Added Gender field options.

dpratt wrote:
I'm glad you used sand moving under your feet as an analogy because that is exactly the reason why strict English is preferred over colloquial English in technical writing and journalism. It's one thing if you have a specific target audience, or if you are writing spoken dialog between characters. But if you're writing for the largest audience possible then you are always best sticking to strict English standards. And it is factually correct that they/them/their pronouns must only ever be used as plural pronouns in strict English. I guess that could be why it's always been a pet peeve of mine when people try and use it as a singular pronoun.

I think this conversation has perhaps diverged a bit from its original purpose, and gone deeper into the intricacies of the English language and the differences between strict and colloquial than is strictly necessary for this use of English on TVM. What you and I have learned and been taught is clearly differently.

It’s evident we are on not going to agree on this, wie both have what we consider facts to support our argument. I’m not sure at this point what could be gained by continuing this particular line of discussion.

Delenn wrote:
You are correct in that my choice of the word objective was inaccurate, but my point still stands. Why is a user determining the gender for an individual any more "objective" or correct than the individual themselves determining it? And since when would a person's official website not be considered a valid source? We consider official websites valid sources for other types of information, why would they not be for this? Appearance and naming are hardly "objective" criteria either I might point out - many names are unisex, and for more minor actors when you can find info/pictures online, it's not always apparent which gender they are based solely on name. This argument implies that the user gets to determine an actors gender and that's somehow more correct/"objective" than the actor determining it themselves.

I would argue award shows have nothing to do with this, we don't categorize things by award show data, and should not be dictating anybody's gender because an of an award show system. But for the sake of argument, MTV have eliminated gender-specific categories at both the MTV Movie & TV Award Show and the VMAs.

I'm still waiting to hear examples of the objective criteria, which was part of my original request. I asked for examples of people who should be listed as Other, and what the objective criteria is for determining that they're Other. The fact that they say so is not objective criteria.

If MTV has eliminated gender specific categories, that would suggest TVMaze do so as well. Which I noted above, but was then dismissed.

Implication aside, if there is no objective criteria, then IMO there shouldn't be a pull-down of non-objective choices. If there is an objective criteria, I apparently missed anyone's statement of such: what is it?

Gadfly wrote:
I'm still waiting to hear examples of the objective criteria, which was part of my original request. I asked for examples of people who should be listed as Other, and what the objective criteria is for determining that they're Other. The fact that they say so is not objective criteria.

If MTV has eliminated gender specific categories, that would suggest TVMaze do so as well. Which I noted above, but was then dismissed.

Implication aside, if there is no objective criteria, then IMO there shouldn't be a pull-down of non-objective choices. If there is an objective criteria, I apparently missed anyone's statement of such: what is it?

What would you count as “objective criteria” though? That was the part that confused me.

We don’t demand the the female/male option meet some objective criteria other than that is the persons identified gender, so why would the NB option require anything more than that?

Delenn wrote:
You are correct in that my choice of the word objective was inaccurate, but my point still stands. Why is a user determining the gender for an individual any more "objective" or correct than the individual themselves determining it? And since when would a person's official website not be considered a valid source? We consider official websites valid sources for other types of information, why would they not be for this? Appearance and naming are hardly "objective" criteria either I might point out - many names are unisex, and for more minor actors when you can find info/pictures online, it's not always apparent which gender they are based solely on name. This argument implies that the user gets to determine an actors gender and that's somehow more correct/"objective" than the actor determining it themselves.

We don't consider a person's official website "valid" and thus having the final say under a wide range of circumstances. For instance, if their website states say they appeared in episode X, but they're not in Episode X, we wouldn't list them for Episode X, would we?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I only add actors that I see in episodes that I watch. I'm not "dictating" their gender: I don't know what that means. I no more "dictate" their gender than I dictate that they're in the episode. I list them for being in the episode because objectively, they appear in and are credited for the episode. If there is some objective criteria (or whatever you want to call it) beyond that for gender, I'd be glad to apply it once someone says what it is. Otherwise the only option seems to be Nothing/Null. Since that would be the vast majority of actors, having a choice seems to serve no useful (from a data site's POV) purpose.

