Where is your e-mail address located?
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My friend suggests that it refers to where I CHECK my e-mail most often, but I don't see an "everywhere there is a computer" option. Plus this image is so much more of a WTF if I don't listen to him.I also found this gem in the same set of forms:
Yes. I am Unknown Gender.
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@The MAZZTer said:
I also found this gem in the same set of forms:
Yes. I am Unknown Gender.
dunno about the top point, but about the gender thing. gender isn't exactly a binary thing, there's a lot between male and female, so unknown makes some kind of sense actually, although it probably have been "other".
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The concept of "Unknown" gender makes more sense if you consider the case of someone filling out the form for someone else....such as over the phone.
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It could also be a "none of your damn business" option. (Though strange that it's listed as a required value, if that's what the asterisk means)
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Facebook?
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@stratos said:
@The MAZZTer said:
I also found this gem in the same set of forms:
Yes. I am Unknown Gender.
dunno about the top point, but about the gender thing. gender isn't exactly a binary thing, there's a lot between male and female, so unknown makes some kind of sense actually, although it probably have been "other".
On our recruitment forms we have four options on our gender question at work: Male, Female, Other, Prefer not to say. Nobody I have talked to has yet worked out what the other might be (and its nothing to do with sexual orientation as that's a different question on the same form). I did try to have other removed but the consensus was to leave it in. Unfortunately the part of the form that this appears on is anonymous for equality monitoring only, so if somebody does class themselves as other we can't ask them for a definition.
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@DAL1978 said:
@stratos said:
@The MAZZTer said:
I also found this gem in the same set of forms:
Yes. I am Unknown Gender.
dunno about the top point, but about the gender thing. gender isn't exactly a binary thing, there's a lot between male and female, so unknown makes some kind of sense actually, although it probably have been "other".
On our recruitment forms we have four options on our gender question at work: Male, Female, Other, Prefer not to say. Nobody I have talked to has yet worked out what the other might be (and its nothing to do with sexual orientation as that's a different question on the same form). I did try to have other removed but the consensus was to leave it in. Unfortunately the part of the form that this appears on is anonymous for equality monitoring only, so if somebody does class themselves as other we can't ask them for a definition.
As a member of the "other" category, I'm always quite happy when somebody gives me the option to not pick "female" or "male". It keeps me from that minute and a half of staring at the paper trying to decide what I'm going to be known as here. And, fyi, "other" can be transexuals, hermaphrodites, other people with "gender issues", and some people who just don't consider themselves to have a set gender at all.
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Yeah, people are wayyyyyy too black and white on those kinds of things... When someone has never known or been exposed through any media to any person who did not fall into either male or female very cleanly, it's easy for them to think in those polarized dichotomous terms, but REAL life isn't always entirely like that.
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@The MAZZTer said:
My friend suggests that it refers to where I CHECK my e-mail most often, but I don't see an "everywhere there is a computer" option. Plus this image is so much more of a WTF if I don't listen to him.This is not where you check your email its what you primarily use that email for. Like I have a separate email from my school which i use solely for my school work, i have a work email which i only use for work and i have a yahoo email which i use for everything else. This field makes sense just is worded strange.
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I don't think that campus and dormitory are distinct enough even if that's the case.
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@misguided said:
I don't think that campus and dormitory are distinct enough even if that's the case.
That depends; are you restricting yourself to on-campus dorms?
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I have a "Select..." email address myself. It's much better than my previous "blank" email.
Seriously, I guess the blank option can be there for people that don't have an email address; but I don't think I've ever seen a "Please select one" message as the last option on a listbox.
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@BradleyS said:
As a member of the "other" category, I'm always quite happy when somebody gives me the option to not pick "female" or "male". It keeps me from that minute and a half of staring at the paper trying to decide what I'm going to be known as here. And, fyi, "other" can be transexuals, hermaphrodites, other people with "gender issues", and some people who just don't consider themselves to have a set gender at all.
Screw that. You're born with a gender, just like me. That's what you put on the form. Through the miracle of medicine, we can give you different genitalia, so you can switch. Other does not apply to humans. No matter who you are, you should consider yourself a set gender. I don't think we should be defending a website drop-down in defense of less than one half of one percent of the population, who can't decide what gender they are. Imagine them trying to order dinner at a restaurant.
Gender issues? Give me a break!
Sorry (ok not really) if I sound mean, and I'm not trying to bash sexual orientation (gay, straight, bi, furry), just people who don't understand that there are only two genders.
