I have put lots of more thoughts into this lately and came up with a counter-proposal to my own plan (step 3) from above and here it is:
Paula’s revised plan for genders on MB
Make genders entities that have their own link and MBID and show the following info:
- list of artists labeled with that gender
- maybe users too (they probably should have to tick a box agreeing to appear in such a list)
- aliases in different languages
- relationships to other genders (has part/is part of, is similar concept to)
- links (e.g. Wikidata)
- …
If possible much of that info should automatically populated from Wikidata.
Everybody should of course be able to link genders to artists (even more than one per artist), but maybe there should be privileged editors that are the only ones who can create new genders. I’d obviously volunteer to be such a “gender editor”.
Genders I’d suggest for now are the following. I found example artists for all of these in our DB - see my collection.
- female
- male
- non-applicable - for artist that are not persons or characters so the concept of genders can not apply.
- none - for people who don’t believe in the concept of genders or refuse it so the concept of genders does not apply.
- non binary (not further defined) - all persons currently labeled as “other” would go here until they are moved to a more specific gender
- non binary - this would be the super-category for all the genders below
- genderqueer - this would be related to non binary as “similar concept to”.
- agender
- genderfluid
- third gender
- gender nonconforming
- androgyne
- transgender - with the two sub-entities below
- transfeminine
- transmasculine
IMO the trans* genders should not be used for trans people who identify as male or female (as probably most do), but only for those who are cited to identify as trans.