Support for third gender

Question

In 2013 Germany's legislation has introduced a third gender. If the gender of a child at birth can not positively be assign to one of the two traditional gender, then the entry for gender is to be left unfilled. In the person's passport the gender field is being marked with an "X".

Many countries, like Australia and Sveden have also already adopted this policy. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender)

Apparently WikiTree is not prepared for this. I think we need to introduce a third gender.

Comments

Seems prepared to me.  Leaving gender blank is already an option.  This comes with neutral language ("Child of") and its own silhouette and its own colour, green.

There's a difference between "known to be unknown" and simply not known, but that's a common issue in several other contexts besides gender.

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Yes, you're right. One can leave it blank (or set it back). It's just not obvious. If you add your comment as an answer, I could mark it "best answer", so everybody can see it.

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I don't think it can be set back to blank. When creating a profile you can leave the gender field blank (or simply forget to make a choice) and the neutral language automatically follows. However, once a gender has been selected (from the only two options) it can be changed but not removed.

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One can set it back, I tested it. Try it in your own profile!

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I don't think leaving it blank is a solution as it becomes a database error.  I have several unnamed, sex unknown babies in my family tree and they continuously get flagged as in error.  If this was the appropriate response they would not be flagged as an error.

As for transgendered folk, I think the issue is different. Some are open and above board about their change, others are not. And in 200 years their profile won't be private anymore. May not seem relevant now, but it will be.

So I do think we need a third option. Perhaps something that just flags the sex of the person being further discussed in the profile.  Some people considered themselves transgendered, some are intersex and in other countries multiple identities exist. I don't think "other" is correct, no one wants to be "othered".

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I totally agree. I'm nonbinary myself and it was really disheartening when I joined to see that there wasn't an option reflecting my gender. In fact, there should be separate gender and sex options to better trace the genealogy of transgender individuals. I was looking at the pages for Dr. James Barry, a transgender male surgeon, and the two pages for him haven't been merged because it seems there is a disagreement about how to mark his gender. It would be much simpler if there was one space of the sex assigned at birth, and one for the person's actual gender.

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As far as the data base error goes, set the status of it as 'False Suggestion.'

Answer 1

I think the only thing WikiTree is not really prepared for is Transgender. I mean how do you really input that? That they were male/female when they were born and now they may be female/male with a name change that is entirely different than when they were born. I mean the name change we can handle since it happens with adoptees all the time. Some have had names before they were adopted and then again, some haven't. But like in the Notables project, if I were to come across Bruce Jenner/Caitlyn or Alexis Arquette, how do you do that to follow genealogical purposes especially when Jenner had children while being a man?

Comments

I just helped someone with this recently, and while it's not the most elegant solution, we suggested that the gender be set to their birth gender, and then the biography stated the circumstances of the gender change.

The name fields already accommodate this to a certain degree.

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that's assuming they are happy with the world knowing their birth gender and that they are trans. Some people might not like the thought of that happening when they are dead.

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I completely agree Gillian. The individual I was helping with was set to either Red privacy or Unlisted -- I don't recall -- and it was his daughter who was handling it. She was very sensitive to his wishes.

If I had a situation like that to handle in my family, I would put out as little information as possible unless I had explicit permission from the individuals involved.