boards.ie and the gender binary fallacy

yawha

:mad:

Beruthiel

Drop them an e-mail to hello@boards.ie pointing out their error.

Annasopra

Yawha and other trans posters what choices would you list if you were writing a survey?

Aard

Oh come on.

Meesared

Aard wrote: »

Oh come on.

What do you mean? You need to elaborate a bit more than that

Sir Ophiuchus

mango salsa wrote: »

Yawha and other trans posters what choices would you list if you were writing a survey?

I'm not trans, but when I did my psychological survey research I simply asked the question as follows:

Gender __________

People wrote in whatever was appropriate (mostly "male" or "female", of course), which allowed for non-binary entries without increasing work or excluding any groups. It's what I recommend to anyone doing survey research. I know a number of websites do this as well now.

Rev Hellfire

I thought one of the big points was that people are meant to be referenced by the gender they 'identify' with.
Surely supplying others implies that these genders are an artificial construct less worthy of those born a particular way?

baby and crumble

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

I thought one of the big points was that people are meant to be referenced by the gender they 'identify' with.
Surely supplying others implies that these genders are an artificial construct less worthy of those born a particular way?

Lots of people identify as neither, or both. Or somewhere along a spectrum. hence why leaving a blank to fill in manually is probably the most foolproof option.

Sir Ophiuchus

baby and crumble wrote: »

Lots of people identify as neither, or both. Or somewhere along a spectrum. hence why leaving a blank to fill in manually is probably the most foolproof option.

Or were born intersexed,

thebullkf

yawha wrote: »

:mad:

Why are you mad OP

FFS if your trans, put down the sex you believe yourself to be;)

Solved.:)

Annasopra

thebullkf wrote: »

Why are you mad OP

FFS if your trans, put down the sex you believe yourself to be;)

Solved.:)

what if you don't identify as male or female?

L.Jenkins

thebullkf wrote: »

Why are you mad OP

FFS if your trans, put down the sex you believe yourself to be;)

Solved.:)

Read this possibly :rolleyes:

baby and crumble wrote: »

Lots of people identify as neither, or both. Or somewhere along a spectrum. hence why leaving a blank to fill in manually is probably the most foolproof option.

thebullkf

ItsThatManAgain wrote: »

Read this possibly :rolleyes:

less of the rolleyes please.

mango salsa wrote: »

what if you don't identify as male or female?

what if you identify as both..or if you identify as not human.. or....etc etc.

In that case Mango then put down what sex you were born.


My point being people have little to be worrying about if they get :mad: like the OP over stuff like this.

Hope this clarifies my position:)

Sir Ophiuchus

thebullkf wrote: »

less of the rolleyes please.
what if you identify as both..or if you identify as not human.. or....etc etc.

In that case Mango then put down what sex you were born.

My point being people have little to be worrying about if they get :mad: like the OP over stuff like this.

Hope this clarifies my position:)

You're not getting it. There is a significant statistical minority of people who are born neither male nor female, physically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

And yeah, of course it's not going to seem important to someone for whom it's not an issue. But if you're neither male nor female, then having to reinforce a gender binary you're not a part of every time you fill in a form is actually a pretty big deal. And telling trans people to put down the sex they were born, physically, isn't particularly helpful either.

Annasopra

thebullkf wrote: »

less of the rolleyes please.





what if you identify as both..or if you identify as not human.. or....etc etc.

In that case Mango then put down what sex you were born.


My point being people have little to be worrying about if they get :mad: like the OP over stuff like this.

Hope this clarifies my position:)

Not really - just makes you sound as if you don't understand the issues at all

Barna77

:rolleyes:

Annasopra

rolling eyes adds nothing to a discussion

Id genuinely like to hear from trans posters what they would suggest.

Barna77

ok, ok..

I'm just sick of everybody making a fuss out of anything and everyhing

Ooohh Fairytale of New York says "******", let's get the lyrics changed

Aaaahhh there are no gayers enough in the soaps, let's loby for more

Get over it

Sica

While leaving a space blank to allow whatever people want rather than give a binary choice is preferable, why ask the question in the first place? Am I the only person bothered by websites and other forms asking for my gender for no discernible reason?

