Gender identity is the personal sense of one’s own gender.[1] Gender identity can correlate with assigned sex at birth, or can differ from it.[2] All societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of the formation of a person’s social identity in relation to other members of society.[3] In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes assigned to males and females,[4] a gender binary to which most people adhere and which includes expectations of masculinity and femininity in all aspects of sex and gender: biological sex, gender identity, and gender expression.[5] Some people do not identify with some, or all, of the aspects of gender assigned to their biological sex;[6] some of those people are transgender, genderqueer or non-binary. There are some societies that have third gender categories.
and
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e., the state of being male, female, or an intersex variation), sex-based social structures (i.e., gender roles), or gender identity.[1][2][3] Traditionally, people who identify as men or women or use masculine or feminine gender pronouns are using a system of gender binary whereas those who exist outside these groups fall under the umbrella terms non-binary or genderqueer . Some cultures have specific gender roles that are distinct from “man” and “woman,” such as the hijras of South Asia. These are often referred to as third genders .
So its seems to me we have a clear difference between Biological Sex and Gender Identity, whether Gender is the exactly the same as Gender Identity I’m not sure. It seems perfectly reasonable to have two different fields to capture these two different aspects. Biological Sex (currently named Gender) can still have Other field (maybe it should be renamed Intersex) to indicate where unclear from birth. But going back to Miley Cyrus she can have Biological Sex set to Female, and then Gender Identity set to genderfluid.
I don’t think anybody is using the gender field that way now. The gender field is obviously already about gender identity, it’s just missing many options.
I can understand that you say that, and agree if you just take that remark by itself.
The reason for writing it was not just an attempt of being snarky, but a result that it occurred to me that maybe many of the artists that we are discussing here, might think “wow, the people at MusicBrainz are taking this all at a far more serious level then I am myself”.
And Miley Cyrus seemed like a good example of a person that doesn’t seem to have any big issues with it.
So I would actually be interested to hear her/his opinion.
I am (again) guessing, many wouldn’t mind at all if MusicBrainz MusicBrainz kept it very simple by having just
m/f/other, and might even feel uncomfortable about other people deciding that they must be put in a much more specified box.
But of course those are all assumptions about other people. But I think it is a valid consideration that we discuss this.
So this was a handicapped attempt to lighten the discussion a bit, and to point out that we have not heard the opinion from one single artist about this matter.
But we (all) are making many assumptions on how ‘they’ might feel about all this.
My brief and unexplained ‘Miley Cyrus’ remark understandably wasn’t read in this way by everybody, so I hope this explanation clarifies it.
Maybe, by accident, I think its a mishmash of both. Because the majority of people have had their gender set based on their biolgical sex rather than based on any Gender Identity statement they have made. Then when a gender identity statement has been made contradicting their biological sex it has been changed to Other.
Use the gender the artist identifies as. Use “other” if the artist identifies as something other than “male” or “female”.
For characters, the fictional gender of the character should be used. This might not match the gender of a person who performed the character.
The “other” gender option is meant to represent a gender that is neither male nor female, and is not intended for use with entities for which the concept of gender is illogical, such as companies.
PPS: To keep this discussion on topic please start a new discussion if you want to advocate for adding a “biological sex” field.
Are you seriously saying that when most people add an artist to MusicBrainz they go of to find some evidence of gender identity statement and select based on that ?
No of course not. But if someone finds a statement by the artist about their gender identity than they change the gender field accordingly and other editors will accept that, because it’s in accordance with the guidelines.
Yes so thats my point, its is intended to be used as Gender Identity, but is actually used as Biological Sex until a conflicting Gender Identity statement is come across. You might say so what ?, since the majority of people accept their biological sex and haven’t given much thought to their gender identity. But my argument is if you could ask every single person in the database to consider their gender identity look at the list you have created there are some options that may be quite appealing to many people such as gender non-conforming , but it would be quite reasonable for them to decide they were gender non-conforming but still male or female based on their biological sex. So firstly it very important that if these options are added then there must be a way to allow multiple values to be selected, but personally I would prefer gender and biological-sex to be kept seperate that will give us a a more accurate and useful database.
You are the one not getting this, if it was strictly added based on ‘Gender-Identity’ most people would be set to unknown because there have not explicitly said their gender-identity. Instead they are being added based on their biological sex either because that is what the field was thought to be, or it was understood what the Gender meant but it was just assumed that their gender-identity was same as their biological sex. It is a very straight-forward point.
