Gender Census 2018 - the spelling question

The survey took place between 1st February and 25th March 2018, and there were 11,241 respondents, of which 1,528 said they were living in the UK.

The first question in the survey was: How do you think this word should be spelled? The options were:

The first three options, bolded, were randomised. I asked this question first because there was also a question about how people identify, and I had to choose a spelling for the checkbox option for nonbinary, and I didn’t want my choice for the survey to sway the results of this question. I also avoided using the word nonbinary in all promotional materials.

You can see the Google Sheets file of the results for just this question here.

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The results for the UK compared to the worldwide results were very different!

[Please note that the worldwide results include the UK results, and the “Everyone” results include the responses from nonbinary people.]

I was surprised by this, but in hindsight I think perhaps I shouldn’t have been - a few people commented in the “other” box that nonbinary is the American grammatical convention, whereas non-binary is the British one. This would explain the way UK-based respondents preferred non-binary over nonbinary.

I think it’s interesting that people who are nonbinary are more likely to omit the hyphen, even in the UK.

[In the table above, the percentages add up to more than 100% because some people used the “other” text box to express a preference for two of the options.]

1 in 5 respondents have no preference among those three options. Many said that it should be up to the individual nonbinary person to choose how they spell it, or that they would follow the instructions in a style guide, or that they dislike linguistic prescriptivism and all three spellings are valid. Most of the “other” entries were either blank or people spelling words other than nonbinary, such as enby or transgender.

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This was the one-off question this year, and I think the results are fairly straight-forward! I asked because I see people spelling the word in various different ways and I was curious to know which was most popular. When being considered for inclusion in English dictionaries the most common spelling is usually the one entered in the dictionary, and in this way the “correct” spelling of a word according to English dictionaries can change over time. (There are some exceptions, such as minuscule.)

I guess ultimately I wanted to know if there was a “correct” spelling that I (and style guides) should adhere to, and I am glad to know that when writing about nonbinary issues for UK resources I should include the hyphen.

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In previous years I’ve included the results of the “extra” questions in the final report. This year I’m choosing to write a separate report, partly because this question doesn’t really relate to the others in the survey, but also because it’s such a big task that I’m hoping breaking it down into several smaller blog posts might help me.

So I think I will try to write a blog post for each question’s results just to keep the ball rolling, and then at the end I’ll tie them all together into two big reports - one for the UK and one for worldwide results, as usual.

List of gender identities entered in the NBGQ2016 survey

This list is from the spreadsheet for the 2016 worldwide results, where there were 3055 useable responses, and 179 unique identity words or phrases entered.

Most commonly entered at the top, with number of times entered and percentage in brackets.

Twitter poll results: a selection of pronouns perspectives

It took a while to wait for all of the polls on this subject to end - I kept thinking of interesting questions.

The first question assumed that it’s impossible to know someone’s pronouns without asking, and asked what people would prefer strangers do if asking isn’t possible. “Guess correctly” was deliberately left out.

I feel pretty good about trusting the results here. After about 100 votes the results stayed fairly consistent, and the final number of votes is definitely impressive. This poll made it far outside of the usual small circle of Twitter followers.

It seems that rather than break the flow of conversation, people would rather be called “they” and correct someone if they feel strongly.

Next I noticed that a lot of followers were commenting that no one had ever asked their pronouns. (I’ve been out as nonbinary for 4 years and I still have not been asked my pronouns by a stranger.) I wanted to compare nonbinary folks who’ve been asked their pronouns with cis binary people who’ve asked someone what their pronouns are. The sample sizes are smaller, but I thought it might at the very least reveal bias.

So either two-thirds of cis binary people are asking the same 29% of nonbinary people about their pronouns repeatedly or... our sample is biased in favour of trans-aware cis binary followers. I suspect the latter. (Edit: Someone also messaged me to point out that some of the difference may be due to the first question specifying “a stranger”, whereas the second allows for asking people you know a little bit what their pronouns are.)

And finally, I wanted to know if people’s feelings about being asked their pronouns directly varied based on trans status and whether someone is binary.

Cis binary folks on the whole seem unbothered, and nonbinary people are strongly in favour of being asked their pronouns. Trans binary people, however, are least likely to like it and 1 in 5 trans binary people dislike being asked their pronouns.

