is that relative or comitative?

[pauraque_bk]

I'm pauraque on DW, though I'm not doing anything with it right now. So far no one whose entries I want to read has actually moved there exclusively and claimed they won't crosspost, so I don't have much motivation to move either.

I wish DW all the best, but there is no way they can maintain the current level of touchy-feely hands-on management -- which seems to be what everyone likes about it -- if it becomes very popular.

Actually, my experience of the touchy-feely was not that satisfactory.

I want either a free text box for gender, or preferably no gender field. _hannelore and I wrote with this suggestion, which elicited emails from Denise that claim a) the gender field has no purpose so it kinda doesn't matter, and, contradictorily, b) the gender field is for information about their user base, like if their user base is mostly older women they don't want to add stuff that would appeal to a 15 year old boy (approximate quote, I'm too lazy to find the email right now). I'm curious, what exactly does she think appeals to women in a journaling service that wouldn't appeal to men? News updates about crochet instead of football? Looking at broad gender stats seems like an incredibly ineffective way of making decisions of any kind, especially when supposedly they are so responsive to individual complaints and suggestions.

Instead of just ditching a useless question, they provided "Other", which to me has the opposite of its intended inclusive effect. If they insist on counting everybody by gender, then I want to stand and be counted as a transgendered person. But dude, my gender isn't "other". Leaving me with only that choice or the standard "male" is actually very insensitive towards the issue of trans people disappearing into mainstream society. Every time I check male on a form, I have to think about that, I have to think about how my identity and experience is invisible to the rest of the world.

Anyway, I know the gender field exists because people are culturally acclimated to think it should -- we just can't have a form without male and female checkboxes, regardless of whether it has ANY relevance to what you're signing up for! The only reason I complain is that I think it's a funny juxtaposition, the insistence on being so very inclusive and responsive and blah blah, yet failing in this particular area. Usually I don't expect better, but it's frustrating to constantly hear how DW is soooooooo good -- but not good enough for this.

eta: On second thought, here's what I'll do. If DW adds a free text box or gets rid of the gender field, I'll move there. I'll even buy a paid account. Until then, I reserve the right to be annoyed about the whole thing.

+

RT @jonathancoulton First of May, first of May, jonathancoulton.com server not responding starts today.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hannelore/]

Email quote reposted: We'll be designing our features based on direct user feedback and user requests. But having the information available to us can be another piece of useful information to take into account at the very beginning -- we wouldn't want to spend our time on a feature that would likely appeal most to a 15-year-old boy, for instance, if our statistics tell us that our userbase is more likely to be older and female.

Also, I feel DW has been responsive to individual concerns, namely the topmost person responding personally to feedback concerns and making layout changes that are problematic to a person's culture.

That being said, the free text box would allow anyone to put whatever they desire in there, even *if* they are transgendered and prefer to use the M or F binary.

Not entirely unrelated, but I was pondering what would happen if managers instructed their minions to *not* call their customers "miss," "sir" or "ma'am." Would a kindly "can I help you?" be that less helpful if it wasn't so gender laden? Speaking for myself, I feel "miss" and "ma'am" are patronizing and create an air of pseudo-helpfulness while really being empty and shallow. /end rant

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

I flip out if I get mail that's not Ms. It has happened.

[pauraque]

I know this isn't what you were referring to, but it reminded me -- my old boss was named Rene, and he frequently got mail for Ms Rene Surname. Some even went as far as "correcting" the spelling of his first name and making it Ms Renee Surname. Amazing.

[pauraque]

Also, I feel DW has been responsive to individual concerns, namely the topmost person responding personally to feedback concerns and making layout changes that are problematic to a person's culture.

Do you think, though, that this also sets them up for a backlash? Hearing that they made sitewide changes because one person complained makes me think, maybe if I complain they'll make a change too, and if they don't respond in the way I want it seems much more personal than just another "big corporation doesn't care what I think".

The more people join the site, the fewer people the head honchos have time to respond to. By definition, the more popular it becomes, the less it can possibly adhere to what people originally liked about it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hannelore/]

At the risk of maybe making a bizarre comparison, I think a lot of people felt "in touch" with Obama (for example) when he was campaigning because he was on the road and highly available to the masses. People felt he took their problems very personally. But now that he's not campaigning anymore and in fact has a very busy job of running teh nation, some folks might feel left behind or that he doesn't have their personal best interests in mind anymore.

But regardless of that, I'd be more concerned about burnout when you have one or two people doing the lion's share of running a journaling service. It happens in businesses, guilds and so on.

