Subject: [VCARDDAV] Rename SEX to GENDER

From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2010 11:00:12 -0400

WG,

Could the proponents of renaming SEX to GENDER please succinctly explain
the reasons for doing so? This will go on the slides for next week's
meeting, so there's no reason for writing more than 2-3 lines.

Thanks,
Simon
-- 
NAT64/DNS64 open-source --> http://ecdysis.viagenie.ca
STUN/TURN server        --> http://numb.viagenie.ca
vCard 4.0               --> http://www.vcarddav.org

---

From: Joseph Smarr <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 08:40:04 -0700

It's more obvious what it means--"gender" directly implies
"male/female/other", whereas "sex" is more ambiguous and clinical. How many
signup forms on the web ask users for their "gender" vs" "sex"? I'd imagine
the former is far more common.

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 8:00 AM, Simon Perreault <[email-masked]
> wrote:

> _______________________________________________
> VCARDDAV mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vcarddav
>

---

From: Cyrus Daboo <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2010 11:56:42 -0400

Hi Joseph,

--On November 2, 2010 8:40:04 AM -0700 Joseph Smarr <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> "male/female/other", whereas "sex" is more ambiguous and clinical. How
> many signup forms on the web ask users for their "gender" vs" "sex"? I'd
> imagine the former is far more common.
>

What goes in the UI is not relevant - clients can easily use whatever term 
they feel appropriate (including localizing it). I would never expect a 
client to display any field name (be it from vCard or PoCo) "directly" in 
the UI.

Given that, then I think your argument is more related to the readability 
of the "raw" vCard data itself, right?

Frankly, I am not bothered what we call it, but I am more concerned about 
what value type we use. Do we stick with the numeric ISO ones or use text 
values?

-- 
Cyrus Daboo

---

From: Brian Suda <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 15:44:32 +0000

> the former is far more common.

--- i would say the opposite. SEX is your genetic disposition, you are
MALE or FEMALE, gender on the other hand is societal, Masculine and
Feminine. You cannot change your sex genetically, but you can change
your gender.

My guess as to why most sign-up forms use GENDER rather than SEX might
be due to blanket filters stopping words like SEX from getting
through.

from: http://www.med.monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html

Sex refers to biological differences; chromosomes, hormonal profiles,
internal and external sex organs.

Gender describes the characteristics that a society or culture
delineates as masculine or feminine.

-- 
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk

---

From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:50:27 -0400

> be due to blanket filters stopping words like SEX from getting

It may also be a language artifact. For example, French forms tend to
use "sexe" more often than "genre".

Anyway, the point remains: gender is more often used than sex.

Simon

---

From: Bernard Desruisseaux <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:22:49 -0400

Given that,

    http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardrev-13#section-6.2.10

    Purpose:  To specify the sex of the object the vCard represents,*as defined in [ISO.5218.2004  <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardrev-13#ref-ISO.5218.2004>].*

and:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_5218

    /The standard specifies that its use may be referred to by the
    designator "SEX"./

I wouldn't rename this property.

Cheers,
Bernard

---

From: Joseph Smarr <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 10:23:27 -0700

And I'm even more against using the ISO values...as I've said repeatedly,
developers do come across raw data formats all the time, and seeing "sex: 0"
is totally opaque, whereas "gender: male" is totally obvious. This really
does matter for ease of adoption and ultimately compliance and interop. The
suggestion from PoCo was to use two reserved values "male" and "female" plus
letting people include an arbitrary string for alternative values. Tantek
has made a slightly more powerful-but-complex proposal that has a single M/F
char plus an arbitrary string. But both are much clearer than the numeric
ISO values. I can never remember whether it's 0-based or 1-based, which is
female vs male, etc. This will be a problem in practice, and achieves no
interop gains by "using an existing standard" IMO.

Thanks, js

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Simon Perreault <[email-masked]

---

From: Kevin Marks <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 11:02:28 -0700

I refer you back to Sarah's post + references:

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/vcarddav/current/msg01778.html

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Joseph Smarr <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Simon Perreault <
> [email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:07:19 -0400

Thanks. This post starts with the following:

> 1) You probably mean Gender, not Sex.
> 
> For the purpose of address books and social information, people are
> interested in presentation and social categorization -- not shapes of
> genitals and configuration of hormones at birth. [2]  We're talking
> about gender here.

I didn't sate this explicitly in my original reply, but here it is: no,
we're really talking about sex. The current draft contains the following:

6.2.10. SEX

   Purpose:  To specify the sex of the object the vCard represents, as
      defined in [ISO.5218.2004].