I got some responses and criticism, saying that visibly trans people are far more likely to be asked their pronouns. Using “they” as default is not often applied consistently. If you’re trans, being asked your pronouns more than everyone else could well be another reminder of transness - anything we have to do that cis people don’t can be a trigger for dysphoria.

What I’ve personally taken from these results is that it’s probably best to call people “they” until I know their pronouns for sure - but if I do that, I must apply it consistently, and obviously so. (Even then, I will probably cause people to feel dysphoric sometimes.) I’m trying to do this, but I’m finding it very difficult, despite using “they” for several nonbinary friends very easily.

Twitter poll results: nonbinary genders in computer games

A small and interesting set of results about a specific subset: nonbinary gamers.

Current Twitter polls: a world without gender

Clicking here will take you to a page that shows you all the polls, plus, a few tweets’ context. They end at 11am BST (UK time) tomorrow, Sunday 3rd April 2016.

Twitter poll results - identity

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve sporadically run a few Twitter polls that it turns out can be grouped roughly by subject. Today I’m going to group the polls about identity.

Some of these polls ran for only 24 hours and received very few votes, so it’s worth bearing in mind that these are not at all reliable. I would like to run them again in a few months when I have a few more followers on the Nonbinary Stats Twitter account.

CISGENDER, TRANSGENDER, AND NEITHER

I was criticised for not using the word cisgender in a poll - I said “not trans” instead. My feeling was that the world cannot be split into trans people and cis people, so I ran a poll to see how many people who fit the definitions of those words actually identify with those words.

I was surprised to note that about a third of people whose genders match that assigned at birth don’t explicitly identify as cis, and about a third of people whose genders don’t match that assigned at birth don’t explicitly identify as trans.

That means, in short, that if these polls are representative, about 1 in 3 people identify as neither cis nor trans.

BINARY, NONBINARY, AND NEITHER

I was also criticised for not using the word binary, opting instead for “men and women who aren’t trans” and other descriptive phrases. So I asked people who fit the definitions of binary and nonbinary if they identified with those words. Again, note the very small sample size!

It seems that people whose genders match those they were assigned at birth (cis people, ish) were far more likely to deny the label of binary, with trans people more likely to express some ambiguity or complexity not expressed in a simple yes/no choice. But when you pay attention to the Yeses, there’s only 10% difference - trans people are only a little more likely to explicitly identify as binary outright.

For comparison, I also checked people whose gender doesn’t fit the binary, and found that more folks on Twitter who fit that definition identified with the term nonbinary than folks who took the big annual survey - and even the lower of the two was 65%, higher than both Yeses for trans and cis people who identified as binary.

I am very aware of bias in Twitter polls, and one easy way of spotting this is the way the proportion of people who identify as nonbinary leaps up after the poll is retweeted by a high-profile openly nonbinary-identifying person with a lot of followers. As the tweet is retweeted some more and makes it out of that immediate circle, the percentages tend to settle back to where they were before.

FLAWS

Some of the sample sizes are not very big, but I also notice when keeping an eye on surveys that once you get past about 30 respondents the results tend to stay about the same, give or take 2%. So I’d very much like to try again with more followers, and I won’t be surprised if there’s very little change.

The respondents are pretty much limited to trans people and their trans-aware followers, which is going to heavily bias any results from questions aimed at cis or binary folks. I expect more trans allies to be aware of the word cis and its meaning, as well as being more likely to use that term to describe themselves.

I am also imagining that whether or not a participant votes may be affected by how ashamed or proud they are of their answer, and perhaps people may be affected by how they feel the vote is going when they’re deciding whether to retweet.

Current Twitter polls

Here’s a bit of a run-down, since summaries are difficult on Twitter itself.

If you think you might like to retweet, please consider doing so before voting - maybe it’ll reduce bias in this highly scientific environment?

IDENTITY

PRONOUNS

REPRESENTATION IN VIDEO GAMES [All open until tomorrow, Monday 28th March 2016]

NB/GQ Survey 2016 - the UK results

Greetings!

I am pleased to announce that I have the UK-only results of this year’s survey to share. This post will focus on the UK results, while comparing with the worldwide results.

The survey ran from 8th January to 16th January 2016, for 8 days. It was promoted on social networks (Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit, and anywhere that anyone felt like sharing) and the Project Wonderful ad network, and the survey was built with Google Forms. Participants were self-selecting, and were invited to take part if they were neither exclusively always male nor exclusively always female. It asked:

There were 3078 responses altogether. I removed 28 (mostly duplicates, and a sprinkling of trolls) from the results, leaving 3055 (890 or 29% of which were from the UK).

