About twice a week I find something online that I want to register for, and sometimes I actually succeed. Usually, though, I have to go through too many screens of intrusive questions.
For some reason the one that really gets me, the one that stops me the most often and makes me realize I don’t need to register on that site, is when they ask my sex. For some reason it just pisses me off, bad.
Maybe it’s that I can give a fake name, lie about my age, give my address as Mile High Stadium (which no longer exists), but when I get to that sex thing there are only two choices: tell the truth, or lie. And it’s none of their business. What the hell, they can have my credit card number–fine, no problem. But as soon as I reveal my gender…what? Are they gonna start sending me pink things? Fashion magazines? (Or, if I lie, car stuff? Sports Illustrated?)
Frankly, they don’t need my address, either. They could probably compile their insidiously sneaky statistics based on my zip code. I happen to have a very classy zip code, although I routinely give a former zip code that was a bit more skid row. They probably just want to know the demographics of their listeners (most of these have something to do with music–websites of radio stations, for instance), but you know what, I don’t want to provide them.
Probably stems from a deepseated fear that once I reveal my gender, I will be treated differently than if I were the opposite gender, and this fear is based on actual data. Okay, to you it might be an anecdote, but my brain regards it as data. I can’t think of any way a streaming audio radio station could treat me differently based on sex–so it’s pointless for them anyway. Why can’t they just think of me as a person? A faceless, ageless, sexless pair of ears that are no longer listening to their playlist. Or their ads.