Other Gender



  •  I work with a software company that creates a medical records application. I just noticed while testing the application that the combo selction box for gender contains 4 choices. Male, Female, Unknown, and Other.

     

    WTF is an "Other" gender. Is that like someone who survived a botched sex change operation, or ran out of money?



  • Wikipedia's articles on intersexuality and gender identity might be good starting points.



  • I was getting a background check a while back, and watching the clerk enter my info, I noticed that the "gender" selection had at least a dozen options ... including "Other", "Unknown", and "Indeterminate" 



  • Note that the field is "Gender", not "Sex".  As such, valid meanings of "Other" include transgender, etc.

    If this was from a registration form for a web app or something, then it'd be a WTF.  But this is medical records software.  In many cases, especially in the psychiatric field, "Male" and "Female" are simply insufficient.



  • TRWTF is that they think 'male' and 'female' are genders. They are sexes. The corresponding genders are 'masculine' and 'feminine'.



  • Well this thread started with a slight turn and ended up with an explosion in the postees face. "That's the real WTF"



  • This is old.  I remember we went over this discussion back when I joined this site.  yawn



  • @belgariontheking said:

    This is old.  I remember we went over this discussion back when I joined this site.  *yawn*

    Which was when you still had to log onto this bulletin board by submitting a batch of punch cards?

    <font face="Courier New" size="3">//BELGARION JOB (00007),’THE KING’,</font>

    <font face="Courier New" size="3">// MSGCLASS=X,CLASS=A,NOTIFY=</font><font face="Courier New" size="3">BELGARION</font>

    <font face="Courier New" size="3">//* LOGON DAILY WTF
    </font>

    <font face="Courier New" size="3">//STEP1 EXEC PGM=DWTFFRM</font>

     



  •  When I worked on HR software, we had several genders for candidates to pick from:

    • Male
    • Female
    • Declined to answer
    • Not specified (basically, our NULL value)
    • Transgender MtoF
    • Transgender FtoM
    • Other



  • Are patients supposed to use this application? If so, I find the option for "Unknown" even weirder than "Other". And if the user selects "Unknown", is he/she/it given directions for finding out?



  • @TGV said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    This is old.  I remember we went over this discussion back when I joined this site.  yawn

    Which was when you still had to log onto this bulletin board by submitting a batch of punch cards?

    Yeah, back when they let me submit jobs in CLASS A. They've since demoted me to CLASS V.



  •  Maybe it should be something like this:

     Select your pronoun:

    He

    She

    It

    HShe (male->female)

    ShHe (female->male)

    Heit (male->sterile)

     

    Well, you can figure out the rest



  • And for someone who changed a lot: HShHShHShHShHeitSheitHShHShe



  • It's easy to imagine cases where "unknown" would be an appropriate category. For example, if a clinic needed to create a new, empty record for someone who called in to make an appointment, their gender might be unknown at the time of the call. The details could be filled out when the patient came in.



  • @barfoo said:

    It's easy to imagine cases where "unknown" would be an appropriate category. For example, if a clinic needed to create a new, empty record for someone who called in to make an appointment, their gender might be unknown at the time of the call.

    Or for someone who has had extensive damage to their outer body making the identification of the gender difficult if not impossible (say a burn victim), and is in a coma or is other wise unable to let you know their gender (amnesia) due to some traumatic event (say being set on fire). They might have a gender, or they might not, thus marking them as other would indicate that you know they aren't classifiable as male or female (like a hermaphrodite).



  • @Lingerance said:

    @barfoo said:
    It's easy to imagine cases where "unknown" would be an appropriate category. For example, if a clinic needed to create a new, empty record for someone who called in to make an appointment, their gender might be unknown at the time of the call.
    Or for someone who has had extensive damage to their outer body making the identification of the gender difficult if not impossible (say a burn victim), and is in a coma or is other wise unable to let you know their gender (amnesia) due to some traumatic event (say being set on fire). They might have a gender, or they might not, thus marking them as other would indicate that you know they aren't classifiable as male or female (like a hermaphrodite).

