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My latest article discusses the least popular terms in the Gender Census, Cisgender and Binary.
https://jasonbeets.blogspot.com/2025/12/cisgender-and-binary.html
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The Gender Census is an annual global online survey of people who have a gender that isn’t exclusively male or female.
Cisgender and Binary are consistently the least commonly chosen checkboxes in the survey.
They are also, arguably, incorrect answers.
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In this thread, we will explore what these terms mean, whether they’re incorrect answers, and why they're included in the survey, in the first place.
We will also examine how these terms have performed in the Gender Census over the years.
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Section: Definitions
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Cisgender refers to someone who identifies as the gender they were assigned at birth.
By contrast, transgender refers to someone who identifies as a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth.
Cisgender and transgender are opposite, or complementary, terms.
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Binary refers to someone who has a gender that's either male or female.
By contrast, nonbinary refers to someone who has a gender that’s something other than exclusively male or female.
Common nonbinary genders include genderfluid and agender.
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Binary and nonbinary are opposite, or complementary, terms.
Binary can be used to describe someone who is cisgender or transgender.
In practice, binary is often used in combination with transgender, in the compound term 'binary transgender,' to describe someone who identifies with the binary gender other than the one they were assigned at birth.
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Section: Survey Design
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A large majority of people are both binary and cisgender.
Only a small percentage of respondents to the Gender Census are binary or cisgender, because the survey is designed to answer questions about the nonbinary community.
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Before starting the survey, participants are required to agree with the following statement:
- Yes, I confirm that I don’t really fit into just one of the two boxes of “always, solely and completely a woman/girl” or “always, solely and completely a man/boy.”
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Right off the bat, binary, as an identity term, doesn’t seem to be a viable answer, considering the statement above.
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Cisgender doesn’t really make sense, either.
Everyone, or almost everyone, is assigned either male or female at birth.
So identifying with the gender you were assigned at birth doesn’t appear to be a correct answer, considering the statement respondents must agree with to begin the survey.
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I would argue that binary and cisgender are wrong answers in the Gender Census.
In certain circumstances, there might be a reason how they could be correct answers.
But from my analysis of the response data, I haven’t found a common reason for why participants chose these responses, that would be consistent with the design and intent of the survey.
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So, why are cisgender and binary included as options in the survey, in the first place?
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Nonbinary and transgender are among the most popular terms in the Gender Census.
Binary is included so we can compare the percent of respondents who select nonbinary, to the percent who select its opposite, binary.
And cisgender is included so we can compare the percent of respondents who select transgender, to the percent who select its opposite, cisgender.
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I discussed how nonbinary and transgender have performed in the Gender Census in "Top of the Charts."
https://jasonbeets.blogspot.com/2025/01/top-of-charts.html
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I also discussed how nonbinary and transgender have performed in the Gender Census in my article on the results of the 2025 Gender Census.
https://jasonbeets.blogspot.com/2025/09/gender-census-2025.html
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Section: Comparisons
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Nonbinary has been the most popular term in the Gender Census, every year, from 2015 to 2025.
Binary has been the least popular term in the Gender Census, since it was added as a checkbox in 2018.
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You can compare the performance of nonbinary and binary, in the Gender Census, in the graph below.
You can click on the images in this thread to view larger versions of them.
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I created the graphs in this series using Flourish, a website that allows users to create compelling visual aids.
https://flourish.studio/features/
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From 2015 to 2025, nonbinary’s average has been 64.1%.
For comparison, binary’s average has been 1.2%.
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