Trans people will be able to choose their gender for next census after bill passes final stage

[stumbledin]

Oh dear - maybe it would have been better to let Parliament be porogued because then this bill couldn't have had its final reading and would have been lost.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/08/next-census-will-allow-trans-people-choose-gender-bill-passes/

Was thinking we need a really big campaign to encourage everybody to ignore this question (no legal penalty) to show that gender identity is totally irrelevant to most people.

Ok, so I'll choose my age, my income, my address and my job. Whatevs. If we're just collating fiction now then I guess we all just have fun.

After all, what's the downside about censi (?) that collect preferred fiction to fact?

And obviously if it's ok for some people to choose their preferred information over fact then it's ok for all people to do it. Right? Right. I'll enjoy the next census.

Whether now or next month it was always going to come in.

That article says people can choose gender in addition to the mandatory sex question. Does that mean there are two separate questions?

Do your stereotypes match your biological sex?

Will this be like when hundreds of people said their religion was Jedi Knight? Silly and utterly statistically pointless

That second question could be a "yes/no".

If you asked people what they thought their gender was you'd need to provide a blank to fill in like they do with religion, as there are too many options, and yes you'd get a lot of the gender equivalent of Jedi Knights.

Yes I bet the options are male and female. What about me I'm pi-gender? What do I pick?

I'm trying to imagine the options available to answer that question

Is you gender the same as the sex you were registered with at birth?

• yes
• no
• sometimes/sometimes not
• dunno
• gender is an oppressive and damaging concept imposed on us and should be consigned to history

in 2001 people were encouraged to write in ‘Jedi’ in the religion box.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_census_phenomenon

Maybe we should come up with a similar prearranged plan? Will we be able to write in ‘Gender Free’?

No they shouldn't be encouraged to lie in the mandatory sex question in that guidance. FFS. Don't have a problem with the optional gender identity question though.

Sex and gender are separate questions which is what Joan McAlpine argued for.

But the guidance tells trans people they can lie about their sex.

The census sex question has been in place since 1801, however the new guidance asks that people respond using their lived sex, whether that corresponds to what is on their birth certificate or not.

Have they defined what they mean by 'lived sex'?

I'm assuming the answer to that is no.

When you have people arguing that they've always been female and that their penis is a woman's penis etc, I don't think I'd trust the answers to the sex question. And if I was asked whether gender identity matched my sex I'd be in a bit of a pickle as I don't believe in the concept of a gender identity.

I wonder if N/A would be an option.

What is the point of a census apart from to record information about a specific group of people?

If all men ticked the 'female gender' box, could they stop funding prostate cancer research, as it won't be needed any more?

What a bunch of utter ridiculous fools.

I don't know what lived sex means so would I leave that blank? What is the point of asking what your lived sex is, it should be your biologucal sex. Also most of the week I identify as a woman, some as gender free and just for the hell of it on Wednesdays I identify as perigender. I hope there is a free text box to write all that.
I would definitely be up for some way of doing a Jedi on the census. Ideas needed.

What day of the week is census night? Asking for Phillip/Pips Bunce.

I think the census is usually a Sunday. At the moment they are just saying it will be in the Spring. The 2011 one was on 27th March so maybe the last sunday in March?

Irrespective (well almost) of the trans identity issue, I dont understand how they cant see they are invalidating the purpose of the census, ie to collect facts to help with planning etc., if they are now allowing people to enter information based on lies.

Dont MPs have any sense of their duty in helping with forward planning etc.. In fact to have insisted of entering the actual biological sex against some later transition would provide information that would accurately reflect how many people this actually has any meaning.

I quite like the idea of an open question of how do you identify. We could find out how many identify as feminist for instance!

Seems crazy they they wouldn't accept those claiming to be Jedi but will accept those who through some mystical process can claim to be the opposite of what they actually are.

Maybe we should take the Extinction Rebellion line of reaching peak protesting by getting arrested. ie we could all refuse to fill in the census on the basis that it was the state colluding with the erasing of women.

lived sex

So there are actually two questions on gender identity?

And no questions on biological sex?

Did they talk to any statisticans while designing this?

I've always felt I'm really Chinese. I don't think you can get surgery to change this yet, but you know once people didn't think you could invert a penis so it's only a matter of time.
Can I start putting myself down as Chinese/Asian as my race instead of White British? When can my passport be updated?

Sounds ridiculous right? You can't change your sex just as you can't change your race!

I actually thought this was ok until I got to the bit about lived sex. I don't object to an additional transgender question any more than I object to a question about religion, although I don't like the wording as it implies everyone has a gender identity.
But asking about 'lived sex' instead of biological sex is crazy and yes, it sounds like there are two questions about gender and none about sex.

Maybe we should just answer ‘Jedi’ for Gender Identity?

I despair