to object to MNHQ forcing a MALE/FEMALE gender binary on my account.

[HairyLittleCarrot]

I don't have any GENDER.

My MN account forces me to pick from two 'genders'.

I can't even opt out, it's a forced binary choice.

I'm not agender, pangender, cisgender, transgender, male gender, female gender or ANY GENDER.

If you want to know my sex, I am happy to provide that information. But you'll have to add that in as a field, because it doesn't exist currently.

Sex and gender are not the same thing. If you insist on collecting data by gender and making it a forced choice I would like an option as follows:

"Reject gender as a harmful, made up, bullshit concept".

Then when you analyse your account database you can say
X% identify as female gender
Y% identify as male gender
Z% reject gender as a bullshit concept.

AIBU to request MNHQ to alter my account details so that they do not misrepresent me?

Quakers have never used titles, such as Miss,Mrs, Mr, Lady, Laird because they tend to believe gender should be irrelevant. Quakers only use titles under protest, banks(which used to mostly be quaker) insist on a title ironically.

I do hope one day we can all drop titles, as then we can meet everyone for the first time as equals.

Unfortunately Quote we are not at that point yet and until then we (women) will have to fight for the right for our name

The Quaker way is one of simplicity. Thee / thou formerly, and certainly no honorifics. Less about gender i thought ? But still it comes from their basic tenet of equality.

Meeting everyone for the first time as equals is just about right.

Careful about the use of 'we' some of us are enlightened enough not to give a shit about what does or not dangle between our legs, let alone believe that it has any relation to ability.

That wasnt very Quakerly!

knew it was coming.

Who said I was quaker?

That did make me laugh.

Advertisers don't read threads on websites to see who they are advertising to. They look at stats which are gathered when you visit the site which is things like your ISP, country, and if you're logged into anything like google, any info you've given them.

Yes, it's correct that there is a lot of learned behaviour separating men and women, to the point that it creates us very differently.

I was getting a Quaker vibe for a moment..my bad!

That's not binary that's Boolean.

I can't believe this issue has been allowed to hijack mumsnet's boards for so long tbh

Haha

And I haven't rtft as I CBA but if you don't like it, er, don't register.

Smily face at Sonya

Your kind of right, from Quakers.

As its for advertisers, i guess the best way to bring it to mnhqs attention is for all of us to change to male? We then get inappropriate adverts for man-stuff (like umm, the russian bride ad's that are on a lot of other websites?), none of us follow the ad, and the advertiser gets pee'd off that their targeted advertising didnt work?

BeyondBootcampsAgain following that logic Mumsnet would go bust as they would lose their advertising revenue.

HairyLittleCarrot
If you want to know my sex, I am happy to provide that information.

How is being categorised by sex preferable to being categorised by gender?

How is being categorised by sex preferable to being categorised by gender?

Read the thread. One is real, the other is not.

Strange response, Seek, which doesn't answer my question.

Perhaps someone from MNHQ can confirm - I'm 99% sure that those profile stats aren't used for advertising purposes? That wasn't the commonly done thing when MN was set up. You are thinking of Facebook.

Going to report my post and see if we get answers, but as I said earlier, I DON'T think those answers are given to advertisers, and as far as I know, the ads which mumsnet hosts directly are not targeted at all, in the sense that all posters and not-logged-in people see the same adverts. Only the AdChoice once change.

I think it's purely so that they can use the correct pronoun (his/her) in your profile, and convention - most other forums ask members to state male/female and date of birth, too.

Why wouldn't they use stats for advertising? If they can go to advertisers and say we have X thousand active female users in the 30-40 age group, it's useful information for companies that want to target that category specifically.

Because gender's an unpleasant construct that all comes down to stereotypes and "feels" while someone's sex is an actual thing.

To try to put it another way (and this is a rough idea!!), imagine targeted advertising is working for the diet industry

Instead of asking your BMI on registration, it asks if you think you are fat. One is real and quantifiable, the other comes from your opinion of yourself based on socialisation.

Yes, from a targeted advertising perspective, to make money it makes more sense to ask if you think you are fat. Low bmi dieters will buy diet products and higher bmi who feel fine, wont.

However, the 'targeted' advertising then reinforces the feelings of those who think they need to diet when they dont, and harm is caused.