Should your system offer Mr, Ms ... and Mx? Last week the Australian government announced new rules for declaring a gender on passports. This week UK authorities revealed they are conducting their own review of gender on passports. What are the implications for systems design and management? The Australian move follows increasing pressure from transgender and intersex …
...or Doctor or Professor or any other gender neutral title you care to imagine.
This was true even in the 20th Century, so presumably there are no systems out there that try to infer male/female distinctions from a title.
But, yes, sadly there's always someone who insists on over-validating things that ought to be free-form text.
Having had the (mis)fortune to be closely allied to the direct marketing industry for some part of my career, i can reveal that there are many, many systems "out there" that infer gender in one way or another, sometimes quite erroneously.
One route is to infer gender from first name in order to set title. Another is to use title to infer gender in order to differentiate in offers made. All sorts of uses happen: some of the uses were barely lawful then, almost certainly unlawful now.
jane
I'm a Dr and so I like to be formally addressed as such IF I MUST choose a title. Of course its a small reward for an extra 4 years of study but its also an asexual title.
I have seen a few websites where you can register as a Prince, Duke, Archbishop, Reverand, Queen, King, Lord, Lady, Right-Honorable etc .. its a nice touch even if the pull-down list is rather long but sometimes you might just want to be a Queen.
I found a fairly comprehensive list of titles, though I did make sure all the common ones were at the top, separated by a divider. We even had somebody commenting on the fact that you could be a Jedi Knight. Nothing wrong with a bit of light hearted fun as long as it doesn't interfere with the usability.
"it is a criminal offence to disclose such information except for very specific purposes – and the offence is “strict liability”, so ignorance is no excuse."
Just how far does that go? If you went to a single sex school, would you then be unable to ever mention anyone you were at school with just in case they had subsequently changed their gender without you knowing?
Nah. There are many things in the UK system that are "strictly" unlawful, but which the law would never bother taking up. I think that if you, as individual, mentioned the name of someone who had changed their details in this way with no awreness of that fact and no link to their present name, etc. there is very little case to bring against you.
That is way different from you either, as journalist, carelessly reporting that Ms X, formerly Mr Y, did such-and-such: your words have import and you are meant to have done some fact-checking. And it is also different from an organisation with loads of HR resources to hand, plus its own legal department, exposing some individual to public embarrassment because it didn't tidy up its own procedures.
Also in play would be issues like whether the individual had a grc (these are few and far between) and whether they did, in fact, object to being outed.
So, sure, it is possible for you to break the law in this instance by accident, but very very unlikely for there to be any consequences...whereas if you are assumed to have some duty to think thru what you are doing, then the consequences may be more serious.
jane
From reading the linked legislation, it appears that offence only applies to people disclosing information regarding a persons birth gender that they came across in an 'official capacity'. e.g. as a civil servant dealing with them, or a police officer, or (oddly) an employer or provider of 'professional services'. So if you just happen to know them from before the change and let it slip, that doesn't criminalise you...
Nobody has a birth gender, they only have a birth sex. Gender is a person't internal identity and how a person interacts with other people and with society. A baby doesn't interact with other people, babies don't have gender, babies have sex. Their gender develops as they grow up and interact with the social environment around them.
Not recording gender at all would suit me - in most cases it's not relevant. For identity purposes though, I can see you need it in addition to a photo.
Given the choice I don't use any title. If you know me, then use my first name. If you don't then I probably don't want to talk to you anyway.
As I'm ranting off topic anyway - stop asking for date of birth when you only need to know when I was born! Just the year will do. The full date of birth is sensitive info (thanks to Verified by Visa for example). Actually, if it's a web site asking, then just don't bother, we all know I'll lie anyway.
The number of times I see title as a select box rather than a text field. Any gender or title related field should just be an open text field. There are more titles in the world than your system can ever reasonably list and its much cheaper to just give them a text box, possibly with a quick select drop down if people are too lazy to type .
Why anything at all? I've seen address fields completely overstructured so that some shitty software can slap a house number before the street name (so *clever*!), even though that's inappropriate in numerous countries ("But isn't everywhere like Britain?!"), forms which insist on a "state", which is also inappropriate or superfluous in many countries, but sometimes just typing a space into these fields stops the stupid whiny red text from appearing.
How about one field for the name and perhaps just one address line before the town and the postcode? Write whatever you like as long as it matches the card details or will get your parcel delivered without the postman scratching his (or her) head about who "Lord Mastodon of Montrose" is or where "The Dark Lord's Summer Residence" might be in Swindon.
Why not try 'they'.
English grammar is too confusing for me, and I only ever learnt any in latin lessons anyway - along with how to complete the Telegraph crossword, and not a great deal of latin... So take what I say with a pinch of salt.
However, you can use 'they' in the singular. I think it's properly for use when you're being non-specific about number (rather than gender), but we don't have a singular and plural second person pronoun, and surely the reason that half the formal structure of english has collapsed, is that people keep on playing fast and loose with it.
Example: I was talking to a mate down the pub, and they said that...
There are loads of alternatives - and plenty of discussion of same on the internet. A less offensive term than "it" is "they"...though that can lead to difficulty at times linguistically.
Otherwise - and i did once use this term in a story about an individual who thought they HAD persuaded the Aussie government to ungender them - there are various groups of ungendered 3rd person pronouns, including zie/ze and hir/hirs.
