The Rorschach Test 87
The release of some early 2021 census statistics relating to gender was greeted with glee and elation by Nancy Kelley, CEO of Stonewall in the UK. Vindication at last!
(Kelley declined to mention that her figure of 262,000 was substantially less than half the number of trans and non-binary individuals – 600,000 – that her organisation has habitually claimed for years.)
The census suggested that England and Wales are home to 48,000 transwomen (and 48,000 transmen), from the total who’d answered No to the voluntary question asking if their gender identity aligned with their sex at birth.
(The largest number that said No, around 118,000, didn’t tick the boxes of transwoman, transman or non-binary, nor wrote in their own. An unknown number of these may have been rejecting “gender” altogether. 30,000 ticked “non-binary” and 18,000 wrote in a gender because they were REALLY special.)
But, as we’ve been told time out of number, we must accept what people say about themselves. So 48,000 transwomen it is. So few. So vulnerable. And that number got me thinking.
