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Right, the problem of the gender binary is that it never existed. What we have is trans-erasure. More generally it seems to me to prove that, with respect to Mr
by sethrin 9y ago
Right, the problem of the gender binary is that it never existed. What we have is trans-erasure. More generally it seems to me to prove that, with respect to Mr Burke, all that is necessary for evil to be done to a person is for good people to do nothing.
- HelloWorldInWS 9y agoThis isn't _entirely_ accurate. Gender binary may be an oversimplification or diminutive concept, but the idea that it "never existed" is a little extreme. It would almost be like saying religion never really existed because it's a figment of human imagination. In that sense, sure, binary genders are a bandaid over a complex subject, but it does exist. In fact, it is quite literally birthed from the genesis of more than a few religious ideologies. It exists just as much as the religions that buy into them exist. Anyway back on topic: Open field text boxes come with a practical cost of being much more difficult to aggregate, and let's be honest, the gender data is probably not important enough for GitHub to expend too much energy on. The more costly you make the data to mine, the less likely that the data will be used effectively.
- sethrin 9y agoI'm sure I did mean to imply that it was an artificial construct, yes. Gender expression and identity are more continuous than people tend to believe. For the interested, this seems like a pretty good overview of gender identity (primarily from a developmental perspective, of course): http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/appsych/opus/issues/2011/spring/gender_identity_development http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/appsych/opus/issues/2011/spring/ge... If the gender data is somehow critical to the data then it's worth being accurate. If not, why even ask?