Try this as a basic primer:
http://aetherlumina.com/gnp/faq.html
jane
is [potentially] discriminatory, or alternatively completely fine depending on your initial point of view?
Unless we all go to a gender neutral honorific, like Citizen or Comrade then there will always be some potential for both gender based discrimination and for the less hardy souls to cry "sex discrimination" at every turn.
IN fact a large part of this issue is simply about recognising pre-existing best practice. The Information Commissioner has frequently condemned organisations that collect data "on the off chance of it being useful": there needs to be a proper purpose to collecting it at the time it is collected, otherwise it runs the risk of being "excessive" within the meaning of the DPA.
The Equality Act simply precludes provision of services differentially on the basis of protected characteristics (which include gender) unless for a specified purpose. Insurance, f'rinstance: following EU rulings, at some point next year it will no longer be permissible to discriminate on basis of gender for insurance purposes...at which point, capturing gender becomes, possibly, pointless...possibly a DPA breach...and just another chance for things to go wrong.
jane
Every SQL programmer knows there are 4 gender codes:
- don't know
- male
- female
- not applicable
which seem to cover most of the cases where knowledge of gender is needed to facilitate a decision.
Given that we're all supposed to be equal these days, the number of cases where such information is crucial is probably smaller than most people think and questions about possession of X and/or Y chromosomes (and maybe some others, too) might be more pertinent.
Traditionally, the DVLA created a portion of your driving licence number from your date of birth and sex - basic template was YMMDDY, adding 5 to the first M for women.
Sounds like this scheme would fall foul of these changes in a number of ways - most seriously of which, breaching the GRC "original sex never existed" stuff.
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"It might be useful in marketing though"
This is exactly why I lie and tell certain websites I'm male, because I got tired of make-up ads and weight-loss ads. Apparently whoever's running those particular websites assumes that all females are hefty and in need of face-paint.
Whereas, when those sites think I'm male, they assume I want to know about fast cars and credit reports and dubious internet "higher education" opportunities, which are still pretty lame but not quite as insulting, IMO.
Yeah, I know, I should use AdBlock but Firefox complains about security-something-or-other-blah-blah whenever I try to install AdBlock. I suppose that puts me in the stereotypical ditzy female category (suggestions welcome), but maybe I can partially redeem myself from that with my near-religious use of NoScript and RequestPolicy, and Firefox's built-in "Exceptions" to which sites are allowed to load images. :) That doesn't stop the text ads though.
If my lying about my gender screws up certain websites' ad analytics, that's just tough titty. The whole targeted-ads concept is a fucking joke anyway.
When these Mx people arrive at the airport wiull they have to be searched by another Mx. Which bathroom will they use ? Mens, Ladies or MXs.
What does Mx mean : Mixture ?
How do you begin a letter: Dear Sir, Dear Madam or Dear Mixture.
C'mon this is just damned pathetic, these people must represent about 0.000001% of the population.
Whats next in the line up for titles : BeerDrinker, Gitface, Blueberry , SexMadRavingLunatic, AmanFromMarsWhoEatsGreenCheese.
This is not 'damned pathetic'. How would you feel if you were told that who you were was not bloody valid? Not nice. It's not 'pathetic' people ask for the simple right for two letters after all, is it? And it's way more than '0.000001%', or whichever figure you pulled out of your ass. Not everyone actually fits the gender binary, actually, and even for those who do not being identified as their birth sex (for whatever reason; maybe they don't want to face discrimination; maybe they're trans* and partway through transition) is not always ideal.
Those bull**** titles you you again plucked out of thin air have nothing to do with the issue at hand.
I agree in part. Non-discrimination is one thing and should rightly be enshrined in law. However the UK has a wonderful habit in going over the top with some of these things which is why any house having new sockets fitted or old ones replace now has to have them floating half way up the wall (450-1200mm) whether it is owned and inhabited by able bodied or otherwise.
This is just pandering bullshit and I await my downvotes with a smile on my face because it's true no matter what the PC brigade spout.
I think you missed the bit of the article where i quote figures for intersex. Good estimates seem to lie in the range of 2% to 4% of the population.
Issues lie around definition and recording of such: for a very long time, medics have tended to erase any mention of intersex by shoe-horning those individuals with intersex characteristics into existing gender categories. In some instances, they have intervened by advising surgery on children as young as 1 or 2.
That has changed drastically over the last few years. First, while the US still opts for early intervention, the UK position tends to be no surgical intervention unless medically (not socially) necessary until the individual is old enough to decide for themselves.
As for what gets defined as intersex...figures from ISNA have instantly recognisable gender variation at birth at somewhere between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 2,000 (which is low, but still a lot higher than your figure).
However, they also add that there are other conditions that need to be taken into account (such as late developing adrenal hyperplasia) which very quickly shift the medical definition of intersex up to somewhere in the region of 2% to 3%. Add in karotype variation and you are closer to 4% (a figure quoted often by OII)...and if you also add social definitions, then 4% to 6% is not unrealistic.
In terms of medical/biological definitions of intersex, the vast majority of those who could fall within the definition will quite possibly never know unless affected by an illness that is co-morbid with an intersex variation - or are tested at the chromosomal level.
That means...think carefully about this...that a fair number of those posting may well be intersex without realising that they are....
jane
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