3 ms·

If you plan to only do English forever that's acceptable, but there's _a lot_ of languages where you need to know someone's gender to be able to use their name

If you plan to only do English forever that's acceptable, but there's _a lot_ of languages where you need to know someone's gender to be able to use their name in a sentence. Weird thing to look over in a thread about internationalization

mzs 3y ago
Couldn't people enter whatever is the equivalent of the nominative gendered singular form of the full name if they cared?
ghaff 3y ago
You can certainly make titles optional or just part of a name field although, in the case of some titles like Dr., that still doesn't give you what you supposedly need anyway. Personally, if I had a form that didn't need title information for some reason, it's probably a minefield I would just bypass even if there are potential edge cases.
makeitdouble 3y ago
I'd assume in these languages you can get away with either not using the name, or going for a neutral form (same as when you don't know who you're speaking to) French has that gendered structure too, with workarounds to manage uncertainty.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  There are many Indian languages where verb conjugations are either male or female and there is no neutral option.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    By curiosity how do you deal with generic instructions ? Like if you needed to have "you will need to come to this counter to apply for special discounts" printed next to a ticketing machine ?
    - RestlessMind 3y ago
      Generally, male gender is presumed if a neutral form is not available.
    - archon1410 3y ago
      Male pronouns are assumed in most such cases, but that is not necessary in the example you provided—the instruction would be the same for both genders, in Hindi at least. "आपको विशेष छूट के लिए आवेदन देने के लिए इस काउंटर पर आना होगा।" It doesn't have any gendered pronouns, most such instructions don't.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  That assumption isn't valid. In some languages in order to say anything about anything you have to apply either the masculine or feminine form of the verbs and adjectives, so there's no way around picking one of the two, so if you don't know, you must guess or assume. And if we look at languages with three grammatical genders, for some of them the neutral option is exclusive to inanimate objects, and using these neutral-gender forms of verbs and adjectives involving any person is explicitly insultingly dehumanizing, you wouldn't even use it to refer to an animal, much less to any person unless you want to make a point of intentionally disrespecting them as "it", saying that they are not worthy to be considered a person. In these languages[1] we do see the neutral gender option applied towards nonbinary and transgender people, but it's done by transphobes as a way of dehumanizing them in conversations. In such languages usually the proper way to behave if you don't know the gender or if that's a mixed gender group is to default to masculine grammatical gender; because there's no polite way to avoid choosing; and, I might guess that there's also probably some aspect that historical patriarchal social reasons it might have been traditionally considered that misgendering someone male-to-female is more offensive than misgendering someone female-to-male, so that's how that default might have come to be. [1] edit - I know about some of these languages, I'm not asserting that this applies for all such languages, perhaps there are some of them where the social norms are different, it's very hard to generalize globally.
  - gremlinunderway 3y ago
    But aren't we talking about form fields? When would you absolutely need a gendered title from someone in a form field so that you could refer to them in the third person? In any case, I understand your point about there not being many options for gendered pronouns in some languages, but you're also assuming that there aren't movements to change that. French is a good example where even though its heavily gendered, things are evolving to the point that Le Robert even includes 'iel' as a pronom personnel [1]. Sure its use is contentious, but so are gendered pronouns even in English are still contentious for some people, but it exists and people do use it. [1] https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/definition/iel https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/definition/iel
    - 3y ago
- vhcr 3y ago
  There's some push to have gender neutral language in Spanish, but it's pretty controversial.
  - rangerelf 3y ago
    And downright dumb-sounding. "Todes" Please stop.
  - otikik 3y ago
    I would say that all gender-related changes are controversial. Otherwise they would have already happened.
alentred 3y ago
If this is why a website or a form asks for it, and there is no way around it, better just ask for it directly ("How would you prefer to be addressed? He/him, she/her, or neutral?") instead of a choice of 25 historical titles.
- rvba 3y ago
  I always choose the clergy titles! (Monarch ones are never available)
  - twic 3y ago
    In Discordian beliefs, everyone (even non-Discordians) is a pope, so this is perfectly legitimate.
- nsonha 3y ago
  What if they want to be addressed by those titles? Mr/Ms is always in the list so what is to be complained about here?

