I think it also needs to be noted that the sex recorded at birth and self-described gender questions are structured in a way that will encourage researchers to ignore gender, and by extension puts trans people into a horrible bind in what to write for the sex question if we want our data to count

oh god nooooooooooooo

Truly. Must be a day ending in "y".

Precisely. That was the logic in the 2020 ABS standards on sex, gender, sexual orientation and intersex questions. But it only works if the "sex and gender" questions are recoded as the correct categories prior to data release. Otherwise it invites lazy or ideological misuse of the data

I suspect it was a compromise decision made under competing demands. I do genuinely respect the ABS and I think they're trying to find something that isn't awful and is palatable to uninformed cis people, but it's still not good. A lot of trans people will choose to lie on the sex question.

More substantively, the mismatch between the framing of the two questions (sex is implied to be an authoritative documentary record, gender is a wishy washy self description) means that researchers will use the sex data if the ABS releases that information. They'll ignore gender. So I will lie.

I'm not sure how it escaped their attention, but their current questions expect trans women to answer "male" on the sex question and "I identify as a woman" on the gender question. And they can go fuck themselves I'm not going to call myself a shemale because they're too timid to use the right words

Creating the incentive for trans people to lie on the census isn't what I would consider ideal statistical practice

I don't know much about this, but I think @mattcowgill.bsky.social wrote some packages that work with ABS data

my aching middle aged back is screaming in horror

Sigh. Yeah. I find that it's somehow easier to just shrug and accept that they do this. Pretending that men are anything other than what they are is a recipe for getting hurt. It probably makes me part of the problem, tbh. I set my expectations so low that I don't get disappointed

ah. i'm sorry to hear it. it's a bit of a shock when you start getting those messages :/

I used to play a little game every time I was on a long distance drive and count the number of hetero couples in cars with the woman driving vs with the man driving. The ratio was always comically lopsided.

i mean for fucks sake twice before 9am on a rainy sunday morning is a bit much

sydney is a stunningly beautiful city. it's ridiculous

have been experiencing a similar issue. i filed an IT request but they have not been able to rectify the problem

I had noticed this recently and wasn't sure why positron does it. It hasn't caused me any problems yet but it does seem strange