Gym thinks only men can be Drs

Of course in the instance in the OP it has everything to do with changing rooms.

That's ok!

kim, how can it have nothing to do with changing rooms?!

Sure, it'd be nice to have unisex/non-coded/whatever you like to call it rooms in a gym so people wouldn't have to tick the box, but if the gym has two rooms, one with M on the door and one with F, they need a workable system for letting people register which one they plan to use - and a better system than deciding all Drs are men!

I wasn't offended Jeanne, don't worry! Thanks for the reply

24 hour gyms? I can't imagine wanting to use a gym at 3am, even if I were in the middle of a nightshift.

I was being a bit sarcastic TBH.

There are people who really, genuinely feel they don't fit to the extent that it causes them serious identity problems. I've heard some people use 'genderqueer' almost as a synonym for 'trans'.

But other people do seem to use it in a much looser way, which is what grinds my gears. Particularly when they tell me it applies to me.

I know you said you'd google, just I felt bad for posting snippily earlier.

Hmm, still not sure I quite understand. I mean, I don't fit into typical gender stereotypes - female in a scientific profession and also good at manual labour such as carpentry and DIY, plus logical thinking tasks. How far do you have to differ before you merit this term?

That's a rhetorical question by the way - I will do some googling later. Thanks for the replies.

Genderqueer is a term that seems to be used mainly by young trendy university students. It means ordinary people who choose not to "identify" as a woman or man. Every genderqueer person I have ever met isn't even particularly non conforming. So personally, seems a bit more of a youth trend than anything else.

It's not pejorative. 'Queer' in the sense of queer theory is fairly well-established as term, it's in university courses.

'Genderqueer' means someone who doesn't think they fit into the traditional gender stereotypes, but bizarrely, thinks this is unique to them and therefore doesn't like the idea of feminists trying to attack gender itself.

I've not heard the term 'genderqueer' routinely used before. The word 'queer' always seemed to be used in a pejorative fashion, so this word sounds a bit odd to me. How long has it been in use?

Bit of a digression (again), sorry op.

If it is a 24 hour gym, the tech stuff makes total sense. No woman is going to want to use a shower at 5 in the morning if there are no staff around, and anyone can wander in.
Kim - a genderqueer person would be choosing which changing room they use. And everyone I have ever met who is genderqueer, looks clearly female or male.

I doubt that it was being as clever as Dad's stuff was (which I love by the way, I'm all about minimising clicks to purchase, and sensible defaults are so important), I expect it was just that only Miss/Mrs/Ms update the sex to female, otherwise it stays male - which is why it's silly to rely on title to determine sex!

I wonder if it was one of those 24 hour gyms EBear - that might explain the reliance on tech for getting into changing rooms, perhaps they don't even have the access control during the day, so the first time she found out was when she went in out of hours (can you tell I've been writing test scenarios for a couple of days!)

IME most medics I know do tend to use Dr outside of work for 'formal' things eg banks, car insurance but not for 'informal' things eg children's school, gym membership. Probably because people make assumptions about you if you are a doctor. Am sure it varies.

Another one who uses my title. Yes, okay, it's new and shiny, but I'm also of the opinion that stupid situations like the one described above are going to keep happening unless we female Drs get ourselves out there and noticed as being just as common as male Drs.

And male being the default for everything (when they actually form less then half the population) is the basis of so much of what is wrong with society and why feminism is still so badly needed.

Okay it is ghastly but I am always a little hmm when people use Dr outside of work. None of my doctor friends ever do only a friend with a PhD does.

Hey, I do this (PhD). I'm not a dick about it; it just makes me smile every time I look at my bank card and think that the six years I spent crying and coaxing bacteria to replicate wasn't in vain. It's not like I go 'I AM A DOCTOR DONTCHA KNOW' to people. I just like using the title, because it reminds me that I earned it. I wonder why medics don't?

Anyway, digression. Stupid database system.

another your friend with the PhD IS one of your friends who's a doctor!

In this case, I took it that the reason to record gender is so that access is given to the doors for only male or female changing rooms, but not both. (It could be argued that just having access and then allowing people to take their choice by the sign on the door would work as well as it does in many, many places. Just because you can be techy doesn’t always mean you have to.)

Also, given the numbers of men and women working in tech, there could easily be sexist assumptions behind the programming, given the stuff some of them unthinkingly come out with in a day-to-day context. (Our HR systems had to be reprogrammed for a trans person, because no one had ever considered you might not always be M or F as you were born.)

I use my dr title because I do not like the marriage assumptions made with the alternatives of mrs/miss/ and even ms. I've posted on here before about being told it is a crime for me to use my husband's bank card...

When buying a wedding present from John Lewis online, you are asked to tell them if you are male or female.

I cannot figure out why.

Forgive me, but surely that is outdated and extremely simplistic?

Its stupid by design IMO. The best way to program it is to require gender first, then be presented with a menu that allows you to select the honorific for the person, of which Dr would be an option for both men and women. The bonus to that is that if the user selects (or is given by default) the wrong gender the fact that Mr Vs Mrs (or Mz) shows up in the next entry option easily flags to the user they got the previous entry about gender wrong. But its seldom done that way because defining gender first rather than honorific of the person seems impersonal.

But why used gendered statistics at all?

Forgive me, but surely that is outdated and extremely simplistic?

It is not a fault in the capacity of the programme, but in the hidebound interpretations of people using it.

That's a very narrow view of poor design, surely?

There were different ways to look at it back when I did it and thinking may have changed since then. Validity of having a default value which was generally statistically driven, level of hazard of potential error, and errors in data entry caused by uncorrected default values Vs errors if the user was required to enter a value but made a mistake. For example in what kim147 wrote, just because you have an option of clicking Doctor – Male or Doctor – Female on a data entry screen does not mean the operator is going to click the correct one without fail. I saw one database that used the first name of the client to check its own database for probability of correct gender to alert the operator of possible incorrect entry. Ultimately if gender is incorrect the client is either in a position of being annoyed at the operator making the incorrect entry or at the software assigning default gender the operator did not pick up on.

That's a very narrow view of poor design, surely?