Why is everyone so obsessed with knowing everyone else's gender?

[SpringchickenGoldBrass]

The only circumstances when I think someone else really needs to know your gender is if they want to have sex with you or give you medical treatment. I do think this is a feminist issue because it seems to me that the insistence of people on knowing one's gender when it really isn't relevant is a matter of treating men and women differently when it's not justifiable to do so.
Why is my gender relevant when I want to book a travel ticket/buy a book on Amazon/join a web forum or (in the most recent case that's annoyed me) ask for advice on a friend's MH issue?

I don't agree that they need to know ethnic origin to plan services. My objection is not that they are nosy, just that it is not a valid categorisation.

There is no standard agreement on ethnic origin categories, it is solely based on how someone chooses to describe themselves. However, it is often assumed to be related to skin-colour. If I choose to describe myself as black african, to howls of "you can't be" based on my skin colour, how is that helping the council decide how many buses to run?

** not really feminism, but happens to touch a nerve so many axes to grind

Also, really good point in delusion of gender about reinforcing stereotypes and that having an effect on performance (in exams for example). Presumably ethnic and other stereotypes may also impact negatively if they are included in the forms.

It just always makes me think of being asked for "papers" in apartheid South Africa or in segregated US - to prove you are black/white/coloured (from films, not old enough to actually have been there!)

I think you have a point dittany about erasing differences in gender potentially "erasing" women by their subsequent absorption in the people=men category. "Mankind", anyone?!

But clearly the problem is when gender has to be unnecessarily specified in situations where at best, that knowledge is used for purposes of stereotyping (I'm including marketing here) and at worst for discrimination (whether conscious or not). Yes, who cares whether a man or woman is purchasing cinema tickets??!

Otherwise, I tend to believe genuine gender differences (as opposed to the socially imposed ones) are something to be celebrated in an ideal world. How dull if we were all the same, eh?! The same goes for racial differences, differences in sexuality etc etc.

It's sad we live in a thoroughly un-ideal world where those differences are all too often used as an excuse to sublimate whole groups of people.

As an example of why ethnicity could be important to know when planning local services - you may know that a group has a particular susceptibility to a certain medical condition. For example I believe that South Asian women are more vulnerable to diabetes. Knowing you had a large number of these women living in your area would allow you to run awareness campaigns, screening, allocate your budget wisely etc.

Yes - it's more to do with health care, sickle-cell for example
affects certain ethnic groups more than others.

Ooh, AMumInScotland that's given me something to think about.

Over-collection of data is one of my bugbears, and I often end up thinking, "Do these people have no grasp of the DPA?" Sounds like, er, they don't.

Yes, it occurred to me after posting - in certain Northern towns there is a higher than normal incidence of children with genetic problems due to marrying of close relations. That's not purely an ethnic issue, its the particular culture which may go with it.

I saw an interesting thing on a documentary called The Gene Code recently - one caste in India has a very high incidence of a bad reaction to a commonly used anasthetic, so they specifically have to ask what caste someone is in the run-up to an operation.

I thought when buying train tickets asking your gender or title was for identification purposes. Anti fraud?

Buying a book .....for marketing?

They should have a 'rather not say'/'none of your business' option for sex as they sometimes have with age or racial background.

Categorising someone as belonging to one or other half of the population does't really sound like helpful 'identification'

Maybe they're thinking of bringing back 'ladies only' carriages

But if a bloke steals my card and tries to book a first class ticket to Bogota or Edinburgh, they'll say 'Hang on, it should be Mrs...'
I've insisted that banks put the 'Mrs' bit on my bank cards as an extra ID. Apparently ones without are more easily forged.

They do have ladies only carriages in Japan - I used to look forward to a grope free journey.

And if a woman steals it they may be less vigilant than they should be.

True, Grimma.

This very thing is being discussed at the Guardian

The census doesn't ask you to state your ethnic origin; it asks you to state your ethnic group. Ethnicity isn't necessarily to do with biology. Irish travellers are an ethnic group, but there isn't any biological difference between them and other people of Irish descent. The difference between the Hutus and the Tutsis are cultural in origin, but we still call them ethnic groups.

So while genetic problems from inter-marriage within an ethnic group are cultural, that doesn't mean we can't associate them with an ethnic group. But this isn't why we're asked that questions in the census - the NHS will have much better data on health and ethnicity from its own records. The census will be for planning of culturally related services and for equal opportunities monitoring. The information could be used for adequate representation of various groups in children's library books for example, which might differ if a particular ethnic group is much more common in a certain area. Or it could be used to ask why nobody from a certain ethnic group holds a managerial position in your local council, if 25% of the people living in that area belong to that ethnic group according to the census.

'Vital to know in pharmaceutical trials .... oh but they're nearly all done on young men'

GrimmaTheNome, that is an interesting fact that I wasn't aware of. Why are they nearly all carried out on young men? Is that really representative? Does it create skewed results?

It's true about pharmaceutical trials - generally on young men because they don't want to risk untested drugs on potentially pregnant women. I think women can be included if surgically sterilised, but obviously fewer in that category.

For example in the widely quoted stress responses of "fight or flight" it was found not to be so for women (disclaimer, I have no idea how gender biased this research was either)
[http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/stress.html#genderresponses]

It really struck me when pregnant that so many everyday medications are prohibited, not because they are dangerous, but that no research had been done. I can see the ethical argument of not testing on foetuses, but to exclude a majority of the population from trials must skew the results.

sorry - link here www.fi.edu/learn/brain/stress.html#genderresponses

Thanks, BelleCurve. I thought it might be to do with something like that i.e. men are more expendable and young women more valuable for humanity. It is a hard logic, but it does make sense, however, the results must be skewed and you have to wonder how valid they really are.

I think traditioanly it also used otbe young medical students who were encouraged to take part in trials, so they tended to be predominantly male.

Oh, for some drugs there are major differences. And then again, some vary according to your racial background. Terribly complicated stuff, biochemistry.

Maybe they should recruit cohorts of nuns.

SwallowedAFly - job application forms have it for Equal Opportunities purposes, if that's what it's still called - ditto for college application forms etc.