SOGIESC, LGBTI and collecting data
SOGIESC and LGBTI PDF
This is a section from the CanWaCH guide I wrote called “Beyond the Binary”. This section is for people relatively new to the issue of understanding the many diverse sexual and gender subgroups. What follows are some excerpts and graphics from that report. The report also covers the basics of some approaches to data collection.
What is SOGIESC? How does it fit with LGBTI?
The term "SOGIESC" is often used in the international arena to refer to critical components of sexuality and gender which are recognized under international human rights law. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) refers to the population whose SOGIESC does not conform to cultural expectations of gender and sexuality. The table below sets out the corresponding SOGIESC characteristics and LGBT subpopulations
Sexual orientation subgroups.
Sexual orientation has three components. 1) sexual attraction, and 2) sexual behavior (both components 1 and 2 can be oriented toward specific people according to their gender), and 3) how someone identifies themselves. These three dimensions create the possibility for seven different subgroups of sexual minorities. The Venn diagram is a very helpful tool to understand these groups . The PDF above has more detail about how to collect data about a person’s sexual orientation.
Gender Subgroups - There is no universally recognized definition of gender subgroups
Gender transition happens in many steps, not always at the same time. An individual may have a legal transition (changing legal documents), a social transition (change how they interact with others though the use of a name, pronouns, dress, mannerisms), a medical transition (hormone therapy), and surgical transition.
Indigenous gender categories are culturally unique and may represent gender as well as religion, caste, and sexuality (examples are Hijra in India, Methi in Nepal, Fa’afafine in Samoa). Also, people with these genders often use terms other than transgender to identify themselves.
Trans people may not identify as trans. Many transgender people identify simply as male or female and do not identify as transgender.
The two-step analysis is a common approach
Given that terms such as male, female and transgender may not tell us what we need to know, many researchers avoid reliance on those terms by using a two-step approach. This approach relies on the answers to two questions:
What is your gender/sex?
What sex were you assigned at birth, such as on birth records?
If the answers to these two questions are the same, then the person is categorized as cisgender (cis being the latin suffix for same). If the answers to these two questions are different, then the person is categorized as transgender. If these two questions are used in a general population survey, it can be used to establish the following five subgroups. As with any data collection effort, how you do it will depend on the purpose of collecting such data.
