gender-examples

This page documents how people currently publish gender information on the web (sometimes implicitly - so not easily machine parsable - such as names (Andrew, Andrea), titles (Mr, Mrs, Miss), relationships (husband, brother), pronouns (he, she), etc.)), and what gender terms are supported by current web user interfaces. This research will hopefully be useful to the genealogy microformat effort, as well as efforts to extend vCard, and therefore hCard.

examples

These examples are based on two primary sources of real world web site usage (e.g. on social network sites)

• user interfaces for editing (and displaying) user profile information
• user interfaces for doing faceted (field-based) search based on value(s) of a gender (or sex) field.

sites and services

Social network sites typically publish the gender of the individual.

Sites and services that allow users to enter and publish their gender. Please add to this list.

In alphabetical order:

• Bagcheck chose to ask which pronoun you want to use:
  • Preferred Possessive Pronoun: ( )Her ( )His ( )Their
• Crusher's Edit My Account(requires login) page combines gender and person vs organization distinction in an interesting type picker among girl, boy, band, or other with a field.
  • Type: ( ) Girl ( ) Boy ( ) Band ( ) Other: [______]
• Canada Council for the Arts (need citation to specific sign-up form URL) - according to Heather Gold:
  • Female, Male, Transgender, Other (please specify), No answer, Please specify [______]
  • 
• Digg's About Me settings page(requires login) has a Gender popup that appears to be inspired by Pownce's list:
  • Guy, Girl, Dude, Lady, Fellow, Bird, Chap, grrrl, Gentleman, Damsel, Male, Female, Transgender, None of the Above
• flirtbox: "Women" and "girls"
• eHarmony: "Woman" or "Man"
• facebook.com: changed from "Male/Female" to Male/Female/Custom" on 2014-02-13
  • custom must be from one of 56 choices, despite being a free-entry text box -
  • (Agender, Androgyne, Androgynous, Bigender, Cis, Cisgender, Cis Female, Cis Male, Cis Man, Cis Woman, Cisgender Female, Cisgender Male, Cisgender Man, Cisgender Woman, Female to Male, FTM, Gender Fluid, Gender Nonconforming, Gender Questioning, Gender Variant, Genderqueer, Intersex, Male to Female, MTF, Neither, Neutrois, Non-binary, Other, Pangender, Trans, Trans*, Trans Female, Trans* Female, Trans Male, Trans* Male, Trans Man, Trans* Man, Trans Person, Trans* Person, Trans Woman, Trans* Woman, Transfeminine, Transgender, Transgender Female, Transgender Male, Transgender Man, Transgender Person, Transgender Woman, Transmasculine, Transsexual, Transsexual Female, Transsexual Male, Transsexual Man, Transsexual Person, Transsexual Woman, Two-Spirit)
  • list from Will Oremus at Slate
• gay.com: "Male", "Female", "MTF" and "FTM".
• http://www.adam4adam.com/: "Male", "Female"
• Google+:
  • before 2014-12-10: Male, Female, Other
  • after 2014-12-10: Male, Female, Decline to State, Custom - if Custom selected, a freeform text field is enabled to put in your gender. Post by Rachael Bennett
• LiveJournal's Edit Profile(requires login) page provides a popup menu for gender with the values in order:
  • (Unspecified), Male, Female
• Ma.gnolia's Edit Your Profile on Ma.gnolia(requires login) page provides a popup menu for gender with the values in order:
  • Female, Male, Other
• MediaWiki.org
  • Radio button choice on Preferences: "(I prefer not to say)", "She edits wiki pages", "He edits wiki pages"
  • Phabricator thread on non-binary gender preferences
• Cortex histogrammed metafilter's 10-year-old free-form gender field- data dump
  • The first entry is blank/null fields; the difference between that and "total records" is the number of people who have put anything at all in the field: 9,325 mefites have as of a few minutes ago put something in that field. Reckoning from the previous note, that means that something like 17-18% of users have actually elected to put something in that field at some point in their membership here.
  • Of the folks who have something in that field, just over 60% use one of the top four options: "male", "female", "m", or "f".
  • Of the top dozen or so unambiguous labels provided, male-identifying terms (male, m, dude, xy, boy, guy, man, mail) account for about 49% of total labels used; female-identifying terms (female, f, lady, girl, xx, femme, chick) account for about 18%.
• MySpace.com used to only allow male or female. There was a protest on MySpace by some genderqueer users who would put the word "genderqueer" into irrelevant metadata fields as a form of symbolic protest (source: tommorris' memory, reddit comment from tommorris)
• OKCupid - "I'm male" and "I'm female"
  • This has led to a change.org petition: Ensure that all OkCupid users are able to comfortably identify their gender and sexual orientation!
  • In 2014-11, OKCupid modified the gender and sexuality options. You can now select up to five from each of the following lists
    • Gender: Woman, Man, Agender, Androgynous, Bigender, Cis Man, Cis Woman, Genderfluid, Genderqueer, Gender Nonconforming, Hijra, Intersex, Non-binary, Other, Pangender, Transfeminine, Transgender, Transmasculine, Transsexual, Trans Man, Trans Woman, Two Spirit
    • Sexuality: Straight, Gay, Bisexual, Asexual, Demisexual, Heteroflexible, Homoflexible, Lesbian, Pansexual, Queer, Questioning, Sapiosexual
    • Source: pinknews.co.uk
• OpenID's Attribute Exchange includes gender
• POF: "Male" or "Female"
• Pownce's Profile Settings(requires login) interface has a Gender popup with the following values in order:
  • Guy, Girl, Dude, Chicky-poo, Bloke, Bird, Lady, Gentleman, Male, Female, Transgender, None of the Above
• XKCD used 'do you have a Y chromosome?' as they were studying colour blindness

Sites and services that internally assign users a gender, e.g. for ad targetting. Please add to this list.

• Twitter has been doing this at least since 2012. Although it claims to be 90% accurate, anecdotally many women in tech have been misgendered creating a big skew towards male in follower statistics. In 2017 the assigned genders became visible to users.

government/healthcare

• NHS Family doctor services registration form (GMS1): male, female
  • Individual medical practices may supplement this form with their own registration form. Some allow for non-binary options for trans and intersex individuals...
  • Belgravia Surgery (PDF) SW1: Male or Female
  • Dean Street sexual health clinic: as part of their computerised registration process, they ask whether you are transgender. If you answer 'no', they then ask whether you are male or female. This is used to determine which medical tests are conducted.
  • Marven Medical Practice, SW1V: "male", "female", "indeterminate"
  • Northam Surgery (PDF): Male or Female
  • Sexual Health Oxfordshire (PDF): Male or Female
  • UCL Students Health Registration Form (PDF): Male or Female
  • York Surgery, Ilford (PDF): Male or Female

travel

• Eurotunnel.com Advance Passenger Information - if you book a journey on Eurotunnel, you have to provide Advance Passenger Information before travel. This includes name, passport number and gender. Options: Male, Female, Unknown

discussion elsewhere

• Because gender isn't binary
• Social networking sites & gender identity
• Survey best practices on meta.wikimedia.org
• Transgender 101, GLAAD
• Not Your Mom's Trans 101, Asher at Tranarchism
• Gender as a text field: What Wikipedia can learn from Facebook, Amanda Menking, Wikimedia Blog, 2015-03-09
• #genderUX – Some guiding principles for handling gender on forms

see also

• gender
• gender-formats
• gender-brainstorming
• profile-examples

related

• genealogy
• hCard
• vcard-suggestions