I really appreciate this website having "other" as a gender option, that's really rad of you guys and also a nice change.

But you know what would be fun? A fill-inable box for your gender, like you get for name. People could still write male/female/other if they wanted, but ppl could also be more specific if they wanted ("demigirl" "genderqueer" "bigender between agender & female" etc), put "prefer not to say", or just have some fun jokes ("you know ; )" "man dude boy thing" "the void that awaits us at the end of all days" etc). Saying your gender is weird abstract concepts is trans millennial culture :p and it's not like there's any more potential for abuse than there is with letting us fill in our names.

Not a vital thing, just something that I thought would be fun.

Are you talking about on your profile? Because you can leave the "Other" and then with code fill in whatever you like, so I don't think it's needed at all since you can already do that.

It's not a thing because people could abuse it. People can do the same for names, sure, but pretty sure staff had it pegged that when it's in the gender field it's much more likely to happen. They've been modding the site for well over a decade now, so I trust their judgement in it.

Tbh you can use use the name field for name, pronouns, and custom code the profile to say what gender you identify as specifically in the gender part. Though I think most people leave it off and just talk about it in the bio?

If you want to be more specific than "other", it's up to you. You have your profile info to fill yourself - feel free to write that info yourself.

A dropdown box is too restrictive, even if we have 12 options, there are more gender identity than that

As this has potential to be an incredibly explosive topic, I think just adding it in somewhere either in your profile or in your sig on here would be the safest course of action.

Yeah, I'm definitely all for this instead of a dropdown.

I feel like "Other" is definitely a good option already, but being able to customize what you put in there would be pretty great for anyone who feels like they don't fit into that category or want to have something more personal / some fun joke / whatever.

There's definitely the option to just leave that whole section out and include description/mention in whatever chunk of your profile you use to talk about yourself, but. Honestly I don't see any trouble in this and think it'd be cool.

How could you possibly abuse a fill-in-the-blank gender field? It's not like this is information anyone has the right to know about someone else if they don't volunteer it.

I can see putting a character limit on it so that people don't write a novel in there and make the database a living hell to work with, but as long as it's in English and PG-13, why not let people define their identities however they want? It might confuse you, but it's not hurting or defrauding you because the gender of strangers on the internet isn't actually your business.

There's definitely a potential for people to abuse it. You're assuming people will only use this in good faith to express their actual identities, and most will, but I don't doubt there'll be some who take advantage of it in a way to "stick it to special snowflakes" or put in something mocking or hurtful. Folks who think it's hilarious to identify as an attack helicopter or make up intentionally outlandish pronouns as a means of delegitimizing trans or nonbinary people. Subeta's an inclusive site with a pretty decent userbase, but that doesn't mean we don't have people like this, unfortunately.

I'm not totally against the idea, but it is possible to abuse it, and it does seem redundant when you can easily put more descriptive information about yourself and your identity in your about, or your forum signature should you choose to do so.

worded it well. This is a concern a lot of people have had, and why staff haven't implemented it. This site is over ten years old and staff have a lot of experience with this kind of stuff and if they think that will be at a high enough risk for abuse, then I trust in their judgement.

Actually what I'm assuming is that people who really want to be assholes will find a way to do that anyway, and that the potential for harm is much smaller than the potential for good.

I think that if someone uses this as an excuse to delegitimise other people's identities, they were probably looking for that excuse anyway. shrug I didn't think of your point before, but I think the type of person who would do that is going to hurt people anyway and eventually get themselves banned or frozen somehow.

We don't have to agree about this, though. Neither of us will be making the decision.

The potential for harm IS much smaller than good, you're right. If it happens, it'll be done by a very small amount of people who would inevitably vent their hate in some other way and get themselves in trouble for it. But we also have other perfectly viable avenues for doing that same amount of good currently without giving hateful people an open opportunity to use it for the sake of a shitty "joke."

It also opens up the possibility that, should this get implemented, how would mods enforce any kind of rules about it? If someone decides to make up some intentionally ridiculous thing to put in there out of spite or for a bad joke, they could just defend their right to have it and claim it's really their identity and they're being oppressed for being asked to change it or something. It would be a difficult thing to moderate, all for the sake of having a box dedicated to a fill-in-the-blank gender when there are other ways to achieve the same effect.

And, yeah, I'm sure if someone was really dedicated to it they'd make the same sort of outlandish thing up to put in their profile or signature or what have you, but opening up a dedicated gender space is asking for people who want to cause trouble to do so. I would love if this could be a thing we could implement and it wouldn't cause any extra hassle, but it just doesn't seem plausible. If there were absolutely no other ways to put down any extra personal information about yourself somewhere for easy reference, I would be 100% on board with this as an idea even with the small amount of bad that can come from it. But we do, so it would save on hassle all around to work with what we have and not open up the potential for hateful people to do what they will with it and foist more on the mod's plates trying to enforce rules that could be easily abused.