U.K. professor's talk on sex and gender allegedly cancelled by Canada's Justice Department

Article content

A U.K. sociology professor claims she was “no-platformed” by Canada’s Department of Justice after she was scheduled to give a talk to mark International Women’s Day.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

U.K. professor's talk on sex and gender allegedly cancelled by Canada's Justice Department Back to video

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology and head of research at the University College London Social Research Institute, posted to X, formerly Twitter, that the topic of her presentation was “Why do we need data on sex and gender identity?”

She said the presentation was cancelled abruptly and her “request for a written explanation of the cancellation was ignored and promised honorarium not paid.”

In an interview with U.K.-based The Daily Telegraph, Sullivan said the event was cancelled without explanation after she sent her slides.

[related_links/’

“I received a phone call from a member of the department saying that she had been told to cancel the event,” Sullivan said. She added that the department member did not offer an official explanation “but indicated that, of course, we both knew what the reason was … you are not allowed to talk about sex in Canada.”

In a statement to The Telegraph, the Department of Justice Canada said it “cancelled a proposed internal event that was meant to mark International Women’s Day, in favour of promoting a whole-of-government event offered by the Canada School of Public Service that aligns more closely with the theme of the International Women’s Day 2024 of investing in women and accelerating progress.”

“In Canada, government data collection defaults to ‘gender’ instead of sex,” Sullivan said. “My talk would have discussed the value of collecting data on both, rather than avoiding data collection on sex.”

Canada is the first country to provide census data on transgender and nonbinary people.

The 2021 Census was the first to include questions that allowed respondents to identify their gender as different from their sex assigned at birth. It found that out of approximately 30.5 million Canadians aged 15 and above living in private homes, 100,815 identified as transgender (59,460) or nonbinary (41,355).

For Generation Z (0.79 per cent) and millennials (0.51 per cent), born between 1997-2006 and 1981-1996 respectively, the percentages identifying as transgender or nonbinary were significantly higher — ranging from three to seven times — compared to generation X (0.19 per cent, born between 1966-1980), baby boomers (0.15 per cent, born between 1946-1965), and those from the Interwar and Greatest Generations (0.12 per cent, born in 1945 or before).

The World Health Organization (WHO) describes “sex” as the biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, and “gender identity” as “a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.”

“A social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time,” it adds.

Sullivan, recently chosen by the U.K.’s Department of Science, Innovation and Technology to lead an evaluation concerning data, statistics, and research related to sex and gender, said her talk being cancelled was “shocking.”

“Surely they should want to open up the conversation,” she told The Telegraph. “Clearly, there are some people in the Department of Justice who want to do that, or I wouldn’t have been invited in the first place, but they have been shut down.”

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our newsletters here.