gender

I don't want to derail anybody's discussions, but this seemed like the appropriate thread for this - a great post at Jezebel about gendered marketing of LEGO products, and what happens when you switch the audio on the commercials.

my own personal experience with gender/sci: both parents are highly educated with tons of graduate degrees, working in sci or health. my older sis ended up collecting master's degrees in the sciences. i was expected to excel in sci/math and i did, although i still had enormous anxiety about it. i tested better in sci/math than humanities when i did any sort of standardized testing. but my biggest class problems were always in sci and math. my honors chem teacher in HS used to say that i was really smart but i got in my own way.

i was never consciously aware of any discouragement or implication that i might not be great at sci/math--but it freaked me the fuck out. and i believe that it was partially due to gender bs that i absorbed, although i tried to reject it. (wearing men's clothes, etc)

I had a young cousin once that posted on facebook that she did well on a math test once and it scared her.

been thinking abt gender and expectations of academic performance...

it seems to me that we've seen, over the last few decades, the emergence of new stereotypes regarding gender and things like general intelligence and ability in math/science. in characters like hermione granger and lisa simpson, we see a girl who easily excels her male peers in these areas, but who is comparatively straightlaced and "uptight". the "nerdy girl" is smart and academically accomplished but socially unskilled and often unhappy/dissatisfied. she is a stickler for rules and order, and is often seen as "annoying" by those around her, adults and children alike. she's basically a modern version of "bossy" and/or "goody-goody" midcentury female comic strip characters like lucy (peanuts) and margaret (dennis the menace), but much more sympathetic and clearly "bright".

the emergence of the nerdy girl runs parallel to a much remarked-on shift in american sitcom family dynamics, where adult male husband/father characters over the same few decades have become increasingly childlike, foolish and irresponsible, exaggerating in their television wives the same "straightlaced" and "uptight" rule-enforcing and behavior monitoring characteristics we see in characters like hermione and lisa. the sitcom wife is not typically (ever?) pictured as truly brilliant, especially not when it comes to things like math and science, but she is often, clearly, a good deal more sensibly intelligent than her husband.

in certain respects, the stereotype of the "less smart woman" is perhaps beginning to be traded out for "smarter, but less fun".

i think we've also seen the emergence of an adult version of the nerdy girl character in stereotypical portrayals of the "corporate woman", a character who is typically portrayed as occupying a management position. she is extremely capable, but also rather ruthless and even cruel, a sort of evil twin to the "good" sitcom wife.

a lot of this stuff seems to reflect changing power dynamics in american society, and anxieties about the same.

This trope is at least as old as Jane Austen. It exists, but it's hardly a new development.

yeah, what i was going to say. thinking young maggie tulliver in mill on the floss

yeah, i'm not saying that any of this is newly invented (it's not, obviously), but these sorts of images do seem to have gained a fair amount of cultural prominence in the last few decades. in the states, anyway.

Well actually it was one of the principle objections to female education down through the ages! That educating women to use their minds will make them un-womanly and possibly sterile! This was a classic Georgian to Victorian complaint (I bet you could probably find it as far back as the Classical period.)

yeah, but hermione, for instance, isn't exactly "unwomanly", and lisa clearly vaccilates on that point (probably depending on who's writing the jokes). in these characters and the contemporary sitcom mom/wife, intelligence is, to some extent, positively associated with femininity.

again, not entirely new ("sensible" sitcom wives and "smart, prissy" young girls go back quite a ways), but i see a greater and more positive emphasis on such characters than in the recent past. more thinking aloud than making an argument...

and then there's everyone's favorite manic pixie dreamgirl!

http://www.narth.com/docs/york.html

I need to get back on track with my chapter précis, and then come back and demolish this fucker.

It is very interesting and stuffed with proper citations.

真的

I want to add additional gender options to a form that parents fill in about both themselves and their children. I'm not sure about the best wording.

A colleague who wants to write 'other' and have people write in what they want, but that is 1. not practical for data collation reasons - we need to automatize that - and 2. sounds dismissive to me. Is it? In any case I suspect she is not suggesting this from a place of inclusivity, but I can't be sure.

I suggested adding 'transgender' to the existing 'Male' and 'Female'. Would having just those three options be appropriate? Are there more that should be included? Re the children, another colleague suggested adding 'intersex' but I think parents of intersex children would tick the box corresponding to their child's presenting gender.

Please avoid "Other" at all costs. It's literally Othering as all hell.

The problem with suggesting "transgender" as a gender is that: 1) it erases the difference of M to F and F to M because "transgender" singular is not really the identity, "trans man" and "trans woman" are the identities. and 2) it disregards non-binary genders and 3) specifying out, if you are going to use "trans" you should really use "cis" as well, but that gets into the bad kettle of fish of forcing people to out themselves. There is considerable debate as to what you should call a third gender option. Personally, I like "non-binary" because there are differences between people who identify as "genderqueer" (both) or "agender" (neither) or something else entirely. Most people agree a third or maybe even fourth option is necessary, but there is disagreement on what it should be.

What is more important is how you phrase the question. The problem is, that the most inclusive language you can use "what gender do you identify as?" or "what gender do you present as?" are the questions which will most confuse cis people (also, ending questions with "as" = grammatically clumsy). I'm sure there are resources out there about good ways of phrasing this question, and a third option in an open and inclusive way that doesn't make cis ppl too upset? I will look for some.

Sorry, this is not a good answer, but basically, I'm mostly aware of what options to avoid, rather than what options are preferred.

