Census 2021 was the first to collect information on the sexual orientation of residents aged 16 years and over in England and Wales. Of those who completed the survey, 1.54% identified as gay or lesbian, and approximately 1.51% identified as bisexual or pansexual. A further 0.06% identified as asexual, and 0.03% as queer. This is almost certainly an underestimation of the actual national diversity of sexual orientation.
No, it is not likely to be an underestimation. It pretty much fits with what we already know – the gayers are a very tiny minority. The trans are an even smaller minority. Single digits of a percentage is about right.
Non-responders are more likely to be LGBTQ+. It is reasonable to assume that those who are themselves part of the LGBTQ+ community are the most likely to show resistance to, and mistrust in, disclosing their sexuality to the government. Why would people disclose their sexuality to the government when it is the government that has previously weaponised this against them?
This is a massive, massive assumption with no basis in fact whatsoever. It does not occur to these fuckwits that resistance to the state poking its nose in where it has no business is irrespective of sexual identity. And, no, the gayers are not remotely worried about being discriminated against – after all we have months and months of Pride where they parade it out in the open. We have rainbow flags everywhere – especially in the public sector i.e. the government. Indeed, you’d almost think that they were the dominant group here. No, the most likely people to resist this question are people like me whose approach to the whole thing is utter contempt and ‘none of your damned business, so fuck off with your intrusive questions.’ We may or may not be gayers, but are not more likely to be.
This is particularly true for older respondents, who are more likely to have a lived history of the criminalisation of homosexual behaviour and government-tolerated or created discriminatory policies. Some evidence for this can be found in the 2018 census test, where the level of non-response was significantly greater for those who completed it on paper (20.2%) than for those who completed it online (4.8%). Older people were far more likely to complete the test on paper. The 2021 census is probably undercounting the sexual diversity of older people.
There’s an old saying about assumptions and it applies here.
Like many LGBTQ+ people, I felt a tremendous joy in completing the census and being able to have my bisexuality made visible. The introduction of this item is wonderful, but we need to be cautious that we don’t overstate who these figures represent.
Wonderful? Fucking hell. There is nothing wonderful about the state poking its nose into personal and private information. For the records, I’m one of the 7% because ‘wonderful’ was not a word that sprang to mind for me.
Where do you find this stuff LR? It surely would be better for your mental health if you didn’t go looking for it.
I don’t suppose that you’ve seen a US sitcom called Parks & Recreation? It took until the second series to really find itself but it is funny and well written. There is a character called Ron Swanson who is very cynical about government and obsessive about privacy. Your take on such matters often reminds me of Ron.
Ronald Regan: “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Updated for today: “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to count people like you.”
“I felt a tremendous joy in completing the census and being able to have my bisexuality made visible.” In other words, “I’m pleased to be able to get into the grauniad and flaunt my inadequacy by casting doubt on someone else’s work.”
I treat all these things with contempt, have done for years.
Those forms you had to fill in at the dentist for example, at one time there was one tick box for white of virtually any type shade caste whatever you want to call it, but if your skin happened to be of a darker shade they wanted to know exactly what shade or type.
Well bollocks to that, i’m, white half Irish from a fair Irish mother but have skin complexion that darkens rapidly in the sun from my father’s farming heritage, i didn’t have to bloody explain my colour shading or heritage so why the hell should some chap with darker skin have to explain the ins and outs of the cats arse to these bleeders just to get his teeth checked…hence i’ve always refused to answer those questions just as i’ve always put a sarky comment on the forms wanting to know your social position..the ones starting with the important people at the top and the ones who actually bloody graft for a living at the bottom…as our host is fond of saying, just eff off and when you get there eff off again.
Whenever I am asked to complete forms such as this, I always tick “Other”, but never explain.
I thought any data collected from a census was not supposed to be divulged for 100 years?
The data isn’t divulged the amalgamated results are. They need to be divulged so we can act on that and make changes. They are talking about not divulging the individual responses for 100 years so that people can’t be identified.
I’m a mongrel. 17th century Russian land slave making his way to the Baltics and later generations marrying a Swedish speaking Finn, onwards to petrol stations, a genuine war criminal, a Jewish princess from Germany to restore a castle, handbag factory (free handbags all around to women in the family, compliments from an antique collecting gay uncle!), all the way to DDR-style education in the 70’s.
I was going to ask for my reparations, but reading the above I think I’ve won a smallish lottery in life.
So … no box to tick to say that you are a Green with purple spots transsexual lesbian from the planet Zarg where there are six individual sexes, any three of which are needed to produce another little Zargian? That’s my “special” little niche disregarded again.
Oh, the humanity and horror that they have missed THAT one off the census form (and the dentists check form). Pure and utter Fascist discrimination against … something or another.
(The world needs a sarcasm font, right enough).
The far end of the alphabet soup community are the most likely to be big-state Lefty fashion-victims (contrary to wishful Lefty thinking, your basic gayers are largely indistinguishable from the rest of us, politically) and therefore the last people in the world to think twice about disclosing their proclivities to Big Brother. I suspect this is a vast overestimation of their real numbers.
See? Q. E. more or less D., right there.
(One thing to be thankful to the Scottish Natzis for: they ballsed up the 2021 Census. Possibly deliberately, to signal their great virtue during the Damn Panic, but given their general incompetence, who knows?)
Not all faggots (self-included) go prancing around in June looking like a unicorn vomited all over them. Quite a few of us prefer to keep ourselves away from the gay/lesbian/tranny freaks and consider who we fuck in the privacy of our own bedrooms our own business.
Equally, I don’t like state intrusion, so have deliberately avoided census returns for a couple of decades (including the Manx 5-yearly census and last years delayed Scottish census).
I don’t think that proves the Grauniad writer right, he/she/it is an idiot as all Grauniad writers are, just that anecdote is anecdotal and correlation is not causation.
The Grauniad writer desperately WANTS there to be far more gay/lesbian/tranny freaks than their actually are and therefore a UK Government Census showing single digits of LGBT+ representation is anathema.
Personally, I think those numbers sound about right. Take out the bisexuals and other virtue signallers and gay/lesbian/tranny freaks starts to look like the very minority sport that it actually is.
YMMV.