Hector Martin

Yes, this is misinformed, but they are trying. Better to ask '2-step' - gender assigned at birth & current gender ID. But people *should* collect this data, but do it the right way & include transpeople. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/research/census-lgbt-demographics-studies/geniuss-report-sept-2014/ …

Why does Drupal, a technical organization, need to collect information about gender? Why is it a required field in order to submit a talk to a conference? How will the gender be displayed and used? Who has access to the data? What if someone is not out about their gender?

Also, my gender assigned at birth is none of your goddamned business. If a doctor wants to ask "do you require a pap smear or a colon cancer screening" that is a better question to ask than forcing me to put my assigned birth on my charts so everyone fucking calls me "ma'am"

Gender assigned at birth is a ridiculous question, that is never acceptable, and the "trans as a gender" thing is just wrong. Basic gender demographics can be useful, though. As long as the question is optional and has a catch-all ("other") for nonbinary it should be ok I think?

sure, but don't ever call nonbinary people "other." It's dehumanizing and othering. Demographics are best collected as Male/Female/[Text Box]

Text boxes are useless for statistical analysis; the whole point is to put people into buckets. As opposed to public profiles or gender fields meant to *specifically* refer to one person, which should always just be [Text Box] (with separate pronoun dropdown if applicable to UX).

I know some people have strong opinions about using the word "other", but personally I don't see what the huge issue is. I've ticked plenty of "other" boxes in non-gender questions and I just go "haha they didn't think of my case". Why is gender special?

Because there is a long history of violent colonialist oppression of nonbinary genders Going "haha they didn't think of my case" is a heck of a lot easier when your case hasn't had its history intentionally erased and hasn't been used as a basis for violence