Help or advice please

[BettyfromBristol]

I am an avid reader of this Feminist board but a bit old to know everything. Constantly in awe of the breadth of knowledge here.

In the new year I may have to complete an online form connected with some voluntary work. A friend has advised me that there is a box asking for gender but not one for sex. I am a woman, so my sex is easy but I do not feel I have to share or give a gender. Never thought before that I needed one as my sex is so obvious.

What does everyone think? Is there an established or legal position on this please? I have tried to Google but could not find anything very clear. I am in England if that is relevant.

Thank you so much.

There is usually a Prefer not to say option, or cross out Gender and write Sex.

I'm sorry I can't help more! If the box online is required, I do remember someone here posted a get-around that may allow you to dodge the box entirely - maybe a search in the fora will uncover it. I dislike ticking gender myself nowadays, for everything it implies, but it may be that it's simply being used as a good ol' synonym for sex. The ones I do resent are those explicitly demanding an "identity" to the decisive exclusion of anything that could mean sex, but thankfully I haven't been coerced into completing one of those, yet. I have avoided a few I otherwise would have completed, though, because of not wanting to appear to condone it - another tiny but not insignificant example of exclusion resulting from this.

There is usually a Prefer not to say option, or cross out Gender and write Sex.

I would agree with this suggestion. But ... and assuming Bristol is where you will be volunteering it may mean that the group whose form you are completing may wonder about your "suitability" to volunteer.

Although in fact you have a right to your gender critical views as the recent Maya Forstater legal case confirmed it is a "protected belief".

Have they already accepted you as a volunteer and this is just follow up admin.

If you have any concerns about it, just leave it blank.

Technically they should only be asking for this data to measure how sucessful they have been in recruiting volunteers representative of the community. ie when stored by them it should not be linked to your name, but just part of a batch of stats to show how many of which age group, ethnic identity, sex, etc., applied and were taken on.

Online forms often need something, anythin, in a box, or it will just keep sending you back to the empty box. If this happens, try putting in anything- an X, an asterisk, anything. The online form may be happy that the box is no longer empty and let you proceed.
Best of luck with it all!

Thank you everyone for your help. We shall have to see if I can leave the box blank. I hope so, I am too old for this gender shenanigans.

You could always do it how they diagnose kids - what are you wearing today? - if it's trousers tick male, if it's something pink tick female. Also if your hair grips annoy you and you took them out tick male.

I’ve had to fill in a few forms in my new job and most of them asked for “gender” and listed “male” or “female” as the only options.

I did find it frustrating, but equally only a few years ago, I would have read it as a synonym for sex and wouldn’t have thought twice about it. It didn’t ask for my “gender identity” or use “assigned female at birth” or any obvious indicators it wasn’t simply a synonym and therefore I did nothing. Had it been on paper, I might well have crossed it out and written “sex” but that wasn’t an option.

So for me, it depends whether there’s any other ideological indications and what opportunities there are to object. I hope you can find a way through that doesn’t negatively affect you.

You're never too old for gender shenanigans!

Or, objecting to them anyway.

Good on you!

Thank you again everyone for your helpful input. I fear that the form will be online (I have heard mention of a laptop) so no chance to use a red pen to cross out gender and write sex.

*Peskysquirrel" you are right, I am not too old! I will fight on if necessary.

Gender is a perfectly reasonable and widely understood synonym for sex in this context.

Your legal position would be if you don't want to voluntarily fill out this form for your voluntary position then you don't have to. Or you can leave that box blank. Or make a big show of crossing out "gender" and writing in "sex". You have no legal right to particular wording on a form.

Sometimes they have an option such as other where you can write sex female and leave it at that. Other times is less open like this online form that did not leave much room for manoeuvring.
This was a feedback form at an entertainment venue, highly captured. There was an open text box towards the end for further comments and there I wrote what I thought of those replies and questions.

if you want the job, maybe be strategic and play along on the form and spread the sexnotgender cheer on a daily basis.

Gender is a perfectly reasonable and widely understood synonym for sex in this context.

Totally untrue, and in fact even more so given recent legal cases and of course the complete mess of the census.

When collecting data about employees, voluteers etc., it should be designed as closely as possible to the statistical data collected by the census. Otherwise your data collection is meaningless as you cant compare your recruitment to the actuall figures in terms of sex, race, age etc..

The census asked for your sex.

And an additional one on gender identity as even those bureaucrats know they are not the same.

But managed to bungle the wording.

So have no idea about OP's volunteer form, but based on any number of volunteers, it could be:

• badly designed because no one bothered to check how or why it should be done
• to try and find if prospective volunteers / employees have swallowed the genderwoo nonsenses**
• just copied from another organisation and in fact they will never use the data in any meaningful way

** in fact personal data like this should be on a form that can not be identified to whoever completed it, but annonymous data to assess your advertising out reach so if anyone does query why someone has crossed out gender and written sex then they have breached guidelines on data collection of personal information.