5 ms·

What sort of agenda was selecting Mr./Mrs. from the drop down pushing?

by gopher_space 5y ago

dotancohen 5y ago
I mean pronouns of type VARCHAR, not ENUM.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  It's not really an agenda to leave the option open - people not identifying with male or female (or fluidly between the two) doesn't harm anybody. Surely for it to be an agenda, it has to be putting somebody else out?
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    Sure, present the option in the UI options. But it doesn't have to be front and center in the sign-up form.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      I don't get the issue. Making gender-nonconforming people's options the same level in the UI as male and female is a bad thing? Seems like pretty standard egalitarian design to me.
      - dotancohen 5y ago
        I don't celebrate Christmas, why not ask me my religion in the sign up form? I certainly don't want to see the Christmas themed website or get the "holiday greetings" newsletter. Is making non-Christian people's options the same level in the UI as Christians a bad thing? Same with the Last Name field. I happen to know someone who doesn't have one. Why isn't he accommodated? How about colour blindness? Why isn't there a colour-blind accessibility option in the sign up form? Is making colour-blind people's options the same level in the UI as regularly-sighted people a bad thing? I think that my point is made.
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        Wait, so because other people aren't accommodated, we also shouldn't accommodate gender non-conforming people? Having a separate first-last name is often brought up as a UX failure for exactly this reason, and UX designers often design websites so that colourblindness doesn't hamper usability (in my experience working with designers at big companies). The Christmas one isn't as much of an issue because AFAIK very few people are meaningfully put out by seeing Christmas decorations on websites from majority-Christian countries. In other countries these things often /are/ turned off depending on cultural sensitivities. We should be trying to design our processes to fit the world around us, not rejecting the parts of the world we don't like.
        scratcheee 5y ago
        To be fair, the equivalent solution for the name field example would be solving it by insisting everyone specify how many names they have before letting them enter their name - there's a reason that isn't the recommended solution, people don't want to deal with minutia that doesn't matter to them, one field works fine for everyone. The obvious solution is to just not use pronouns - it's a messy part of the language that is currently in flux, so why wade in? Obviously, some sites are dedicated to these issues, so they can justifiably ask on sign up, but if you don't _need_ to care about people's personal details, better not to ask at all.
        dredmorbius 5y ago
        There was a time when asking for religous affiliation was fairly standard, though also often associated with prejudicial practice. Forms of address --- Mr., Mrs., Miss., Ms., and often professional titles (Dr., in German Ing. (engineer), esquire (lawyers), Reverand, etc.) is at least fairly common if not entirely standard practice. I suspect, again, some motivation on the part of a requestor. A magazine's circulation department, for example, might want to know the number of lawyers and doctors among its subscribers as a proxy for advertising value. Many business information request forms provide detailed rosters of who you are, what you do, and your company title. For similar reasons, I suspect. (I also feed those bogus information as a matter of course.)
dwrowe 5y ago
For me - it becomes an agenda when they’re collecting the information for no other reason than to collect the information - or - they’re using the field to show how progressive they are. Unless gendering language is somehow critical to the operation of the software - why collect it at all? I have the same feeling about birthdays - I’m automatically assuming it’s because you have “sell customer data” on the 5-year business plan.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Some of us are still old enough to remember when "Ms." was a contentious or at least novel title, though few are old enough to have seen its original proposal in 1901. The New York Times formally adopted use of "Ms." as a title, distinct from "Mrs." (a married woman, often referred to by her husband's full name, e.g., "Mrs. John Q. Smith"), or "Miss" (an unmarried woman or girl, addressed by her given and maiden names, "Miss Jane Q. Jones"). Ms. Magazine was a direct and deliberate challenge to that practice, and was launched in 1971 by Gloria Steinem. Interestingly, all three words, "miss, "missus", and "mizz" originate from "mistress", which was at one time the single title applied to any woman, adult or child, married or not. (For men, the terms "Master" (unmarried child) and "Mister" were both represented as "Mr.".) And then as now, "Ms." resulted in much gnashing of teeth, changing of forms, and updating of databases. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25FOB-onlanguage-t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25FOB-onlanguage...