Sorry for multiple posts, but this just occurred to me... the other consideration is, indeed, why are you asking the question? Because there are circumstances under which you are not looking for the person's gender, you are looking for their sex - very specific circumstances, usually involving medical treatment. In which case, M, F, Intersex would be preferred (and possibly some trans options). If you are just asking about gender, consider why you need to know gender at all.

the other consideration is, indeed, why are you asking the question?

^ not saying this has relevance to ljubljana's situation but lots of places collect info without thinking, I've tried to phase it out of records at previous employers

Thanks, BB, that's extremely helpful. I really like the possibility of having a 'non-binary' option.

Currently there is no question as such - just 'Gender' and a list. I'll give that some thought.

Ogmor, you're right, we always need to keep an eye on whether we really going to use the data. I'd rather not say too much on here about the actual studies, but we're interested in parents' gender because of an interest in how that might correlate with the ways they do specific activities with their children. We're interested in children's gender both for that reason, and because there are established (but small) developmental differences in language and other cognitive development.

OK, that is a perfectly valid and reasonable reason to be interested in gender. (It's the "what gender should we ~market~ to you as" questions that really irritate me.)

Maybe use "non-binary" with some examples ("e.g. agender, genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender") so that cis people don't get too confused? It's too bad you can't use a freetext for gender, but I understand that would make data collection an absolute nightmare.

Why do you keep assuming cis ppl're going to be confused

can you just put a blank space for people to write in whatever they want?

Our first "NOT AAALLLL CIS PEOPLE!!!!" comment. Yay!

Zing

Omg, my co- worker who did not even bother coming to the meeting about re-doing the questions is fighting me on this and directing me to census categories. I suspect religious grounds are behind that. Nnnnnggggg. 20 emails and counting.

Crut - that would be great but would cause us probs with auto-categorizing the data.

Everyone agreed yesterday to change the question, bar the co-worker who skipped the meeting. We just needed to sort out wording. Today no-one except me is responding to her emails saying we mustn't add any other options. Her reasons: (bear in mind we are asking parents as well as children about their gender):

Again, I think g3ender should be m@le/fem@le. If there is a consensus to have third option, which I d0n't think there is, then the third opti0n should just be blank. I don't think w3 are in a position to get into terminology that is p0tentially confus1ng (children aren't usually transg3nd3r and p@rents don't necessarily choose a different g3nder for young childr3n). It becomes too pol1tical as well.

I responded to that by saying I disagree but would go along with the results of a vote, so please let's have show of hands. No-one responded, and the person trying to get the new questionnaire together has now asked our supervisor to decide. I think I know which way it'll go, unfortunately. I could still be wrong.

How is gender manifest? Should gender be understood as entirely cultural? For example, I think of gait and voice as associated with gender. While both are associated with the body, I think of the former as an understanding and the latter as a given.

gender pronouns for consideration as a possible set: you (en), one (en), on (fr)
Are there other language equivalents that are as impersonal as possible?

In languages with neuter gender, can you use neuter pronouns after your name and what does it mean when you do this?

Sweden introduced a gender-neutral pronoun last decade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_(pronoun)

xp: i don't really know what you mean, neuter as a grammatical gender and gendered pronouns (as prominent in english) are not really related

this might be of interest (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_pronoun#Gender)

many languages do not distinguish female and male in the third person pronoun.
Some languages have or had a non-gender-specific third person pronoun:

Malay (including Indonesian and Malaysian standards), Malagasy of Madagascar, Philippine languages, Māori, Rapa Nui, Hawaiian, and other Austronesian languages
Chinese, Burmese, and other Sino-Tibetan languages
Vietnamese and other Mon–Khmer languages
Igbo, Yoruba, and other Volta-Niger languages
Swahili, and other Bantu languages
Haitian Creole
Turkish and other Turkic languages
Luo and other Nilo-Saharan languages
Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, and other Uralic languages
Hindi-Urdu
Georgian
Japanese
Armenian
Korean
Mapudungun
Basque
Persian

Some of these languages started to distinguish gender in the third person pronoun due to influence from European languages. Mandarin, for example, introduced, in the early 20th century a different character for she (她), which is pronounced identically as he (他) and thus is still indistinguishable in speech (tā). Korean geunyeo (그녀) is found in writing to translate "she" from European languages. In the spoken language it still sounds awkward and rather unnatural, as it literally translates to "that female".

I know from personal experience that Chinese or Turkish speakers that have come to English (or, for instance, Dutch) later in life sometimes tend to exclusively use 'he' for the third person, regardless of the particular person's gender (or in some cases throw in a random 'she' sometimes, again regardless of the actual gender).

Thanks for the link and sorry for the possible confusion. I think what I mean, and sorry for working this out here, is this: if gender in language is used to convey the gender of a person, in a language with a neuter gender, what does it mean when you put neuter gender pronouns with slashes in between in parentheses behind a name?

Are there always male and female versions of nouns for gendered species in languages with gender and if there is not would it be wrong to use the masculine or feminine to refer to an instance that is not masculine or feminine respectively?

(where gender identity is an issue and needs to be conveyed in language, I think it would be best to mark (recognize, signal, announce) in the first and second person.)

(or first is where when has authority and second is where it is a priority to mark for communication and third is where what does not need to claim any knowledge)

(third is where one does not need to claim any knowledge but perhaps being able to refer presumes knowledge in which case all persons bear responsibility)