Assuming women have a gender identity is offensive

[WomanOfTime]

Yesterday I had to fill out an online application form for a well-known, mainstream organisation. Two of the compulsory questions were:

What is your gender? Male or Female.
Is this the same as the gender you were assigned at birth? Yes or No.

The correct answer to these questions is mu. (www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/mu.html) It is like asking what my religion is and giving a list of religions but no option to say that I am an atheist. As it's online, I have no option to write in 'sex' as I usually do, or leave the question blank. It's such a small thing, but it feels like it is forcing me to make false statements about myself and be complicit in my own gender-based oppression as a woman.

This analogy occurred to me. It's imperfect and incomplete, I know, but it illustrates how I feel when people ascribe a gender to me, or call me 'cis'.

Imagine a place where equal pay legislation never happened. Where men are paid more than women for the same job. Alice, Bob and Carol all work there. Alice campaigns for equal pay. Bob declares that he is transwaged, and wants to be paid less even though he is male, because that is his deeply-felt wage identity.

Bob gets paid less than the other men, but still more than Alice. Nobody is allowed to mention that Bob is into niche financial domination fetishes. Bob says that Alice is ciswaged, and identifies with being paid less. If she has never considered this a part of her identity before, it's simply part of her ciswaged privilege. Alice declares that all of this is insulting nonsense, and Bob calls her a bigot. Then Alice asks if saying she is transwaged will mean a pay rise for her. She is told she can't be transwaged, and a ciswaged bigot like her suggesting so is mocking poor Bob's identity struggle.

Carol says that Bob is stunning and brave. When Carol then identifies as transwaged, she gets paid a little more than Alice. Still not as much as the men in the company. Everyone ignores Alice when she points out that it's the structural inequality that is the problem and that 'wage identity' is not a real thing, because nobody identifies with their own oppression.

Gender is a hierarchy, not an identity.
Sorry if this was rambly, I'm just feeling angry and powerless over it all right now.

I was born female, I wasn't "assigned female" This is the language of early 20th century Dystopian fiction.

Do they have the legal right to force you to say if you are transgender, as this is effectively what they are asking I think?

I hate this too .... I do not have a gender and think it is a horrific system of categorising people that needs to be dismantled for everyone's mental health and wellbeing

GDPR makes it very clear that personal information/ data should only be collected when there is a reason to collect it. I have yet to fill in a form where asking me to disclose my gender (if indeed I have one) could be justified. To be fair, it is difficult to see why collecting information about my sex is relevant, but in some instances it is (e.g. health related information)

I disagree with identifying as anything much and generally refuse to answer such questions, especially about marital status! That I'm recognised/somehiw identifies by my relationship to a male, miss/mrs.
I don't think it's important what ppl identify as. I never thought it mattered that we had black kids in our school, it was novel as they were in the 00.02% of the school population, but I never heard racist slants.

I dont agree women should have this stoopid CIS label. It's all about the labels now, how regressive

If you don't agree with men in women's spaces you're called a terf.

There's altogether too much labelling and therefore out-grouping of ppl, and growing division and hatred!

I don't think they have the legal right, but as it's an application form, I'm sure that any email complaining about the wording and/or the compulsory nature of the questions would lead to me being seen as difficult and affect my chances of being a successful candidate.

If I get rejected anyway, for other reasons, I might complain about the form afterwards! But it's one of those situations where I can't justify jeopardising my chances out of principle. :/

I agree, its potentially discriminatory, either positively or negatively.

They are an employer, who the hell gave them the right to hold such personal information, but I guess that's another thread or am I guilty of missing the point?

We're not bloody 'assigned' sex, we are medically what we are. If that's hermaphrodite, which is pretty rare, then that's what we are, but its male or female. I don't believe our sexual persuasions old fashioned term for gay in all its forms can be pertinent in a work environment, unless that work environment is the gay industry in whatever form. Or relevant, as in men in women's refuges.

Is that the type of company you want to work for then? Go for one who doesn't care what your religious beliefs or who you prefer to have sex with or your gender dysphoria

WomanOfTime want to send me a link to the app form and I'll complain to them?

The more you have to 'identify' as something the more that indicates that you possibly aren't actually that at all.

I don't 'identify as' as woman. I just am one. I too would be insulted by a question asking me what gender I identify as, or insinuating that.

Depends how much you want your application to be accepted. If the organisation is large enough to have a fully fledged HR dept I wouldn't have thought your answers or being "difficult" would influence the application, HR are just doing the administrative stuff.

You could just tick Male and answer yes. They might wonder at you not having a male name if your name is a traditionally female one. But would they dare ask? Possibly it wouldn't even be noticed or not until you turn up to an interview in your feminine finest. Then you can either bite the bullet and explain or dismiss it as a computer glitch. IF THEY DARE ASK!

That is effectively making you transgender if you do not identify with femininity.

Sex is male/female.
Gender is masculine/feminine

The question should be

Are you male/female?

Have you ever had gender reassignment?

I mean, the EA is about not discriminating on the basis of gender reassignment. So the second question is basically the same as asking if you have a disability, I think.

You could feign ignorance and ask what they mean. But I would expect that the company is trying to adopt the best inclusive language they can, without thinking through the implications, and you are better placed to challenge this once you are actually an employee.

What would annoy me much much more than the forced 'what do you identify as' bollocks, would be them using 'male and female' for gender. I hate that, and will often send back emails about it if its an online form, informing them that 'gender' would be masculine or feminine, and that O don't see why what stereotypes I follow has any bearing on anything.

I had an equal opportunities form to fill out this week that asked my gender identity. I often scribble it out and write "sex". I have also answered "I do not have a gender identity. I am female" But it was not really going to be anonymous and I didn't want to seem difficult in a professional context. So I just went along with it.

I just filled out a form that had the following choices
man
Woman
Trans man
Trans woman
Gender neutral
Prefer not to say

Which covers all angles.