US won't tally LGBT people in '20 Census

Yes. While Captain Jack Harkness likes to call himself "omnisexual," it's the same basic principle.

Speaking of, is "transsexual" considered an outdated term, or a different thing from what we now call "transgender"? I noticed you listed both, but it's been a long time since I've heard anyone, including the bigots, use that phrase.

I thought Captain John Hart was the one that was omnisexual.

The whole bury/outlawing the collection of data part pisses me off. Over at City Data Forum the gun nuts like to rave about there being new studies about gun ownership increasing deaths in the home/suicide/accidents. When you show them studies from the mid 90's they say it is to old knowing full well that the very first thing Republicans did when they took over then was outlaw federal research money in this topic.

It is a dirty business of the facts aren't on our side so let's outlaw collecting of facts.

Tiresome.

it wasn't, but it was on trajectory to be added this time.

Which, one official was quoted as saying that it did not serve any government interest to ask which is silly, the FedGov tracks all sorts of things related to LGB/T people.

But at it's most basic, this seems to be the administration philosophy - "we can get by with less information"

It's a planet in the galaxy Transylvania, of course.

The phrase I'm hearing more and more lately is QUILTBAG, which I think is actually pretty nice -- connotations of a whole patchwork quilt of diversity.

Getting back to the original question, I really don't think sexual orientation should be on the census -- and I think LGBT rights groups pushing for it to be included might actually be counterproductive.

Three reasons:

1) It would probably result in the number of LGBT people in the country being severely underreported. There are many parts of the country where people would not be comfortable marking themselves as gay on a form, even knowing the privacy laws surrounding the census. Plus, it's one form per household. How many closeted gay kids are there whose parents would mark them as straight, or even openly gay kids whose parents would mark them as straight as a form of passive aggression?

2) Sexual orientation is not a binary, or even trinary, state. There's a reason the Kinsey scale exists, and many people find that they would place themselves at different places on the Kinsey scale over the course of their lives (if they find the Kinsey scale to be applicable to them at all).

3) It's nobody's fucking business.

Yeah, the extended acronym has "transsexual" listed, but I don't use it. I prefer the term transgender, which sounds more accurate anyway.

I don't watch Torchwood, so I don't know about him.

Ooh, I like that.

You make some excellent points. Still, I think it's more about being counted. The idea that on an official U.S. census form, people in the LGBT community are being noticed. It's definitely political, as is the sudden withdrawal of the planned category on the 2020 census.

He was played by James Marsters. Captain Jack Harkness would scrump anybody. Captain John Hart would scrump anything. The first time he saw a french poodle he lost his mind.

Surprised you didn't tag me lol

In reality, "transgender" is sort of problematic because it s designed to cover any wort of "gender non-conformity" but no one seems to be willing or able to make a distinction between a "state of being" and "a thing I like to do" and some want a very expansive definition which includes drag queens and fetishistic cross-dressing, others (including myself) don't think that is wise (not withstanding that a drag queen might ALSO be trans)

In any case, in general terms, Transgender includes at least transsexuals, non-binary and androgyne types, and those who do not seek or want a transition but who regularly, as a way of life, non-conform when it comes to gender roles and expectations. Parallel to this are "intersex" people who are not typically understood to be a subset of transgender (at least for political and semantical reasons)

Now, a transsexual is a term many of us, including myself, still choose and prefer and it's circled back around to the point where even advocates of "transgender" acknowledge a role for the word transsexual. At a minimum, as a sub-catagory of transgender (there are some "seperatists" who deny any association between the two but they are rare voices in the wilderness). So what is the distinction? A transsexual is a person who takes active measures to physically and socially transition to the "opposite" sex from the one they were assumed to be at birth, in order to reconcile their gender identity with their body and their sociological role - or, if they don't it is only for the lack of practical ability to do so, but they still desire to. It is a "classic" binary condition, I'm seem as being on this side, but my heart and mind says I belong on the other side.
A non-binary sort of transgender person would never apply the term transsexual to themselves, someone like me is often quite fond of it because we - I at least - think it is important to clarify the distinction.

And, by that definition, the considerable - possibly overwhelming - majority of trans people are in fact transsexuals.

All that said, I mostly just say "trans" and avoid the tangent

You'd have to be careful to interpret the number as persons reporting as queer rather than as everyone who is queer, even in phrasing the question. But why is change over time a problem? Aren't there any other questions with changing answers on the census?

Oh my. That's, uh, definitely omnisexual by definition.
No, no, my attraction is strictly to sentient beings with higher cerebral functions.

Not really, outside of things that relate only to housing situations. On the short form that everybody fills out (there are also long forms sent out to smaller sample sets in the off years), it's just the age and race of each person at the residence, plus whether the residence is rented or owned.

You could almost argue that it's more a survey of places than of people.

