Male, Female, Other
I work for a software firm.
We make pretty spanky HR software.
One of the fields on our main screen is gender. One particular customer made us change this from just Male and Female to M/F/Other just in case it offended transsexuals.

I mean ffs, they are changing from one to the other so what is the problem?

Oh, and we have a cool feature where you can upload pictures of your employees and then when you look at their record their picture pops up - cool huh? never forget who is who.

Anyway if you haven't got a picture, it pops up with a little cartoon bloke with a cool combover or a little cartoon bird with a pink blouse, based on the gender mentionned above.

You can guess what is coming now can't you.

Same customer again decided that these images may be offensive to people confused about their sexuality.

ffs

So we replaced the picture with one of their choice, so everyones 'photo', while still being a cartoon, is a picture of a.............


Computer.

wtf, ffs, onetyeleven!! etc
( ogwen69 has returned from Reddit, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:06, 7 replies)

On our inTRAnet Staff listings....
...anyone without a self posted picture has a strange head and shoulders pic of a 'person' made from balls of beige granite...
(Phlash, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 16:56, closed)

No, they're not 'changing from one to another'
Gender and sex are a lot more complex than binary boxes. Many people jump through a lot of hoops to be listed as something other than what you might guess, or indeed as nothing at all.

At a minimum, all systems should have M, F or 'unspecified' - except in the case where someone's physical sex is medically important - and even then it's not straightforward.
(EssY, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 17:50, closed)

Unspecified.
Until we get a genderless pronoun sorted out (and "it" doesn't cut it), I'm afraid we all have to choose one or the other.
(Musuko, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 18:44, closed)

Well, no, there are various options
Such as plurals like 'they'

Or referring to someone's name directly

Or the genderless constructs (which I personally loathe) like zie, hir, and suchlike.

For the vast majority of applications referring to someone's gender is irrelevant and unnecessary.
(EssY, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 18:55, closed)

Perhaps the 'other' picture should be
a shemale/chick with a dick/whatever you want to call it.
( idonthaveafunnynickname Drink-Aware? Sure. I'm aware I want another drink., Thu 22 Nov 2007, 23:39, closed)

Well...
I have to say I would have welcomed that box of unknown sometimes.

I used to work in Brighton and the system I used to use to book appointments used to ask for title first. You couldn't do anything until that box had been filled.
That used to cause some real problems as Brighton has more than it's fair share of trans gender people.
I used to ask the name and see if I got a male or female name and go from there.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Fri 23 Nov 2007, 11:50, closed)

Well
I guess using a picture of a computer is definitely 'PC'.
Mwahahahaaa!

Sorry.
(man_d is being watched by experts on, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 21:43, closed)