by GINA WILSON
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) will hold the five-yearly national census on August 9 this year.
Organisation Intersex International (OII) Australia has campaigned for some time for the ABS to provide options other than male or female as sex designators in the census.
The ABS has indicated any attempt to ‘write in’ a sex other than male or female will not be counted. Census forms with something other than male/female will have sex allocated on the basis of information such as first names, marital status and partner’s sex, or other information that could be interpreted to indicate a sex.
Failing that, sex will be allocated randomly on the basis of a toss of the coin, which approximates the 50/50 binary thought to exist in the population.
Counting sex other than male or female is important to intersex. There are currently no consistent and wide-ranging population studies on the prevalence of intersex. The numbers collected by the ABS inform government when allocating resources. So long as there is no acknowledgement that intersex are a part of the population, what our numbers are and where we reside, we will be unlikely to have funds for intersex issues.
Most currently quoted statistics come from scattered outpatient numbers collected in 2000 or hypothetical projections based on small individual hospital departmental records.
Medical records are a very unreliable method of assessing intersex numbers due to the non-reporting of cases, cases lost to follow up, and the lack of a formal reporting protocol and centralised reporting agency.
OII Australia’s preference is that the ABS provides a ‘write-in box’ for sex rather than the two tick boxes currently used. Failing that, at least a male/ female/ other option that would allow some assessment of the number of Australians who see themselves outside of the sex binary.
The ABS has indicated they will not include other sexes in this year’s census, however, they will reconsider the issue prior to the next one. In the interim, OII Australia is asking all intersex people to indicate intersex as their religion in the upcoming census.
Religion is a write-in box that must be counted. In the UK ‘write-ins’ have made Jedi Knight the sixth most popular religion.
info: www.oiiaustralia.com
The 2011 Census seems to include an indicator of same sex couples. Where is the education in our own community to make sure we tick the right boxes…. and stand up and be counted…
from the Census website…
Same Sex Couple Indicator (SSCF)
This variable is new for the 2011 Census Dictionary. It indicates whether or not a family are a same-sex couple.
I have put together a discrimination complaint to the Human Rights Comission based on past complaints, and rebtting many of the reasons the ABS have provided in the past for why they don’t include Intersex. It is here: http://iisforinclude.org/Romanasblog/?p=310
I hope others can write in similar submissions, so the HRC know how important this is.