I think it's too soon to predict the future of DW and that's why I prefer to stick to the issue of the gender text box and not so much whether they'll crack under the strain.

[pauraque]

guilds

i c wut u did ther

Indeed, it is early to predict the death of DW, Gattaca-like, before the midwife has even left the birthing room. I just see a chromosome that looks worrisome. :D

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

The touchy-feely of Dreamwidth has cooled me on the project. As is their now-frequent insistence that they're not 'solely for fandom'. I'm not sure it's a good idea at all now, because a corporation that thinks of itself as two people who don't really want to be tagged as 'serving those people' is far more easily rolled over than some corporation who could give a shit in Russia.

[pauraque]

Oh, I didn't even know that. I thought being for fandom was the whole point. What the heck.

[gmth.livejournal.com]

The touchy-feely of Dreamwidth has cooled me on the project.

I kind of agree with this. I was puzzled and eventually grossed out to see the cult of personality springing up around Squeaky over at IJ, and this seems to me to be heading in the same direction. Of course, I hear LJ was like that back in the beginning too, when brad was in charge, but I wasn't around in those days so it doesn't matter to me. But yeah, setting people up as god/desses in a situation like this is just asking for disappointment down the road.

[pauraque]

*sporfle* your ICON!

Anyway, IAWTC.

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of a MUSH. (Or a guild.) That cannot be good.

But you're right, people used to wet their pants over brad.

[eponis.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, I totally agree with you about the free box for gender.

On the other hand, I am going to quibble with one thing you said (though I suspect we're not actually that far apart on this!). I think that gender statistics are important, because they reveal holes. For instance, it's noticing "hey, the vast majority of people who play most video games are male! but that's not true of things like the Sims! what's going on here?" that leads to products/attitudes that are more inclusive of all genders and interests. And yes, some people can tend to make these things prescriptive rather than descriptive -- "more women than men read chicklit novels, which means that all that women really want is to be a fluffy heroine who's swept away by a strong man" -- which is obviously problematic. Nonetheless, it's only by generating statistics like those -- as imperfect as they are -- that we can figure out who isn't being represented in a particular place.

(And yes, I think that this is true, despite the fuzziness and very-non-binary nature of "gender," for the same reason that it's useful to see which ethnic groups aren't being represented in a space, even though "race" is fuzzy and socially constructed, and plenty of people are multiracial.)

Er. Hopefully all that made sense?

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

I agree with this. And I'll add that I don't know what I'd say if it were a free-text box, and I'd be very unlikely to say "female," so they wouldn't get data from me. I think to give the drop-down answer in the free-text box requires you to act out your internalized version of the institution in a way that would make me, and a lot of people, uncomfortable.

Eo - serious question - is it the case that most transgendered people do not identify as male or female? or not without qualification?

[pauraque]

I think to give the drop-down answer in the free-text box requires you to act out your internalized version of the institution in a way that would make me, and a lot of people, uncomfortable.

Since I had to read this several times to understand it, let me verify my interpretation -- you mean that actually typing the word "female" as opposed to checking the box makes you feel personally implicated in the whole binary-gender system, rather than just going along with it because hey, there were only two choices, what can ya do?

Eo - serious question - is it the case that most transgendered people do not identify as male or female? or not without qualification?

I don't know the answer to your question in a statistical sense, nor do I know where to get such an answer. I can only offer my anecdotal experience which is, sure, lots of trans people have identities other than "just male" or "just female". (One of Kate Bornstein's books has a rather amazing chapter that lists the answers of quite a number of trans people when asked to give a name to their gender. I would provide examples but Hannelore has the book!)

I hope it goes without saying that even if most trans people do identify as "one or the other", that would not be a good reason to ignore the rest.

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

To your last, of course!!! I realized after I left the comment that it might sound reject-y of your request to DW, and I didn't mean it that way, of course not. My question was just a question - I know appallingly little about trans culture.

To the first question, in a word, yes. That is, I mind being expected to replicate things myself more than I mind having them imposed on me. Frex: I don't really mind having a boss. In fact, in some ways I like having a boss, for work. But I don't like having to think like my boss. In fact, that's why I want a boss. I hate the idea of internalizing the boss's point of view, as if her interests and my interests coincided, or as if I should care more about her interests than about my own, just because she's my boss. I want to feel like there's some limit to how far the rules and power structures and stuff penetrate my soul.

