I’ve gotten a few emails and /msgs about this so I really wanted to post a clarification.
When I put the color survey together, I was mostly interested in making maps and tables of color names; the opening survey was almost an afterthought. Finn added a question about chromosomal sex, since it’s closely correlated with colorblindness (Finn is one of the rare people with two faulty X chromosomes for color vision).
We debated for a long time to find a wording of the question that would be answerable unambiguously by everyone, regardless of gender identification or any other issues. In response to a friend who was suggesting we were overcomplicating things, Finn said, “I *refuse* to word the question in a way that doesn’t have a good, clear answer available for transsexuals, intersex people, and people who already know they have chromosomal anomalies.” I felt the same way, and at the same time I didn’t want to assume everyone remembers what the hell chromosomes are. After hours of debate, everyone was happy with this:
Do you have a Y chromosome?
Don’t Know Yes No If unsure, select “Yes” if you are physically male and “No” if you are physically female. If you have had SRS, please respond for your sex at birth. This question is relevant to the genetics of colorblindness.
We didn’t add a question about gender identification, in part because I wasn’t really planning to do anything with the survey data beyond basic calibration and didn’t want to hassle people with more questions, and in part because gender is really complicated. We recently programmed Bucket, the IRC chat bot in #xkcd, to allow people set their gender so he can use pronouns for them. This ended up taking hundreds of lines of code, three pages of documentation, and six different sets of pronouns and variables, just to cover all the basic ways people in the channel with different gender identifications wanted to be referred to (even without invented pronouns like “xe”, which we vetoed). And that’s just to cover the pronouns. The role of gender in society is the most complicated thing I’ve ever spent a lot of time learning about, and I’ve spent a lot of time learning about quantum mechanics.
So when I wrote the survey, I really didn’t have anything in mind for the data. After it went up, I saw the DoghouseDiaries comic, and immediately wanted to investigate. I was really amazed by the results, particularly the top-five list of colors, which came as a complete surprise. Everyone agreed it was the most interesting of my results (at some point, my friends were sick of hearing me talk about hues and saturations) and I couldn’t resist publishing it somehow.
Originally, my post had a big wall of text discussing how all I had was chromosomal data, and that what the comic talked about was gender identification. I rewrote this post a bunch of times, and ended up with roughly the wording that’s there now:
[…] realized I could test it (as far as chromosomal sex goes, anyway, which we asked about because it’s tied to colorblindness).
I didn’t want to spend a long time boring people about sex and gender (I’ll talk forever if you let me), but I also wanted to clarify that this was something I cared about and was trying to pay proper attention to. I ran it by some friends before posting, and they approved; one specifically thanked me for adding that note. So I figured I’d found a good balance.
But a number of people were still offended or upset by my use of the chromosomal data in a conversation about gender. Now, there are always going to be people upset about anything; as Ford Prefect said, “Fuck ’em. You can’t care about every damn thing.” But this is an issue I really do care about, and one I spend a lot of time trying to get right—and I genuinely appreciate the guidance. If people were offended or feel I didn’t handle this right, I’m sorry, and it’s my fault. But it wasn’t for lack of caring.
And to anyone writing software that handles gender or sex information, it’s a good reminder that these questions are not always straightforward for everyone, and a little courtesy can do a lot to make someone feel respected.
xkcd 
Having worked in the design industry for 10 years (and a long time follower of this strip) – the ‘color’ survey R.M has done is truly a huge and VERY detailed amount of work. Of course, all types cannot be accommodated when results are based on averages and/or extremes. (I also saw that the girl-boy stereotyping of ‘naming’ colors was more the work of Doghouse Diaries – and not xkcd, as that had been a surprise since one of the reasons I liked this comic to begin with was because amongst other things, it really projected a very positive representation of the uniqueness of ‘geek-girls’ who really are a minority in the world.)
