A British academic has been deplatformed by the Canadian government over her research-informed belief in the importance of biological sex in policy and law.
As reported by the Telegraph, Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology at University College London (UCL), was set to give an online talk to staff at the Canadian Department of Justice last week about the problems with prioritising self-described gender identity data over biological sex, which the Canadian government now does “by default”.
However, she was abruptly told the internal event meant to mark International Women’s Day had been scrapped at short notice, with no official reason given.
Prof Sullivan, an expert on data on sex and gender identity, said: “After I had sent my slides, I received a phone call from a member of the department saying that she had been told to cancel the event. She was not authorised to give me any explanation but indicated that, of course, we both knew what the reason was… you are not allowed to talk about sex in Canada.”
While sex refers to the biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, gender is a person’s internal sense of self as a man, woman, a blend of both, or neither, and may not correspond to their sex at birth, according to the World Health Organisation. Trans activists and LGBT+ campaign groups like Stonewall believe gender identity takes priority over biological sex in policy and law, and insist there can be no debate about this belief.
Two years ago, Canada became the first country in the world to collect and publish official data on gender identity via its national census, and recorded 31,555 trans women, 27,905 trans men and 41,355 non-binary people.
This change followed a report, released in 2018 by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and the Department of Justice, which said government departments and agencies “should collect or display gender information by default” and that sex information is “to be used by exception”. The report, titled Modernizing the Government of Canada’s Sex and Gender Information Practices, went on to state that even in cases where a sex identifier is necessary, “an exception should be made for transgender, non-binary and two-spirit individuals whose sex identifier does not align with their gender, so that their identity document is consistent with their gender”.
Since then, the official policy for government departments and agencies has been to ask people for their gender instead of their sex, unless absolutely necessary.
Prof Sullivan said her talk “would have discussed the value of collecting data on both, rather than avoiding data collection on sex”.
She went on to describe the Canadian government’s decision to cancel her talk as “shocking”, and questioned why public officials would regard an attempt to “open up the conversation” on this hugely important issue as problematic. “Clearly, there are some people in the Department of Justice who want to do that, or I wouldn’t have been invited in the first place, but they have been shut down,” she said.
In an interview with Radio 4’s Today programme back in 2021, Prof Sullivan explained why it is essential for the sex/gender distinction to be maintained, in policy and law: “Sex is an important predictor of outcomes across all areas of life, including education, wages, crime, and physical and mental health,” she said. “If we do not monitor sex differences, we cannot tackle sex discrimination.”
Prof Sullivan continued: “Gender identity is not the same thing as sex. Understanding people’s identities is important, especially at a time when increasing numbers of girls are identifying as trans or non-binary. But we cannot simply assume that the lives of these girls are not also affected by the fact that they are female.”
The UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) had hoped to adopt a position similar to that of Canada, when in the run-up to the 2021 England and Wales census it proposed advising respondents that they could answer the question on sex in terms of their subjective gender identity, rather than their biological sex.
At the time, Prof Sullivan coordinated a letter to the Times from more than 80 quantitative social scientists, protesting the ONS’s stance, and noting that officials had “failed to engage in a serious and timely way with those outside government who have expertise on the collection and use of population data in the social sciences”.
Following a judicial review by campaign group Fair Play for Women, the ONS was forced to change its guidance, and eventually reverted to advising that people should answer the sex question to reflect their natal or legal sex.
Canada’s Department of Justice isn’t the first public body to cancel Prof Sullivan on the basis of her academic research expertise.
In 2020, the soon-to-be-head of LGBT+ charity Stonewall, Nancy Kelly, was the deputy chief executive of NatCen, a research body that agreed to have Prof Sullivan barred from a seminar discussion of how Britain conducts its census.
Prof Sullivan had initially been invited to talk at the event by NatCen, which works closely with the ONS. However, the event was cancelled after some NatCen members alleged that Sullivan held “anti-trans views”. Emails disclosed under a Subject Access Request (SAR) reveal fears “that including Sullivan as a panellist could be seen as NatCen endorsing anti-trans views, risking reputational damage and perhaps more importantly risking harm to staff and audience members”. The emails circulated among NatCen’s six-strong leadership team, which included Kelly, say the body’s LGBT+ network “suggested she not take part or that the event be cancelled”. Days later, the event was scrapped.
Prof Sullivan has since revealed that the ONS was also “complicit” in cancelling this opportunity for researchers and policymakers to engage with mainstream views on the measurement of sex.
Following her no-platforming, Prof Sullivan met with NatCen CEO Guy Goodwin, and was told that a “subsidiary factor” in the cancellation of the event was the “mood music” coming from the ONS. Goodwin said that people at the ONS were unhappy about the public letter of concern that had appeared in the Times, had questioned her motives, and had threatened to pull out of the event if she was allowed to speak.
Earlier this year, it was reported that senior staff at the ONS – all of whom happen to be on the body’s LGBT+ staff network – had voiced concerns that trans staff at the body might not feel “safe” in the workplace, after its methodology for counting transgender people in the census was questioned by the UK’s statistics regulator, as well as leading academics, including Prof Sullivan.
Michael Biggs, an Oxford University sociology professor who was one of the first to query the ONS transgender data, said: “It is troubling that the ONS has treated scrutiny of its data as a threat to its staff.”
He added: “A key question is whether ONS has been granting its ‘LGBTQ+ and Allies Network’ undue influence over the collection of data on sex and gender.”
The ONS is the publicly funded executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, which is accountable to Parliament.
