust. But this constant reporting of the crimes of men, but attributed to women, is but one of the issues that the public has finally become alert to. The unfairness of male-born trans competitors in women's sport is another. That so many of our public institutions have gone along with this nonsense is evidence of the power of lobby groups. It is also an indication of how poorly valued women's rights are. None of the institutions that have now retreated from the vice-like grip of these campaigning organisations (Stonewall, Mermaids), have apologised for being in thrall to this dangerous ideology. In employment tribunal after tribunal, women who have refused to say that men are women have been bullied out of their jobs but won their cases. Who has said sorry to them? Meanwhile those interested in reality have been proved right by the Cass Review. Guess what? Puberty blockers that inevitably lead to cross-sex hormones are not the best way to treat psychologically distressed kids. Now we have the Sullivan Review, which emphasises the importance of recording biological sex and gender as two different things. This matters for health and criminal records. To muddle them does no favours to trans people. A trans man still needs cervical smears, a trans woman prostate checks, and no Alphabetti Spaghetti lanyard changes that reality. Coming up are a spate of books that try to pretend that somehow the woke have actually 'woken up'. They range from Ash Sarkar's Minority Rule (the identity politics Ash pushed so hard were unappealing to many) to Deborah Francis-White's Six Conversations We Are Afraid to Have (hint: she is still afraid). Yet both show they cannot detach themselves from trans ideology because it is still their core belief. One can see the same kind of pathetic denial in the Democrat party. It was always bizarre to be lectured by American feminists on how trans rights were exactly the same as reproductive rights when here we have abortion rights and trans healthcare on the NHS, while they were losing abortion rights and don't even have maternity leave. The Democrat position is finally being questioned by brave detransitioners and by those looking at the actual medical evidence, which has made so many European countries pull back from medicalising children. In truth, this 'movement' was always a forced coalition between male fetishists and distressed teenage girls. If gender identity was someone's true identity suppressed for years, why do we find it mostly in middle-aged men who finally get to wear frilly knickers? Was this absurdity not obvious? We do not suddenly have a generation of middle-aged women declaring themselves to be men. The best we can manage is some attention-seeking actresses having a haircut and declaring themselves 'non-binary'. To mistake a fetish for a civil rights movement was a gross error. The much-discussed scene in the new White Lotus series, when a character realises that what he desires ultimately is to have sex with himself, but as a woman, makes this clear. The term for this is autogynephilia, and it is all over social media. Half these men don't even want to be women. They want to be 'little girls'. Sadly, actual girls who fear becoming adult women in our pornified culture often turn out to be simply gay. The blatant homophobia of the whole trans rights movement is astonishing. The radical position would be to extend our definitions of masculinity and femininity, not push people into these awful pinks and blue boxes. The infantile pink and blue trans flag says it all. These beliefs have been deeply embedded into academia, the Civil Service, the NHS, the arts: so many of our institutions have abandoned critical thinking in favour of fashion. Yet most of the public never really have bought into this ideology. Most of us have wanted the gender dysphoric to get the help they need, but want women to retain their own rights, spaces and language. There is now a long walk back from this idiocy. The public are not fools. No, female medics should not have to get undressed in front of biological males. No, women should not get punched in the face by those who refuse to take a simple sex test. No, a nurse dealing with a huge paedophile should not be racially abused and reported because she wouldn't use the 'right' pronouns. I don't expect any apologies for losing work and 'friendships' for arguing that biology is real. But there are many, many good folks who refuse to be airbrushed out of history. They stood up when it mattered. And you may not believe me but when I see what is going on in America, one of the saddest aspects of all this is that those most harmed by ramming trans ideology down everyone's throat have been trans people themselves. The backlash they now face is the result of the liberal failure to think for itself. For that, someone really does need to say sorry.