I had a fascinating talk on this survey with a friend of mine who works at Harvard neuroscience – and we started concluding that the ‘naming’ of colors (and the differences you find amidst the way men and women name) is quite different than actual ‘perception’. And this has to do more with brain wiring and the LANGUAGE-expression vs. hue-saturation PERCEPTION. So while a man (and women with male-aspie-type-brains like myself) DO see the shade difference, we don’t use the effeminate adjectives like ‘blush’, ‘dusty’ etc. to name the shade. We’ll just put them under a ‘red category.’ Similarly women (the more girly types) and gay men – and I do have many dear gay designer friends – will be more creative in the NAMING of the colors – even though the latter have a Y chromosome- although both the more systematizing men and women AND the more verbalizing men and women might or might not be seeing equal variations of the shades and hues. Hence language and hue perception cannot be measured on the same barometer as true color ‘recognition.’
Since the paint industry is a HUGE one, I wondered what would happen if a similar laborious and exhaustive survey is done in the design and construction industry…..since I’ve seen more women to be ‘sensitive’ to color with their moods. (Or who knows – they might be women with mood swings.) The way that works I find amongst architects and interior designers is :when we choose a color – we generalize the shade when we name it but are completely anal about the NUMBER that each paint company designates for a shade and specify it on our drawings. Then I realized that’s exactly what I do too due to my abnormal brain systematization. I like naming colors by their number rather than inventing girly adjectives.
In the architectural world too we all say that we’ll give the numbers to the painting contractor and the flowery names to the lady of the house/ museum curator et al. That’s how we reach a middle ground and everyone is happy. A painting contractor and/or site engineer will understand BM06754 much better than ‘morning pink’ (as a hypothetical example) Or – as in the survey R.M has placed the RGB values under the shades.
Conclusion: At the end numbers and not ‘words’ turn out to be the most accurate description. Regardless of sex or gender-based perception of color. Or color blindness. (Because believe it or not, there are a few color-blind architects too.) And numbering comes out as the objective resolution. When a client’s wife argues that was not the shade she wanted, we say – but m’am you did pick up BM 03356 and that’s what we gave you 😉 And if the complaints continue – we politely do Rhet Butler’s closing line. A more polite version of ‘fuck ’em’ I guess! You can’t please all the people all the time, as they say….
Keep up the good work, kid.
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Issues surrounding gender in society seem largely irrelevant to me. Certainly they’re relevant to the <1% of people who struggle to define their gender, but compare it to other serious social issues.
A billion people worldwide lack access to clean water. At least a billion people live under repressive, undemocratic regimes. In the US, there is subtle structural discrimination that effects most of the population in one form or another.
Gender identity just seems like a self-indulgent diversion to me. If it interests you, great, but don't give yourself a headache over it.
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@ Ari – couldn’t agree more. My work (and life ) has taken me to many parts of the world where just daily living is a struggle, and the atrocities towards women faced there cannot even be compared to what is termed as ‘discrimination’ here.
This of course was a geek-oriented survey – a fun diversion – and when I did point out to a friend who works for Architects without Borders – that these arguments should be on bigger issues – he said, yeah but this is the escapsim and humour that helps us when we deal with those real issues…so it’s necessary too.
I had written in my own blog once that : “We all have the right to feel sad at times, but we do not have the right to feel ungrateful. For there are different degrees, types and intensities of pain and anyone who has taken the time to educate herself on global problems will know that such horrible acts of injustice, misogyny and abuse go on towards women in many parts of the world that the damsels born in wealthier and more democratic countries should thank their lucky stars that they live here. Really. You cannot compare your ‘victim-hood’ of a non-matching purse-with-shoes to the rape and poverty that goes on in some very real places in the world.”
I have to confess though that the women who are often out there on the field DOING something (like the ones I met who were working to make a humanitarian difference), or even women with hyper-smart technical/scientific/design brains are often not quite the ‘girly-girls’ obsessing about blush pinks and dusky browns. Perhaps a little ‘maleness’ in women’s brains isn’t too bad, i.e. an inability to name the shades of colors poetically. I think it’s not about X or Y – at the end it comes down to how secure you feel about yourself male, female and everything else and how well you can handle slights and criticism. And I can say that as geeky girls we are anyway so used to being left out since school days, it doesn’t make a difference anymore…. Perhaps that’s why we can think more of other people who get left out in the world.