Here's the 2010 form, for anyone who's curious. It's pretty basic.

that depends on what you think "trans-" stands for.

If you take the classic use of the prefix (i.e. "across" or "to cross over to") then no, it's actually less accurate for the vast majority of people. With rare exception, even among trans people, your gender is a fixed point. It's why we're so miserable when our "sex" does not align with it, so (with those "gender fluid" exceptions, people do not "cross over" from one gender to another, the gender identity is the constant.
By contrast, someone such as myself seeks to "cross over" from the category of male (sex, not gender) to female - thus we cross over a SEXual binary....but semantically some people avoid the word because to the ignorant, if a homoSEXual is all about the sex act (they aren't but, ya know, ignorance) then a transSEXual must be doing their thing because of sex too.

But in a purely linguistic sense, transsexual is a much more accurate term, even if people don't use it correctly

(on a similar note, EVERYONE says "the sex I was assigned at birth" which is stupid as hell, it gives the connotation of a decision made in a government office somewhere. A MUCH more accurate term would be "the sex I was ASSUMED at birth" but, alas, apparently no one but me wants to use that phrase)

I don't see why we don't go with something like SO/GI which is already working into the parlance when it comes to lawmaking and legal decisions.

It is not precisely a label in the sense of, say, "Lesbian" but any old description of your particular sexuality or identity that works for you falls under one or the other of those.

I guess, then, it's more about the word itself. It feels grating, and I believe part of that is because the word has been used as a slur, along with a shortened version of the word. I think that's what makes me feel so uncomfortable with the word itself. I like "transgender" because it feels "softer" if that makes any sense. I don't know, maybe I'm just weird.

As for being "assigned at birth," I get why it's used, because in a way the government *is* assigning your sex at birth. They just happen to be wrong. Your usage of assumed seems to work nicely, though, too. I guess it comes down to personal preference.

That could work, though I think it feels more as a general term than something that picks out specifics. Of course, that may be the point. I went and looked it up, and of course the first couple of hits were the Heritage Foundation and Focus on the Family, so they seem to find it as a threat to their freedom, which means we should definitely consider it further as a possible alternative.

Questioning is really an alternate reading, for most it still means "queer" and while I agree with you it seems redundant, for those who like the word it typically means "not straight and cis, but not exactly any of the L,G,B, or T either" - just a catch-all for "different in some other way"


Frankly, IMO, the Millennials are trying to hard and making this shit too complicated. I won't deny that such a thing as, say, "gender-fluid" exists - it may be that I simply don't understand that completely the same way that TLS doesn't understand me. but likewise, I think there's a VERY distinct possibility that a significant proportion of those who are "gender fluid" or "non-binary" or whatever when they are 20, 25 years old - will fall neatly into one of the more basic categories 10 or 20 years down the road.


Last night I was scrolling a trans group I'm in and their was this 20-25 year old who said, essentially "not only am I transgender but I also identify as trans species - I'm a fennic fox"

No, dumb ass. You are not. There is no biological mechanism for that to happen. It's because of people like you that we have to put up with this "snowflake" bullshit.

Assholes just trying to be clever. I see a lot of that shit when I'm on feminist forums, where some troll comes in and starts up with jokes. I mean, if they want to be morons, that's their right, but do they have to broadcast that stupidity to everyone else?

A little off topic (but not really) I think midgets should be counted as 3/5 of a person.

similar to the housing data, the census sometimes collects data for government purposes in helping carry out their functions.

For example, if HUD has regulations which specify that LGB/T people not be discriminated against in housing (which it does until and unless Ben Carson gets hold of it), one way to do that would be to have a solid grasp of the percentage of such people in the general population as opposed to the percentage in HUD housing (indeed, such a comparison might also provide other info such as the likelihood that such people would need to access HUD housing for economic reasons or whatever)

However, it's certainly arguable that this is better done on the long form Community surveys than on the short form everyone gets.

The main reason I'm for it, personally, is that all the right t people are against it because they see it as another example of the government "legitimizing" a "deviant" population. And I could do with some more legitimizing.

Nothing says inclusiveness like dividing your group up into as many portions as possible.

This is a huge point of contention. You experience your gender as fixed, but a huge amount of people don't, and frankly, talking about gender as if it is usually or properly fixed will at minimum disregard, but often more than that hurt people who experience their gender's fluidity and are trying to come to grips with it, especially when they're young. The 16-year-old who was attracted to five girls and now feels attraction to a boy doesn't need anyone telling them that their gender is supposed to be a fixed thing that never changes.

To be fair, you can be attracted to all sorts of folks and still have your gender be fixed. I've had relationships with men and women, but I'm still sure I'm female. I think it's pretty rare to have a fluid gender identity, while fluid sexuality is actually quite common.

"to the extra accommodations, extra considerations and free shit we need?"

Peter Dinklage will kill you.

No, it's an attraction to goat-legged flutists.