It’s frustrating. It’s 2026 and we’re still pointlessly gendering things. And I don’t mean this is a “omg you assumed my gender” way. I mean that organization’s that should know better go the extra mile to apply strict genders to things and processes. If this email is about workplace harassment or something like that, it would be easier to just not gender people.
Armand1@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I mean, they’re right.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
_skj@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The email sounds like a college student participating in a sociology study for class and asking the professor for clarification. This is exactly the kind of thing that I’d expect to ask about gender along with a bunch of other personal information. The goal being to see if any patterns in the responses.
Sociology in general does have the problem that categories are important and helpful to spotting patterns, but people are very difficult to categorize. People just don’t fit cleanly into categories
Ratio_Tile@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
Well, sometimes gender fucks with the data because we live in a society and all that. Gotta at least try to compensate for likely sources of error
Soup@lemmy.world 7 months ago
But they’re very correct that so many things aren’t needed. I mean, gender on a driver license? Really?
pageflight@piefed.social 7 months ago
I agree, seems more like an insightful reminder about inclusivity, product design, and data analysis; and a window into someone who’s probably incredibly frustrated trying to be positive.
grue@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I mean, I LOL’d at the “this data is internally valid in the sense that I am precisely average in all respects, in relation to all the other [zero] people I know of the same sex” part.
SpongyAneurysm@feddit.org 7 months ago
Mathematically speaking it can’t be, because if you put it in relation to only the OTHER people, you’d have to divide by zero which ends up non defined.
It only works out when you put it in relation to ALL people within those criteria, thus dividing by one.
grue@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Look, I didn’t want to shove that all into clarifying square brackets within a quote, OK?
SpongyAneurysm@feddit.org 7 months ago
Ever heard of footnotes? :p