So, in the case of the gender drop down menu vs. text box: for myself, I don't mind (very much) answering "female," which is the answer Dreamwidth is looking for, in a drop down menu. They are looking for a certain kind of answer, in a certain frame of reference, and it's *their* frame of reference, and I'm willing to cooperate with it. But I'm not going to volunteer it. I'm not going to act as if their frame of reference and mine were identical. Not because I don't identify as female, but because I don't want to be someone who talks in drop down menus, if that makes any sense - I know my way of talking about this isn't very transparent.

I guess what I'd prefer to see is a radio-button with text box option or something like that - something that didn't insult or exclude anyone, AND that let DW gather potentially helpful data, AND without my having to volunteer my gender in a way I don't care to. I don't love answering The Gender Question, but I'm more likely to do it if it's clearly stated that it's *their* question, if I have some idea why they are asking me & why they are asking me to answer in this way.

The bottom line is, if they gave me a text box, I just *know* I wouldn't type in female - or, that would be my instinct, though maybe it shouldn't be...?

[pauraque]

I probably would have been more mollified if Denise had said what you said. The contradictory statements that the gender stats somehow simultaneously don't matter, yet also inform decisions about their service, is troubling to me. Both due to the contradiction, and because using the information to cater to the people who are already there isn't the same as using it to study who is there and why (which I totally agree is worth studying).

[bardsmaid.livejournal.com]

Like you, I signed up for an account just in case, but I have no intention of leaving Lj. Too bad DW hasn't been receptive to your input on the gender issue. On the one hand, until you've had to deal with something like this firsthand, it's hard to understand why it's an issue at all... however, anyone who's been around Lj has probably bumped into people for whom it is indeed an issue, so it's harder to understand how someone who's been in a fandom-oriented online milieu like Lj wouldn't have some sensitivity to it.

[pauraque]

until you've had to deal with something like this firsthand, it's hard to understand why it's an issue at all

Yeah, exactly. Even if DW never responds further, hopefully the discussion will provide some perspective for those who may never have had to consider it.

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

Damn, that's really not cool :/ If they don't want a free-form box, they could ask around and see what versions are most used My uneducated guess is that it would be something along the lines of male, female, transgender, genderqueer, does not wish to reveal) and then add a few bullet-points. Especially if they're still in a beta state, that wouldn't be so very difficult!

[pauraque]

I previously mentioned something in eponis's journal about wondering why they hadn't added FTM and MTF (probably the most common trans identities), and got a PM from a trans woman who said that would have made her feel singled out, because she doesn't identify as MTF, but solely as female.

And I get that, but you know... she's not out! That's why she PM'd me instead of commenting. She chooses to be invisible. Providing additional choices in no way prevents her from indicating that she is female, whereas failing to provide additional choices does prevent me from indicating my identity. Perhaps the ability to check more than one ticky would help for some, but a free text box seems much better.

I'm not denigrating the person who PM'd me; I understand the motivation behind not being out. I wasn't always out either. But arguing that others shouldn't have the choice to out themselves -- which I don't think is what she consciously intended, but it is the effect of what she said -- takes it a bit far.

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

because she doesn't identify as MTF, but solely as female

...but then she could have identified as "female"? *sighs* I don't know, this is one area of life where I haven't had to struggle and question myself, so it's a difficult one to grasp (but hey, if there's ever a ticky-list for ethnicities, I'm all there)

Providing additional choices in no way prevents her from indicating that she is female, whereas failing to provide additional choices does prevent me from indicating my identity

yes, that is my gut-feeling too. Most people will still pick either male or female, because many people don't even question whether there is any other choice. But it's not like they have to be truthful there either, so the developers can only hope that there isn't a bunch of 15-year-old boys who have decided that they'll use DW as the place to play out their 25-year-old-girl sex RPG, you know?

[scarah2.livejournal.com]

I suggest we campaign to have everyone change to Other to help them realize how little good it is doing them.

Oh look, mine mysteriously just changed to Other.

[pauraque]

:D

[tenebris.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU for posting "First of May" in ASL. There's a really heavy Sign component to the Ling department I'm in, not to mention a high geek component, and now I'm trying to figure out who exactly to spam with this. Because eee, awesome!

And the DW stuff just makes me *facepalm*.

[pauraque]

If you go to his channel he's got more ASL songs, it's awesome.

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

I've had this window open ever since you posted it waiting for a good time to watch the video and not getting around to it.

That was really good! I'm not at all familiar with the song, and it took me a little while to catch on to what was happening in the words. In the meantime I was just sitting there wondering why the back-ups were doing "fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck" for the chorus, are they making a mistake or something?... Oh!