FairyChatMom is a guy? :eek:
That reminds me, I was visiting my mum last month, and I had the brainstorm of directing her attention towards a message board that would appeal to her… (Soap Opera Central, I believe. :)) Anyway, while I was holding her hand through the registration process, I was rather impressed to see that, while they ask for gender information, the choices are: ulFemale, ( )Male, ( )Transgendered[/ul]Cool-- maybe I was being prejudicial, but I was surprised to see soap opera fans were so progressive.
That being said, count me as another “ixnay on the enderjays”
If people want to broadcast their genders, they don’t have to try very hard. (God knows some of 'em do, though.) No need to force the issue.
Ummmm, no, I’m not a guy. I was supposed to be a guy - firstborn son and all that. I had a homepage full of pics, but it got flushed in the great ether. You’ll just hafta trust me on this one…
I don’t like it, for two reasons. While I am not a member of the transgendered community, there’s been some attention paid to the idea in my area recently. My (poorly educated) understanding is that the whole idea is to identify with a particular gender that may not be the one you were born with, not to acquire a whole new and separate one. Or maybe it is the latter – but not for everyone.
And secondly, being transgendered is not the only way to have an ambiguous gender.
But in both cases, I guess having the third option can’t be a bad thing.
Me too. On this board we use our cerebral cortexes, not our gonads (Well, outside of MPSIMS).
Your brai…oh never mind
Larry, I think having that “third option” is not much of a benefit. Many transgendered people do not care to identify as transgendered. Transgendered is not a “third gender”, and covers so many possible points in the spectrum. This is someone who thinks s/he is being “inclusive” and in so doing is actually being rude.
The proper thing to do is to not ask the question, or at least to make the answer optional.
I am all for keeping gender out of the profile. It is a wonderful and joyous thing that, unless they tell us or allude to it, we can’t tell people’s gender by their posts. This is further proof of the ultimate irrelevance of gender for anything except mating puposes, and the way we attach artificial importance to gender nevertheless.
Why would anyone care what gender a poster is unless one wants to attach stereotypical qualities to them: “Now, I really wish I knew the gender of this person before I make up my mind about their posts. If this comes from a guy I can undertand it, but for a woman it would be horrendous to feel this way.”
Gender and age only become meaningful (and not in a good way) when we use them to pigeonhole people. The beauty of the internet is that we can leave all these outside distractions behind and focus solely on what we have to say without people judging our words through the filter of gender, age, etc. We should be thankful that, with the internet, we have at least one venue on Planet Earth where we can play up what we want to be known about us and disregard to distracting rest.
Stereotypes are so deeply imbedded, and people are so scared of letting go of them that, personally, I have actually had people argue with me about what age and gender I am: “No way are you a middle-aged female. You must be a teenage boy.” (Guess again.)
A fascinating part of human nature is revealed by how much we rely on preconceived notions based on age, gender, and a host of other qualities in order to form an image of another person in our minds. The only thing that is even more fascinating is how unwilling we are to let go of these ideas.
A very large percentage of new female members here choose usernames that identify themselves as such. Just think of how many people you seen here with a username that ends in -girl or some other variation of that.