How Do I Answer This? A Queer Critique of Australian Census Forms and the Reification of Cisheteronormative Families

Abstract

This paper presents a critical examination of Australia's 2021 household, individual and interviewer census forms. Using a form-led analysis, this research scrutinises the underlying cisheteronormative logic that implicitly shapes the Census process, from data collection to distribution of findings. We analyse the normative frameworks that underpin the Census questionnaire, through tools such as straight washing data (re-categorising non-binary individuals into male/female response options), only giving binary response options (e.g., asking “who is your mother, who is your father?”), or making assumptions about sexuality based on the sex of one's partner. Ultimately, we argue that the 2021 Census further marginalises those with diverse genders or sexualities in Australia by strategically limiting their ability to be counted and therefore considered in the policy process and the national allocation of resources. Thus, the Australian Census operates as a regulatory instrument for queerness, favouring specific expressions of sex, gender, sexuality, and intimacy, particularly those aligned with a heterosexual, cisgender, and biologically related nuclear family models. Furthermore, we advocate a future approach that eschews reductive, essentialist notions of sex, gender and sexuality that seeks to homogenise diverse Australians into cisheteronormative categories.