NZ Census 2023 - sex and gender questions

[Thatsenoughinternetfortoday]

It’s census time in NZ and the forms are asking for ‘gender identity’ and ‘sex at birth’. Unlike the question for religion, which provides an option to object to answering the question, the options for the gender question are ‘male’, ‘ female’ and ‘another gender’ with no option to object to the question or say you don’t have a gender/don’t believe in gender.

Stats NZ have said that if you don’t fill out the gender question (which can’t be skipped online; you need a paper form to skip it) they will complete your gender for you using other data. As one tweet about this points out, this means we’ll have an “assigned gender at census”.

Also alarming to see that the official position from the census people is that ‘ a person’s sex can change over the course of their lifetime’…

There is a movement to boycott the census entirely.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this pans out.

Sure, thank you

'Third gender' 😂

There is so much on that list to ridicule, and so little time!

Will putting the batshittery out in the open like that make more of the general public start to question the madness do you think?

NZ Herald has published a hit piece on Dawkins, accusing him of racism but not saying what exactly he said that was racist: archive.ph/FcYgG

He does have a bit of a tin ear, unfortunately. I don't know why he decided to criticise the use of the Maori language in official documents. It's not any of his business and it detracts from the things that are, ie, science.

Right? I mean, God forbid an official (and original) language of a country be used in official documents.

Does he complain about the use of French in French documents?

After the undercount of Māori in 2018, there was quite a debate about how other data sources were used to complete the census dataset. It sounds like similar methods will be used to impute missing gender records from 2023 census. The data quality will be dubious.

But the "Counting Ourselves" reports have already set a course for not worrying about how representative data is of the whole population:(

Mmm, putting lots of Māori words in the only English document is potentially a bit different to having one 100% English document and one 100% Māori one, though. I mean, private individuals can write how the heck they like, but governments, it could be argued, have a responsibility to create official documents that are as easily intelligible to people as possible; a lot of older white NZers and immigrants of all ages may find English documents opaque if they contain loads of Māori words. I prefer the Welsh approach, where Welsh signage etc. is everywhere but the English is provided alongside it.

@user1477391263 I feel the same. I was reading a document yesterday that had some words in Māori scattered throughout and with no English translation next to them. It made for very disjointed reading and a hard-to-follow document. I don’t know why some words were in Māori and not others; it appeared to be quite random, presumably based on the level of Māori knowledge the author had (she is english).

It would have been easier to follow if it had been written as either

English word (Māori word) or
Māori word (English word)

or, as you suggest, two entirely separate documents.

I speak 3 European languages with varying degrees of fluency and would find a document with random French/German/Spanish words scattered throughout would take longer to read and would be harder to follow than all one language.

Can you give an example?

Dawkins complained that the words were random,and that very few NZers (or Maori) understand Maori words, so the documents become incomprehensible. It's the equivalent of putting out a document in the UK with random French words because they speak Norman French in Jersey. It would make the document incomprehensible to most of us.

Dawkins criticised apparently random use of Maori words in an otherwise English language document - rendering it difficult to read.

He also criticized equating non-scientific world views with the scientific method and branding the scientific method as eurocentric and a means of colonization. The NZ education system appears to be suggesting that Creationism be taught in science lessons, which is ridiculous.

No- difficult for him to read. There is a difference, although I suspect it's lost on Dawkins.

NZers vary tremendously in how much they are able to follow documents that have a lot of Te Reo-origin words in them, seriously. It depends on age and also on whether the person is an immigrant (if your English is wobbly AND you don't know Te Reo, this is going to make things hard).

The proper approach would be for all documents to be available in both languages but separately, and for things like signage to use both languages in tandem.

The curriculum thing is ridiculous. Cannot believe NZ is actually doing this.

It's the equivalent of putting out a document in the UK with random French words because they speak Norman French in Jersey.

Hmm, no, it’s not the equivalent of that ^

For one thing, French isn’t the indigenous language of England - it’s not even an offical language.

And for another, there’s no Treaty in place in England to protect, preserve and promote the use of offical language/s, other than English.

Other countries might find it unusual for a second language to be scattered throughout English documents, and the like. That’s fine, they can find it unusual.

But te reo is increasingly utilised in this way (as much as a contingent of people might hate that), and the upshot is that use, and understanding of the langue is spreading. Slowly but surely.

@TomPinch here are two paragraphs from the document I was reading. I had to look up some of these te reo words. As @user1477391263 says, documents like this are harder to follow for many people.

If you live in NZ and don't understand words like koha, whenua etc then, with respect, you need to learn them. They've been loan words into NZ English for decades.

Complaining about it is no different to complaining about Scots talking in Scottish accents in Scotland.

They aren’t the words I had to look up.

I’m not complaining about any of it. I’m agreeing with the point made above that documents that contain words in te reo are harder to follow for many people.

I’m an immigrant to NZ and had to adjust my ear to the kiwi accent as well as adjust to learning some te reo words. I don’t complain about the kiwi accent. I’m not complaining about te reo words.

None of that changes the point that some documents are harder to follow for many people.

Just to add that I don't speak Maori but I've never had any problem navigating government forms which, pretty much all the time, are available entirely in English.

The census is an example. There may be some highly obscure gender categories on there but they have little to do with Maori.

I'm guessing Dawkins is referring to some kind of policy document. I would absolutely expect some Maori in there: ie, to discuss matters that don't have a precise English equivalent and which are relevant to the Maori community. There is nothing novel about this.

It's got nothing to do with the really very genuine point Dawkins has about presenting mātauranga Māori as science, and him getting diverted like this makes him look arrogant and uninformed about his hosts.