3 ms·

usually in forms the gender is irrelevant, what matters most of the time (if it even matters) is the sex

• DanBC 11y ago
  If you're gathering sex: i) you want to know how a person identifies ii) you're gathering demographic data so you also want to get trans status At this point there's no point asking about gender. Certainly in the UK asking for sex and then asking for gender is going to be seen as hostile to trans people, while asking for what sex someone identifies as and then asking about trans status is seen as less hostile. I can't think of a situation where you'd ask for the sex and not for trans status.
  • collyw 11y ago
    Considering the vast majority of people are not trans, then I think that in most situations it would be perfectly acceptable only to ask the sex.
  • captainmuon 11y ago
    In my field, there is mandatory radiation protection for pregnant women. If you start, you want to ask on the form for the (biological, birth) sex, and if it is not female you can simply skip the part where you inform the worker about rights and responsibilities in case of pregnancies. Honestly, I don't think you need to ask for any (gender|sex)-information in most cases, but it is often added out of completism. The only valid reasons are: - Self-presentation of the user, e.g. in a profile page -> allow the user to write whatever they want - Advertising, argh, but you often can't get around this. I don't know if advertisers care about how people identify or about trans people, but they probably want a simple m/f flag that fits enough people. - Medical or legal stuff