Mick Hartley

It looks like the Tories are firming up on gender nonsense.From the Telegraph:

The Science Secretary will on Tuesday unveil a review into the “utter nonsense” of public bodies being urged to collect data on self-identified gender rather than biological sex.

Speaking at the Conservative Party Conference, Michelle Donelan will sound the alarm at what she calls the “denial of biology and the steady creep of political correctness”.

Ms Donelan has been moved to act by examples such as the NHS sometimes using a person’s stated gender rather than their biological sex in data records.

The review will last six months and be headed up by Prof Alice Sullivan, the head of research at UCL’s Social Research Institute.

It will analyse the collection of research and statistics by all public bodies on sex and gender, with specific recommendations to be made at the end.

Ms Donelan will say in her speech on Tuesday: “To those who think they have the right to impose this utter nonsense on science, let this message go out from this conference hall today… We are safeguarding scientific research from the denial of biology and the steady creep of political correctness.”

She will also say: “We are making a stand before it suffocates British identity and values entirely… That is why we are depoliticising science, because science is the most extraordinary force for good – from curing disease to growing our food – [and] we must keep it that way.”

The intervention comes as the Conservative Party hardens its position on the importance of biological sex being recognised amid the debate about transgender rights….

Rishi Sunak’s Government has long been promising to publish guidance for schools on how they should act when pupils want to self-identify as a different gender from the one assigned at birth.

Whoops. And it was all going so well. Repeating the nonsense about "assigned at birth" and confusing gender with sex.

The minister herself knows better:

“Any credible scientist will tell you that gender and sex are two different things… To suggest otherwise is not only scientifically illiterate, it damages scientific research and statistics in everything from population studies to medicine to sport.”

Telegraph journalists take note.