Post by Sisyphus on Apr 23, 2015 11:04:52 GMT 8
I've become sensitive when I get to the gender or sex field on a survey and I see only two answers: Male/Female. Sometimes I pick my AAB gender and sometimes I pick the other gender. But most recently I've just been either not touching the box or just exiting the survey.
To be helpful I took a survey made by local sixth graders for their class (non-gender related), and for some reason when I hit the gender section and there was only male and female my brain exploded. My finger kept working the mouse scrolling as if some other option would come up, and my brain went: "My gender's not here. What am I supposed to mark?" And then I had to talk myself back down to binary culture space, where I have to pick one. I wanted to be upset, but I couldn't allow myself to be, because these are just kids who don't have any other frame of reference - their teacher probably guided them on including gender. And if they did have an understanding of non-binary gender or gradient gender, they probably don't have the structure or framework to interrupt the binary culture gender train to ensure that one question includes people like me (or them).
Recently on a hand-written survey I just went ahead and wrote in "Other" (I know there are problems with "Other", but I didn't want to be specifically outed as non-binary, and I thought I could get away with Other and it may not be pegged to me). It made me feel great not to pick a box that wasn't me just because I feel like I'm left with no choice. It was an act of tiny, happy rebellion. When the aggregated results were sent out, I was so proud of myself. I thought, 1) maybe that will plant a seed where someone designing surveys down the line will include different options in the future and make a difference for others and 2) people will see the survey results and some might realize - hey, there are more than these two genders out there!
But further down in the race section, I saw someone had written in "Human". I was deflated. Perhaps on its own, it would have been fine. But this was a survey after a panel on race. Several options for race were included - including multi-racial, bi-racial etc. Not only that, but there was clear discussion about the idea of avoiding difficult discussions on race by using identifying as "human" as a means of colorblindness that ignores racism.
So now I'm thinking, great. People are going to look at the survey, see one person wrote in "Other" (for gender) and one person wrote in "Human" (for race) and dismiss it as some jerk who's making some sort of color/gender/group quality blind statement by not identifying with known quantities. It felt like this tiny little accomplishment, this tiny little win for myself for alt-gender visibility was washed away. I was really frustrated with it.
Kids aside, I feel like if researchers go to the trouble of designing a survey, they can include more than just the binary, if even its a "Prefer not to answer".
Perhaps I should have put this in the rants section...
Do restricted binary gender options on surveys bother anyone else?
To be helpful I took a survey made by local sixth graders for their class (non-gender related), and for some reason when I hit the gender section and there was only male and female my brain exploded. My finger kept working the mouse scrolling as if some other option would come up, and my brain went: "My gender's not here. What am I supposed to mark?" And then I had to talk myself back down to binary culture space, where I have to pick one. I wanted to be upset, but I couldn't allow myself to be, because these are just kids who don't have any other frame of reference - their teacher probably guided them on including gender. And if they did have an understanding of non-binary gender or gradient gender, they probably don't have the structure or framework to interrupt the binary culture gender train to ensure that one question includes people like me (or them).
Recently on a hand-written survey I just went ahead and wrote in "Other" (I know there are problems with "Other", but I didn't want to be specifically outed as non-binary, and I thought I could get away with Other and it may not be pegged to me). It made me feel great not to pick a box that wasn't me just because I feel like I'm left with no choice. It was an act of tiny, happy rebellion. When the aggregated results were sent out, I was so proud of myself. I thought, 1) maybe that will plant a seed where someone designing surveys down the line will include different options in the future and make a difference for others and 2) people will see the survey results and some might realize - hey, there are more than these two genders out there!
But further down in the race section, I saw someone had written in "Human". I was deflated. Perhaps on its own, it would have been fine. But this was a survey after a panel on race. Several options for race were included - including multi-racial, bi-racial etc. Not only that, but there was clear discussion about the idea of avoiding difficult discussions on race by using identifying as "human" as a means of colorblindness that ignores racism.
So now I'm thinking, great. People are going to look at the survey, see one person wrote in "Other" (for gender) and one person wrote in "Human" (for race) and dismiss it as some jerk who's making some sort of color/gender/group quality blind statement by not identifying with known quantities. It felt like this tiny little accomplishment, this tiny little win for myself for alt-gender visibility was washed away. I was really frustrated with it.
Kids aside, I feel like if researchers go to the trouble of designing a survey, they can include more than just the binary, if even its a "Prefer not to answer".
Perhaps I should have put this in the rants section...
Do restricted binary gender options on surveys bother anyone else?