To think that 'Female' shouldn't be the 4th option in a list of 5 when being asked about gender?

[Shufflebumnessie]

I'm having a rubbish day and am in the midst of feeling annoyed about everything so I'm quite happy to be told I'm over reacting.
I've just completed a survey sent to me by Dominos pizza (following a recent order). At the end of the survey it asked for a few questions for 'classification purposes'. It then asked 'Please select your gender', the bit that really annoyed me was the the 'Female' option was 4th down the list of 5 options. Surely it should state male & female as the first two, and then the non-binary / third gender, Prefer to self describe, Prefer not to answer options?
I just feel angry that female has been relegated to 4th place. Obviously male was number 1 in the list !
Apologies if this isn't the right place to rant, it's just been one of those days.

Well OP says this: 'Female' option was 4th down the list of 5 options. Surely it should state male & female as the first two, and then the non-binary / third gender, Prefer to self describe, Prefer not to answer options?

So my guess is:

1. Male
2. Non-binary / third gender
3. Prefer to self describe
4. Female
5. Prefer not to answer

Not if male was first…

Aerogender ... Amelia Earhart?

I had this argument with a male colleague many years ago when there were just two options.
He told me very aggressively to wind my neck in as it was alphabetical order.
I took great satisfaction in telling him to check his alphabet.
After this for a while the office website did have it in alphabetic order (which I put in). I am sure they reverted it after I left though.

Even the fact that Male is almost always the first option despite it not coming first alphabetically, and there being fewer men than women in the pop, always pisses me off.

I'm working on something at the moment where the target pop is 95% women. Guess which is listed first in the questionnaire!

You’ve hit the nail on the head.

Did they offer ‘do not believe in gender ideology’ as an option?

Or told that it would only make middle class women of a certain age kick off.

I volunteer for a charity, it's mainly women who volunteer. They sent a big survey out last year and it was similar. Almost all other questions had alphabetical answers but not the 'gender' one, with female/woman at the bottom.

I emailed them and pointed it out, got nothing back. It really makes me cross for many reasons, they are a charity and can waste money on this stuff! I now won't fill in any surveys from them.

I'm just surprised they put one option below us.
I didn't think that was possible.

Female would come before male, then!

Sometimes if there's a box I write "I don't believe in gender identity but my sex is female." DH does the same (except obviously he writes male). Probably makes absolutely no difference, but makes me feel better.

Yes c'mon shufflebumnessie l can't get worked up about this until I see the options in your list because , eg , if it were:

Male
Goddess
Ladyship (your)
Female
TERF

then, great, obviously.

That's a great list.

As much as I want to laugh at it, my objective side kicks in because I'm imagining how gender identity believers see it. There are people for whom this list will make absolute sense. Something will "click" with them and they'll recognise where they map onto it and how it helps them make sense of who they are.

It's not the belief itself that's gone wrong. Humans look for meaning in life. Forming and having beliefs is a natural part of that. What's wrong is how it's indulged without question.

From the ridiculous sexism of "female" being 4th on a list of options, to the options themselves being presented as fact (sex is fact, "gender" is a word to describe sex-based cultural stereotypes and "gender identity" is a belief that we all have an individual, internalised version of gender as a core part of who we are)... to the serious side of what happens when this belief is forced onto society at scale:

• children taught in schools that it's important to recognise and affirm people's gender identity. That it's unkind not to do so. That someone's gender identity is more important than their sex.
• medicalisation to "affirm" people's bodies to match their "gender". Most people who enter the "affirming care" pathway are under 25. Most who remain on it will keep taking the next step in their belief that this is the best way to help them feel settled with their body. The lack of medical evidence for these irrerversible, sometimes life-limiting interventions is apparently not a problem. Apparently it's a human right that they should be provided.
• women's sports are colonised, with medals and records taken, plus safety (in contact sports) out of the window. They're not colonised by the vulnerable people for whom this list makes sense but by those who rely on the belief and support of these people.
• ditto re the colonisation of other women's spaces and services
• we all watch on as "women's" sex crimes go through the roof, news organisations afraid of what will happen if they don't uphold the belief that we all have a gender identity and actually report the sex of the offender
• women are gaslit into believing that they are unkind if they don't affirm the identity of transwomen. Sometimes it's women doing the gaslighting, sometimes it's abusive partners, sometimes it's progressive men who pat themselves on the back for being so "inclusive".
• parents are gaslit into believing their children will kill themselves if they don't have access to the medicalised pathway that will change their bodies both inside (their endocrine system) and outside (secondary sex characteristics removed and/or synthetically copied) forever.

At a societal level, this belief has been pushed onto us in a way that we haven't seen since puritanism and the centuries that followed, where Christianity gradually morphed from being accepted as the only "truth" to being something that it's OK not to believe in. Christianity is still having to grapple with those who use others' belief in god for their own gains (Justin Welby's recent poor handling of a yet another scandal being a good example) but it's now perfectly acceptable for someone to say that they don't believe it's possible for a virgin to give birth, or in any other tenets of the belief. Nobody gets killed (or death threats) or cast out of society (lose their job) for saying this.

One day we'll be free to say we don't believe that everyone has a gender identity and that we don't accept it being forced onto us.

It annoys me not nearly as much as being asked my gender. I don't have a gender I have a sex.

