Irish census - CSO advise trans to select male AND female sex

[OchonAgusOchonOh]

thecountess.ie/census-campaign/

In an unprecedented departure from the historical method of counting how many males and females are in the State on the night of April 3rd, 2022, the CSO has advised trans identified people to select BOTH Male and Female on their forms. The CSO will then randomly assign their sex. This is not a viable solution because it will skew the data collected for the sex category, which is primary, after one’s name. In a joint campaign by four Irish women’s groups, we are asking those who believe that biology and gender identity should be two separate categories, to legally register their protest to the problem of gender interfering with the primacy of sex, by entering “Believer in Biology” for Question 12: “What is your religion, if any?” Just tick option 7, “Other”, and write Believer in Biology in the space provided.

This is quite concerning to me as in order to plan services etc. accurate data is required. If they feel it is important to know numbers of trans people, then ask the question. This is a disservice to both trans people who may need specific services and to people who either don't have a gender identity or whose gender identity matches their sex who need services aligned with their sex.

What? I just don't get it, or the Scottish decision. Surely a census can just have:

A question on biological sex
A question on gender identity

Surely it doesn't need to be so complicated!!

Exactly. It makes a nonsense of the data if they're randomly assigning a sex to respondents.

I will be following the advice of The Countess and putting Believer in Biology as my religion.

I suspect the census was designed by the time the TRAs objected to the single question on sex and this is a sop to them as there is no question on gender identity.

Isn't this.... Forcibly assigning gender? Something that's totally fine to do to women TRAs declare to be cis, but "literal violence" to a trans person?

But snarkiness aside this is the most bonkers solution ever! Again and again powerful organisations are showing us they are really scared of TRAs, I think. Accurate data is the whole point of a census yet they've agreed to do away with it?!

I'm not in RoI, can clearly see the idea of allowing people to put both sexes is insane (and maybe illegal?) But to then think that Transgender Ideologues would be happy for them to assign their gender ... won't end well. An interesting one to watch

They are randomly assigning sex, not gender. Totally insane.

Bumping for census night

All you can do is order a paper copy (if you are able to do this in ROI) and make your feelings know on it by recording yourself as a "believer in biology" as we did on the Scottish census.

Having said that, it took ages for my one to come, and a week after I posted it I received a letter saying they had not received it, and detailing that it was an offence not to complete the census. I have a funny feeling that a lot of paper copies are going to go "missing" in order to force people into filling in the online version and therefore not acknowledging the feelings of those who think the census is not worth the paper it is written on when they include "trans" tripe.
The census should remain a factual and accurate recording, not indulging in a gender ideological belief system of which only a tiny percentage of the population actually care about.

Here in Ireland we haven't moved to online yet, its all paper census forms

Thanks for highlighting this @OchonAgusOchonOh - I wasn't aware that the Countess crowd had put out this advice.

This has to be an April fool joke, surely....

@Artichokeleaves

This has to be an April fool joke, surely....

Unfortunately not.

Apparently they are obliged under EU law to ask the question about sex with binary options. They considered asking a gender identity question in addition to the sex one, but decided to defer it as they need to test question format in advance of including it. Kickback from TENI et al and apparently someone from the CSO said anyone uncomfortable with selecting one could select both and they will randomly allocate a sex on a 50:50 basis.

Oh FFS it just gets better and better. What is the point of a census if you are not collecting data based on material reality.
www.rte.ie/news/2022/0929/1326038-gender-pay-gap/

The current "gender" pay gap is 11%.
Hmmm why don't all the lower paid women identify as men and nab themselves an extra 11% ???

Because it's not a gender pay gap, it's a sex pay gap!!!!

The conflation of gender and sex is so pervasive here and it's infuriating. It makes data meaningless as people are talking at cross purposes.
Really annoyed to see that Nessa Hourigans proposal to add a third category non binary to the census is being considered. Unless sex is kept first with an additional optional question about gender you may as well scrap the census altogether.