[Noisebridge-discuss] Gender & Technology followups from 5Mof

[Sai Emrys]

On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 12:42 AM, maymay <bitetheappleback at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> "Do you want to get busy with a person who has a penis?"
>>
>> Not really, IMO. For instance, pre-op MTF trannies (aka "chicks with
>> dicks") are almost exclusively a straight male thing.
>
> Sorry, can you clarify? A straight male thing in being that pre-op "MTF
> trannies" are straight men or that straight men want to experience sexual
> activity with these people? If the latter, how do you know this is true?

Sorry - in that such people are regarded *as females* by straight men
(and themselves). And thus, that their gender (female) and not their
anatomy (dick) is the relevant part.

And I didn't say that all straight guys are into MTFs; rather, that
straight men, not gay men, are the consumers of MTF porn and sex
workers. (I.e. it's a subset of straight men - those who are into
girls exclusively but curious about cock.)

I can't cite a study on that (alas), but it's from observation - and
FWIW, Dan Savage agrees with me on it (and has mentioned it more than
once in his column & podcast).

(Mind that this is for the porn version of MTFs. This is a subset of
real ones, of whom I've known a few and who aren't really like that.
But hey, we're talking about perceptions vs identity, ne? ;-))

>> So I think it is more accurate to say that people are looking for
>> specific gender(s), broadly.
>
> I think it's difficult to quantify the components that make up someone's
> feelings of desire, and while a significant portion of that might be
> described as desiring specific genders, an equally significant portion is
> not.

Agreed, but this is a sort of scope creep. One can just talk about one
or the other despite them being fairly intertwined IRL, especially for
more complicated cases. (E.g. what does one call a pre-op FTM who's
always been into males but whose gender identity has changed over
time? "Gay" seems a bit missing the point. But this is a fairly rare
case, where the intertwining is relevantly problematic.)

> I *think* I disagree with you here. Being "into" something is as vague as
> desiring something in an unspecified way (see above paragraph), and I think
> that "the majority of people" really aren't aware of the nuanced
> distinctions that make individuals different when it comes to their
> expressions of femininity or masculinity or something else.

Sure - but unawareness defaults one to not-into-ness. You can't be
looking for something you don't know exists.

So by default, the unswashed masses who think sex = gender and thus
that there are only two genders (don't bother bringing up
intersexuals; they're rare and the masses haven't heard of 'em anyway
except as freaks), are also canonically "straight" or "gay" (or maybe
"bi").

> The fact that
> the majority of people *appear* to be "into" a "standard gender" looks more
> like a mirror onto the current state of most people's (mis)understanding of
> gender than anything else to me.

That's as may be. But you can't pretend that people are more
introspective (or aware of gender issues etc etc) than they are when
discussing what their identity and desires are.

> In my experience, very
> "standard"/"normal"/"straight"/"vanilla"/whatever-you-want-to-call-it people
> are quite a bit more nuanced than even they realize at first.

... probably (if I read you right) because you see them go through
changes in their identity brought on by education and/or exposure to
alternatives they weren't previously aware of or comfortable with.

IME, most normal people - and pretty much everyone on this list is
excluded from that group - really are not very introspective at all,
which makes them having nuanced genders a rather difficult
proposition. ;-)

>> Those who aren't probably list themselves as bi, and that moots that issue.
>> ('cause bi actually means 'no preference' in this context; insert
>> nonduality spiel here.)
>
> As a self-identified bisexual, I'd dispute that, too, but that's a totally
> different argument. :)

Hence the self-disclaimer. :-P

>> What about the above trannies, who identify as female and are mostly
>> sought by straight males, despite their having cocks?
>
> Okay, so, there are a few issues all wrapped into one question here. One is
> the way in which people identify themselves independent from the physical
> bodies they have. Another is the distinction between desiring something and
> wanting to be something—sometimes these are similar and sometimes they are
> not (e.g., "Wow, that person is really cool. Do I have a crush on them or do
> I just want to mimic their behavior because I admire it?"). I'm not sure
> which you're addressing, if either…?