Gadfly wrote:
We don't consider a person's official website "valid" and thus having the final say under a wide range of circumstances. For instance, if their website states say they appeared in episode X, but they're not in Episode X, we wouldn't list them for Episode X, would we?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I only add actors that I see in episodes that I watch. I'm not "dictating" their gender: I don't know what that means. I no more "dictate" their gender than I dictate that they're in the episode. I list them for being in the episode because objectively, they appear in and are credited for the episode. If there is some objective criteria (or whatever you want to call it) beyond that for gender, I'd be glad to apply it once someone says what it is. Otherwise the only option seems to be Nothing/Null. Since that would be the vast majority of actors, having a choice seems to serve no useful (from a data site's POV) purpose.

Certainly an official website might not be used a final say source in many occasions, I recognise that, and if it can be proven to be in error in the case of a cast appearance then of course, it should not be the final say. But gender is not an episode apperance, to equate the two is false equivalency. There is no reason at all an actor's offical website could not be considered a valid source for information on their gender, gender is determined by the individual. I'm not saying it should be the only source but it's certainly a valid one.

See my above post for my question about what you might consider 'objective criteria' for gender? I'm genuinely perplexed as to what "objective" things you think could catagorise an individuals gender? Are we talking about the way a person looks? The roles they play? How they choose to dress?

Delenn wrote:
I think this conversation has perhaps diverged a bit from its original purpose, and gone deeper into the intricacies of the English language and the differences between strict and colloquial than is strictly necessary for this use of English on TVM. What you and I have learned and been taught is clearly differently.

It’s evident we are on not going to agree on this, wie both have what we consider facts to support our argument. I’m not sure at this point what could be gained by continuing this particular line of discussion.

It is my opinion that they/them/their should not be used as singular pronouns in technical writing and journalism. You may have a different opinion from mine and that is allowed. The Associated Press would agree with you by the way starting in 2017. However the fact that they waited until 2017 should at least tell you that it is not strict English. That is a fact.

As for whether to add "other" as a third gender option, I would be more partial to using "N/A" as a third option because then the false implication that one can be a gender other than male or female is not there.

Delenn,

I think what Gadfly is getting at is will it be more based around how the individual identifies, or some legal criteria, such as an accepted legal application for change of sex/gender.

Would an official diagnosis (i.e by the NHS in the UK) of gender dysphoria and a statement on how they identify be sufficient?

(The same question could be asked about Transgender people on TVmaze, but that's a separate topic).

dpratt wrote:
It is my opinion that they/them/their should not be used as singular pronouns in technical writing and journalism. You may have a different opinion from mine and that is allowed. The Associated Press would agree with you by the way starting in 2017. However the fact that they waited until 2017 should at least tell you that it is not strict English. That is a fact.

As for whether to add "other" as a third gender option, I would be more partial to using "N/A" as a third option because then the false implication that one can be a gender other than male or female is not there.

This is a fair point regarding The Associated Press, however they have made this change, as have others, so regardless of the date they did it that should at least be taken into account. But we are still going to have to agree to disagree on what we consider to be a valid assessment of the facts here. Sure, we could go around and around endlessly, but I don't think either of us much fancies doing that. We had a civil conversation in which we disagreed, that's cool, this is the discussion forum. :)

Saying that, I'm not opposed to "N/A" as the third option, it would allow for the third option to exist which is my primary concern here.

gazza911 wrote:
Delenn,

I think what Gadfly is getting at is will it be more based around how the individual identifies, or some legal criteria, such as an accepted legal application for change of sex/gender.

Would an official diagnosis (i.e by the NHS in the UK) of gender dysphoria and a statement on how they identify be sufficient?

(The same question could be asked about Transgender people on TVmaze, but that's a separate topic).

Ahhhhhh ok. See, I wasn't getting that. My apologies to Gadfly if I have failed to quite understand what was being asked.

My reponse to this would then be, what standards do we set to define people as male or female? Because it seems that we accept pretty readily a female actor saying/self-identifying that they are female, and a male actor saying/self-identifying they are male, we don't seek out a birth certificate/legal form of ID/medical confirmation in those cases - so by extension - a non-binary actor saying they are non-binary should be accepted in the same way, should it not?

When we're adding actor's birthdate or country of birth, we don't asking for the ID or birth sertificate, do we?

tnt wrote:
When we're adding actor's birthdate or country of birth, we don't asking for the ID or birth sertificate, do we?

I really don't care about your opinion.

This thread is a shitstorm and I don't even know why I created it in the first place.

@tnt wrote:
Renaming "Unknown" to "Other" could be a solution.

Other indicates, "They have specified their gender as being neither male or female" while "Unknown" indicates that we do not have hard data from a primary source. (Which to me feels like very different states.)