ISO 5218 is concerned with biological sex, not psychological gender.

Therefore this is not an argument for renaming SEX to GENDER. It's an
argument for changing the property's semantics.

Simon

---

From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:12:59 -0400

> argument for changing the property's semantics.

Oh, and just to be clear, I've already dedicated a slide to this
separate issue. So I'm not ignoring it. It will be discussed.

Simon

---

From: Mike Douglass <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:06:54 -0400

It seems that the definitions of SEX and GENDER are quite clear.

The question - which I'm not sure anybody has addressed is - what's the 
intent of the property?

If it's to define the individuals actual sex then SEX.

If it's for them to express their gender then GENDER

Or maybe we can just allow both and point people at the definitions...

On 11/02/2010 02:02 PM, Kevin Marks wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Joseph Smarr <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>     And I'm even more against using the ISO values...as I've said
>     repeatedly, developers do come across raw data formats all the
>     time, and seeing "sex: 0" is totally opaque, whereas "gender:
>     male" is totally obvious. This really does matter for ease of
>     adoption and ultimately compliance and interop. The suggestion
>     from PoCo was to use two reserved values "male" and "female" plus
>     letting people include an arbitrary string for alternative values.
>     Tantek has made a slightly more powerful-but-complex proposal that
>     has a single M/F char plus an arbitrary string. But both are much
>     clearer than the numeric ISO values. I can never remember whether
>     it's 0-based or 1-based, which is female vs male, etc. This will
>     be a problem in practice, and achieves no interop gains by "using
>     an existing standard" IMO.
>
>     Thanks, js
>
>
>     On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Simon Perreault
>     <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>>
>     wrote:
>
>         [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
>     [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>

---

From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:32:46 -0400

> If it's for them to express their gender then GENDER

Currently, it's the former. This is made clear by referring to the ISO
standard:

> Or maybe we can just allow both and point people at the definitions...

The problem is we have no definition for gender. For sex it's easy: we
point to the ISO standard. For gender, it's complicated (see Sarah's post).

Simon

---

From: Sarah Dopp <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 12:47:56 -0700

Glad to see this conversation has resurfaced.

> point to the ISO standard. For gender, it's complicated (see Sarah's
post).

Please also see the part of my post regarding the complexity of Sex:

With Sex as a category, you need to consider people with intersex conditions
> [3], as well as those who have undergone Sexual Reassignment Surgery [4] and
> Hormone Replacement Therapy [5].  For many of these people, to choose Male
> or Female on a form is to lie about half of their bodies.
>
> The bottom line: For someone who claims a gender or sex less clear-cut than
> Male or Female, "not known" is offensively inaccurate, and "not applicable"
> is offensively dismissive.
>

I support Tantek's two-component proposal:

Sex component: The value M stands for "male", F stands for "female", O
stands for "other", N stands for "none or not applicable".

Gender identity component: a single text value.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/VCard4#section_6.2.10._SEX

~Sarah

-- 
Sarah Dopp
site: http://sarahdopp.com   /   blog: http://doppjuice.com   /   tweet:
http://twitter.com/sarahdopp
art: http://genderfork.com   /   show: http://queeropenmic.com   /   love:
http://cultureconductor.com

---

From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:43:48 -0400

> https://wiki.mozilla.org/VCard4#section_6.2.10._SEX

Thanks. This proposal will be discussed during next week's working group
meeting.

Simon

---

From: Renato Iannella <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2010 14:09:29 +1000

FYI:

OASIS CIQ [1] uses "gender" but only recommends "Example: Male, female, etc" (the xml element is just a text field)
 
FOAF uses "gender" [2]

OMA Converged Address Book (CAB) uses "gender":
  1)       “0” indicates “not known”.
 2)       “1” indicates “male”
 3)       “2” indicates “female”.
 4)       “3” indicates “other”.
 5)       “9” indicates “not applicable”

Cheers

Renato Iannella
http://renato.iannella.it

[1] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ciq/download.html
[2] http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_gender

---

From: Kevin Marks <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 22:03:03 -0700

Portable Contacts has:

gender:The gender of this contact. Service Providers SHOULD return one of
the following Canonical Values, if appropriate: male, female, orundisclosed,
and MAY return a different value if it is not covered by one of these
Canonical Values.
http://portablecontacts.net/draft-spec.html#anchor16

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 9:09 PM, Renato Iannella <[email-masked]> wrote:

> FYI:
>
> OASIS CIQ [1] uses "gender" but only recommends "Example: Male, female,
> etc" (the xml element is just a text field)
>
> FOAF uses "gender" [2]
>