I'm not sure either, really. I think it's the desire though.

FWIW, I do know one such person - fairly normal, straight male.
Exclusively into girls. But likes sucking cock (mostly his own). He'd
go for MTF, since it'd let him do the physical things he wants to try
(giving fellatio) while remaining in his sexual identity (exclusively
straight).

And see above disclaimer about this being about the porn version of
MTFs, and yes I know that's not very representative, etc etc.

> Yeah; from a technical standpoint, it's all about functionality in the end.
> That's why it frustrates me to see male/female drop down menus in places
> where the answer to that question means nothing to the functionality being
> offered (i.e., hotspot example in presentation).

In that example, the functionality is for them, not you. It's probably
because they're selling ads at some point, or want to know what their
user demographic is so they can buy ads appropriately. Etc.

You could argue that companies oughtn't ask stuff that's purely
self-interested, rather than directly for providing a service to the
user, but that's an entirely different issue.

> I care about making things better for myself, which—being an edge case—is tough. :)

Indeed. :-)

> Not necessarily. I'd prefer a generic text entry over a drop-down menu in
> the case of, say, FetLife.com's "Gender" field since that field (AFAIK) is
> only being used as a display string and not for any operations that require
> metadata like profile searching.

Yes - but that's what I said when I meant you loose categorization
ability. (Except perhaps very advanced sorts that use massive
collocation and other heavy analysis techniques to figure out
similarity distances in free text.)

> Creating a formal ontology and/or vocabulary for sexuality
> and gender has been on my mind as a side project for some time.

I'd be interested to see this. I've never seen one that seemed any
good (i.e. not idiosyncratic or displaying a major worldview bias).

> I don't know how or if that interface is tied into the user-matching
> algorithms that OkCupid uses, though.

It's not, TTBOMK, other than as much as any generic text is.

(Also FWIW: I know someone who works at OKC. So if you have real
suggestions, I can pass 'em to someone who might be in a position to
implement 'em.)

> It will always come back to functionality, and that's highly
> application-specific, of course. For a site like OkCupid, which shows little
> reservation about making users answer a whole lot of questions at some point
> or another, I think this kind of expanded self-identification scheme is
> likely to be a pretty good fit.

For profiles, sure. But your suggestion abandons their real need for
filtering based on sexual orientations.

IOW: I think you punted on my dare. :-P

> My argument is centered around the belief that more
> sites—regardless of what their exact purpose is—can meet the goals of more
> people more effectively by becoming more aware of gender bias at every
> level, from interface to business logic, and if executed well, users who
> prefer not to introspect about the details won't have to know anything's
> changed.

And that's why I challenged you to propose how a site for which gender
is a relevant factor (like OKC) ought to do gender.

I think it's a rather more interesting question than just pointing out
how the way they do it now over-pigeonholes people.

> Some people, myself included, are constantly confronted by the reality that
> by using the categories most known we are interacted with in ways we don't
> like and that, at their worst, don't feel respectful. I acknowledge that in
> this way, I'm a social edge case, but from a technical standpoint, making
> one's systems robust enough to handle the edge cases is what iterative
> improvement is all about.

Sure. What do you propose that would be such a robust handling, yet
not force genderqueerness on the masses?

>  But we also didn't know how to do public key
> cryptography before a whole ton of math geniuses focused on the problem,
> either.

And we still don't seem to know how to do it in a way that the masses
can handle.

Viz. the craziness that is the current belief in paper, ink, stamps
and signatures. (And how easily they can be forged...)

It's a user interface issue, and a popularization issue, far more than
a technical issue IMO.

If that's not solved, then your problems with gender in tech will
remain as obscure as GPG is now. Yes, some edge cases are aware of it
and maybe even use it (... says the guy whose GPG key is on his
business card), but it just isn't going to impact anything widespread,
and without that, you don't accomplish what you're after.

- Sai