Gender question ‘voluntary’ in the next national census My room was no bigger than a cell. I had been champion of the world but now I felt like an animal in a zoo, stripped of dignity
CITIZENS could be allowed to opt out of saying whether they are men or women when they complete the next census, it emerged yesterday.
The gender question could be voluntary in the national survey, due in 2021, amid claims that it discriminates against transgender people, the Office for National Statistics has suggested.
But rather than offering other options, it recommended the question “should not be mandatory, for the benefit of particularly intersex and nonbinary people who cannot choose male or female as a reflection of their current sex or gender”, it was reported. Feminist campaigners blasted the plan. Germaine Greer said: “Women haven’t even won the right to exist.” Activist Stephanie Davies-Arai said failing to collect information “skews everything for women”.
pulled up, the first thing that hit me was the size. It was as scary as a prison and every bit as bleak.
As I stepped inside, I felt physically sick. I could see the other patients eating their dinner behind a locked door. “It’s Bruno,” they were shouting. “Bruno is coming in here.”
The wall was covered in smears. They were the fingerprints of despair left by patients who had arrived before me. Now I was no different to them. Then I heard it – the noise that had been the soundtrack to my world so often. First it was squeaky wheels as the nurse steered the medicine trolley.
Then it was the clinking of glass bottles.
Finally, there was the click of the lid as the pills were opened. I was handed lithium. I gulped them down. Maybe I’d wake up and find it had all been a bad dream.
My room was a hellhole. I placed a Bible under my pillow. Lying with plastic sheets under me was the worst feeling imaginable. I pulled the duvet up to my chin and tried to control my fear.
The world slowly got hazier. Then, eventually, there was darkness.
I came round face down on the pillow with what felt like a rock strapped to the back of my skull. My bed sheets were drenched in sweat. How strong were these drugs they were giving me? I looked at my hands and they were shaking. I’d never seen them shake, not before my toughest fights or after my most crushing defeats. But they were shaking now and I couldn’t make them stop.
I reached for my Bible and said a prayer.
The side-effects of the meds were unbearable. They felt like electric shocks to my brain.
My legs would go into spasm and I could hardly walk. Other times, I couldn’t stop my feet from tapping. I was swinging between paralysis and breakdancing.
The drugs were making my mental state worse. I begged the doctors to stop giving them to me. But no one would listen.
I’d have blackouts and come round crouched in the corner of my room – totally unaware how I had got there. I was struggling to stay awake, slurring my words and dribbling.
And most nights I’d be tortured by the same hellish dream. I’d be climbing to the top of a building, then watch myself fall through the air, hurtling towards the ground.
I’d wake up just before I hit the pavement, then realise I was sitting bolt upright in my bed, shaking and dripping with sweat.
Relief always swept over me when I realised it was my mind playing tricks. But then I’d remember where I was. Trapped.
I feared I would not get through. I was breathing, I was moving, I was existing.
But I didn’t feel alive.