Blog posts

10 Things I Learnt When Talking about LGBTQ Data

7 August 2025

From audience groans, giggles and gasps, what ideas about gender, sex and sexuality data resonate with audiences and what ideas fall flat.

Diversity data eats itself

27 May 2025

The UK Supreme Court ruling suggests that all public authorities should collect data about a person’s ‘biological sex’ – how would this work in practice and how can we ensure we don’t abandon inclusive approaches to data?

The Politics of Categories

16 April 2025

Categories used by the state to sort people into boxes – according to shared characteristics – are never neutral. Rather, the number of boxes available and the borders of categories are always contingent on who is in charge. The design of sex and gender categories is therefore not some dusty topic reserved for administrators and bureaucrats – it has become the main battlefield for trans equalities in Scotland and the UK.

A Trumpian approach to sex and gender data

19 March 2025

The UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has published a Review of Data, Statistics and Research on Sex and Gender, a hangover from the former Tory government’s mission to address ‘wokeism in science’.

Goldilocks Data: Scotland’s census and the counting of LGBTQ communities

26 June 2024

For campaigners and commentators opposed to the inclusion of LGBTQ people in society, what is the ideal number of LGBTQ individuals? A statistic big enough to stoke fears about the ‘explosion’ of queer identities and impressionability of young people but also small enough to discount the views of LGBTQ community leaders as an irrelevance. Trying to establish that perfect percentage – neither ‘too big’ nor ‘too small’ – is a type of Goldilocks Data and is a trap that accompanies the publication of LGBTQ population data.