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I've worked on loads of web forms. The amount of common sense that goes in to designing these sorts of forms is... pretty much zero.
Sure it's functional, but people NEVER read them to check if it makes _any sense at all_.
I'm so glad I'm now working somewhere with a dedicated QA team :)
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Ok the issue of gender. Most people are familiar only with the male and female of our species.
These are defined by a set of chromosones
XX = female
XY = male
Thing is, there are actually three more official but rare genders caused by mutations that add a third chromosone.
XXY, XYY, XXX
There is no YYY as an X is always passed by the mother. Two of the above three appear female (XXY and XXX) while the third appears male. These genders are also infertile.
So when selecting Gender, Other should be a valid option without even considering personal gender confusion.
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@belgariontheking said:
@BradleyS said:
As a member of
the "other" category, I'm always quite happy when somebody gives me the
option to not pick "female" or "male". It keeps me from that minute and
a half of staring at the paper trying to decide what I'm going to be
known as here. And, fyi, "other" can be transexuals, hermaphrodites,
other people with "gender issues", and some people who just don't
consider themselves to have a set gender at all.Screw
that. You're born with a gender, just like me. That's what
you put on the form. Through the miracle of medicine, we can give
you different genitalia, so you can switch. Other does not apply
to humans. No matter who you are, you should consider yourself a
set gender. I don't think we should be defending a website
drop-down in defense of less than one half of one percent of the
population, who can't decide what gender they are. Imagine them
trying to order dinner at a restaurant.
Gender issues? Give me a break!
Sorry
(ok not really) if I sound mean, and I'm not trying to bash sexual
orientation (gay, straight, bi, furry), just people who don't
understand that there are only two genders.You
don't sound mean, just arrogant in your ignorance, so here's clue #1:
just because YOU don't know about something doesn't mean it does not
exist. Here's clue #2: you appear to be confusing 'gender' with
'what kind of genitalia you have'; some people have no genitalia, some
have unusual congenital development which means that they have genital
structures that aren't unambiguously one or the other. Here's
clue #3: most men have two X chromosomes, most women have an XY
combination, but some people have YY, XXY, XYY or other
combinations. Here's clue #4: all of this biological stuff
is entirely orthogonal to psychosocial definitions of gender.Gender
is a complex construct, and you don't get to redefine the english
language to make it mean something much simpler such as "what kind of
dangly bits someone has".Why don't you actually go read that wiki article someone quoted?
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@DaveK said:
Here's
clue #3: most men have two X chromosomes, most women have an XY
combination, but some people have YY, XXY, XYY or other
combinations.I don't think YY is actually a viable karyotype - to the best of our knowledge, at least one X chromosome is required for a human embryo to develop at all (there's a lot of important low-level genetic stuff that's only present on the X, you shouldn't get a body developing without it). Pretty much anything else is feasible, although more than three is extremely rare.
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@DaveK said:
You
don't sound mean, just arrogant in your ignorance, so here's clue #1:
just because YOU don't know about something doesn't mean it does not
exist. Here's clue #2: you appear to be confusing 'gender' with
'what kind of genitalia you have'; some people have no genitalia, some
have unusual congenital development which means that they have genital
structures that aren't unambiguously one or the other. Here's
clue #3: most men have two X chromosomes, most women have an XY
combination, but some people have YY, XXY, XYY or other
combinations. Here's clue #4: all of this biological stuff
is entirely orthogonal to psychosocial definitions of gender.Gender
is a complex construct, and you don't get to redefine the english
language to make it mean something much simpler such as "what kind of
dangly bits someone has".Why don't you actually go read that wiki article someone quoted?
I think not having a universally accepted term for what we are talking about creates some of the tension here. You say gender, someone thinks physiology. You say sex, someone thinks of the action instead of physiology. If only people were more like scallops. Beige gonads = male, bright pink gonads = female.
As an aside, you've mixed up male and female chromosome combos there. I always remember the Bill Cosby joke where he blames his wife for not giving him a boy ("Hey, you had it last!") and she says it was really his fault. If the man decides the sex of the baby, he must have both the X and Y chromosomes.
