Publication announcement! 🚨📚 "Sex, Lies and Statistics: Why We Need Evidence-Based Policy on Sex and Gender" "Sex, Lies and Statistics" documents the missteps society has made by turning its back on evidence when it comes to sex and gender, and shows that accurate data is vital in providing a path to evidence-based policy. Pre-order your copy now. amazon.co.uk/Sex-Lies-Statis… @politybooks #Gender #PublicPolicy #Statistics #Data #Sociology

🚨 BREAKING: CAF has written to Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor on behalf of several academics who fear professional repercussions if they raise concerns in their own names about a University-wide communication offering “support and advice” specifically to black members of staff. As reported in today’s Telegraph, the message, circulated following the death of Dr Jason Arday, contained a statement from five members of Cambridge’s Senior Black Leaders Group, including two Deputy Vice-Chancellors and college heads. It presented contested claims about the “hyper-surveillance”, “structural pressures”, “hostility” and “systemic barriers” supposedly faced by black scholars at “high-profile institutions” as established facts. The signatories described themselves as “institutional advocates”, speaking “in our senior roles”, before the communication concluded by inviting black staff to contact them for “support and advice”. The academics who independently approached CAF are concerned both about the apparent race-based offer and what the wider message means for those who disagree with its theoretically informed analysis. In the particularly charged circumstances surrounding Arday’s death, they fear that challenging its claims could see them regarded by those same senior figures as contributing to the very “hostility” it describes — a concern that extends to raising the matter informally with managers. It also raises an obvious, albeit uncomfortable question: would the advertised support and advice be as readily available to them? That academics feel unable to raise concerns of this kind within their university without protecting their identities is something Cambridge’s senior leadership might wish to reflect upon. CAF therefore agreed to raise the matter on their behalf. In our letter, we ask Cambridge what the support comprised, whether access was afforded or facilitated on the same basis irrespective of race, and the legal and evidential basis for any difference. This matters because, under the Equality Act 2010, the question is not simply whether a non-black member of staff would ultimately have been refused help: the way access to a workplace benefit or service is afforded or facilitated can itself be relevant to whether there is less favourable treatment. And although the Act permits positive action, that’s only where the statutory conditions are met: there must be an evidential basis for reasonably believing that the relevant disadvantage, different need or disproportionately low participation exists, and the action must be proportionate to addressing it. Interestingly, Cambridge has now told the Telegraph that it also signposted general wellbeing support to everyone. That’s good to hear. But it doesn’t answer our question as to whether access to these senior figures’ support was offered on the same basis irrespective of race. We hope Cambridge will provide the necessary clarification and reassurance to resolve the matter without formal internal proceedings. We have asked for a response by 22 October, after which we will advise the academics concerned on the further steps available to them. CAF provides confidential casework support to academics, students and emeritus scholars, helping them pursue internal and regulatory remedies and, where appropriate, obtain specialist legal advice and representation. To help us take on more cases like this, please donate to our ringfenced legal fighting fund here: donorbox.org/support-the-com… You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter here: afcomm.org.uk/updates-from-t… Full story: telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…

♀️ WOMEN OF CAMDEN ASK 4 days until Holborn & St Pancras Elects its next MP Our letter in @NewJournal asks why violence against women & girls isn't higher on agenda. Camden records 3,466 VAWG crimes+ 2nd highest recorded rate of sexual violence in London.We deserve answers

If you care about how ESRC allocate social science research funding and want to be part of improving the system, this could be the job for you! fa-evzn-saasfaukgovprod1.fa.…

Or as his costar Geoffrey Toone once put it to me: “Christopher Lee, you can’t tell him anything. Either he’s flown one or his mother was one.”

