Our perception of gender

[Vimala]

What if somebody doesn’t want to be put into a certain box? There are many people on this forum who are completely anonymous, with a name that is neither male nor female nor anything else. We still get a perception in our head from the way they write that they are one or the other. Gender is a spectrum and personally I feel that putting labels on people is not helpful.

I just want to refer back to some earlier discussions and this article here:
https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943

Sex determination at time of ordination

In a world where “gender non binary” becomes more and more prevalent, we still try to put people in gender-boxes. And that is exactly the kind of thing that reinforces this whole mess of gender-bias; as long as we keep looking at ourselves as belonging to a certain group and others as belonging to another group. And more and more people find out that they don’t actually fit in one group or another. I feel that as monastics we are all human beings and we all belong to the same family that is San…

@Brenna

As one of the people who helped implement the ‘gender identification’ feature

I also remember that the person who was the reason for this discussion said that (s)he would prefer to be just referred to as “human”. And this person never completed the “gender identification” field.