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@DaveK said:
@belgariontheking said:
@BradleyS said:
As a member of
the "other" category, I'm always quite happy when somebody gives me the
option to not pick "female" or "male". It keeps me from that minute and
a half of staring at the paper trying to decide what I'm going to be
known as here. And, fyi, "other" can be transexuals, hermaphrodites,
other people with "gender issues", and some people who just don't
consider themselves to have a set gender at all.Screw
that. You're born with a gender, just like me. That's what
you put on the form. Through the miracle of medicine, we can give
you different genitalia, so you can switch. Other does not apply
to humans. No matter who you are, you should consider yourself a
set gender. I don't think we should be defending a website
drop-down in defense of less than one half of one percent of the
population, who can't decide what gender they are. Imagine them
trying to order dinner at a restaurant.
Gender issues? Give me a break!
Sorry
(ok not really) if I sound mean, and I'm not trying to bash sexual
orientation (gay, straight, bi, furry), just people who don't
understand that there are only two genders.You
don't sound mean, just arrogant in your ignorance, so here's clue #1:
just because YOU don't know about something doesn't mean it does not
exist. Here's clue #2: you appear to be confusing 'gender' with
'what kind of genitalia you have'; some people have no genitalia, some
have unusual congenital development which means that they have genital
structures that aren't unambiguously one or the other. Here's
clue #3: most men have two X chromosomes, most women have an XY
combination, but some people have YY, XXY, XYY or other
combinations. Here's clue #4: all of this biological stuff
is entirely orthogonal to psychosocial definitions of gender.Gender
is a complex construct, and you don't get to redefine the english
language to make it mean something much simpler such as "what kind of
dangly bits someone has".Why don't you actually go read that wiki article someone quoted?
Again, give me a break. You're talking about less than 0.5 percent. The wiki article puts it at 0.018%. "Prefer not to say" would suffice if you're confused about your gender. That's what we call a severe minority, and doesn't need to be taken into account when coding up a website unless you're a government organization. If it were a percentage much greater, even 5%, I would have less problem with people bitching that it's not an option in some random website that's not even been linked in this thread.
I feel educated by your post, but not swayed.
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@DaveK said:
You
don't sound mean, just arrogant in your ignorance, so here's clue #1:
just because YOU don't know about something doesn't mean it does not
exist. Here's clue #2: you appear to be confusing 'gender' with
'what kind of genitalia you have';That is what 'gender' means on a form. It's manifestly incorrect, and only that way because some people are squeamish about the word 'sex', but what are you gonna do?
clue #3: It's not asking about your identity.
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@belgariontheking said:
@DaveK said:
@belgariontheking said:
@BradleyS said:
As a member of
the "other" category, I'm always quite happy when somebody gives me the
option to not pick "female" or "male". It keeps me from that minute and
a half of staring at the paper trying to decide what I'm going to be
known as here. And, fyi, "other" can be transexuals, hermaphrodites,
other people with "gender issues", and some people who just don't
consider themselves to have a set gender at all.Screw
that. You're born with a gender, just like me. That's what
you put on the form. Through the miracle of medicine, we can give
you different genitalia, so you can switch. Other does not apply
to humans. No matter who you are, you should consider yourself a
set gender. I don't think we should be defending a website
drop-down in defense of less than one half of one percent of the
population, who can't decide what gender they are. Imagine them
trying to order dinner at a restaurant.
Gender issues? Give me a break!
Sorry
(ok not really) if I sound mean, and I'm not trying to bash sexual
orientation (gay, straight, bi, furry), just people who don't
understand that there are only two genders.You
don't sound mean, just arrogant in your ignorance, so here's clue #1:
just because YOU don't know about something doesn't mean it does not
exist. Here's clue #2: you appear to be confusing 'gender' with
'what kind of genitalia you have'; some people have no genitalia, some
have unusual congenital development which means that they have genital
structures that aren't unambiguously one or the other. Here's
clue #3: most men have two X chromosomes, most women have an XY
combination, but some people have YY, XXY, XYY or other
combinations. Here's clue #4: all of this biological stuff
is entirely orthogonal to psychosocial definitions of gender.Gender
is a complex construct, and you don't get to redefine the english
language to make it mean something much simpler such as "what kind of
dangly bits someone has".Why don't you actually go read that wiki article someone quoted?
Again, give me a break. You're talking about less than 0.5 percent. The wiki article puts it at 0.018%. "Prefer not to say" would suffice if you're confused about your gender. That's what we call a severe minority, and doesn't need to be taken into account when coding up a website unless you're a government organization. If it were a percentage much greater, even 5%, I would have less problem with people bitching that it's not an option in some random website that's not even been linked in this thread.