What sort of agenda was selecting Mr./Mrs. from the drop down pushing?

dotancohen 5y ago

I mean pronouns of type VARCHAR, not ENUM.

beaconstudios 5y ago
It's not really an agenda to leave the option open - people not identifying with male or female (or fluidly between the two) doesn't harm anybody. Surely for it to be an agenda, it has to be putting somebody else out?
- dotancohen 5y ago
  Sure, present the option in the UI options. But it doesn't have to be front and center in the sign-up form.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    I don't get the issue. Making gender-nonconforming people's options the same level in the UI as male and female is a bad thing? Seems like pretty standard egalitarian design to me.
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      I don't celebrate Christmas, why not ask me my religion in the sign up form? I certainly don't want to see the Christmas themed website or get the "holiday greetings" newsletter. Is making non-Christian people's options the same level in the UI as Christians a bad thing? Same with the Last Name field. I happen to know someone who doesn't have one. Why isn't he accommodated? How about colour blindness? Why isn't there a colour-blind accessibility option in the sign up form? Is making colour-blind people's options the same level in the UI as regularly-sighted people a bad thing? I think that my point is made.
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        Wait, so because other people aren't accommodated, we also shouldn't accommodate gender non-conforming people? Having a separate first-last name is often brought up as a UX failure for exactly this reason, and UX designers often design websites so that colourblindness doesn't hamper usability (in my experience working with designers at big companies). The Christmas one isn't as much of an issue because AFAIK very few people are meaningfully put out by seeing Christmas decorations on websites from majority-Christian countries. In other countries these things often /are/ turned off depending on cultural sensitivities. We should be trying to design our processes to fit the world around us, not rejecting the parts of the world we don't like.
        scratcheee 5y ago
        To be fair, the equivalent solution for the name field example would be solving it by insisting everyone specify how many names they have before letting them enter their name - there's a reason that isn't the recommended solution, people don't want to deal with minutia that doesn't matter to them, one field works fine for everyone. The obvious solution is to just not use pronouns - it's a messy part of the language that is currently in flux, so why wade in? Obviously, some sites are dedicated to these issues, so they can justifiably ask on sign up, but if you don't _need_ to care about people's personal details, better not to ask at all.
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        There was a time when asking for religous affiliation was fairly standard, though also often associated with prejudicial practice. Forms of address --- Mr., Mrs., Miss., Ms., and often professional titles (Dr., in German Ing. (engineer), esquire (lawyers), Reverand, etc.) is at least fairly common if not entirely standard practice. I suspect, again, some motivation on the part of a requestor. A magazine's circulation department, for example, might want to know the number of lawyers and doctors among its subscribers as a proxy for advertising value. Many business information request forms provide detailed rosters of who you are, what you do, and your company title. For similar reasons, I suspect. (I also feed those bogus information as a matter of course.)

dwrowe 5y ago

For me - it becomes an agenda when they’re collecting the information for no other reason than to collect the information - or - they’re using the field to show how progressive they are. Unless gendering language is somehow critical to the operation of the software - why collect it at all? I have the same feeling about birthdays - I’m automatically assuming it’s because you have “sell customer data” on the 5-year business plan.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Some of us are still old enough to remember when "Ms." was a contentious or at least novel title, though few are old enough to have seen its original proposal in 1901. The New York Times formally adopted use of "Ms." as a title, distinct from "Mrs." (a married woman, often referred to by her husband's full name, e.g., "Mrs. John Q. Smith"), or "Miss" (an unmarried woman or girl, addressed by her given and maiden names, "Miss Jane Q. Jones"). Ms. Magazine was a direct and deliberate challenge to that practice, and was launched in 1971 by Gloria Steinem. Interestingly, all three words, "miss, "missus", and "mizz" originate from "mistress", which was at one time the single title applied to any woman, adult or child, married or not. (For men, the terms "Master" (unmarried child) and "Mister" were both represented as "Mr.".) And then as now, "Ms." resulted in much gnashing of teeth, changing of forms, and updating of databases. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25FOB-onlanguage-t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25FOB-onlanguage...