This ⬆️

As for why Dominos needs it, I'd like to think their analytics teams are pulling together all this data, of which genders order which pizzas, and passing them to the product management teams who are dreaming up the latest new pizza options.

Perhaps a new pizza called the Spectrum will take over from the 4 seasons, with its gradual fade from the manliness of chillis, jalapenos and spicy meat on one side through the gradual thinning out of these toppings as we move across the pizza and they are replaced by increasing amounts of the light feminity of colourful peppers and pinenuts, all dotted as jewels. Topped off with (affirming) mozzarella across all of it.

Looking at the list, every gender on it would map to this new offering. It'll be the pizza sensation of the decade. I hope someone from Dominos is reading this and gets started on it.

Thanks for your very interesting post, BonfireLady, some really good points about how gender ideology has gained traction..

There are people for whom this list will make absolute sense. Something will "click" with them and they'll recognise where they map onto it and how it helps them make sense of who they are.
On the other thread where this was discussed, I admitted that I could 'identify' with about three of the labels, but they are just aspects of me and were incorporated into my development from gender-confused child [if gender dysphoria exists, I had it!] to adult human female lesbian.

If I'd paused and pursued any one of them as 'my identity' I wouldn't be this settled me, and I'd probably be angsting today about next week's hair colour and pronouns at work..🙄

Love the pizza idea to replace the Quattro Stagioni!
What's the Italian for '72 Genders?' [this is FWR: somebody always knows everything]😄

If I get 'prefer to self-describe' I always put 'no gender. SEX is female'.

Not overreacting- that would give me the rage too. And why always male first not female anyway (obviously I know why, the patriarchy). The older I get the ragier I get about this.

I want a 'My sex is female and gender is a societal construct' option.

I do this, except I say "I don't believe in the gender ideology cult "

I could 'identify' with about three of the labels, but they are just aspects of me and were incorporated into my development from gender-confused child [if gender dysphoria exists, I had it!] to adult human female lesbian.

Exactly this. I'm a straight adult woman but I can still picture myself as a teenager, playing a card game on my friend's bedroom floor and realising that I had a massive urge to lean across and kiss her. I didn't do it but I remember feeling really confused for ages afterwards.
Trying to make sense of yourself through adolescence, of your place in the world, is difficult. Especially as feelings get tangled up while people figure out how to handle the previous "simplicity" of friendship with a new emerging awareness of sexual feelings. The belief that we all have a gender identity fits in pretty neatly as an explanation, especially when doctors and other trusted adults are telling us about the importance of it all.

After I posted my pizza comment, I had to laugh at myself. Yes, I managed to present my objective response (in the previous post) but my sarcastic side was clearly itching to get out 🙃 For a bit of equal opportunities humour, to balance things out, here's Loretta helping us to understand women's rights at a time while elsewhere in the film, Brian was trying to come to terms with his status as the son of god:

As for the name, I think you're right that it needs to be Italian @MarieDeGournay . Perhaps "Il Spettro" (The Spectrum, according to Google translate).

Like many other posters, I make a comment if possible that my sex is female and I don’t have a gender identity. The more of us do that has surely got to be picked up at some point. At work, I refuse to answer anything that asks for my gender, it is their loss because the data they are hoping to get will not be accurate. It’s the assumption that we all have a gender, or those who still think that it’s just another word for sex that need to wake up.

At work, I refuse to answer anything that asks for my gender, it is their loss because the data they are hoping to get will not be accurate. It’s the assumption that we all have a gender, or those who still think that it’s just another word for sex that need to wake up.

Me too. I had previously asked the head of EDI to change how these questions are asked on the forms where this comes up.

I had suggested that they could ask for sex recorded at birth first, then to ask for "gender identity (if applicable)", making sure to include an N/A option.

Unfortunately I didn't receive a response to my suggestion, despite the fact that we had had a positive meeting about why it's not appropriate for this belief to be positioned as fact. It was clear that she had outsourced all thinking on this, believing that the LGBT network understood it better than her. She told me it was important to remember how marginalised trans people were.

One positive outcome did result from my discussions, where they updated a company policy to correctly explain the protected characteristics in the EA and to remove the previous conflation of sex, sexual orientation and gender reassignment. Unfortunately the mandatory and voluntary training which includes gender identity as fact still continues. As does the collection of staff diversity data in which gender identity supersedes sex. And mine is still empty.

A different solution to the Gender/Sex issue is suggested by a Bill proposed by some Republicans in the US, the 'Defining Male and Female Act of 2024'.

It suggests officially conflating the two terms, which recognises the widespread conflation that goes on anyway - a lot of people use the word 'gender' as a polite synonym for sex, they don't mean it as in gender-woo.

(4) ‘gender’, when used alone to refer to males, females, or the natural differences between males and females—
‘‘(A) shall be considered a synonym for sex; and
‘‘(B) shall not be considered a synonym or short-hand expression for gender identity, experienced gender, gender expression, or gender role.
Republicans introduce bill to define ‘male’ and ‘female’ based on biological differences (US) | Mumsnet

It doesn't get around the confusion still present in terms like 'gender expression', but it would mean that tick-boxes on forms like this could only have two choices, M or F, whether the heading was 'sex' or 'gender', as those two words 'when used alone' would legally mean exactly the same thing.

Many surveys randomise the order otherwise there is a heavy bias towards the first answer. You are probably way over thinking this. Non of this stuff is compulsory