TBH, the vast (VAST!) majority of services where I've filled out a form online don't actually need to know my gender for anything useful related to their service. I just assume every place that asks for it is selling the data someplace, or using it for their shitty recommendations engine.

"Cargo cult" data collection.

Yes, the advertisers definitely want to know your gender to use it for targetting.

I worked for a while on a dating app (that was never released). It had over a dozen gender options and allowed selecting more than one gender. In the case of a dating app allowing multiple genders wasn't just about inclusivity, it was also practical - a non-binary person might want to also be classified as male or female for the purposes of a dating app, for example.

But in any case, it's the context that matters. Most of the time you don't need to know a person's gender so just don't ask. Many other times gender is just a proxy for something else, such as a person's title. It's better to just ask for their title than their gender.

About 99% of gender dropdowns are there for marketing purposes and serve no other purpose. If it's for medical purpose, then your gender doesn't even matter, as the doctor at most needs to know what sexy bits you were born with and if you take any medication.

Your doctor does need to know your gender as well as your sex, especially your GP. It's part of your behavior and mental health, which is also their remit.

I would only prompt someone for their gender when it's really necessary, and then use the reasoning for that necessity to form the prompt. For instance, how we ask someone to selecting a character trait in a video game should probably differ from how we ask them a similar question on a medical form. Gender can surprisingly tricky, and I don't believe there's a good "one size fits all" approach to this question.

I remember reading an article about 10 years ago how do it right. I don't know if it is still up to date. But they suggested: Man, Woman, Other, "Do not want to specify".

There might be some exceptions, like an airline won't accept a non-binary gender because of safety (weight distribution estimation). For a dating site it might make sense to allow anything.

Even the airline case can be handled with an exception - if "other or unspecified or not asked, assume whatever would be the maximum".

Or just ask people their weights if that’s what you really need to know.

The average American is already way over the "flight weight" - see https://unitedafa.org/news/2021/6/10/heavier-passengers-on-p...

Some planes have weighing systems built into the landing gear but most passenger flights are WAY under max weight (Airbus can tell the pilots if the weight/balance once underway doesn't match what the computer was told).

you're almost bang on here, but don't forget "prefer not to say"! Also you only need that text box if you actually GAF (which many do but half the time you'll throw it away), otherwise some poor data-cruncher is gong to be filtering out 100 "attack helicopters" and fifty misspellings of "womnan"

Honestly, the correct answer is that in the vast majority of cases, there was no good reason to ask any gender question in the first place. People should think about /why/ they're asking this. Even in the rare cases where there's a perceived need, it's likely a more-specific and functional question would be better. Dating sites are probably the biggest exception where I can imagine there's a legitimate need for putting a lot of thought into true gender+preferences questions.

The only counterpoint that I can think of is that sex is public information.

If the form's request for sex is salient IRL, and the form-filer's sex will be apparent anyway, I don't think refusing or having an expectation of privacy about one's sex is reasonable.

This is not the case for most things, but I do think it goes beyond dating.

It depends on the purpose you are asking for their gender. If there's no purpose to guide what the options are, why ask?

This is the correct answer. There is no one answer that works for every use case. Asking this on a clothing website is much different than on a dating website which is much different than asking it at a doctors office.

> Some of these are pretty funny, but is there really a "right" way to prompt someone for their gender?

Like a salesperson asking for my email address: why do you need to know; what is this information used for?

Optimal gender selector: slot machine game with only one pull. Your pronouns are... cherry, apple, seven. Nice.

The UK government’s guidelines basically boil down to “don’t, but if you have to, alphabetical ordering”: https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/gender-or-sex/

Based on how you use that data imo, otherwise give it a textbox, or a drawing canvas

For marketing, it should have whatever the marketing/dataminers want to know about your purchasing preferences.

Male, female. Then "Don't specify". If you're datamining or have specific products for specific nonbinary consumers, add that.

For science and health, be as specific as required or ask for biological sex and demand "male" or "female" as appropriate.

(IMO).

I think a pretty tactful way to put it is "male | female | NULL", and I'm only half joking.

Many people prefer not to say for whatever reason, and people identifying as anything other than male or female aren't going to be a statistically significant minority for whatever data collection purpose you have.

Go for

    0. Not known
    1. Male
    2. Female
    9. N/A

Why? It's an international standard: ISO 5218.

And it suits everyone.

Well, my choices are Not Known (which is false) or N/A (which is also false). As a nonbinary person, I generally don't feel included by that form?

N/A is the non-binary answer (neither M nor F). Could be worded otherwise, "Non-binary or Not Applicable".

Not Known is for when no answer is given. This option shouldn't be presented to the user, but is for the case where the field is optional.

I would associate N/A more with agender (someone who has no gender) more than someone who has a gender but it is not listed. For me, my gender is applicable, it's just not in that list.

"Not Listed" might be a better title for N/A?

Edit: Just saw your edit, makes more sense. Still feels a little on the edge for me, but we're all going to have different needs out of something like this.

I was commenting mostly in jest anyway.

The purpose of the standard is to give a numeric code which is language agnostic, for internationalization of forms and software.

Adding other genders isn't really applicable, since there's no common meaning or terminology across languages. M and F are universally recognized because they're grounded in reality: Every language in the world has a term for them.

A very very very extremely minor adjustment might be to rename "other" to "not listed".

The reasoning is that the word "other" can be alienating to some folks. The way we use the phrase "the other" to imply something foreign and untrustworthy in common language is a good example of why someone might not want to be called "other" in a form.

Now, this is a really minor thing, and won't impact 99.9+% of your users. But it could impact a few people! It's ultimately up to you whether you think it's clearer/more appropriate for your app to use "other", "not listed", or something else! My goal is not to be prescriptive, just to provide a little color and reasoning.