Gender option on LJ

[greenie_breizh]

So I was going to go to bed but then LJ decided to be a douche (again).

LJ is considering making gender a mandatory field when signing up. Not only that, but they would be removing the "unspecified" option, too. The log about this is here, but you can read more about this here.

I won't go into why this is offensive, discriminatory, enraging, appalling, I think you all know why. So please - send a signal to LJ that this is not acceptable. Send them feedback, comment on that log post (do both, it doesn't hurt), and change your gender to "unspecified" in your profile.

Your feedback doesn't have to be long. tempore's "I find being forced to choose a gender to be offensive and discriminatory. Please reconsider an open option." is short and to the point. But please GIVE LJ FEEDBACK. They need to know that people do not agree with this change, and the only way they will know that is if we let them know.


Thanks achtung_meggie for bringing this to my attention.


EDIT: As many of you know, LJ has clearly backed down from this decision, and sent this to everyone who contacted them with their concerns:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns. We understand that gender is not binary, and intend to respect that understanding for our users.

At this time, the code you reference is not live on the site, and will not become so in the future. We know that you, and many other users, have serious concerns about any requirement to specify gender, so we'd like to take a moment to explain events and our position further.

The intention of this code was to change the sign-up process to include a field for the selection of gender; that the code would completely disable the "Unspecified" option at the same time was deemed unacceptable. While the code in question had gone to our beta (testing) server, it had not gone to our production server, and will not do so due to this problem. Furthermore, we'd like to clarify that code posted to the changelog community is not always final, as such code must then go through the beta testing process and can often be changed before actual implementation.

Additionally, some erroneous information has been spread regarding the potential public display of the gender field. We would like to clarify that gender is not currently publicly displayed on the profile, nor anywhere else on the site, and there are no plans to change this behavior.

Regards,
LiveJournal Community Care Team

That this suggestion got this far without anyone from LJ itself going, "um, WTF, NO" is the part that still pisses me off, but I'm glad they're not going there. And I'm glad we raised our concerns, because maybe they'll be a little more careful in the future, and maybe, just MAYBE they could think about doing some diversity training with their programmers.

Comments

[evilblacksheep.livejournal.com]

Wow... Thanks for the information. I'm totally lazy to do my own post now but... Can I quote you ? (I was gonna say retweet...) Anyway, gender switched, feedback sent and comment done.

[petit-rhino.livejournal.com]

Have you read this?

Synecdochic (at DW) got a response from LJ as follows:

"thank you for your feedback. This is all very informative, I received many email with this already.

However, the code update that you refer to is not live and did not have any chance to go live. That was a beta release, we always push code to beta to see if everything works correctly. In many cases it does not and we either fix bugs or pull the code from the final release plan.

We were going to add a gender field to the sign up user flow, which is fine, but by mistake it became a mandatory "female/male" field for everyone. This is why this is not going live. And this is what beta releases are for, to see problems and solve them before any user faces a problem." (from Anjelika Petrochenko, US general manager)

I'm not sure how reassuring that is though. I've just changed my gender (if only it were that simple!) and I'm going to leave a comment.

[lounalune.livejournal.com]

Done, done and done. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Am I allowed to copy your post on this subject, with due credit of course, to spread the message?

[greenie-breizh.livejournal.com]

It seems like there's no real need for that anymore, but for the record, for anything like this, always feel free to copy my post/quote me. :)

[lounalune.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in the mean time it does seem like it's not necessary anymore. Though I do think it's good we gave them a good kick in the ass for even thinking about it!
And I'll remember to just quote you next time anything like this shows up.

[themegs.livejournal.com]

I was on my way to bed at the time, too. Just doing a final quick flist check, and ka-BOOM.

I like tempore's feedback. Mine went on for days.

[lvs2read.livejournal.com]

What petit_rhino posted is also now on the changelog entry here. Hopefully, they've been dog-piled with enough 'oh, hell, no's' to never, ever again think this was a good idea. *facepalm*

Stupid html failure. *more facepalming*

[shiraz_wine]

Well, I sent a Feedback before I read that LJ wasn't going to go live with Mandatory gender option. Ah, well. Hopefully, it'll deter them from doing something similar in the future.

In other news, Nevada is awesome: Nevada Brothel Aims to Offer First Male Prostitutes

[greenie-breizh.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting Nevada didn't have that before? Like, really, in 2009, that's your break-through? :/ Also, it's weird, a lot of sex workers here don't actually like the Nevada model all that much and prefer decriminalization over legalization. I'd be curious to read about the experiences of sex workers over there and see how they feel.

[shiraz_wine]

Well, it seems that the law that legalizes prostitution in Nevada was worded so that it only included women; sex workers are required to get weekly cervical exams, which automatically excludes men. It actually reminds me of a law in Baltimore that says that having an all-female domicile makes it automatically a brothel and illegal. Plus, there seems to be more stigma surrounding male sex workers than women, simply because male sex workers would most likely be called upon to service men. Women are much less likely to seek out female sex workers, so the converse is not as stigmatizing.

I understand sex workers not liking the strict control that brothels have over their employees. But that strict control has made it so that there has been little to no cases of sexually transmitted infections in Nevada since 1986. I know that Penn & Teller: Bullshit! interviewed some sex workers from Nevada when they did a show about legalizing prostitution in Season 4, Episode 2. I'm sure you can find some clips on YouTube!