I'll be giving an online lunchtime UCL lecture on 'How should we collect data on sex and gender identity?' on 12th November. Sign up! @IOE_London @ucl ucl.ac.uk/events/events/2026…

just published--and open access! (link @ end of thread). i describe a set of strategies academics use to shut down debate: citation practices; topic choices; professional gatekeeping; platform sharing; teaching practices; disciplinary practices. i give examples of all these strategies as they are used within trans philosophy & trans-inclusive feminist philosophy. and then i ask whether a) there can be a moral obligation to deploy some of these 'no debate' strategies on particular topics (e.g. trans, DEI, israel/gaza), and b) if there is, how that personal obligation trades off against our professional obligations as academics. i conclude that philosophy's no-debaters are most likely abusing their professional positions to personal ends. if you just want documentation of how politicized the research practice in one area of academic philosophy has become (in connection with the ongoing discussion about the politicization of the humanities) jump to section 2 (or see screenshots below).

The draft Conversion Practices Bill would silence therapists, harm children and divide families. That is the warning of our new report, which is based on 30 in-depth interviews with mental-health professionals. Read it here: sex-matters.org/posts/update…

CAF has been looking closely at the mandatory 90-minute “inclusivity training” that all Caius undergraduates are due to receive from Stop Hate UK from next week. Some of the publicly available material raises serious questions for us — both about the accuracy with which aspects of equality law are presented, and about the line between introducing students to contested concepts and requiring them to express assent to particular ways of understanding speech and social interaction. We will be writing to Cambridge to address some of those concerns later this week, once our draft has undergone legal review. But what we don’t yet know, and what may matter considerably from a legal and regulatory perspective, is what actually happens during the training. So if you’re a Caius student attending one of these sessions, or know someone who is, CAF would be very interested to hear from you afterwards. Are there quizzes, scenarios, exercises or tick-box questions? Are some answers treated as “correct”? Can students complete the training while openly disagreeing with propositions advanced during it? Are they ever required to repeat an exercise or answer until they select the approved response? Are students given materials they can retain? How are key terms like “harassment” and “discrimination” defined, if at all? And perhaps most importantly: did the training affect how willing you felt to contribute to discussions of difficult or contentious subjects afterwards? You can DM us via X, use the ‘get in touch’ function on our website, or email us directly at manager@afcomm.org.uk. Screenshots or contemporaneous notes would also be very useful. We’re happy to treat approaches in confidence. @theasewell05 @MaeveHalligan @lottietredgett @Fox_Claire @ProfAliceS @drianpace @astor_charlie

For those who don’t know, these materials were shared by our treasurer, Ava Foyle, at Caius college, and posted and commented on so astutely by Lavinia, our new secretary of @CUSocOfWomen. This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ideological narrative being pushed by the university as a whole.

At Caius College, Cambridge, attendance of these 1.5 hour-long inclusivity training sessions is mandatory for all undergrads. The sessions will be delivered by Stop Hate UK, who erroneously state that "gender identity" is a protected characteristic and that "Islamophobia is a crime." One would hope these are honest mistakes and they will be correcting them @stophateuk It will be interesting to hear what they have to say about the hate myself and others experienced at Cambridge for having the temerity to join a society for women that excludes men. Their website talks a lot about The Law and they seem to be very much in favour of the crime of Hate as a category: the word itself is menacingly capitalised throughout their material with the ominous implication that the violence or harassment ordinarily necessary for hatred to constitute a Hate Crime is somehow superfluous, and that simply Hating silently in your head should be sufficient. I wonder if they like the law so much when it comes to the protected characteristic of belief in the binary nature of sex and the Supreme Court judgment clarifying that sex in law means biological sex. We shall soon find out. In any case, by bringing them in and mandating attendance, Caius College is at best tacitly endorsing this ideological pressuring of students into being firmly on the woke side of a culture war they are determined not to wade out of, even given recent events. Training will of course include American rubbish about unconscious bias, microaggressions and how to be an Upstander against heteronormative hypermasculinity. No doubt some administrator has looked over this charity and their session descriptions and decided there's nothing at all controversial here, nothing political, just kindness.

