Public bodies should categorise gender identity using 24 separate definitions, the Scottish Government has claimed.
In updated guidance for data collection on sex and gender, its Interim Chief Statistician Ally McAlpin advised Government-funded bodies to document “trans status” under a variety of contentious headings, including “Agender”, “Demigender”, and “Gender non-conforming”.
Government guidance states that data collected in this area should enable bodies such as NHS Scotland, Sport Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service “to design, plan, monitor and evaluate services that are sensitive to the needs of all of Scotland”.
Definitions
According to the new coding framework, “Agender” denotes or relates “to a person who does not identify as having a gender”.
“Demigender”, it says, refers to “someone who only partially (not wholly) identifies” as either a male or a female “whatever their assigned gender at birth”.
And the category “Gender non-conforming” is defined as someone “whose behaviour or appearance does not conform to prevailing cultural and social expectations about what is appropriate to their gender”.
Among other definitions offered are those for “Pangender”, “Bigender”, “Detransitioned”, “Genderfluid” and “Androgynous”.
‘Subjective categories’
Dr Kath Murray, of the policy analysis group MurrayBlackburnMackenzie, said: “Data collection by public bodies should serve a clear function. It is not a validation exercise.
“It is difficult to see why any public body would spend resources classifying data on trans status into multiple subjective subcategories, many of which are circular, hard to understand, and/or contested.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The point of the survey is to collect information on the respondents’ trans history and how they would define it.”
Gender self-ID
In May, Scotland’s First Minister claimed that men can be defined as women.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland, John Swinney stated: “I believe a woman is an adult female born as a woman, and I also accept that transgender women are defined as women.”
The Scottish Government’s gender self-ID Bill, which the SNP intends to revive if the UK Government lifts its veto, would allow 16-year-olds to change their legal sex by self-declaration without a medical diagnosis, and reduce the waiting time for adults from two years to just three months.
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