Its all interconnected. So with the current options a male who identifed as ‘gender nonconforming’ would be listed as Male, but if all these options listed they may be changed to ‘gender confirming’. It is more useful to know that they are male then gender non-conforming. Should it even be on the list since from https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Gender-Fluid-and-Gender-Non-Conforming it says
Gender non-conforming refers to anyone who does not meet societal expectations of gender expression. That could be a pretty wide range of people from those in the middle to those who are actually pretty binary identified irregardless of sexual orientation.
It seems to be you want to eliminate the importance of biological sex, I would say it is considerably more significant then some of the gender identities listed, and at least as significant as the others.
And that is one of the problems with the issue.
I think if MB is going to do anything about it, it needs to be re-active, not pro-active. What I mean by that is…
In the city of New York, there are 32 identity pronouns. But other places have a different list. And, if you watch any of those “Change My Mind” videos, 32 isn’t enough. I mean, hell, my identity, Supreme Being, isn’t one of the 32. And even among the identity crowd, I get odd looks when I say I am a Supreme Being.
I don’t think MB, at this point, should be doing anything other than “other” for the simple fact that the rest of the world hasn’t settled on what we should be doing.
The minute society says “these are the genders” instead of expecting us to accept a hodge podge of “anything you want to be is a gender and you can change it from one day to the next”, then MB can deal with it. But until that happens, we will be needing to constantly be making changes to our system.
Gender has until recently been a socially assigned identifier.
It was assigned on the basis of appearance and behavior.
Not biological sex.
The vast majority of MB’s Artists who have been gendered have been done so on this basis.
Conclusions have been made about gender based on appearance in photos and videos, usual gender of name used by Artist and gender assigned to the Artist by others.
Never, to my knowledge, has biological sex been cited as the basis for gendering on MB.
If you’re trying to guess someone’s “biological” sex separate from their presentation and identity, you are free to do that elsewhere (although you shouldn’t). Putting it on musicbrainz, however, is against official style/policy and you should stop.
I am not adding people based on their biological sex and actively ignoring their gender identity where it conflicts. But mmirG says until recently been a socially assigned identifier i.e I read this as society has incorrectly been setting based on appearance, well I dont agree, I think society has been setting based on biological sex. The underlying point I think trying to be pushed here is that gender has nothing to do with biological sex, well that is also clearly untrue as the majority of people gender identity matches their biological sex, that is not a coincidence.
I am curious as to how you have been determining biological sex.
Please explain.
While you may have thought you were assigning “biological sex”, the fact is that you, almost certainly, most often had access to appearance, behavior and the gender as assigned by otheNJr parties.
The exceptions would be women known to have given birth.
Gender has, very literally, been assigned by appearance at birth.
The claim that this is necessarily “biological sex” is falsified by the people whose actual biology is found to be other than that that their birth appearance indicated.
The gender assigned at birth has very often been the biological sex of the person.
However we now know that it has in many instances not been their biological sex.
We can either continue with the inaccurate understanding of how “biological sex” is determined or accept the fact that gender, especially on birth certificates, has been assigned by appearance which has been shown to be unreliable.
Okay so when you go down to this level of details gender identies can be quite fluid, and therefore can change over time. Meaning data that was correct at one point in time is no longer correct, this is unlike other data in the database and to my mind this is problematic.
Clear definitions are required for what these terms mean,
I previously gave the example
non-binary:range of gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine
third gender- set of gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine
and you failed to explain the difference. We shoudn’t be creating a list of terms if even the person suggesting them is unclear on what they mean because this will mean that the wrong option will be chosen or duplicates options with different name will be added to the list.
You say
It’s also not about whether you understand the difference between two specific genders. Inform yourself or ignore it.
but it is about you understanding the difference and if you cannot explain the difference then the difference is not notable enough to include in list.
This list appears too detailed, I would propose the following list would suffice
female
male
non-applicable
none
non-binary
trangender
The discussion here has gone way off-topic and seems to have a number of misconceptions of what Paula actually has proposed/is proposing. As a result and to “start from fresh”, she has started a new topic.
Please be sure that you are 100% on-topic when posting in that topic. If you have even the slightest doubt that something you’re writing might not be on-topic—e.g., if you want to discuss a new field for “biological sex/gender”—please do so in a new topic. Same if you want to discuss possible differences (or lack thereof) of two or more gender identities, etc., etc.
Duh!