"The last woman to be executed in the US...who transitioned from male to female while in prison, was convicted of stalking, raping and fatally stabbing an ex-girlfriend before transitioning." There are two sexes, and mammals cannot change from one to the other. Sex matters—as does the language we use to describe it—especially for women's safety. This bs from @thetimes helps nobody. @ProfAliceS

Fascinating piece.

With the release of the recent PISA results, there was a lot of discussion about it's methodology. For those interested, today I have put online a new, free to download 250-page textbook discussing such issues! zenodo.org/records/23030398 Please do share!

I loved this conversation. As an empirical economist, I have a few thoughts on this: If you count men as women and vice versa in official statistics (incl. income statistics) you severly distort the pay difference between men and women. Suppose you have self-ID and so ~ 1 % of men enter the statistics as female and maybe ~ 1 % of women enter the statistics as male. If those men earn above average and the women below (which is I think a reasonable assumption), the pay gap is distorted downwards. So it seems as if employers suddenly paid women better but it's a simple statistical artefact. Also, I recently discovered in (German) hospital statistics that you can select for sex when looking at hysterectomies (🤨). To my horror, I saw that out of roughly 66,000 hysterectomies every year, more than 700 are performed on "men." That's a non-negligible number. Imagine you're a health researcher and you want to research the effects of having had a hysterectomy on post-operative health or anything and you see 'male' patients in your data. Some might just throw this data out. Nobody in the end benefits from this. It's a bit like saying Christians do not appear in mortality data because they will be resurrected..

“If you don’t believe in free speech for your opponents, you don’t believe in free speech.”

Identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) has plummeted among younger teens in 2025 in the nationally representative YRBS survey from the CDC. Older teens show relative stability, consistent with data from young adults.

The entire set of ideas that got us here summed up in one quote

One of the aspects of the Tickle v Giggle case that doesn’t get the attention it should is the punishment for a reaction deemed offensive - without complaint or evidence - during cross examination in court. It is a direct attack of free speech, in my opinion. We laugh about it - because it is laughable - that I was fined $10,000 for laughing. It was a maybe 3 second laugh - I’ve even been told 3 seconds is an exaggeration, I don’t know - at evidence presented to me by the other side - their evidence - at something designed specifically to illicit a laugh, and BAM. $10,000. I swore to tell the truth, and I did. My instinctual reactions were true. It means that, from now on, even during cross examination you’re not free of punishment if you do or say something that could be deemed *offensive*. Even if those asking you the questions brought in the offensive material. This is the Australian way, apparently.

📊¿Por qué es importante que recopilemos datos incluyendo el indicador sexo? En este episodio del podcast de «Sex Matters», Helen Joyce @HJoyceGender habla con la profesora Alice Sullivan @ProfAliceS, socióloga del University College London, sobre su próximo libro *Sexo, Mentiras y Estadísticas*, que saldrá a la venta en noviembre. ♀️ ♂️ Alice explica por qué el sexo es una variable estadística esencial y cómo su confusión con la «identidad de género» oculta las diferencias en materia de salud, delincuencia y condiciones de vida.... Hablan sobre cómo la descalificación de la concepción común del sexo como algo real y biológico ha llevado a muchas personas a tener que ocultar sus verdaderas opiniones. Analizan cómo organizaciones públicas y privadas, desde la Oficina Nacional de Estadística hasta los organismos reguladores del deporte, han llegado a adoptar ideas marginales que pocas personas comparten, y por qué tantas instituciones han tratado a quienes plantean estas preocupaciones como si fueran el problema. Por último, Alice aborda la necesidad de reforzar la protección de la libertad de expresión y de poner fin a la cultura de la impunidad si se quiere restablecer el uso de datos basados en el sexo y la elaboración de políticas basadas en la evidencia. piped.video/watch?v=zxmYUlP9…

StatsNZ gets a mention - & not in a good way. "Why does it matter whether we collect data on sex? Helen Joyce talks to sociologist Professor Alice Sullivan of University College London about her forthcoming book Sex, Lies & Statistics, due out in November." #SexMatters