Cross posting from LivingGeography blog.
The BBC article here talks about the new Census data which was released this week.
Many people have been waiting for this release as it is the first time that particular questions were added to the official Census form and therefore data was collected at a national level.
I mentioned this in a previous post, which considered whether it was time to reevaluate the traditional population pyramid with its gender binary structure.
The article provides a useful summary of related terms. See below:
LGBT+ is an "inclusive" way to represent all the different identities in the longer acronym but here's a breakdown of what each of the letters in LGBTQQIAAP mean.
L - lesbian: a woman who is attracted to other women
G - gay: a man who is attracted to other men or broadly people who identify as homosexual
B - bisexual: a person who is attracted to both men and women
T - transgender: a person whose gender identity is different from the sex the doctor put down on their birth certificate
Q - queer: originally used as a hate term, some people want to reclaim the word, while others find it offensive. It can be a political statement, suggest that someone doesn't want to identify with "binaries" (e.g. male v female, homosexual v straight) or that they don't want to label themselves only by their sexual activity
Q - questioning: a person who is still exploring their sexuality or gender identity
I - intersex: a person whose body is not definitively male or female. This may be because they have chromosomes which are not XX or XY or because their genitals or reproductive organs are not considered "standard"
A - allies: a person who identifies as straight but supports people in the LGBTQQIAAP community
A - asexual: a person who is not attracted in a sexual way to people of any gender
P - pansexual: a person whose sexual attraction is not based on gender and may themselves be fluid when it comes to gender or sexual identity
There are maps of course which can be used to explore the data for any particular area.
Use these to explore your own home area.
Some more thoughts here:
