Offer a "Preferred pronoun" field on the profile page

[pendrecarc]

Title:
Offer a "Preferred pronoun" field on the profile page

Area:
Profile

Summary:
It would be helpful to get a "preferred pronoun" field on the profile screen in addition to the "gender" field. This would facilitate discussion and linking to other users' posts. It would be important to include a "Rather not say" option, of course.

Description:
It can be difficult to link to other DW users' posts or mention other users if you don't happen to know which pronoun they prefer. Not everyone is comfortable asking You can always choose something gender-neutral or talk around it, of course, but that can be syntactically awkward, and whenever possible I want to respect other users' preferences. If someone has a gender selected, that can provide a clue, but it's not a guarantee, and of course not everyone does.

Having a space in the profile to specify a pronoun seems like a quick fix. The field could be free text if compiling a list of possible pronouns is problematic, but either way it should include the (default) option not to display a pronoun.

Poll #7556 Offer a "Preferred pronoun" field on the profile page

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 117

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
53 (45.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
23 (19.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
17 (14.5%)

(I have no opinion)
23 (19.7%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (0.9%)

Edited on 10/8/2011 to add that I got some of my facts wrong in this post re: the existing profile options, due to some confusion over different sites. Also, I explained the possible benefits of this very poorly. It's not just an issue of social ease for those of us linking to other users; it's also, and far more importantly, about being aware of how users of this site want to be approached. Based on comments, if this is implemented (as I still think it should be) it's very important that the field be free text.

Comments

(frozen comment)

[denise]

Just FYI for accuracy, the user's choice for the "gender" field doesn't display publicly anywhere; it's used only for aggregate stats. This should not affect the discussion of the suggestion itself, I just saw that in your suggestion and thought I should clarify!

(frozen comment) Try this...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I suggest "he," "she," and "they" as pronoun options. "They" is coming back into fashion as a gender-neutral pronoun; some other services use this for everyone.

(frozen comment) Re: Try this...

[cesy]

It needs to offer free text if someone prefers a different gender-neutral pronoun, though.

(frozen comment) Re: Try this...

[ysabetwordsmith]

If that can be coded, it would be great. I just assumed that it would be too complicated because there are dozens of options -- I've studied them -- and they don't even all decline the same way.

(frozen comment)

[rydra_wong]

I think it could easily be problematic if it makes people feel they're being required to specify a pronoun. Especially if only a limited set of options are supplied, which would piss off anyone whose preferred option is excluded.

If someone wants their gender to be known, or has a particular non-obvious preference for what pronoun they prefer, they can communicate that themselves, and most people do; I know a number of people who state their pronoun preferences in their profiles.

(frozen comment)

[ratcreature]

Yes. I don't see of what value a special field would be. For most of the other fields it makes sense that they are filed somewhere they can used as a variable, e.g. the birthday has an input field because there are the reminders, the website appears linked on your pages and such, the location can be used in searches... But why would you need the pronoun available to the system as a variable? The only use I can see is if automated mails from DW would need the proper pronoun address, but I think there phrasing can be made neutral.

(frozen comment)

[denise]

DW addresses people directly ("you") instead of with third-person pronouns, for the most part! (And singular-they where it's not possible, which makes me twitch a bit, but I'm one of those prescriptivist freaks.) I have considered teaching the system to recognize pronouns, where you'd be able to set your pronouns (independent of gender identification, of course) by picking from either he/him/his/his/himself, she/her/her/hers/herself, it/it/it/its/itself, they/them/their/theirs/theirselves, or "define your own" where you'd enter your preferred pronouns (subjective, objective, possessive determiner, possessive, and reflexive) and the system would use those ("denise has added you to her circle", "mark has added you to his circle", "username has added you to zir circle", etc).

On the one hand, it would be an awful lot of work, and invariably there would be some smartass who'd put "fuck" or whatever as all of zir pronouns, which would confuse and/or offend someone else when they saw it (either because they were offended by the use of the word, or offended by someone mocking the genderqueer or gender-variant); on the other hand, I know there are people who'd really like it if they could pick the pronouns that others would see the system using for them -- but it wouldn't change what they see, only what others see when interacting with them. As far as I can remember, right now the only two places where pronouns are used for someone, as opposed to referring to a theoretical person, is in notifications (the "denise has added you to their circle" notification, and the comment notification where it says "The comment they replied to is:") -- there might be more, but those are the only two that comes straight to mind. Both of them are handled with singular-they right now.

So, I'm not sure if it's worth adding another option for that, since we all know that more options are often bad UI. If the system used pronouns for people more frequently, I'd probably want to do it more, but as is, I'm not sure it's worth it. (OTOH, if we had a system like that, we could use pronouns in more places without me worrying that someone would be upset by the system misgendering them, even if the misgendering is singular-they.)

All of which is one long digression intended to address your hypothetical use case. *g*

(For the record, on thissuggestion, not the hypothetical use case, I happen to agree with you and rydra_wong, that having a pronoun field in the profile would be more potentially exclusionary than do good -- I think that's the sort of thing that's best handled via the bio.)

(frozen comment)

[pendrecarc]

Yep, recent migrant from LJ, and I got the two confused initially, which I should know better than to do. :)

(frozen comment)

[pendrecarc]

To clarify, I wasn't thinking of this as a system variable--I'm sure the complexity to usefulness ratio there would be pretty high. Death of the suggester and all that, but the intent was a purely social one, to facilitate discussion and linking to other people's journals while being respectful to people's individual choices. My understanding was that, while asking for a gender might be exclusionary, asking for a pronoun is specifically about giving someone agency in determining how they are addressed, which is important.

more options are often bad UI

Agreed there, however! No need to clutter the profile if this won't be useful to people.

(frozen comment)

[denise]

*nod* In general, I think you'll find DW users are generally a crowd quite amenable to "Hey, just a quick check, what pronouns do you prefer?" It's a pretty common question around here :)

(But I am still genuinely on the fence about the tell-the-system-what-pronouns-to-use-for-you idea! It really wouldn't be that hard to do, just a lot of tedious work, and there would be benefits and drawbacks both. So right now I'm kind of 50/50 on it.)

(Also, i forgot to say: welcome to DW!)

(frozen comment)

[erik]

This sounds good, but also sounds like a prime candidate for the law of unintended consequences to apply.

(frozen comment)

[montuos]

I voted "I have no opinion" because there isn't an option for "I have conflicting opinions, but none of them is winning (yet)." ;> I agree with almost all of the pros and cons that I see posted here so far.

(frozen comment)

[pauamma]

If implemented, it should IMO be free-text, because:
- not everyone who would willingly refer to a DW user as eg, "zie" if requested knows what the accusative or genitive of that pronoun are supposed to be (zim? zir? zis? zihre? zin?)
- some users (eg, multilingual users or users with a multilingual circle) may want to specify pronouns for several languages (this is especially true if those languages don't all use the same script)

(frozen comment)

[pauamma]

Having Dreamwidth use the pronouns (or of any gender indication, really) specified in actual system messages would be very painful to implement and use (not just in the translation framework we all know and love want to die a long, painful death, repeatedy if possible - it would be painful in any translation system).

(frozen comment)

[denise]

Eh, I don't think it'd be all too awful in English. In some other languages, yes, but I don't think we should worry too much about that; if anyone wants to make a non-English version of DW they could just remove the setting and change the "gender" variables in the translation strings to be whatever's appropriate for the language.

(Or extend it so that the system messages use the appropriate forms throughout, yadda.)

(frozen comment)

[melannen]

I'm not strictly opposed to this, but even though I go by basic feminine, the idea of being explicitly asked to pick a pronoun makes me go oogy for some unspecified reason. And also I know some genderqueer people who haven't settled on a pronoun who might find it difficult too.

Most people who feel strongly about misgendering find some place in their profile to make this clear, anyway, so I'm not sure this is that useful as a system option.

Also: there is nothing whatsoever wrong with singular they for "gender unknown/unspecified" (a pronoun we'd still need even if a thirdgender pronoun became standard!) It's been used consistently in English since Chaucer! The only reason the prescriptivists hate it is because they were trying to turn English into a Romance language! Which it isn't! ...sorry.

Also it really isn't that hard to avoid using personal pronouns for people if one puts a little thought into one's sentences. Really.

(frozen comment)

[denise]

I know, I know, but I had it drilled into me so many times at an early age that I can't not twitch every time I see it!

(frozen comment)

[pauamma]

Agreed on both points. It's only messy if you want to support more than one language on a single service. (But ooooh boy, does it get messy then.)

(frozen comment) Re: Try this...

[yvi]

The way I read this, this wouldn't be used to adapt site text at all, so a free-text field sounds possible.

(frozen comment)

[msilverstar]

I spent quite a lot of time & energy changing software manuals from assuming all users are male, so became an early partisan of the non-gender-specific "they". Not that it's perfect but the alternative was far worse!

(frozen comment)

[susanreads]

Likewise!

(frozen comment)

[matgb]

there is nothing whatsoever wrong with singular they for "gender unknown/unspecified" (a pronoun we'd still need even if a thirdgender pronoun became standard!) It's been used consistently in English since Chaucer!

Exactly. It's perfectly acceptable and very useful.

I'm ticking 'no opinion' as I don't actively object, but I don't see the amount of work it'd need is justified given people can either ask or put it in profile if it matters.

(frozen comment)

[arethinn]

Yeah. I thought the suggestion was just to be able to put it in the profile so that other users can look it up.

That being the case, why not just put this in your (general you) bio if you consider it important?

(frozen comment)

[holyschist]

Hmmm. I think most people with a different preference than 'he' or 'she' say so in their profiles; I could see this reminding binary people to specify (I tend to assume Everyone On DW Is A Woman, which is just as incorrect as the Everyone On the Internet Is A Man assumption prevalent elsewhere), but I also see all the cons people have brought up, so....I don't know.

(frozen comment)

[aedifica]

I'm in favor of being welcoming to all genders, but this feels like a non-optimal way to do it (especially coming right after the whole "can you make your gender non-public information" thing with Google Plus).