I ended up in this thread because I was editing a person's gender and they have explicitly identified as being neither male or female and "Unknown" is factually wrong, (because I do know how they identify.)  So I think that Other is inclusive enough, (until some of the other gender++ become standard) as well as Unknown to actively replace the nulls in the database, (to keep Sir Tony Hoare happy.)   ENUM('Male', 'Female', 'Other', 'Unknown');

I expect that the database standard in the near future will be ENUM('Male', 'Female', 'Both', 'Neither', 'Other', 'Unknown');  (And if they are genderfluid, we have an API so they can update as their gender slides.)

Just choose a gender. Just because someone identifies as non-binary doesn't mean he or she is non-gender. So I'll use the biological gender since that's what gender means, not what people identify as. People who call themselves non-binary usually have some kind of political bone to pick and as far as I can tell it isn't really about something deeply personal like what transgender people experience.

@dpratt wrote:
Just choose a gender. Just because someone identifies as non-binary doesn't mean he or she is non-gender. So I'll use the biological gender since that's what gender means, not what people identify as. People who call themselves non-binary usually have some kind of political bone to pick and as far as I can tell it isn't really about something deeply personal like what transgender people experience.

Its easier to call "biological gender" sex. (The doctor's best guess when you were born.) It's separate from gender which is what your brain tells you that you are, (though usually congruent with sex assigned at birth; but not always.) We tend to refer to a person's presentation as their gender because we don't have time to do a DNA test on everyone that we meet and its rather invasive to demand to inspect their pants. (The problem here is that there are people that "look like the other one" - so its more efficient to just ask and listen.)

Just as most grass is green doesn't mean that we can conclude that all green things are grass. Just because sex and gender match for most people doesn't mean that we should dumb things down and exclude people.

"Just choose a gender" might be really easy for you and everyone that you know, but most humans don't know more than a small village of people, (fewer than 250) and of those they usually have fewer than six people to whom they would trust with complicated personal issues. (The "who's going to help me bury this body" group.) You probably know or have met someone that is non-binary that feels that they can't tell you because your certainty on this topic means that they doubt that you would either listen or hear them.

Don't underestimate the beautiful hidden complexity of the human mind; especially your own. We can all learn more if we show that we can take the time to hear each other.

I suppose the ideal solution would be if ISO just implement a standard list for gender options, so it could be used the same way TVmaze using a list of countries or languages :)

@tnt wrote:
I suppose the ideal solution would be if ISO just implement a standard list for gender options, so it could be used the same way TVmaze using a list of countries or languages.

Based on the large majority of our world, female or male is still the ISO standard.

@Thomas wrote:
Based on the large majority of our world, female or male is still the ISO standard lol

well, that's why the rest are considered minorities ))

@alexx wrote:
Its easier to call "biological gender" sex. (The doctor's best guess when you were born.) It's separate from gender which is what your brain tells you that you are, (though usually congruent with sex assigned at birth; but not always.) We tend to refer to a person's presentation as their gender because we don't have time to do a DNA test on everyone that we meet and its rather invasive to demand to inspect their pants. (The problem here is that there are people that "look like the other one" - so its more efficient to just ask and listen.)

Just as most grass is green doesn't mean that we can conclude that all green things are grass. Just because sex and gender match for most people doesn't mean that we should dumb things down and exclude people.

"Just choose a gender" might be really easy for you and everyone that you know, but most humans don't know more than a small village of people, (fewer than 250) and of those they usually have fewer than six people to whom they would trust with complicated personal issues. (The "who's going to help me bury this body" group.) You probably know or have met someone that is non-binary that feels that they can't tell you because your certainty on this topic means that they doubt that you would either listen or hear them.

Don't underestimate the beautiful hidden complexity of the human mind; especially your own. We can all learn more if we show that we can take the time to hear each other.

But being classified as male or female on your passport, does it really involve you a lot if you lived like a non-binary person or transgenders in life in most western countries? Transgenders could easily be opted in the category they wanted to be in/what their brain tells them, however a gender is not classified by your brain, but simply by what the country considers you to be....

I can understand your point, however it would also call others to argue this change. Also if someone would star as himself/herself, what would you call such non-binary person then? Having them being classified as ''them'', ''they'' or ''it'', is just weird too.

I personally do not have any issues with having different terminology, but it should be clear as to what.

@pentar wrote:
Just what we need, another topic to argue over.

if the answer is some variant of "Because it's traditional"

@ilhamou13 wrote:
if the answer is some variant of "Because it's traditional"

Also if someone would star as himself/herself, what would you call such non-binary person then?