[The results on Google Sheets]

Question 1: Which of the following best describe(s) in English how you think of yourself?

This year I specified English in each of the questions for the first time.

The top 5 for the UK were:

The increase in use of “nonbinary” is striking. Worldwide it only increased by about 1%, compared to about 8% in the UK alone.

The main difference when comparing with the worldwide results is a lack of the word “agender”, which made it to number 4 overall. “Genderqueer” has gotten less popular worldwide but has gained popularity in the UK, despite complaints worldwide that the inclusion of queer makes it a controversial umbrella term. “Trans*” has dipped in popularity both in the UK and worldwide.

Here’s a summary:

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Question 2: In a magical world where all title fields on forms were optional and write-your-own, what would you want yours to be in English?

This question allowed only one answer, though people very occasionally sneakily used the text box to tell me about either-or situations - and those titles were counted too.

The top 5 were:

Here’s a comparison of UK vs. worldwide, for the curious:

Last year “no title” was most popular, and this year it’s Mx. It’s the same story worldwide. But worldwide Mx is only leading by 1.5%, and in the UK it’s 7.7%. Mx has consistently been more popular in the UK than everywhere else, and I might speculate that this is because it’s much more difficult to avoid titles in the UK.

The “no title” option has gone down very significantly this year, and I’m not sure why that is but I suspect that it may have something to do with me offering more titles as pre-written options this year; last year over 1% of people entered Dr into the other box, so I included it this year by adding gender-inclusive (eg: Dr) and gender-exclusive (eg: Sister) career/qualification titles as two separate options. I also added an “unknown” option. I think these changes and the increasing popularity of Mx account for most of the difference in the “no title” option.

A significant change from last year was my inclusion of a hypothetical gender-exclusive title for nonbinary people, as opposed to the gender-inclusive Mx, Ind, Per, etc. A gender-exclusive nonbinary title would be one that is intended for only nonbinary people to use, in the same way that men get Mr and women get Ms. Internationally this was the most popular gender-exclusive title option at 3.6%, and I’m surprised to note that Mr was more popular in the UK. Although this option asked people choosing it to let me know about any gender-exclusive nonbinary titles in the feedback box, no one suggested one.

The vast majority of people (75%) would rather have Mx or no title at all. This could be for a number of reasons, such as a belief that gender is irrelevant, or the fact that nonbinary people still face significant discrimination and would rather have a gender-inclusive title that anyone can use and therefore theoretically doesn’t out them as nonbinary and/or trans.

Due to them getting under 1% of responses worldwide this year, I will be removing Misc, Pr, Mrs, and gendered career/qualification titles from the list of offered titles next year.

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Question 3: Supposing all pronouns were accepted by everyone without question and were easy to learn, which pronouns are you happy for people to use for you?

This question allowed multiple answers, and had a write-in “other” box. The pronouns question always takes me a LOT of hard work for various reasons, so I’m thinking about better ways to ask about this.

The top 5 were:

“Mix it up” was a new option this year, and a good idea, I think - a lot of people selected several well-known pronouns as they did last year, but were able to add this very practical detail to their responses.

Here’s a summary:

This graph was very similar when worldwide results were included:

Last year I had to add a couple of pronouns because they got over 1% in the “other” text box, but this year only offered pronoun options went over 1%. I was surprised to see the relatively new xe/xem pronoun get more than the well-established zie/hir and Spivak options.

As with last year, he/him and she/her were approximately equal and more acceptable than anything but singular they/them. Some people expressed comfort with a gendered pronoun because it was incongruent with their gender assigned at birth and therefore caused less dysphoria, and some were happy to stick with the familiar pronouns people assume based on birth assignment. Many people chose both he/him and she/her. It demonstrates that one cannot judge gender assigned at birth based on gendered pronouns, and that a comfort with or preference for gendered pronouns doesn’t indicate that one is binary.

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The questions I ask

What I’ll do differently next year

Closing thoughts

You are all awesome. I love that you are all willing to trust me with this stuff, and I feel very lucky to be able to do this whole thing because I find it really fun and interesting. I learn so much every time. Thanks for another great survey experience!

See also