Barna77

Er... it's a survey, so for statistic purposes splitting male/female makes a lot of sense...

Did ye all tell the census people back in April to feck off?





*these posts are brought to you with %100 extra free sarcasm

Sica

Took a weekend away from the census takers

Annasopra

Barna77 you might not think this is worthwhile discussing but others do

Barna77

Then feel free to discuss it.

I'm out

Shakti

Sica wrote: »

While leaving a space blank to allow whatever people want rather than give a binary choice is preferable, why ask the question in the first place? Am I the only person bothered by websites and other forms asking for my gender for no discernible reason?

I reckon there sold on to advertisers or at least used to attract them re: tampon manufacturers or manly man shaving foam etc.

Sica

Shakti wrote: »

I reckon there sold on to advertisers or at least used to attract them re: tampon manufacturers or manly man shaving foam etc.

Ok, I really do know it is all for marketing purposes, but I still resent it and the fact that virtually every time I fill in a form for any reason I help marketing.

Shakti

Sica wrote: »

Ok, I really do know it is all for marketing purposes, but I still resent it and the fact that virtually every time I fill in a form for any reason I help marketing.

have you seen 'century of the self'?
brilliant documentary about it Bernays et al.

Caiseoipe19

Would I not be correct in saying that if you provide a box in which people can write how they identify instead of just ticking a box, it would bean that they will get back heaps of slightly differently phrased answers, many of which are actually the same. This would mean that someone would have to go through each of these answers and put them into groups, which would be work for whoever's in charge of it.
Ticking boxes is the most efficent way for them and the group it does affect is probably too small to make much of a difference to the results.

baby and crumble

Cygnus wrote: »

Would I not be correct in saying that if you provide a box in which people can write how they identify instead of just ticking a box, it would bean that they will get back heaps of slightly differently phrased answers, many of which are actually the same. This would mean that someone would have to go through each of these answers and put them into groups, which would be work for whoever's in charge of it.
Ticking boxes is the most efficent way for them and the group it does affect is probably too small to make much of a difference to the results.

From a research methodology point of view, you're correct. From an ethics point of view, however, it's not ideal. But marketing and social science research are 2 very different things.

Azure_sky

Well Australia has added androgen as an official gender. Gender identity may run on a spectrum, very much like sexual orientation. Personally I'm not that bothered about boards not giving a wider choice of gender, there's far more serious trans issues which more require immediate attention, imho.
That said I've seen many websites where people are given the option of choosing male, female or in between/irrelevant.

Still, I'm more concerned about trans rights in the work place. Let's start at the fundamentals first.

G.K.

Anything addressing our isues is a step forward, imo.

However, you are fundamentally corrrect - t'is the serious issues that could do with the focus.

MegaWattKungFu

Sir Ophiuchus wrote: »

I'm not trans, but when I did my psychological survey research I simply asked the question as follows:

Gender __________

People wrote in whatever was appropriate (mostly "male" or "female", of course), which allowed for non-binary entries without increasing work or excluding any groups. It's what I recommend to anyone doing survey research. I know a number of websites do this as well now.

If you're collecting the results in an automated fashion (and I assume you would be), you could be losing data points for people who don't enter in a specific or near specific string - "male", "Male", "mail", "man", etc. If someone write in "guy" or any other weird combination then you are losing data.

If you give a choice of what to write, you're not forcing the user to choose a specific answer so they could give no answer for any reason. (Privacy reason or something similar).

Anyway, my point is, did you find that any of this happened in your results?

I think I would often click I don't identify with either gender if I got the choice simply because of privacy issues and not gender or sexual related ones. I'm sure I'm not alone and it would cause problems for the owners of the website, form, whatever.

Sir Ophiuchus

I was using a paper questionnaire (filled out in my presence, albeit anonymously and without me reading their answers) and coding the response data myself, so the issue didn't arise, but I take your point. No, everyone wrote in an answer.