Gender Option

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I was trying to see if I could remove my gender selection from my profile... When I went in to edit my profile I saw that the gender selection wasn't chosen even though the little box showed me as "Male" in my posts. So I figured I'd first try switching it to something else, and then back to no selection to see if that would update it.

When I went back to edit the second time, there is no gender option.

I don't mind my gender displaying as female, it's not entirely wrong... but it might be better to have neither selected for me personally...

First question, did I break something?
Second question, could I select neither or blank something along those lines?

Someone please notice this. It's really bothering me that everyone's "gender" is listed in the side of their posts.

It's irritating because there's zero accommodation here. No option to change gender, no option to not display gender, and no option to hide people's genders from view. There's only two options available, male and female, and it's a required field. Maybe you should rename it to sex. It feels like I'm in a hospital, and everyone's private details are on full display.

There should be a way to hide gender/sex from other users. That's not information one should be required to share online, let alone next to every single post.

I believe there's an option to leave it blank when registering, considering the number of members who don't have their gender listed in their profile. But apparently once it's been placed, it's locked for life. As the moderator who is stuck with having the wrong gender in his profile once said, WP is held together with tape and staples.

I've just joined and neither my gender nor age are displayed.

You made a wise decision.

It was marked as a required field on the registration page. Apparently I just need to be more of a rebel.

Maybe it shows required on some registrations and not others. WP is known for such glitches.

Since your account is so new, maybe you can appeal to scrap the one you have and try again.

Fair to say that this is a particularly bad case of the forum showing its age. It has been clear that it needs to change for several years now, but Alex has very limited time indeed.

Mine was like that at the start. After I made so many posts it started showing all my info.

This bothers me, too. I recently signed up for something online, maybe it was a commercial account where I am sometimes a customer - it required an answer for gender, and there were only the standard two options (male or female).

I am not a gender-fluid person or anything like that, I just didn't think they should be demanding to know that fact about me.

Another, more sneaky way, some sites ask the same question is requiring you to pick a prefix to your name - Ms., Miss, Mrs., Mr., Dr. or Rev. Medecins Sans Frontieres where I sometimes donate is one of these. Since the requirement pissed me off, I selected Dr. even though I am not one.

^ Probably for marketing purposes so they can tailor the advertisements to what they think you'll buy.

Hi Everyone, I just recently joined, and am sure it was marked as a required field, as was Date of Birth. Interestingly, I was able to change (remove) my DoB from my profile page after I joined, but not the Gender option. Curious.

I agree I'd prefer not to have to see the poster's gender, on every single post, a bit 'in your face'.

(Edit: I've just seen in the FAQs on page 2 it says we have to give our DoB to confirm we're over 17.)

Oh, definitely. Supermarkets mine the data of the specific items on receipts in order to correlate purchases and predict or suggest other products. It's even a stock problem called "market basket analysis" in intro data mining courses. Every piece of data you're asked for on the internet is added in by a programmer at the behest of the people designing the system. Every piece of data takes up space on a database and if they didn't "need" it for something they'd get rid of it to save space and make the system faster. Or occasionally they're using a prefab design and not reconfiguring it to their needs.