Gender Options...

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I have a question about what does transgender exactly mean.

I will use the masculine pronoun as gender neutral, as is the norm in Spanish, to avoid having to write the masculine, the femenine, and the "other" mistery pronoun or mystery pronouns that might apply.

What I think it means is someone who is biologically of one sex (male, female, or one of the special cases) but identifies as being part of a gender different than the one associated to their sex, and changes his appeareance to match the one of his chosen gender by doing things from wearing different clothes to undergoing surgery.

Wouldn't someone who identifies herself as female be comfortable with using the "female" option? And similarly, but opposite, for someone identifying himself as a male? And those who identify as neither to then use an "other" option? Plus simply not making it a requirement to declare one's gender in the first place. It seems to me that would cover all bases nicely.

This is essentially what I think would work best: Male, female, other, and undisclosed. There are a large number of non-binary genders and including them all would be difficult.

Because this is an install of a phpbb forum & not something Alex created out of thin air. M/F are the stock options preprogrammed into the forum software & there isn't an admin page to add other options. It would require someone to do some custom php programming to alter it. If it's really that big of deal to you, and you have the programming skills to do it, offer to create the code to modify the forum software and add this options. Chances are if there's an agreed upon addition & it doesn't cost Alex much time he'd agree to allow someone to come up with this. I'm not a programmer AND I don't particularly care about this little detail enough to want to learn, but to each their own - whatever floats your boat. Have at 'er.

From the few things I know about wp management, Alex is reluctant to change, and also to accept outside help for coding matters.

This topic has come up many times and no change so far. I don't expect new options to be added at any point, but I still see no point in not expressing my opinion on the matter.

Someone who has Gender Identity Disorder. Basically, their brain is the wrong gender. So, they were born male/female, and they live as female/male, via crossdressing, hormone replacement, and ultimately surgery to change facial features and certain other bits. Of course, people can be transgender and choose to live in their birth gender, but often times that decision leads to a great deal of mental health problems that are alleviated by changing their lifestyle.

This is a very touchy issue at best.

This isn't a minor issue, gender reassignment is an exceptionally risky thing to do, infact I can't think of any other type of ellective(not necessary) surgery that has so much risk.

The fact is a misdiagnosis can lead to some very extreme health complication(and hormone therapy is very risky as well.

To anyone here who has been misdiagnosed(I'm sure a significant portion) it's a very risky area.

I'm all for personal choice, but anytime a medical professional gets involved you have to really wonder about the ethics of it.

Stoek, your post is off-topic.
This thread is discussing the gender options available in WP profiles so please keep to that.

Thanks.

Shatbat, I agree. Most places online at least have an "undisclosed" or "other" option these days and I think anything of that kind would be fine. Sorry to hear it's a coding issue which could be difficult to resolve, but perhaps it would be worth making this point to the suppliers of the forum code instead, as I assume that would have the potential to make the option available to more communities.

Stoek, you are misinformed - it is almost impossible for anyone transitioning to be "misdiagnosed" because it's not a "diagnosis" which governs what happens - the rules governing medical transition are very strict and require things like living in role for years prior to any surgical intervention. There are few to no health risks involved to a physically healthy person and the number of people who regret transition in any way is far less than 1%, so it's not "risky" or "touchy" at all unless you are someone who is judgemental about the lives of others. Sorry to follow up the off-topic remark, but I don't feel it's fair to let misinformation stand like that.

I really couldn't care less either way.

Capitalised pronouns could be used to refer to people whose religious views include having God within them. Or maybe some particularly rich individuals as well.