Sorry, PinkNews: Kirstie Allsopp’s pro-trans views are not backed up by your science and facts

PinkNews put out this, frankly, garbage article a few days ago:

And, despite the smug headline, this piece does not in fact provide “science and facts” to back up what Kirstie Allsopp says. Let’s go through each of the tweets, one by one:

The ‘Teeny, weeny polka-dot-bikini-sized minority’

By way of backing this tweet up, PinkNews first quote figures from the 2021 England & Wales census data.  As it happens, they misrepresent the data¹ because the overall number of trans people it recorded is more than 260,000 but, nevertheless, the census data does indeed show that trans people are a small minority. 

They also quote a study from the Williams Institute for US data, saying that 0.5% of US adults identify as trans, and 1.4% of 13–17-year-olds, which is indeed what it found.

The problem is: that isn’t the point that needed backing up.  I don’t think many people would have disputed that trans people are in the minority.

The contentious thing Kirstie claims, for which PinkNews offer no “science [or] facts” is that because trans people are a small minority that therefore means they cannot possibly have any power over women. That is entirely faulty logic.

Here’s a somewhat silly hypothetical example to illustrate why:

A quick search of the open electoral register reveals that there are 26 men in the UK called “Archibald Green” (a name I arbitrarily selected²). Even assuming there are quite a few who are not on the register, that’s an even teenier, weenier polka-dot-bikinier-sized minority!

So, according to Kirstie’s logic, if you are part of that tiny minority who are named Archibald Green you cannot possibly have any power over women, who make up 50% of the population, right!? 

So, men called Archibald Green are safe and should be fine to use womens’ toilets, right? And if I change my name to Archibald Green, I can use the womens’ changing rooms, right?

Obviously, I am being facetious - this suggestion is stupid, and we can see that it clearly isn’t the overall numbers of your demographic group that matter. We aren’t assembling these groups en masse to face off in some colossal hand-to-hand battle. Whether there are lots more people like you or not has no bearing on whether you, as an individual from that group, might present a risk to others.

The situation is no different for men who identify as trans and want access to women’s spaces, or certainly not if they can self-ID. (A related question is the pattern of offending in transgender people, trans-identified males in particular, but we’ll cover that under Kirstie’s next tweet.)

Ultimately, what PinkNews have done here is back up the part of the statement that no one was arguing with, yet provide zero evidence for the part that needed justification.

I might just as well say “trans people are in a tiny minority and therefore Winston Churchill was an aardvark”. I can back that up equally (in)effectively with the same data.

‘The danger of everything trans’

The actual point Kirstie makes is valid, here, I think: you don’t have to be a parent to care about the welfare of kids. I guess PinkNews didn’t think so though, as they don’t discuss that or provide any of their “science and facts” to validate it. Instead, they misattribute her description that the perspective is “bizarre” to their own statement:

They focus on the tweet she is responding to, which refers more generally to the dangers represented by including trans people in certain places. They read this as referring to trans-identified males in women’s spaces, which is not made clear but I think is probably valid - there are minimal risks to men from including trans-identified females in men’s sports etc. so that would make sense.

They make a sweeping statement that this type of language is employed with the explicit intent to “ostracise the transgender community.” This is not a view that Kirstie expresses anywhere - it appears to be their own opinion and, again, they do not provide any “science [or] facts” to back it up.

They then quote a fragment of the EHRC Code of Practice for the 2010 Equality Act, I think meaning to show that it would be unlawful not to allow transgender people access to single-sex spaces. However, the full paragraph reads as follows: 

13.57

If a service provider provides single- or separate sex services for women and men, or provides services differently to women and men, they should treat transsexual people according to the gender role in which they present. However, the Act does permit the service provider to provide a different service or exclude a person from the service who is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or who has undergone gender reassignment. This will only be lawful where the exclusion is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

As we can see, it provides explicit permission for lawfully excluding trans individuals where there is a legitimate aim.

PinkNews then refers to claims it says are “shared widely by anti-LGBTQ+ campaigners”: that trans people pose a “danger to children”. Even though it is in quotes, this does not appear to be actually quoting anything specific - it’s not in either of the tweets above and they provide no examples.

