US Census Bureau Director John H. Thompson wrote a blogpost yesterday announcing that a Local Census Office was opening in Washington DC for a Local Census Test scheduled to take place on July 1. It will be conduced in 200,000 homes in parts of Washington DC and Montgomery County, MD and is designed to research way to make the 2020 Census more cost effective, efficient and easier for people to respond to accomplish its goal off accurately counting the population of our country.
That announcement has also got me thinking once again about something that I have been pushing for to happen ever since I made my first trip to DC 16 years ago this month. I have been asking for as part of the identity options available for checkoff on the US census forms to add a 'transgender' category to it.
So what say you, Director Thompson? Transpeople have been part of our country for over a century and it's past time we started counting them. I've been saying 1-3% of the population is transgender based on the Lynn Conway prevalence of of transsexualism ratios she came up with, and it would be nice to have some hard Census data to back that up.
We need to find out exactly how many transpeople reside in the borders of the United States and get US census data on our lives that can't be dismissed or ignored by our conservafool opponents..
Nations such as Nepal and India already do so. It would be nice to walk into a city, state or federal legislative office when you're lobbying them for a human rights issue, and when they deploy the 'I have no trans constituents' lie, the rebuttal can be "The census says you have X amount of trans people in your district." With the next US Census being six years from happening, it's time we as a community began pushing hard now for the ability of transpeople to be counted in 2020.
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