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I’m with Ford Prefect on this one. You put in a lot of effort – the people who are still offended are more worried about being offended than they are their gender identification. At some point it’s _them_ and not you.
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Wow “another anon”, you said exactly what I said, but a million times better. I love it when people agree with me.
@Ari. My god, I never even thought of it from that perspective.
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I’m pretty much cisgendered and don’t usually read the comments, so didn’t notice the issue until you posted about it… and, well, you probably don’t usually read comments either, considering the sheer volume of them, but — thank you for caring.
@Ari: Don’t minimalize. Plenty of things are unimportant when compared to life-and-death issues. Lack of higher education pales in comparison to war and famine. And even totalitarianism and oppression would pale in comparison to, say, the potential extinction of the human race. How does respecting others’ gender identities in any way hinder democratization efforts? How does it in any way exacerbate discrimination?
The cultivation of an attitude of respect is something that carries over to other aspects of life as well. Laws and their enforcement are only a surface solution; the true battle is to change people’s ways of thinking.
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Hey hey hey!
Randall is gay!
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It was nice that you were specific about what exactly you wanted to know and why you wanted to know it. (I say this as a transgender person who can be extremely picky about terminology when I want to be.)
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The wording could also be “Do you have at least one Y chromosome?” or “Has your development been guided by testosterone your testes have produced?” The second being better as ‘female’ is effectively the default setting.
Or perhaps “Do you have only one X chromosome?” would be preferable on the basis of why you’re asking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XXY
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I’m transspecies myself…
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Ari, GG –
You’ve both commented that gender is an issue of minor importance compared with things like minimal standards of living, wide-scale repression and discrimination. However, as GG alluded to, in many cases and places, repression and discrimination are inextricably tied to issues of gender. The fact that gender-based discrimination in this nation (the U.S., that is) is, for the most part, much less life-threatening than in some other places does not negate the role gender plays in our society or any other. If we want to combat inequality and injustice, we must first understand the social forces that create and maintain an environment where they can thrive. In some cases, such as that of misogyny, gender plays an obvious role in the injustice; in others, it’s less clear what part gender may play. In any case, however, it is short-sighted to dismiss it utterly.
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First, awesome comments from everyone. Shockingly intelligent and respectful conversation all around.
Misogyny is a key theme worldwide and inextricably tied to tremendous suffering. What I view as less significant are debates over what pronoun to use for the 50,000 people who were born male, had a sex change to female, and now consider themselves asexual. It’s similar to the distinction between trying to eradicate tangible racism and spilling tremendous ink over whether it’s racist for the census form to include the word negro. In other words, misogyny, racism, and intolerance are real and should be fought. But let’s not lose sight of the big picture.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to fix minor injustices or explore interesting topics. After all, we’re all on the website of a webcomic. If gender is important to you, that’s great and no shame in exploring it fully. Randall made a fascinating survey and we all enjoyed it. My point was just that we shouldn’t take the wording of the gender question too seriously. The survey should be fun. If it’s not fun because of sensitivity to subtle gender issues, we’re making a mistake, because there are more serious things to be upset about.
In other words, save your outrage for things that deserve it.
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I especially enjoy the mention in GG’s post about paint colors. For about 30 years now I have endeavored to paint all my frames the same shade of fairly neutral, value 5 “beige” (no Y chromosome.) Throughout that time the color has been named “goat”, “mushroom”, “cement” and “mochaccino”.
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Thanks Carol. I’ve been a long time xkcd fan – but being a math-brained-woman in the design industry for so long I did find the color topic fascinating…but when it comes to well, X and Y chromosomes (not from any genetics-based gender perspective, but more from the ‘male-female’ color naming perspective) trust me – if this survey had been done by 50,000 gay designer men (XY) and 50,000 technical-brained-geek-girls (XX), the results might have been quite something different! And a result that would have put the DD cartoon to shame.