I feel educated by your post, but not swayed.
First, I wasn't bitching about it not being there. I'm actually quite used to people telling me I'm not really a boy or not really a girl, and I've learned to deal with it. I understand that I'm a severe minority, and again, I deal with it. I was just pointing out that it brings me joy when some people accept that "gender" either as physiology or as psychology, doesn't have to be a binary scale.
Your first post, though, seems to indicate that you consider somebody's gender to have changed if they get a sex change operation, i.e. they were female but are now male. If you do accept this switch as being a valid change of gender, what do you consider them during treatment? It's not an instant thing, ya know.
Of course, it wasn't too long ago that people were convinced there were only two sexualities ("gay or straight, just pick one!"), and transgendered people just didn't exist, so I guess we're moving forward regardless.Either way, I'm still happy to be included.
-
I think we should all be glad it's a dropdown with options, rather than a a single checkbox labeled "Man".
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@belgariontheking said:
@BradleyS said:
As a member of the "other" category, I'm always quite happy when somebody gives me the option to not pick "female" or "male". It keeps me from that minute and a half of staring at the paper trying to decide what I'm going to be known as here. And, fyi, "other" can be transexuals, hermaphrodites, other people with "gender issues", and some people who just don't consider themselves to have a set gender at all.
Screw that. You're born with a gender, just like me. That's what you put on the form. Through the miracle of medicine, we can give you different genitalia, so you can switch. Other does not apply to humans. No matter who you are, you should consider yourself a set gender. I don't think we should be defending a website drop-down in defense of less than one half of one percent of the population, who can't decide what gender they are. Imagine them trying to order dinner at a restaurant.
Gender issues? Give me a break!
Sorry (ok not really) if I sound mean, and I'm not trying to bash sexual orientation (gay, straight, bi, furry), just people who don't understand that there are only two genders.
Actually, sex is the physical characteristics you are born with. Gender is what is in your brain.
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@slavdude said:
Actually, sex is the physical characteristics you are born with. Gender is what is in your brain.
At last someone pointed it out. I'd like to continue by saying that both your physical characteristics and your mental ones have a grey area between male and female. Just because you don't care about a minority of less than x% doesn't mean no-one else does, or that they are irrelevant.
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Why don't we settle for defining gender based on whether the person prefers to be called "sir" or "ma'am" and call it a day?
@dhromed said:
I think we should all be glad it's a dropdown with options, rather than a a single checkbox labeled "Man".
:D
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@BradleyS said:
First, I wasn't bitching about it not being there.
Your first post, though, seems to indicate that you consider somebody's gender to have changed if they get a sex change operation, i.e. they were female but are now male. If you do accept this switch as being a valid change of gender, what do you consider them during treatment? It's not an instant thing, ya know.
I wasn't speaking to you directly on that account. I just don't think that every website needs to account for "intergendered" humans.
If they got a sex change operation, I'd be alright with them checking the other gender on a website. I'm not sure whether I consider it a valid change of gender, since gender (I now know) is very complicated. I would be alright with whatever they wanted to call themselves during treatment. "Temporary" maybe.
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@belgariontheking said:
@BradleyS said:
First, I wasn't bitching about it not being there.
Your first post, though, seems to indicate that you consider somebody's gender to have changed if they get a sex change operation, i.e. they were female but are now male. If you do accept this switch as being a valid change of gender, what do you consider them during treatment? It's not an instant thing, ya know.
I wasn't speaking to you directly on that account. I just don't think that every website needs to account for "intergendered" humans.
If they got a sex change operation, I'd be alright with them checking the other gender on a website. I'm not sure whether I consider it a valid change of gender, since gender (I now know) is very complicated. I would be alright with whatever they wanted to call themselves during treatment. "Temporary" maybe.
And most websites don't cater to the intergendered, but that doesn't mean that none of them can. This one either does it intentionally, or just allows for more options than most people think of. Inclusion through scope creep, maybe?
And I think that "temporary" is an absolutely lovely gender identification. I may have to start using that. Thanks. ;)
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@belgariontheking said:
@BradleyS said:
First, I wasn't bitching about it not being there.
Your first post, though, seems to indicate that you consider somebody's gender to have changed if they get a sex change operation, i.e. they were female but are now male. If you do accept this switch as being a valid change of gender, what do you consider them during treatment? It's not an instant thing, ya know.