mzs 3y ago

Couldn't people enter whatever is the equivalent of the nominative gendered singular form of the full name if they cared?

ghaff 3y ago

You can certainly make titles optional or just part of a name field although, in the case of some titles like Dr., that still doesn't give you what you supposedly need anyway. Personally, if I had a form that didn't need title information for some reason, it's probably a minefield I would just bypass even if there are potential edge cases.

makeitdouble 3y ago

I'd assume in these languages you can get away with either not using the name, or going for a neutral form (same as when you don't know who you're speaking to) French has that gendered structure too, with workarounds to manage uncertainty.

RestlessMind 3y ago
There are many Indian languages where verb conjugations are either male or female and there is no neutral option.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  By curiosity how do you deal with generic instructions ? Like if you needed to have "you will need to come to this counter to apply for special discounts" printed next to a ticketing machine ?
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    Generally, male gender is presumed if a neutral form is not available.
  - archon1410 3y ago
    Male pronouns are assumed in most such cases, but that is not necessary in the example you provided—the instruction would be the same for both genders, in Hindi at least. "आपको विशेष छूट के लिए आवेदन देने के लिए इस काउंटर पर आना होगा।" It doesn't have any gendered pronouns, most such instructions don't.
PeterisP 3y ago
That assumption isn't valid. In some languages in order to say anything about anything you have to apply either the masculine or feminine form of the verbs and adjectives, so there's no way around picking one of the two, so if you don't know, you must guess or assume. And if we look at languages with three grammatical genders, for some of them the neutral option is exclusive to inanimate objects, and using these neutral-gender forms of verbs and adjectives involving any person is explicitly insultingly dehumanizing, you wouldn't even use it to refer to an animal, much less to any person unless you want to make a point of intentionally disrespecting them as "it", saying that they are not worthy to be considered a person. In these languages[1] we do see the neutral gender option applied towards nonbinary and transgender people, but it's done by transphobes as a way of dehumanizing them in conversations. In such languages usually the proper way to behave if you don't know the gender or if that's a mixed gender group is to default to masculine grammatical gender; because there's no polite way to avoid choosing; and, I might guess that there's also probably some aspect that historical patriarchal social reasons it might have been traditionally considered that misgendering someone male-to-female is more offensive than misgendering someone female-to-male, so that's how that default might have come to be. [1] edit - I know about some of these languages, I'm not asserting that this applies for all such languages, perhaps there are some of them where the social norms are different, it's very hard to generalize globally.
- gremlinunderway 3y ago
  But aren't we talking about form fields? When would you absolutely need a gendered title from someone in a form field so that you could refer to them in the third person? In any case, I understand your point about there not being many options for gendered pronouns in some languages, but you're also assuming that there aren't movements to change that. French is a good example where even though its heavily gendered, things are evolving to the point that Le Robert even includes 'iel' as a pronom personnel [1]. Sure its use is contentious, but so are gendered pronouns even in English are still contentious for some people, but it exists and people do use it. [1] https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/definition/iel https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/definition/iel
  - 3y ago
vhcr 3y ago
There's some push to have gender neutral language in Spanish, but it's pretty controversial.
- rangerelf 3y ago
  And downright dumb-sounding. "Todes" Please stop.
- otikik 3y ago
  I would say that all gender-related changes are controversial. Otherwise they would have already happened.

alentred 3y ago

If this is why a website or a form asks for it, and there is no way around it, better just ask for it directly ("How would you prefer to be addressed? He/him, she/her, or neutral?") instead of a choice of 25 historical titles.

rvba 3y ago
I always choose the clergy titles! (Monarch ones are never available)
- twic 3y ago
  In Discordian beliefs, everyone (even non-Discordians) is a pope, so this is perfectly legitimate.
nsonha 3y ago
What if they want to be addressed by those titles? Mr/Ms is always in the list so what is to be complained about here?