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Census time approaches once more (11/8) (info.census.abs.gov.au)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/australia@aussie.zone
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Got my letter in the mail today, doesn't seem that long ago that we had the last one...

Census date is 11th of August if you haven't gotten the letter yet.

I note they're definitely trying to spread the load this time by highlighting you can do it as soon as you get the letter rather than waiting for the actual date. Smarter move - albeit less amusing - than everyone doing it on the night, crashing the servers, and the ABS claiming it was a DDoS attack (I mean most of the country accessing your server does fit the definition, but they asked for it).

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[–] -1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

"Sex assigned at birth", like that has any fucking relevance to my life. It's not the sex on my birth certificate. It's not the sex that aligns with my lived experience, my medical needs, the way the world perceives me etc. It's irrelevant, and like many trans people, I will just be lying on that question, because my lived experience today is more relevant than out of date information.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 weeks ago (1 child)

    The information may not be relevant to how you live your life, but it is relevant to the census - which is trying to build an accurate picture of the variety of people who live in Australia. These questions, which you say are irrelevant, are what the census use to determine how many trans people exist. It is literally the opposite of what you said in your first post. (i.e. they ask these things because they acknowledge such people exist. That's why they have to ask.)

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  • [–] 2 points 4 weeks ago* (3 children)

    These questions, which you say are irrelevant, are what the census use to determine how many trans people exist.

    It won't do that, because it conflates intersex people and trans people.

    If they wanted to do it in a useful way, they would also ask my actual legal/medical sex, not just information that is decades out of date. They could also explicitly ask if people are trans or gender diverse, instead of trying to infer it in a way that conflates two distinct groups

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  • [–] 4 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

    They could also explicitly ask if people are trans or gender diverse

    If you're MTF, then you'd select Male/Woman. It not only implies being trans, it's the definition itself.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 weeks ago*

    it conflates intersex people and trans people.

    Conflation happens downstream of the statistics. If an organisation is conflating intersex people with trans people, then that would be deserving of drawing attention to.

    If you're annoyed that an individual might misinterprete the results, that's true of many statistics.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I get not wanting the target on your back, but if they see higher numbers of trans people, they're more likely to stop fucking around on trans services.

    I vote we all genderfuck the damned thing. If we can dick around for a jedi joke we can do it for our most vulnerable

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago

    The problem is now, they can't tell trans and intersex folk apart with these questions, and non binary folk are completely invisible.

    Their numbers are useless no matter what trans people answer

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