By Dee McCullough, Lesbian Labour & LabourLGB

A fabulous new initiative is under way to create a Welsh Women’s Health website, and when they asked stakeholders for feedback I was first in the queue. I couldn’t fault the website — but the consultation itself had a fatal flaw. As always, we stakeholders were asked to give demographic details, one of which was “tick the box if you’re LGBTQIA+”

Data collection is an important part of a modern, diverse nation, because any efforts to fight discrimination can only be built on accurate information. But when you combine different groups, it makes the data meaningless — especially when it involves those whose rights are in direct conflict; for example, women and lesbians against men who ‘identify’ as women or lesbians.

Conflating groups with conflicting characteristics is known as “forced teaming”. It’s a form of parasitism, with the infiltrating group seeking to take advantage of the goodwill towards the host. Forced teaming gained official sanction in the 2021 census, and thanks to Professor Alice Sullivan’s pioneering analysis we now know it results in a catalogue of harms. Not least of these is to render demographic data meaningless.

Let’s be clear: sex is central to LGB. It defines who we’re attracted to, and it’s why people have historically discriminated against us. For TQIA+ people, sex is far less important; they believe in a “gendered identity”. This is the core of the conflict: we are simply not the same, and should not be treated as such. It’s impossible to serve both groups equally; in fact, the only people it helps are those who seek to manipulate or obscure the data.

Welsh Women’s Health is hardly an isolated example. Gays, lesbians and bisexuals are every day bombarded with the claim that “there is no LGB without the T”. This thought-terminating cliche brooks no disagreement, even though it puts data collectors at real risk of breaking the law.

Under GDPR, there are strict standards for organisations that gather personal information. Data must be necessary to achieve a specific goal. If businesses want to learn about groups with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, forced teaming renders this information useless, or worse than useless. So why is it happening?

While forced teaming is often a deliberate strategy deployed by political activists, it can also be achieved by accident. For example, when organisations buy software from abroad (such as the United States), they often unwittingly import and embed political ideas and norms that aren’t compliant with local rules and regulations.

Yet this mess can’t really be blamed on the software firms. It’s every organisation’s responsibility to ensure processes and technology are compliant with the law, yet that’s made increasingly difficult under a wider corporate culture that persistently elides LGB and TQ+ under the banner of progressivism. Leaving data collection aside for one moment, we’ve seen the devastating effect this has on staff morale, with research finding a third of LGB employees face hostility due to their beliefs, and two thirds feel pressure to affirm views they do not hold.

Nor is forced teaming limited to the workplace. In fact, the hostile takeover of LGB is in evidence everywhere. To take just one example, last week the BBC reported on Senegal’s harsh new sentencing rules for “LGBT people”. Except the proposed law is about same-sex acts. It doesn’t cover ‘identity’ at all.

It should go without saying that we abhor unlawful discrimination; no lesbian or gay man would want others to go through that, just because of who they are or feel to be. But the only honest way forward, the only way to support and protect the interests of both groups, is to disaggregate the LGB and TQ+

It’s also the bare minimum for businesses that wish to stay compliant with data protection laws. But remember: compliance isn’t just about “covering your back”. It’s about committing to improving life for customers, employees, service users, and any other stakeholder who has a protected characteristic. Data is a precious and personal thing, and it shouldn’t be abused through forced teaming. Businesses should start treating it with the respect it deserves.