While going through the Composer Diversity Database’s list of non-binary composers for our Project Composer Diversity I realized they seem to use non-binary for gender and/or sexuality. E.g. Aaron Garcia seems to be a gay man (no mentions of non-binary gender on the homepage, but use of he/his pronouns, face looks rather male and name is mostly used for men - but of course non of that has to mean anything).
Before I read the sentence “He lives in Brooklyn with his partner and two cats.” I assumed (never a good idea) that Aaron considered himself male, but not a man. That got me thinking. MB doesn’t use man/woman/other, but male/female/other to categorize genders.
So that would mean that for someone who doesn’t consider themselves as a man but uses male pronouns I’d probably still choose “male” as the gender in MB.
Of course there is always also the option to leave the gender option blank. Or we could - as society and politics will one day have to, because nothing else makes any sense* - drop genders altogether.
*Here in Austria we will soon have a third gender option for the passport thanks to a decision by the supreme court. I do think it’s a step in the right direction, but at the same time I think it makes no sense at all. What’s the point of acknowledging that there are an infinite number of genders and therefore introduce a third gender?
On my MB profile I chose the female gender-option. I am a Trans-woman so yes, I do consider myself a woman and yes, I do consider myself female, but I also consider myself as other genderqueer.
There are people who consider themselves male and female (either at the same time - e.g. bi-gender - or depending on the situation/mood/whatever - e.g. gender-fluid).
So basically I think there are three options:
- drop genders altogether
- don’t give any options for gender, but make it a free text field
- give the options male, female and free text field and the ability to choose none, one, two or all of them.
What do you think?