Census day (80/365)

[white_hart]

Today is census day in the UK, and I just filled ours out. I'm slightly perplexed by the insistence that answers to the questions about workplace and travel to work are supposed to be filled out for now, while we're still locked down in the middle of a global pandemic, and not for what we would have done in normal times, and I really hope this doesn't end up being used to justify cutting public transport funding "because no-one is using it".

I dithered a bit on the "national identity" question and ended up putting "European" and "British but embarrassed about it" in the write-in box. ("British but embarrassed about it" is basically accurate".) I also used the write-in box for sexuality to put "biromantic asexual", and dithered a bit about the gender identity question because today is one of the days when "female" feels more or less OK, but then I remembered all the days when it doesn't so wrote in "demigender" instead. (I'm not convinced "demigender" is actually right; on the whole I mostly just think gender is bullshit, but I don't find being identified as female or using she/her pronouns particularly painful - I get more of a niggling sense of concealing something than a feeling of actual wrongness - so demigender feels like a reasonable alternative to writing a whole essay about it.)

Anyway, that's that for another ten years.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I refused both the religion and gender questions- the latter had been rendered meaningless by the terf lot going to court and getting it changed. I'm both trans and intersex (I was born with the condition PAIS) but there was no way of making that clear, so no........

[el_staplador]

Yes, I had similar misgivings about the travel to work question, though could at least report that we have 0 cars at this household.

[joyeuce]

I put English and British and wrote in European for me. M chose British and European, and J just British (which is fair enough as she is 8 and has never left the UK).

[alithea]

Not census day in the whole UK, we're doing ours next year in Scotland, precisely because the government up here figured that planning services for the next 10 years shouldn't be based on a time when many folks are in temporary households and not working or travelling as usual.

[ankaret]

I put myself down as other religion -> write in -> pagan because I am, but am now feeling twitchy about it because I am worried about counting towards 'X percentage of people in the UK have a faith' statistics put forth by people I disagree with about practically everything. Peter is No Religion so I suppose we cancel one another out.

I wish I'd thought of 'British but embarrassed about it'.

[sollers]

Re workplace etc: it’s supposed to be a snapshot of one particular day. I did some research on the census returns for the area where I used to live in London and for one the population was far higher than normal because the railway was being built and all the navvies had to be included (my heart goes out to the person who had to question them).

For national identity I was very happy to be able to record “Welsh “ (and was able to tick read/write/speak/understand Welsh)

[lokifan]

Bugger, I missed 'European'! And 'British but embarrassed about it' is perfect.

) I also used the write-in box for sexuality to put "biromantic asexual"

Hey, so did my flatmate :) And given the givens it does sound like demigender was the best fit when required to put something unboxable in a box!