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gendercensus · 2 years

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hi! i love the new proposed system -- i have concerns about some of the common 30+ terms being taken down. specifically androgyne, butch, and transsexual. in my experience, at least, these are terms very commonly used by older folks (50+) and/or in rural areas without queer communities.

id be worried about alienating a large portion of older people with the removal of these. im not exactly sure how to resolve this? but terms like these have been used since the early 20th century, and will likely have been what many queer folk will have grown up and identify as. maybe an exception for terms that have been in use for 30+ years? or some other time-minimum?

i love taking this survey every year, thank you so much for doing it!! it provides such important information!!

I wrote a query to sort the checkbox terms by popularity among participants aged 51+ (only 433 people) and this is what I got:

nonbinary - 44.3% of participants aged 51+

queer (in relation to gender) - 28.2%

genderqueer - 27.0%

gender non-conforming - 25.9%

transgender - 19.9%

trans - 18.9%

genderfluid/fluid gender - 17.1%

enby - 16.9%

none / I do not describe myself / "I'm just me" - 15.7%

agender - 13.6%

woman - 12.7%

transfeminine - 11.1%

lesbian (in relation to gender) - 10.4%

trans* - 10.2%

genderless - 7.9%

gay (in relation to gender) - 7.2%

femme - 6.9%

transmasculine - 6.9%

questioning or unknown - 6.2%

androgyne - 5.8%

butch - 5.3%

Transsexual wasn't on the checkbox list this year, so that's not in this list. But androgyne and butch were, and neither get over 6% among participants aged 51+.

Butch is pretty evenly distributed across all age ranges, hovering between 3-10% but mostly around 5%.

Androgyne is most popular among younger people, gets down to 3% in the 45-55ish range, and then gets more popular in the older ranges again - up to 8.5% at ages 61+.

So androgyne is the one I'd be most worried about, but the list based on 30-and-unders and 31-and-overs combined plus the use of the multiplier takes 12 identities from each list. If I were to include a 51+ list, butch and androgyne would have to climb at least 8 places to be considered for the checkbox list.

I could alternatively make a list based on all the 5-year age ranges, but towards the older age ranges sample sizes get much smaller and less reliable, so I'm not so keen on that idea. 51+ is 433 people, and that dips to only 130 people (0.3%) for 61+.

Removing words from the checkbox list does suck and it will inevitably alienate some people, and I do worry about that, of course. It is important to me that lesser-represented groups look at the checkbox list and don't immediately think "ohhh noooo this is not for people like me..." and close the tab. But I feel like having the words on the checkbox list gives them maximum visibility whether I like it or not, and I then split stats into two age groups to give words even more of a chance, and if they're still not popular enough to fit into a top 20 by quite a long way then I can't really justify making an exception for them!

The best thing you can do to make sure people are represented is to encourage them to take part in the survey, and encourage them to type their gender identity words into the textboxes. In particular, age 51+ folks are finding the survey through Facebook and the mailing list. Facebook's algorithms routinely bury posts by pages that don't pay up (including the Gender Census Facebook page), so I'd recommend getting people onto the mailing list instead. Send them this link to sign up: https://www.gendercensus.com/mailing-list

#meta #age #butch #androgyne

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