Gender Options In Profile

[Cloud Strife 928]

First, I'd like to say that I like the diversity currently present within the gender options available within profile. I was pleasantly surprised to see that you could pick a variety of terms, and not just the typical male/female. If I may, though, I'd like to offer some alternatives for the terminology that's being used in some of the gender options.

 

Essentially, some of my transgender friends find terms such as "FtM" and "MtF" problematic as they focus too much on that "used to be" gender rather than acknowledging that they've always been male or female, just assigned a gender different from the one they actually were. As a result, I'd like to suggest a change in the terminology from that to "DMAB" (Designated Male at Birth), "DFAB" (Designated Female at Birth), and the terms but with a "C" in front of them (Coercively Designated Male/Female at Birth, reserved for intersex people).

 

Alternatively, just "Trans Female" or "Trans Male" would work fine, as well.

 

Thoughts?

[Simon 4,554]

@,

 

First off, thanks for the suggestion and welcome to the forum!

 

Just speaking personally here, I think the big issue as far as gender options go is that there's just no way the terminology we choose will satisfy everybody.  Some people won't be happy with MtF, and others won't be happy with DMAB. 

 

The big benefit to using MtF and FtM is that they're very clear.  People viewing the profile can very easily understand what gender the person identifies as.  And at its core, the purposes of the gender box is to simply communicate gender in a glance to people viewing their profile, primarily for purposes such as letting people know what pronouns to use when they send you a PM. Because of this, I personally think the best option is to utilize the clearest and most commonly used terminology, which in this case is MtF and FtM.

[Cloud Strife 928]

That does make sense to me, and I see your point. Still, would Trans Male/Female not convey the same thing? Or would it potentially be confusing, too?

[Nohbdy 4,108]

The terms trans male and trans female can easily cause a greater degree of confusion than the existing options. MTF and FTM are, by far, the most commonly used terms to classify transgendered individuals, and they clearly identify someone as being born male or female. On the other hand, trans male and trans female are used much less frequently, and are much more ambiguous in their meaning. Is a trans male someone who was born female, but identifies as male, or it it the opposite? As for DMAB and DFAB, those are even more likely to cause confusion. I doubt they're used widely outside of the LGBT community. For those who don't want to focus on biological sex, I imagine that simply selecting male or female will suffice.

 

The purpose of the gender options, as Simon pointed out, is to provide a straightforward means of identification. I appreciate your feedback, but in the interest of preserving this purpose, I'm afraid there's simply not enough to justify making this proposal a reality.

[Envy 5,998]

Wouldn't "Designated Male/Female At Birth" put even more emphasis on their birth sex? I don't know.

Edited October 18, 2014 by Envy

[SeraphStar 398]

If I could springboard from this topic just a little, can we get better symbols for mtf and ftm (female gender symbol and male gender symbol, respectively).

 

That could solve the (if any) clarity issues as to the terminology used (mtf v. DMAB... quite honestly, I've never seen the latter term used) and may also help focus less on the used to be... sentiment which may be felt from the endless list of acronyms.

[Nohbdy 4,108]

If I could springboard from this topic just a little, can we get better symbols for mtf and ftm (female gender symbol and male gender symbol, respectively).

 

That could solve the (if any) clarity issues as to the terminology used (mtf v. DMAB... quite honestly, I've never seen the latter term used) and may also help focus less on the used to be... sentiment which may be felt from the endless list of acronyms.

Great idea! I've added the proper symbols to each respective transgender field. For those who noticed some profile screwups in the past few minutes, that was me doing a few tests on the updated code. If you're experiencing any other problems, be sure to let me know!

[PSP (Dizzy) 201]

It was nice to see this thread was already made, and I have nothing to add except that I also think it's excellent that this site supports gender diversity.

[Eloquence 2,076]

Princess Twilight brings up an excellent point, and if I may I think I have some insight that would help everyone come to a decision.

 

I was actually around before those gender options existed, and had a heavy hand in making them available. If you go back far enough in this section of the forum, you will likely see the thread I started about the need for options beyond the standard male and female. It was quite the difficult process debating what would be included and how.

 

When it was decided that the trans options would be included, it was because some trans people wanted to make it readily apparent that they were trans, because they wanted to be visible to other trans people, didn't feel comfortable just identifying as male or female, etc. I think the best, clearest way to do this without using the MtF and FtM terms that you pointed out as being problematic would be to change the options to -

 

Female (trans)

 

Male (trans)

 

This would convey both gender and placement in the LGBT community with perfect clarity in my opinion.

 

(of course I still think we should just make the gender section a blank box and let people write whatever they want, but this works too)

Edited January 8, 2015 by Eloquence

[DJPON-3-#Power11 78]

@,

 

First off, thanks for the suggestion and welcome to the forum!

 

Just speaking personally here, I think the big issue as far as gender options go is that there's just no way the terminology we choose will satisfy everybody.  Some people won't be happy with MtF, and others won't be happy with DMAB. 

 

The big benefit to using MtF and FtM is that they're very clear.  People viewing the profile can very easily understand what gender the person identifies as.  And at its core, the purposes of the gender box is to simply communicate gender in a glance to people viewing their profile, primarily for purposes such as letting people know what pronouns to use when they send you a PM. Because of this, I personally think the best option is to utilize the clearest and most commonly used terminology, which in this case is MtF and FtM.

you should set up a pole then.

[Jeric 46,834]

you should set up a poll then.

 

I usually dislike polls in the Feedback Forum as polls discourages actual conversation, fall victim to 'lack of response' bias, and polls unfairly set an expectation that just because something is popular it should be done. But the biggest issue is this - we have tens of thousands of members, of which several thousand are active. In the end a half of one percent of the user base should not make a decision for the vast majority of users on any system. That is what I mean my lack of response bias. 

 

 

 

The purpose of the gender options, as Simon pointed out, is to provide a straightforward means of identification. I appreciate your feedback, but in the interest of preserving this purpose, I'm afraid there's simply not enough to justify making this proposal a reality.

 

 

The feedback has actually been tracked. Should this be an issue that receives a decent measure of demand and response in the future, but as it stands we won't be making any additional changes to the gender system.

[Lektra Bolt 2,336]

Redacted

Edited October 15, 2017 by Lektra Bolt

[Jeric 46,834]

On 1/14/2015 at 2:36 PM, bronislav84 said:

[Redacted by request]

http://mlpforums.com/topic/110640-should-mlp-forums-have-more-gender-options/page-5#entry3109411

 

We had a rather lengthy discussion regarding that topic in the post I linked above. In the end it was determined and decisioned that the Other option was valid.

 

At this time the gender options are going to remain unchanged. However, as I said earlier in this topic, and as was said in the topic I linked to ... demand and demographic need would allow us to re-evaluate the answer.

[Lektra Bolt 2,336]

Understood. Makes sense to me.

Edited January 15, 2015 by bronislav84