Gym thinks only men can be Drs

[DrElizabethPlimpton]

I've just seen a link to a Daily Fail article (I won't link obviously) about a gym in Cambridgeshire

A paediatrician joined and she found that her electronic key wouldn't allow her access to the female changing room. The 'glitch' was explained by staff - apparently her title Dr automatically defaulted to the assumption she was male.
I'm currently speechless.

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.

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!)

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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

I always use my Dr title because that's my title.

Oh. I thought it was about who could go into a changing room - that is what's in the OP!

It's not a programming assumption that a Dr is male. A database isn't human - it can't really 'assume' anything. It can only be programmed.

Obviously, I stand by what I've just said about options to tick M/F. Not sure why you're asking me again?

Oh, for fuckssake.

Now you're accusing us of wanting to 'ban the T'. Really?

Could you for one minute consider this thread may actually be about a woman who was discriminated against, not about us being evil, evil bigots?

I corrected you about the programme because the point here is that a person has to make that sexist assumption about women doctors. You don't like that idea, do you? That someone might be discriminating against women.

But they are. And some of us actually don't like it.

That attitude, believe it or not, is not actually to do with wishing harm to people who (like me), might prefer changing rooms and indeed databases that didn't use sex as a selection category. Ok?

Oh for goodness sake....

Look, kim, can we just leave it?

The whole bloody thread is about this woman not being able to get into her changing room. Yes, it is also about databases and assumptions and all sorts of other things, but to claim it isn't about changing rooms is absurd.

I do think it matters that the assumption belongs to the programmer, not the system. And you did need correcting on that, because your statement - in that post, not in others - was obscuring the fact that sexism here isn't some randomly generated effect, but the result of active decisions made by people. I felt that was important. I don't think it is mansplaining to say so.

I really don't think I am obsessed with 'the T word'. I think trans people - and everyone else, actually - would be better off if we stopped classifying the whole world into two groups based on sex. I have expressed this view many, many times, both to you and in general on here.

I feel really sad that this thread has now been totally derailed away from 'shit example of sexism' to 'kim and her one-woman crusade to tell everyone they are bigots'. I get that life is shit and hard for you and I am sorry about that. But that does not mean that you get claim everything that is not directly about you must be bigotry directed at you.

It isn't. Sometimes, it's just not about you.

I think you're reading a different thread, if you think this wasn't about both changing rooms and assumptions made by programmers. That's how I was reading it, anyway.

If the card in question wasn't used for gender-specific access, we'd probably not be aware that the database behind it all was making assumptions about Dr being assumed to be male. It probably happens more widely, but we're just not aware of it.