They reference another Williams Institute study, which reports transgender people suffer four times the level of victimisation as non-trans people. There are significant issues with this study, which the authors acknowledge themselves, saying that the “study is limited by relatively small sample sizes of transgender people”, that they “could not investigate victimization at the intersection of gender identity, race and ethnicity, age, marital status, urbanicity, and other characteristics” and noting that “there are also general limitations in the NCVS, such as the reliance on selfreport.”

However, purely for the sake of argument, let’s assume we can put those limitations aside. Even then, being a victim of such actions does not prevent you from being a potential danger to others. The majority of murder victims are male, but that doesn’t prevent the majority of murders being committed by men. It doesn’t make men in general safe to include in women’s spaces.

This study might be an argument for not putting trans-identified males in men’s spaces, but that is not the same thing as establishing they should be permitted in women’s spaces.

Bizarrely, they then quote a Swedish study that they say shows trans-identified males were no different to females in terms of criminality. The study looks at this group in the period 1973-2003, which is obviously not especially current, and is also a significantly different group to the males who identify as transgender today. In fact, the linked parliament document they provide as a reference says:

It is crucial to emphasise that this study looks only at those who have undergone hormonal and surgical transition, which is a much tighter group than individuals who self- identify as transgender.

It then goes on to say precisely the opposite of what PinkNews claim it shows:

The researchers state:

‘male-to-females . . . retained a male pattern regarding criminality. The same was true regarding violent crime.’

MtF transitioners were over 6 times more likely to be convicted of an offence than female comparators and 18 times more likely to be convicted of a violent offence. The group had no statistically significant differences from other natal males, for convictions in general or for violent offending. 

In addition to this, there is further evidence accumulating that trans-identified males commit sex offences at rates significantly higher than females.

For example: this FOI request, which reveals that there were 56 trans-identified males in prison principally for a sexual offence at the time of the census, compared to the 109 females given in wider prison statistics. Based on the census, there are at least 116 times more women in the general population than trans-identified males³. Putting this information together points to the fact that there is a much higher rate of sexual offending.

If females were offending at the same rate as trans-identified males, we would expect to see around 6,500 women in jail for sex offences. Or to put it another way, trans-identified males offend about 60 times more than biological women.

There is also the response to this recent FOI request, which indicates that nearly half of all transgender prisoners (97 of 197) in March 2021 had been convicted of a sexual offence. It is still awaiting further clarification that would allow better analysis, but offers supporting evidence nonetheless.

Furthermore, even if there were evidence that historically, trans-identified males committed fewer crimes than other males, that would still not justify extending that assumption to others who simply self-identify in the future.

To take my somewhat silly Archibald Green example from above a little further, let’s imagine I searched all the records of criminal convictions and I established that no one called Archibald Green had ever committed any crime, ever.

It’s not hard to see that this wouldn’t provide any meaningful reason to give men with this name a free pass into women’s spaces.  Because there is nothing stopping any other man adopting that name, there is no logical reason to assume that future men with that name would act the same way.  There are no other criteria, so any man at all could identify into the “safe” group.

Continuing to exclude men called Archibald Green isn’t saying that all men with that name are definitely predators, it is simply saying that there is no legitimate reason to make an exception for this subset of males.

Exactly the same is true of males who identify as transgender. It’s not saying that all trans-identified males are definitely predators, it is simply saying that there is no legitimate reason to make an exception for this subset of males.

I am also male and, as you would hope, I have no intention of sexually assaulting anyone. And I would feel upset if someone who knew me personally said they thought I was a rapist. But I don’t take offence to being excluded from women’s spaces, because I understand that I belong to a demographic that is collectively responsible for the problem, and that this is a way of pragmatically making the vulnerable group safer.

Majority of public support trans people

Here they quote Kirstie’s support for Dylan Mulvaney and the use of pronouns as being “kind & polite”. She states her opinion, as she is entitled to do. I’m not entirely sure what “science and facts” you could sensibly provide to prove this.

However, PinkNews attempt to do so by referencing a survey that found a majority of people were “supportive of trans people”, which is pretty vague, and a YouGov survey they commissioned themselves that showed support for self-ID (their link is broken, but I think it refers to this one).