As I wrote earlier, language-expression vs. actual-visual-perception (or) hue-recognition vs. hue-naming are two different things.
I’m with you on the beige thing 😉 We say it’s the paint companies’ marketing strategies to keep things ‘fresh’. And from what I’ve seen in that industry – they leave the ‘naming’ to more ‘expressive’ girls and gay men. My site engineer (and my woman architect friend) calls a shade ‘pukey green’ which the female real estate marketing lady might term as ‘misty forest rain.’
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I wouldn’t have thought there was this much thought in the wording of the chromosomal gender question. I thought it was simply a little wink in direction of all genetics buffs, and when I think about it, I wish it were. We shouldn’t have to think that much about gender…
To quote one of my favorite comics:
“can we, as a species, move on now please?”
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Took me a while to realise you meant the other, non-fictional Ford Prefect
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I started reading about differences between chromossomal sex, gender and sexuality just today, so yeah. I have not much to add to the discussion going on, which was a quite pleasant read too. Man, discussions are so more satisfying than lectures!
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I study genetics, and if the survey were done again, I would recommend adding one more question for genetic women: if their fathers are colorblind. If a woman’s father is colorblind, she must have only one copy of the appropriate photoreceptor gene, and I would imagine is more likely to answer the color questions like a genetic man might.
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Hiya–me again, the person who wrote the UI for the color survey. I was just checking in on new comments here and noted a couple of points that seem to still be unclear.
To the several people who noticed that what the survey actually cared about was X chromosomes, not Y chromosomes: you’re absolutely correct! But as ridiculous as it seems, I think we got more accurate data by asking the wrong question. Here’s why:
For a person to be XXY and appear to be XY is surprisingly common, and can occur with few or no symptoms–i.e. most people in that situation aren’t aware of it. It’s much more rare to have a Y chromosome without knowing it, because you’ll usually end up with e.g. a penis. Therefore, I chose to use the data which is most likely to be accurate when gotten by casual polling–the presence or absence of a Y chromosome–with the understanding that Randall could estimate statistically how many Y-chromosome-bearers were likely to have more than one X chromosome, and how many respondants who lacked a Y chromosome were likely to have more than two. Asking about X chromosomes directly would have gotten more inaccurate responses, which would have been less useful for an analogous statistical analysis.
This idea was touched on by another commenter, who pointed out that the same technique could be used for estimating the frequency of response by trans and genderqueer people. That’s true, of course, but my understanding is that the statistics for that are less consistent and reliable than for chromosomal anomalies.
However, if we’d been intending to collect data on gender identification in the first place, we would have done so explicitly. As Randall mentions, the idea didn’t come up until the other comic posted its ideas about gender and color. Lacking the data to analyze the survey results vis a vis gender, he substituted data which has a strong, but far from 100%, correlation with gender–and acknowledged that fact, but not as clearly as was possible.
One could combine his results, statistics on chromosomal anomalies, and statistics on gender/sex correlation to get an estimate of the real gender/color correlation. Actually … one could make a tool which used the chromosome and gender statistics and let you plug ANY sex or chromosome-based data in to get a more accurate picture of the results. Hmm …
Anyway.
To those who are wondering why people care about gender identity when there are still starvation and genocide in the world:
It’s a good point; I had to stop and think a little before figuring out why it rings false for me. I care a lot about this issue (obviously, I hope), but even I don’t think it’s more important than access to food and shelter and clean water. But those things being worse doesn’t make this one any better. That a person in one place is dying does not justify treating a person somewhere else without respect, any more than having had a bad day justifies being rude to the waiter.
No way I could possibly have worded the survey questions would have lessened the threats to human rights, life, and safety all over the world. But I could still choose to word it in a way that would make some people happy, and set a good example. Almost everyone reading this has the luxury of assuming they’ll have food, shelter, and water in the foreseeable future; in a society so privileged, we have plenty of emotional energy left over to spend. It costs so little to be kind, and does no harm. I refuse to let greater problems justify indifference towards lesser ones.
