A new poll found that 35% of United Kingdom residents either did not know or were unsure if there was a difference between biological women and “trans women.”
Analysis group Murray Blackburn Mackenzie (MBM) conducted the survey in mid-June, asked around 1,000 people, “When you hear someone described as a transgender woman, what do you think this means?”
The researchers said, we…”did not expect to find quite how poorly understood these terms are.”
They concluded:
Our findings suggest that media outlets, policy makers, and polling companies all need to anticipate relatively high levels of misunderstanding and confusion when they use these terms. 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. At worst, they will have a back-to-front understanding of what they are being told or asked. ‘Trans woman’ appears more likely than ‘transgender woman’ to be misunderstood, but both have problems. This evidently matters in any context where sex is relevant to what is being discussed.
The survey and results are included below.