Maya Forstater

PS @RoryFitzESS I'd be very happy to discuss this with you offline.

Gender was always (and still often is) treated as a synonym for sex. So I don’t think it would have been an issue for historical papers. It’s only recently that some people have started to use gender to mean ‘gender identity’ as opposed to a social structure.

So we now need to be really clear in distinguishing between: 1 sex; 2: gender (social structure treating m and f differently based on sex); and 3: gender identity. It strikes me that 3 might be better captured with some kind of scale.

But of course it depends what is meant by gender identity, and that is far from clear. We shouldn’t try to measure it until we know what we’re trying to capture.

Yes, danger with current conflation goes two ways. (1) most people will answer a question on 'gender' with their sex (using the old convention) but then this is interpreted as meaning everyone has a "gender identity" (although it's not clear what that is).

(2) some people find it uncomfortable to answer a question about their sex, or they don't believe it's a legitimate concept. You still want to survey these ppl to avoid bias and u still want to know their actual sex.