A poll has found that more than a third of UK residents do not know that trans women are in fact men.
According to The Telegraph:
Campaigners said that the finding showed politicians, journalists and pollsters needed to be more explicit when speaking about gender issues, as in many cases members of the public did not know what politically correct terms meant.
The survey, carried out by Edinburgh-based policy analysis group Murray Blackburn Mackenzie (MBM), found that 35 per cent wrongly believed that a “transgender woman” was someone born female, or they were unsure.
The confusion was even greater for the shortened term “trans woman”, with 40 per cent either being unsure or believing it meant someone who was registered female at birth.
MBM said several bodies, such as the BBC, regularly used the terms without further explanation, for example, in stories about transgender participation in sport or the debate over self-ID.
In many cases, the terms were adopted as a result of lobbying from trans rights activists, who often claim it is discriminatory and offensive to refer to a transgender person’s biological sex.
However, MBM said the results of its poll showed there were “high levels of misunderstanding and confusion” about the terms and that there was a need for language to be more explicit.
“Using these terms, without spelling out what they mean for a person’s sex as matter of course, will leave a large minority of people at best uncertain,” Lisa Mackenzie, one of MBM’s founders, said.
“At worst, they will have a back-to-front understanding of what they are being told or asked.”
She added: “These results show that to avoid confusion and misunderstanding, journalists and others need to spell out clearly what sex of person is being referred to, in any context where sex matters.
“We also hope organisations which need to communicate with the public will commission further research as necessary, to understand how language here may confuse or clarify.”
