Why are you asking trans people to out themselves when they join the forum?

[Elettaria]

I've just come back to this forum after five years' absence, and before I managed to work out what my old user name and password were (incidentally, the "forgot your password" link doesn't send you an email, I tried twice), I tried to make a new account. I was very much taken aback to see that there's a compulsory question on your gender, and that it has the following options:

Male
Female
Intersex
Transgender MTF
Transgender FTM
Other
Cheese

If I wasn't already a member of this forum, and knew that I was only popping in to ask a few questions about henna and that these are the folks who Know Henna, this would have stopped me from joining. And I'm a cisgender woman. ("Cisgender" means that the sex you were assigned at birth is the same as your gender identity, it's the opposite of "transgender".)

I get the impression that it's well-meant, that you are trying to give people options, but you're not quite sure how to go about it, and that you aren't clear on the differences between sex and gender. Intersex, for instance, is about sex, and the equivalent in terms of gender is genderqueer. Unfortunately, the options you're giving are really offensive.

1. The first problem is that trans people face massive prejudice in today's world, and they get to choose when they come out as trans. "Woman" is a category that includes trans women, it's not an either/or. To present "trans woman" (which is the preferred term these days) as an alternative to "woman" says that you don't think that trans women are "real" women, and that's a) untrue and b) deeply offensive. Generally speaking, trans people do not need or want to mention their transgender status for the vast majority of the time. It's simply not relevant very often, and it makes them more vulnerable to transphobic attack.

2. You do not need to know someone's biological sex when interacting with them socially. The configuration of their private parts, let alone their chromosomes, is none of your business. Indeed, not everyone knows this about themselves. A friend of mine discovered that she is technically intersex when she was in her early thirties. Nothing is visible externally, I think it's a chromosomal issue, and it helped explain some of her health problems (PCOS, repeated miscarriages etc.) She identifies as a woman, she is still a woman. Other intersex folk may identify as male or genderqueer. She's told me because we have a close friendship and discuss very intimate matters, but she is certainly not about to declare it to the general public, just like she's not going to put up a notice saying how often she has sex with her husband. It's private. If someone wishes to disclose these kind of details, it is entirely up to them, and most people will only disclose them to a small and trusted group. Making people declare it publicly on the internet is not on.

3. Gender is more relevant to social interaction, and this is where non-binary gender identities become an issue. I identify fairly straightforwardly as a woman. I was female assigned at birth (FAAB), I grew up feeling like this was a good fit for me, I'm a cisgender woman, it's pretty clearcut. I have friends who were assigned one sex at birth and found out that their gender is a different one, but again it's a binary gender thing, e.g. FAAB, realised they were a man, now living as a (trans) man.

But not everyone fits into a binary gender system. I have some friends who are staying in the body they were born in, as opposed to undergoing transitioning treatment, but do not feel that either "man" or "woman" describes them clearly. There are a few terms for this, and one of the most common is "genderqueer", along with "non-binary". You can be both trans and non-binary, one of my friends is. They were FAAB and have realised that their gender is somewhere between "man" and "genderqueer", they will be undergoing transitioning so that their body fits with what they are comfortable with, and they prefer the pronoun "they".

Some people will prefer the category "other", and some will feel as if their identity has been erased if that's the only option they have left.

4. As for "cheese", I understood what it meant because I used to hang around this forum for years. Newcomers don't know the local jokes yet. My partner thought it was an insult, a way of saying "all these gender options are a joke and I'm sick of trying to list all the gender options". This is not a good spot for the cheese joke.

5.So what information do you need about people's gender on this forum? As you will understand by now, gender is a complicated thing, and it's up to someone to decide how much they want to tell thousands of strangers in a forum about it. But it's very useful to know which pronoun people prefer, so that you can say things like, "Did the OP mention which country they're in, so that we can give them advice on henna suppliers?" There are a variety of gender-neutral pronoun sets available, including "they", "zie" and others. Since this is not a forum where many people will know what "zie" and similar mean, I'd suggest using "they", as it's widely acceptable and easily understood.

6. I had a quick search for "transgender" on this forum. I saw some people being welcoming when someone came out as trans, and others being ignorant to the point of offensiveness, including the extremely unpleasant slur "tranny". I really hope you're dealing with that sort of hate speech when it occurs.

If you want to give people a list of options that makes it clear that you respect the full spectrum of gender identities, you have three choices.

a) Don't include a question about gender at all. I honestly can't see why you need one. If people want to disclose their gender identity, they will do so. For most people this is unproblematic. The vast majority of people on this forum are women, it's considered the default. Men tend to state that they're men. People with other gender identities are mostly keeping quiet about it, as far as I can tell.

b) Simplify the gender options so that you no longer list trans women as being separate from "normal" women. Give people an option not to disclose their gender. I mean this both in the sense of making the question non-compulsory, and giving a "Prefer not to say" option. I would suggest

Female
Male
Other
Prefer not to say

as your list of options in this case. I'm still not keen on asking people to reveal their gender at all, though, and a genderqueer friend of mine just mentioned that they would be extremely uncomfortable with being shoved into the "other" category.

c) Instead of asking people to declare their gender, ask them to declare their preferred pronoun. So it would read as:

I prefer to be referred to as:

He
She
They
Other/prefer not to say

Whatever you do, TAKE OUT THE CHEESE!