# Reference to gender in forum rules



## scoiattolino

This is being very picky I know - it's just a suggestion. In your rules section you have:

"Represent yourself honestly.
You may register with one user name only. 
Do not pretend to be someone you are not: this includes *gender*, nationality and native language. "

Gender identity is a complex issue, and if I remember rightly, when signing up to this forum it allows you to identify yourself as either "male" or "female". For some people it's not quite as simple as this, and this rule could imply dishonesty on the part of those people who have no such intention. Might this reference to gender from your rules be removed if it isn't absolutely necessary?  I completely understand why you would need to specify this for national and native language, I'm just not so sure about gender.


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## cherine

In some languages, you need to know the person's gender to address them properly. For example, in Arabic, the verb conjugation/verb ending differs according to the subject and/or the object.
Asking for an honest representation or identification of one's gender means that someone who considers himself male, shouldn't say he's a female, and vice versa. But you can of course not indicate the gender in the first place. Honesty is required if/when you're going to fill in that info.


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## JustKate

Yes, the rule is that you must represent yourself honestly. But if someone doesn't wish to specify gender - for whatever reason - he or she is under no obligation to do so. The person who decides that this is just too complicated can simply leave that blank. And many people do.


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## The Newt

I can understand that a language forum would ask that people correctly identify their nationality and native language, because those things may potentially have a bearing on how we evaluate the advice they give. If I say I'm a native Farsi speaker and I'm not, then I'm potentially misleading people. With gender I'm not sure that this is much of a factor. If you say you're male and you consider yourself male, then for our purposes I don't think it's going to matter what other people think your gender is, or even if you're simply lying. Still, perhaps the best policy is to refrain from deliberately misrepresenting oneself and perhaps we should explore the option of other choices for declared gender than male and female.


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## scoiattolino

Thanks for getting back to me. I didn't realise that the gender field was optional, so I suppose that makes sense.


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## JamesM

Yes, the only personal piece of information that is absolutely required is your native language.  The others are optional.  I believe the rule is only saying "if you declare gender and nationality be truthful about it."  (I honestly don't think we ask for nationality.  I think that is just a reference to the way you represent yourself in your posts.)


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## Outsider

I wonder, though, if those who'd rather not state their gender would prefer a different avatar, instead of the question mark... Something more neutral?


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## cherine

Like what, Outsider?


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## Outsider

It's just that the "?" struck me a couple of times as impersonal, and I thought the posters with this avatar might feel the same. But as for possible replacements, I think it up to them to state their preferences, if they have any. Now I'm wondering if I should even have raised the issue...  
(I'm OK with my avatar.)


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## JamesM

It's fairly common to have a blank avatar represented with a question mark or a silhouette with a question mark.  It's difficult to come up with a silhouette that is so ambiguous that it could easily be male or female.  I suppose we could just have a "No Image" message there but that doesn't seem any less impersonal than a question mark to me.


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## tsoapm

Outsider said:


> Something more neutral?


You can’t get much more neutral than a blank space, to my mind...


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## cherine

Well, yes, this could be a solution; a blank space instead of the question mark. I hope it is doable.


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## ain'ttranslationfun?

Two points: 
1) Why not just put "NS", for those of us (like myself) who consider it irrelevant and check "unspecified" in the "Gender" box? 
2) On second thoughts, I might raise my second point in another thread - oops, 'Discussion'.


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## ain'ttranslationfun?

"NS" for "Non-specified".


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