The idea that between 1841 and relatively recently the Census authorities were completely agnostic about what the population thought the target of the sex question was is ludicrous and shows a complete lack of historical imagination. From 1841 the head of household filled

in the schedule and a census enumerator checked and amended the return. If you want to call that "self-report" fair enough, but all the questions were answered by self-report in that sense. This does not = self-id. It is completely implausible to believe that historically there

was any quantitatively serious divergence between the recorded answers to the Census sex question and biological sex as proxied by what was written on birth certificates after civil registration was introduced in 1837. When reality changes, as it undoubtedly has (though we >>

don't know by how much) it is absurd to say we must carry on using the same instrument even though we now can't take the meaning of what people report for granted. That would be like saying we must carry on measuring how left-wing people are by their attitude to nationalising >>

the coal mines. That was fine in 1946 but won't work now. That means we have to define what sex means for Census purposes even though we didn't in the past. In 2011 via a process of behind the scenes lobbying and without any public consultation ONS introduced for the first time>>

guidance on how to answer the sex question. This was basically self id. It was hard to access the guidance and very few bothered. In 2021 because most people will complete on line the guidance is very accessible. Many more will consult it. We don't really know what the effect >>

will be. Lobbyists argue that self-id is continuity with the past. That is only arguable if you ignore historical change and the implications of change for the future. We could have had the best of both worlds. The Census could have guided people to answer the sex question with>

regard to what was to the best of their knowledge written on their birth certificate when their birth was registered and in addition included a question on what they now regard their gender to be. Nobody that I know in any way opposed the latter question being included. >>

In fact quite the reverse. Though activists here & elsewhere claim otherwise without producing any evidence that it is the case. Activists however did implacably oppose ONS issuing guidance that the sex question should be answered with reference to natal sex. In fact they >>

explicitly said they would organize a boycott of the Census. And this is, ultimately why we have the unsatisfactory compromise that we have ended up with. It will not, without making heroic assumptions, produce a credible count of the trans population or an >>

estimate of the proportion of the population that are in some way gender non conforming. Brilliant. Well played guys. But then again, at no point did anyone ever seem very interested in that. Apart from the social scientists that are now being vilified. Spot the irony?

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