To get irritated by surveys that ask for my 'gender' but not for my sex?

You might wanna sit down before you read any other threads on AIBU! 😮

God I am so bored of this.

People with DSDs are still either male or female.

They are not some third sex or something in between.

And yes OP it pisses me right off too.

when people deny gender I often wonder about intersex people or those whose genitals are/were ambiguous.

The number of people with DSDs (not intersex), where there is ambiguity about what sex they are, is infinitesimally tiny and will be clarified by a medical professional

Intersex is an incredibly outdated term. DSD is the accepted term and using the word intersex has been widely understood to be offensive to people with this condition.

0.02% of people are born with a DSD or difference in sex development. They are still either male or female. It is biologically impossible be a mix between the two or "intersex".
You either have a DSD that is present in males OR females.

And people with DSDs have repeatedly and publicly asked to be left out of the gender nonsense. I think we should respect that.

when people deny gender I often wonder about intersex people or those whose genitals are/were ambiguous.

Doesnt that cast any doubt for you on the fact that gender and sex are different. I can be intersex (and have had ambiguous genitals at birth) but be living comfortably as one gender or another, and be receiving all the privileges or discriminations of that gender (which is often what is relevant in data collection - ie understanding whether certain groups have an advantage or not).

i don’t have lived experience of being intersex so can’t speak to it deeply but surely it makes you question your convictions!

Honestly another thing I wonder is why so many of you are doing surveys all day!!!! And writing them by the sounds of it!

Rape crisis centres
Womens shelters
Domestic violence support agencies
FGM support agencies

Breast screening
Smear tests
Prostate exams

All of these things and countless more exist precisely BECAUSE what is between someone's legs.
You are either very young and as of yet not had the life experience to show you how intrinsically important someone's sex is, or you are worryingly under informed and are naively dismissing people's legitimate concerns.

The biological differences between men and women go far beyond their hormones and their reproductive systems - they are also manifested in metabolism, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, bioavailability... all of these things make is vitally important that a person's biological sex is recorded, especially on medical records.

Their gender has absolutely no bearing on anything.

YABU because gender is a thing
But the point is that in most cases it's not a relevant thing.

Gender has NOTHING to do with what people have between their legs ( I assume you mean their sex but you really need to learn some biology ).

In fact it’s quite bigoted to say this, people of both sexes can identify as any gender they like and it’s not your place to tell them how they identify.

You nailed it

YABU because gender is a thing. I don't know why everyone here argues that it's not. Yes, it's a sociocultural concept, but that doesn't make it any less real.

National borders don't exist in nature - there no line on the ground showing where Canada ends and the US begins - but we all act as if there was. Society is full of these mutually agreed arrangements.

Everyone knows what you mean when you say the word "gender". And everyone knows that there are some people living as a different gender to their birth sex. Saying that this is "nonsense" will not make it go away.

I worry about women's safe spaces too, but I think the dismissive attitude taken by many here towards gender issues is really unhelpful.

Yes have noticed that characters in Dickens and Austen often mention "their sex" with no hint that it's funny or sexual. But I have read that gender was also used historically, although this was in an online dictionary, so whether or not that can be trusted I don't know.

Every time I tick other and write no gender identity, sex is female. Or prefer not to say. Either way it messes up the stats. I had to point this out to a work colleague recently as his survey only asked for gender. I asked what he was hoping to learn from that question.

Yes this.

You've literally got a dedicated board for this crap. Can you just stay there please and not pollute the rest of the boards with this moral panic over nothing (cue the comments 'Women won't be quiet, we're not going to shut up!').

I'd really love to have so little to care about that I'd give a shit about this over say, the levels of homelessness and child poverty we have, but it's not the case. You know what gender means on the form, you're just looking to start a bunfight around your obsession with what people have between their legs.

Yawn.

I always cross out ‘gender’ and replace it with ‘sex’. Then write Female. Even an NHS form had this - maybe someone will notice and take it on board. I live in hope.

Prefer not to say isn't accurate though. I don't "prefer not to say" , I just do not have a gender, because it's made up bollocks.

If there were an option to say "I don't have a gender" then that would be fine, but there never is.

I usually ignore the question entirely, or it if it's compulsory online I choose "other" then write "I don't have a gender. My sex is female" in the free text box which then appears.

YANBU OP, it's very annoying and also unhelpful for those collecting the data if they don't ask about sex.

I'm not sure why it's helpful to know someone is faegender. If they really want to know if someone follows the cult of gender they can just ask that.

As far as I’m aware the majority of people who answer as Ms are unmarried. Do you know differently?

It sounds like your gender is female. So tick that. It’s not hard

I love all the cool middle/ upper class women on this thread saying

“ I’ve got better things worry about [ like my designer shoes and clothes and if my maid or Chauffeur will turn up on time today ] .

We get that you are better than other women.

Its lovely to be so privileged that you don’t need to worry about the safety of women in prison, shelters or hospitals or girls using changing rooms in the local sports centre or Primark ( where accommodation is allocated by gender and not sex ).

Yeah we get that you are not a rape or a prisoner or an NHS patient or an homeless person or an asylum seeker or refugee or a working class woman and that you don’t give a fuck about those who are. Because you know it will never be you.

No they are two different concepts. Sex is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 but gender identity is not.
If you are not collecting data about sex but only gender you cannot demonstrate that you are monitoring for discrimination/equal treatment of a protected characteristic.

Sometimes using the right terminology really matters.

YANBU gender is a social construct.

I do have to write surveys. Putting "something else" or "other" is, of course, othering!

It drives me crazy too.

But if you're a survey researcher, you have to accept that people are going to tell you about themselves - and it won't necessarily match your idea of the world. If you provide M and F check boxes, men who identify as women with will tick F. If you give people a space to self-describe, you'll hear from a couple of Apache attack helicopters. It's all information - just not exactly what you wanted. You can't make people care about the things you care about. Personally, I care very much and I agree with you OP - but life's more complicated than just 'what leafinthewind says goes'.

No, its not, or at least not for a gender abolitionist. I don't have a gender, nor am I agender because I don't believe in gender as an identity, just as a semi-useful way of analysing society (though, boy, are we beginning to understand its limitations!)

No it doesn't.

That's the problem.

There are different legal protection for sex and gender reassignment.

If sex is invisible in data collection there are implications.

That's the thing, gender wasn't used as a synonym for sex for centuries - its very recent. If you read texts from16th C onwards (I dont know about earlier, but I expe t its the same) there is absolutely no embarassment is using 'sex' to refer to women. 'The weaker sex' is bandied about all over the place. I think you'te right though in that, weirdly, its been one of the unintended consequences of feminism that we have focussed perhaps too much on the social construction of oppression & therefore gender and almost denied the biology of it - because if we accept the biology then the danger is people are gue that inferiority is naturally ordained - which is what people in the past believed, but of course doesnt have to be true. We all colluded in the normalisation of gender theory without realising it!