I wasn't speaking to you directly on that account. I just don't think that every website needs to account for "intergendered" humans.
If they got a sex change operation, I'd be alright with them checking the other gender on a website. I'm not sure whether I consider it a valid change of gender, since gender (I now know) is very complicated. I would be alright with whatever they wanted to call themselves during treatment. "Temporary" maybe.
-"Male or female?"
-"I'm temporary!"
:DAnyway, you should watch House MD 2x13 - Skin Deep, there's a hot chick in that episode. Or is there?
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Karyotypes with multiple ocurrences of X or Y don't define extra genders beyond male and female. What defines a biological male is the presence of one or more Y chromossomes. Female is defined by the absence of Y.
Of course, if someone who is not human goes filling that form, they might go by other. For example (and I might be wrong, so correct me if I am), daleks have no gender.
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@belgariontheking said:
Again, give me a break. You're talking about less than 0.5 percent. The wiki article puts it at 0.018%. "Prefer not to say" would suffice if you're confused about your gender. That's what we call a severe minority, and doesn't need to be taken into account when coding up a website unless you're a government organization. If it were a percentage much greater, even 5%, I would have less problem with people bitching that it's not an option in some random website that's not even been linked in this thread.
I feel educated by your post, but not swayed.
Really? This is what we're going with? It's a WTF to take into account tiny percentages of the population when coding a website??
I'm not saying it's a WTF to NOT do so, though I do think you should have an "unspecified" or "prefer not to say" for people who don't think it's any of your damn business what gender they are...
but if someone has that extra option, it's not silly, it shows that they don't think obsessively in the box and try to fit everyone into that box for their own comfort. which is damned annoying.
Just as an extra layer of perspective, and to Godwin this thread in the hopes that it will die already, the ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda made up as near as I can figure about 0.0000184 % of the world's population, maybe that's why the international community did basically nothing while acts of genocide were being committed against them... Clinton said later that if he'd sent about 5000 peacekeepers he could have saved about 500,000 of their lives, but seriously, that's what we'd call a severe minority so it's a good thing so few people took them into account.
Giving basic consideration to small minorities is good, mmkay?
[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]
For example (and I might be wrong, so correct me if I am), daleks have no gender.
[/quote]Good point. I always assumed that daleks were male because of their giant phallus. But they do have a vaguely female manner of bossing humans around ;)
(I wouldn't have felt good about being such a belligerent gender liberal in this thread if I hadn't taken an aside to jokingly perpetuate roles stereotypes... heheh)
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How about a slider? Then you can be 74% male with no problem.
Now that I think about it, why isn't there a slider form element?
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@asuffield said:
@DaveK said:
Here's
clue #3: most men have two X chromosomes, most women have an XY
combination, but some people have YY, XXY, XYY or other
combinations.I don't think YY is actually a viable karyotype - to the best of our knowledge, at least one X chromosome is required for a human embryo to develop at all (there's a lot of important low-level genetic stuff that's only present on the X, you shouldn't get a body developing without it). Pretty much anything else is feasible, although more than three is extremely rare.
As I understand it: XX comes from the mother; XY comes from the father. So you, in normal circumstances, would have 'XX' or 'XY' on the child. YY is impossible, according to http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/mole00/mole00149.htm - emphasis mine:
Missing the X chromosome completely is lethal to my knowledge. I also know of no cases of live birth to a human with no x chromosomes.XYY is possible and does occur.
XYY can be normal although some evidence indicates they are sometimes below normal inteelect and sometimes violent.
But you can have a single X (this is Turner's Syndrome, according to Wikipedia). Still according to Wikipedia, you can have XXYY as well: "48,XXYY syndrome is a sex chromosome anomaly. It affects one in every 17,000 boys who are born." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/48%2CXXYY_syndrome)
So, being XXYY is possible, but very rare, and YY is impossible.
-
on the topic of coding around small minorities:
the 29th of February is a very small minority of the days (about .07% of days are Feb 29th) but if someone made a calendar that didn't account for it, they would have committed a huge WTF.
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@Renan_S2 said:
So, being XXYY is possible, but very rare, and YY is impossible.
Or as a geneticist friend of mine once put it, there's not much carried on the Y chromosome apart from hairy ears and surnames.
Andrew.
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We always use "Legal Gender" on forms and such; i.e. the gender in your passport, as in the country I live in (and AFAIK in just about every other country), only two legal genders, male and female, exist, and every citizen is assigned exactly one of them.
