Taylor Swift has called out U.S. government officials for failing to recognise transgender and non-binary people on the 2020 Census.
Swift shared her frustrations with the limited options on the legally-required population questionnaire on Friday as she joined fans online for Pride Live’s Stonewall Day livestream event, celebrating the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots at The Stonewall Inn in New York City.
“Hey guys, it’s Taylor,” the singer began. “I wanted to say happy Pride Month. The Stonewall Inn has been such a symbol of rebellion in the face of oppression and such a safe place for people. I want to say thank you to everybody who works there, everyone who has worked there, everyone who’s made it the place that it is.”
She went on to recall her surprise performance at the bar last summer, when she joined actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson for an impromptu 50th anniversary set, and then turned her attention to the continued fight for equal rights for the LGBTQ community.
Referencing a recent landmark ruling by Supreme Court judges, officially extending protections from discrimination in the workplace to LGBTQ people, Swift said, “(It was) a really good step forward with the Supreme Court ruling… but we still have so far to go in terms of equality and protections for LGBTQ people and people in the trans community…”
“I got my Census the other day and there were two choices for gender: there was male and female, and that erasure was so upsetting to me, the erasure of transgender and non-binary people,” the Shake It Off hitmaker continued.
“When you don’t collect information on a group of people, that means that you have every excuse in the world not to support them. When you don’t collect data on a community, that’s a really, really brutal way of dismissing them.”
Swift concluded her speech by urging fans to make their voices heard by voting in November: “We need to make sure we elect people who care about all communities.”
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