Gender Options on the Wiki

[d3crypt]

Could someone add nonbinary to the gender field? I know there is undisclosed, but I would like it if it gave more than just male and female.

[Schol-R-LEA]

Oddly enough, the Whateley Academy forum has the same problem - when they redid the site after the 2015 DDOS attack made the old domain unusable, they never got around to configuring a lot of the new forum, so it has the Kunena Forum defaults of "Male", "Female", and "Unknown" (which sounds even odder than "Undisclosed", but, uncomfortably enough, in my case it is the only real option that would fit even if there were others).

Not sure why I wanted to mention it, other than a) shameless promotion of a series I enjoy, and b) to point out that, well, if they don't get it right, I wouldn't really expect a site that isn't, well, focused on that very topic to do better. I won't defend it on that basis - really, how is this still not handled more gracefully by any site by now? - but I do think that it is food for thought.

[hannah]

We could just change it to Sex, there is no such thing as non-binary sex.

[Schol-R-LEA]

We could just change it to Sex, there is no such thing as non-binary sex.

You might want to reconsider that assertion: Wikipedia: Intersex. I could also tell you about an ex of mine, but that would be TMI.

Actually, intersex states of various degrees are usually thought to be far more common than non-binary gender ones; they occur at a rate of about 1% according to most estimates, as opposed to 0.2% for gender variance as a category. The figures for both are now increasingly considered underestimates, however, by as much as an order of magnitude in the latter category, and at least some studies suggest that they are roughly equal in frequency at around 2%. I would still say that those figures are misleading, as they don't reflect the multidimensionality of variation - both physical and psychological diversity occur in more than one form - but that's getting too far into the matter at this juncture.

However, I don't really want to belabor the point, either way, as it really isn't relevant for the topic of the site, hence my own relative silence about it here up to now, compared to what I have said in other fora. While I have discussed it at length in the Daily WTF - a site I am not currently visiting for various reasons - as well as the aforementioned WA and similar sites such as Tuckerspawn and the EGS and Rain LGBT message boards, and even have mentioned it in other technical and hobby fora such as Daniweb and Homebrew Talk when it was on-topic, it never really came up here before so far as I know.

Pervy creep that I am (as anyone who has figured out the last of the Sacred Dis Honors listed after my name and title in my .sig can tell ), I ordinarily would go along with dchapiesky's suggestion, except that's orientation and libido rather than gender or sex. Besides, even with a relatively small forum, there's a statistical certainty that there is at least one person who is asexual and we'd be back where we started.

Now, I am pretty sure that the field is just a default part of the phpBB configuration, and that it is simply the case that no one on this site ever really thought about it until now; since it really isn't relevant to the subject at hand, we can probably just remove or turn off the field entirely.

And just to forestall any nasty comments, I will merely point out the likes of Dani Berry, Alexia Massalin, Sophie Wilson, and Lynn Conway.

[Kazinsal]

Gender is one of those social constructs I've grown to be rather annoyed by after years of being in various aspects of the LGBT+ community. Suffice it to say I think it should either be a text box, a series of humourous responses (my vote is for Sausage/Bagel/Complete Breakfast), or just turning the damn thing off is the best way to go apart from having the two dominant responses for the question "what is your gender" and the catch-all "other" for the other percent-or-less -- which is what we have now.

[Brendan]

Hi,

Could someone add nonbinary to the gender field? I know there is undisclosed, but I would like it if it gave more than just male and female.

I'd rather see the gender field removed and not replaced with anything - it's all irrelevant information (this is not a website intended to be used for finding a date/spouse/whatever).


Cheers,

Brendan

[FallenAvatar]

Can admins lock this thread before more hurtful/dismissive/insulting comments are added?

[Schol-R-LEA]

Hi,

Could someone add nonbinary to the gender field? I know there is undisclosed, but I would like it if it gave more than just male and female.

I'd rather see the gender field removed and not replaced with anything - it's all irrelevant information (this is not a website intended to be used for finding a date/spouse/whatever).

As I said earlier, I think this is the best option as well. However, one other option would be to ask for pronoun preferences rather than gender, and allow individuals to choose from a database-driven combobox which would allow them to enter one not already on the list.

The problem with that, aside from the rather trivial issue of trolling that is present whenever an open-ended option is offered, is that it would not guarantee that anyone would actually follow the request, especially if they were deliberately provoking someone.

Furthermore, while I find Brendan's statement more than a little dismissive, I agree that it is simply not something that comes up in technical fora for the most part. I could probably count on my hands the number of times I have used a third-person pronoun to refer to someone on this forum in the past three years, and most of those would have been referring to one of three individuals (Brendan, Embryo, or Nunolava1998). The best choice really is to eliminate the field as irrelevant.

I also second the lock request, unless one or more of the mods think there is anything to be gained from further debate on the topic.

[SpyderTL]

It probably makes more sense on other sites, but asking for a user's gender on this site is about as helpful as asking their race. Or their weight.