I haven’t drilled into the details of those surveys, but the fact is that they don’t explicitly back Kirstie’s views on Dylan Mulvaney, and Kirstie says nothing about self-ID in her tweet. The insertion of the self-ID issue is purely propaganda introduced by PinkNews.

Even putting all of that aside, even if they had managed to secure a poll that showed 99% of respondents explicitly said “I personally endorse this specific tweet by Kirstie” it would still only establish that her view was popular in that group. It would not establish any objective truth to what she says.

‘Using preferred pronouns is simply good manners’

Again, they don’t seem to bother referring to much of what Kirstie actually says. They continue with their own views, citing a Lancet study that purports to show that having the desired name and gender on ID correlates with better mental health.

The study does establish a correlation between these things but does not prove any causality, due to a range of other factors that could contribute to the results. For example, there are significantly more participants living in poverty in the groups where mental health and suicidality was recorded as being worse. Therefore, the conclusions that can be drawn are fairly limited.

This is reflected in the language the authors themselves use in their interpretation of the results, saying that “possession of gender-concordant IDs might improve mental health among trans persons”. (emphasis mine)

All of this has nothing at all to do with Kirstie’s tweet. 

In fact, much of what Kirstie says seems to - superficially, at least - align with gender critical views, arguing for the protection of women’s sport and vulnerable women’s spaces. She goes on to indicate she does not like being called a cis woman and prefers to be simply called a woman.

I’d say it's unclear what she means by some of this and what, for example, she thinks protecting women’s sport and spaces means. But whatever she meant, PinkNews have not provided any “science [or] facts” to elucidate.

‘Biological women’

Again, I think PinkNews are superimposing their own agenda into Kirstie’s tweet. She calls out this particular user’s bio and pinned tweet and, to me, what leaps out is not the phrase “biological women”, it’s the references to “sick freaks at childrens [sic] parties”, “paedophiles” and “importing the filth”.

I too would be put off by a profile like this and it has nothing to do with the reference to biological women.

They go on to claim that the phrase “biological woman” has been “weaponised” but the only evidence they offer is that the prime minister said “adult human female” and “biological sex matters”. And that the EHRC suggested clarifying legal terminology in the Equality Act to refer to biological sex.

It’s certainly not clear from the tweet that any of this is Kirstie’s view and, even if the tweet had read “I despise the phrase ‘biological woman’ - it has been weaponised” they STILL haven’t provided any “science and facts” to establish this is anything other than her opinion.

It’s also interesting that they make out the EHRC to be a problematic organisation in this last section of the article, pointing out they have been “condemned” by “trans advocates”, whilst at the same time quoting from their publications to support their cause higher up in the article.

I’m going to wrap up here. I have a staff of one (two, if you include my wife as adhoc editor), salaries are sub-minimum-wage and I’m fairly convinced I’ve spent significantly more time on this than anyone at PinkNews.

Hopefully I’ve done enough to convince you what a steaming dungheap of meritless clickbait the original article is, and maybe cover a few interesting points along the way.

1. As PinkNews state, there are around 48,000 transmen recorded in the census and a similar number of transwomen. However, PinkNews overlook the fact that there are a further 166,106 people who identified as trans on the census, making the total 262,113 trans individuals.

Obviously, that is still a tiny minority (around 0.5%) with respect to the overall population, but it speaks to the misleading journalism that is going on here - they’ve cherry picked the smaller numbers. Or maybe they just didn’t read it, I don’t know.

2. “Archibald Green” is a name I arbitrarily chose by looking up uncommon first names and randomly picking a surname. I wanted something that was relatively rare to make my point. However, just to be clear: this is a completely fictional association, and I in no way wish to imply anything about anyone with this name.

3. I’ve been as conservative as possible here - I’ve assumed that anyone who identified as trans in the census but was not a “trans man” (who would have to be female) would give us the upper limit for the number of trans-identified males - that is, a total of 213,678 (see footnote 1 above).

Bearing in mind that the gender identity question was only given to those over 16, I then took the total number of females from the census data who were over this age, which amounts to 25,039,098.

We can also subtract the number of “trans men” from above (48,435), as they would be included in the total. That gives us 24,990,663 females.

Based on these numbers, there are at least 116 times more females than trans-identified males.