    Well, from a purely scientific standpoint there really are only 3 genders: male, female and "defective".  A genetic test can easily determine which chromosomes the person has.  However, this isn't so much being used to identify genetic gender as it is emotional gender, which is why there are so many options.  Emotionally, people can identify themselves in multiple ways which means there have to be plenty of options available.  The only time "unknown" would be appropriate there would be if the person was in a coma or something and unable to identify their gender and something led the doctors to believe they wouldn't identify with their primary physical gender.



  • My favorite option in the "Sex" scroll-down menu will always be "Yes please."



  • @joeyadams said:

    Maybe it should be something like this:

     Select your pronoun:

     

    I think it was George Carlin who suggested the catch-all abbreviation

    he or she, it

    h'or'sh'it

     



  • @Lingerance said:

    @barfoo said:
    It's easy to imagine cases where "unknown" would be an appropriate category. For example, if a clinic needed to create a new, empty record for someone who called in to make an appointment, their gender might be unknown at the time of the call.
    Or for someone who has had extensive damage to their outer body making the identification of the gender difficult if not impossible (say a burn victim), and is in a coma or is other wise unable to let you know their gender (amnesia) due to some traumatic event (say being set on fire). They might have a gender, or they might not, thus marking them as other would indicate that you know they aren't classifiable as male or female (like a hermaphrodite).
     

    It's Pat!!  Anybody actually remember that old skit?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Well, from a purely scientific standpoint there really are only 3 genders: male, female and "defective". 

    Actually five chromosonal genders:

    XX = female

    XY = male

    XXX, XXY, and XYY are the three defectives, there is no YYY as you will always have at least one X from the mother.  Externally they usually appear female (not always), have shorter lives, stockier and usually infertile.  Theories abound as to why these happen including things similar to "sexless drones".



  • @KattMan said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Well, from a purely scientific standpoint there really are only 3 genders: male, female and "defective".

    Actually five chromosonal genders:

    XX = female

    XY = male

    XXX, XXY, and XYY are the three defectives, there is no YYY as you will always have at least one X from the mother.  Externally they usually appear female (not always), have shorter lives, stockier and usually infertile.  Theories abound as to why these happen including things similar to "sexless drones".

    It's more complicated than that. For example, there are a number of mutations that can produce an XY female, most of them infertile. XXX usually, but not always, produces a perfectly normal female., while XYY is a normal male. You can also have XXXX (50% normal) or XXXXX (severe medical problems). Male variations of these (XXXXY, XXYY, XXXY, etc.) almost invariably result in miscarriage, but if they don't, the result is usually fertile. Monosomy X is usually infertile, monosomy Y is non-viable.



  • @Carnildo said:

    @KattMan said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Well, from a purely scientific standpoint there really are only 3 genders: male, female and "defective". 

    Actually five chromosonal genders:

    XX = female

    XY = male

    XXX, XXY, and XYY are the three defectives, there is no YYY as you will always have at least one X from the mother.  Externally they usually appear female (not always), have shorter lives, stockier and usually infertile.  Theories abound as to why these happen including things similar to "sexless drones".

    It's more complicated than that. For example, there are a number of mutations that can produce an XY female, most of them infertile. XXX usually, but not always, produces a perfectly normal female., while XYY is a normal male. You can also have XXXX (50% normal) or XXXXX (severe medical problems). Male variations of these (XXXXY, XXYY, XXXY, etc.) almost invariably result in miscarriage, but if they don't, the result is usually fertile. Monosomy X is usually infertile, monosomy Y is non-viable.

    I think this is why I just said "male, female and defective". 



  •  

    From what I know it's about this:
    XX & XY are (usually) normal
    XXY (most common) canbe a wide variaty of things, from a fertila female to an (usually infertile) male.This is also the most common cause of hermaphroditae (medical term: intersexuality. The most common is iirc a infertile female and slighty less common an infertile male.
    XXX is always female, usually infertile.
    I've never heard of a (live-birth) XX(X)*(Y)*, but I don't think it's impossible. I'd think it's highly unlikely though, since it usually goes like this:
    X from mother + x/y from father
    And when it goes wrong it is usally this:
    X from mother + xy from father
    And it should be possible to (altough extremely rare I think):
    XX from mother + xy from father

    More seems impossible to me if the mother and father are  healthy.


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