For the queer community, being counted has a negative impact

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Next March, for For the first time, the Scottish Census will require all residents 16 years and older to share information about their sexual orientation and whether they identify as transgender. These new questions have increased with similar developments in the UK and other parts of Malta, inviting people to “stand up” when the census returns.The proposal to add more issues on gender, sex and sexuality to the national census is at various stages of discussion in countries outside of Europe, including new Zealand, Canada, Australia, and America.

The idea of ​​being counted in the census feels good. Maybe this is my enthusiasm for data, but when I checked the response option “homosexual” in a survey, I felt recognized. The survey previously pretended that I did not exist or was unimportant to be incalculable. If you agree with the less common descriptive words in the drop-down box, seeing your own reflection in the survey can change your relationship with the wider community beyond your personal experience. Therefore, many bottom-up queer rights groups and top-down government agencies are constructing counts of queer communities with a proactive vision, and positioning expanded data collection as a step towards greater inclusiveness. It makes sense.

Increasing the visibility of many queer communities has important historical significance. However, paying too much attention to the benefits of being counted can distract people from the potential harm of participating in data collection activities to the queer community.My concerns are based on recent academics and activism, which warn against involving technology in identity issues, including Dress Benjamin, Statistics of black life, Algorithmic Justice League, Eubanks, Virginia, Lauren F. Klein, and Catherine De IgnacioWhen considering the impact of data practices on the most marginalized populations in these communities, the positive may not always outweigh the negative.

Since the middle of the 20th century Over the centuries, lesbian and gay rights groups in many countries have launched campaigns to increase the visibility of minority communities based on gender, gender, and sexual identity.However, even in the 1970s and 1980s, activists and scholars of the gay rights movement, such as John De Emilio, Warned that increasing the number of “going out” may not change the structure that is detrimental to its community.

When I looked at the design process of Scotland’s 2022 Census, the limitations of inclusiveness became obvious to me.While researching my book Queer data, I attended committee meetings of the Scottish Parliament, digested lengthy reports, submitted evidence, and participated in stakeholder participation meetings. As the disagreements over how to calculate and who to calculate have grown bigger over the past few months, it has become increasingly clear that the census was never designed to collect accurate data.

I am increasingly contradictory about the actual meaning of being counted for the queer community, and worry that expanding the census to include some queers will further eliminate those who are inconsistent with the government’s narrow understanding of gender, gender, and sexual behavior. Most notably, Scotland’s 2022 census does not include non-binary populations, who need to determine whether their gender is male or female. In another example, a transgender movement group asked the Census to delete the “other” box and limit the response options for sexual orientation to “gay or lesbian”, “bisexual”, and “heterosexual/heterosexual” . The view that reproducibility is based on a fixed, binary concept of gender and that the problem is limited to three options will effectively remove those identified as queer, pansexual, asexual, and other sexual orientations from the count. Although the final version of the sexual orientation question includes an “other” sexual behavior box, collecting some data on queer life can push those who exceed these expectations into the shadows.

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