The Sunday Telegraph has interviewed Professor Alice Sullivan, the lead author of the recently published Sullivan Review, which urged public bodies to go back to collecting data on biological sex. In a revelation that may surprise some, the Left-wing academic says she thinks Donald Trump is right when it comes to trans issues, eg, that biological men should not be allowed to compete against biological women in women’s sports.
Sullivan, a professor of sociology and a quantitative data scientist at University College London, was commissioned by the previous Conservative government to investigate how data on biological sex is collected by public bodies after deep concerns were raised about the stranglehold of gender ideology in our key organisations. She was chosen to do the review because of her specialist work on the topic and well-publicised views on the need to record accurate data on sex.
“Sex and gender identity are distinct characteristics and are not interchangeable,” has always been her message. “But unfortunately people in a great many organisations don’t understand data collection as a discipline and have been taking advice from other people who don’t understand it either; the result is a mess. We need – we have a responsibility – to record both sex and gender identity”.
She and her team carried out interviews, collated evidence and heard from whistleblowers too fearful of reprisals to speak out. What they uncovered was shocking; across key organisations like the NHS, schools, the police and civil service, factual information on biological sex has been replaced by subjective (and highly contested) feedback on gender identity since 2015.
As a consequence “robust accurate data” has been lost, the review concluded. Criminals – including sex offenders – are being permitted to choose a self-identified ‘gender’ rather than be identified by their biological sex, and the police and courts are complying. Then there are the schools that immediately change children’s ‘gender’ on IT systems if they self-identify as the opposite sex – often without consulting the parents – and civil servants hounded out for perfectly ordinary opinions on biological sex. It’s absurd. Enter the Sullivan Review. For those longing to turn the tide on aggressive gender politics, this detailed 226-page document has drawn a long-overdue line in the sand.
Maya Forstater, CEO of pressure group Sex Matters welcomed its findings: “This review is devastatingly clear about the harms caused by carelessness with sex data and a decade-long failure of the Civil Service to maintain impartiality and uphold data standards. The destruction of data about sex has caused real harm to individuals and research, and undermined the integrity of policy-making. Conflating sex and gender identity is not a harmless act of kindness but a damaging dereliction of duty.”
Or, as transgender lobbyists TransActual put it on their website; “This review is providing an academic gloss on what is a political call to strip trans people of our hard-won rights to privacy, dignity, and respect in public spaces.”
It’s the sort of binary response that has landed Britain in such a nonsensical quagmire in the first place. Sullivan has, in fact, called on organisations to record gender preference as well as sex when gathering data – but nuance has gone the same way as common sense.
Thankfully cometh the hour cometh the quantitative data scientist in the shape of Prof Alice Sullivan, who is as far from a Gradgrindian number-cruncher as you can imagine. To my mind it all feels terribly bleak. But when we meet, in her corner of north London, where the magnolia trees are in full creamy bloom and the local coffee shop is so vegan I almost cause a riot when I unwittingly ask for “real milk”, Sullivan is in surprisingly high spirits.
“I’m optimistic. I think this review marks a watershed. It has taken a long time but I really do believe we are beyond the point where we can be silenced. It’s the beginning of the end for no debate.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? I can’t help suggesting that Donald Trump of all people may have had a part to play in changing the proverbial mood music surrounding gender issues.
“As a life-long Leftie, it feels uncomfortable to be put in the position of agreeing with Donald Trump. But the fact is that he is simply saying that there are two sexes and that this matters, for example in prisons and sports. If Donald Trump says that the earth is round, should Leftists claim it is flat just to avoid being on the same side as him? This kind of tribal thinking has been horribly damaging to the Left. The idiotic positions that the Democrats took on these issues helped to gift the election to Trump. Mainstream politicians of all stripes need to learn from this that denying observable facts about the world is dangerous.”
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Sometimes, during such madness, you just need a quick dose of Ricky Gervais. A man after my own heart, he says what he thinks and doesn’t give a sh*t who he offends;
https://x.com/rickygervais/status/1906060125711765889
I do care who I offend. I keep quiet when I know my opinion will offend a relative or friend, however I will happily give them facts that they may feel uncomfortable with.
I am happy to offend didacts and pedants who fail to consider others themselves.
I happily share facts ( and opinions ) certain people feel uncomfortable with on here regularly. But then I’m very much a proponent of the “offence is taken, never given” approach, which tends to sort the true supporters of free speech from those who are fake and have an inability to practice what they preach. The hypocrites, who are predictably triggered, then out themselves.
The fact I collect haters on here the same way a sheep’s arse collects whinnets tends to supports this.
Hahaha! Brilliant!
Two sexes, XY is not XX, testosterone is not estrogen – separated by reality from a rainbow of narrative, agenda, delusion, truth-twisting, fantasy, opportunism, mental illness, etc, etc.
Knowing someone’s sex is critical for accurate diagnosis of many physical conditions of ill health. Knowing someone’s preferred gender is likely only of use in the diagnosis of limited mental conditions.
I can say I honestly have never felt the need to identify myself as anything, certainly not a “rightie”, or a “centrally”. Lefties love to belong to a group. Anyway, good that she can admit that she believes Trump is right about something. I’m sure it’s a wrench for her. Maybe she’ll eventually figure out that she’s been fed lies about him all along, by the very “lefties” she identifies with. Let’s hope.
“Sex and gender identity are distinct characteristics and are not interchangeable,” says Professor Sullivan.
Professor, if you believe that, you believe anything.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you are delusional.
So far so good, though can the Prof explain to me what “gender identity” is? How is it measured, judged? Who is qualified to determine it? How many “gender identities” are there? Can she name them? What is the medical or other significance of “gender identity”? Professor of bullshit. I’ve got crappy A Levels in English, French and History and I know that “gender identity” is a nonsense concept.
“Alice took her undergraduate degree in PPE at Balliol College, Oxford (1992-1995), and went on to take an MSc (1996) and DPhil (2000) in Sociology at Nuffield College Oxford. Alice was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Nuffield College Oxford from 2000-2003. In 2003 she joined the UCL Institute of Education, initially as a Research Officer. Alice was Director of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) for ten years, from 2010-2020. In 2020, she took up the role of Head of Research at the UCL Social Research Institute (SRI).”
This lukewarm, reluctantly pro-Trump article can hardly counterbalance Telegraph’s sustained attacks on Trump and Elon, led by truly deranged writers, all Biden/Harris/Obama fanatical supporters. They keep losing readership because of that, but they carry on doing it, funded by their future American owners.
How can a person know what a man feels like or a woman feels like?
Being of one and one only biological sex you feel as you feel. You can’t know what it is to feel like a man or feel like a woman, you can’t differentiate. You can only know what cold is, if you have felt warm.
Anyone who ‘feels’ they are in the wrong body is no different than an anorexic ‘feeling’ they are fat. It demands sensitivity and understanding but ultimately they are not well mentally.
The sad thing is that a professor has to clamber over her own personal ad hominem prejudices to agree with the blindingly obvious. The decline of academia is very evident.