Finally, I know that some people–perhaps those more honest with themselves than those who made the above argument–really just don’t understand why anyone cares so much about this. I’m afraid I don’t know how to convince someone of it who’s never had the experience of being treated like they didn’t exist. Being told you don’t matter or aren’t human, even subconsciously, does bad things to a person. Specific numbers vary, but the suicide rate among transpeople is in the ballpark of ten times as high as that of the general population.
If you genuinely want to understand, find some stories about the everyday frustrations of trans life. I bet there are good blogs about it. It’s really easy not to see all the little ways our society is built to exclude people who don’t fit easily into the gender binary when you do fit, but if you make a conscious effort to take the blinders off you’ll notice it everywhere. (That’s why it was so important to me to choose not to perpetuate it, even in such a little way.)
If you honestly don’t care–and that’s your right–please at least consider choosing behaviors that don’t make other people unhappy. It’s not that hard, and it only does good.
Phew, that came out longer than I expected. Sorry ’bout that. I may check comments in here again, but don’t count on it; if you have a response you’d like me to see, please email or use some other form of contact info listed on chiliahedron.com.
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As a transgender friend of mine once said:
“anyone who whines at you for not respecting their personal gender choice is basically going to find a reason to whine at some point anyway, so I just let them get on with it. They aren’t doing much for the gender stereotypes themselves”
People *do* get hung up on gender for some reason; I’ve never understood it. This isn’t about the fact there are people dying elsewhere (that’s a poor comparison). It’s about there being 2^8 (:)) more interesting and important things for someone to worry about than what gender people view them as.
Obviously being treated poorly as a result of gender choice is a different issue; but the issue there is nothing to do with gender itself, it’s about people being idiotic and is a general problem across race, sexual preference, gender and more (I had hell at school for being geeky).
But if the complaint is there not being a particular checkbox on a web page to cover your gender – that feels a little disingenuous (i.e. finding discrimination where there is none)
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I just want to say that I thought the way the question was phrased was perfect, made sense and was sympathetic to people outside of gender norms while still able to get the relevant biological data. I think the only reason people would be upset by it is if they don’t understand the connection with colorblindness and chromosomes, or don’t understand why the question was phrased that way. But if you put a simple M/F, you’d get inaccurate data chromosome-wise and irritate some people.
I think the worst attempt I’ve seen to be inclusive was “M/F/T,” for male/female/transgendered. That shows a major lack of understanding of what ‘transgender’ means. It’s not a third option. Male/Female/Other is a definite improvement (trans could be included as a separate checkbox if it’s relevant). Although I think that’s prone to abuse by people who just think it’d be funny to check “Other.”
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Ari,
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I love polite discourse!
I think Elizabeth expressed my one aspect of my point of view very well viz. dealing with “minor” expressions of injustice when we come across them. Certainly immediate physical threat, under any guise, is more pressing than potential emotional or intellectual harm; but if we have the opportunity to correct or avoid less blatant expressions of injustice, it is to the good of all to do so. However, I also agree with you that a sense of proportion – and, ideally, a sense of humor! – is vital in creating any productive discussion.
In this particular case, I will do my best to explain why, to me, the issue of (for example) pronoun choice should merit attention, even in relation to issues where (for example) actual bodily harm is a threat. You’ve said that we should not lose sight of the big picture. This is exactly why I feel it important to include all aspects of any given issue. As I come from a sociological perspective, I understand that social change is extremely challenging, and slow, to achieve. One of the reasons is that for any given behavioral norm (e.g. the categorizing of people according to gender), there are many cultural supports, some obvious (segregated bathrooms), some more subtle (jobs primarily performed by men paying more than those primarily performed by women). When we wish to change one aspect of the norm – pay inequality for example – it is useful, nay, necessary to understand the social forces that support that norm. If the full support structure is not taken into account, an attempt to change a single aspect of a society is almost certainly doomed to fail, because societies tend to maintain their existing structures. It is a frustrating truism about social change that it cannot be accomplished incrementally – that in order to achieve lasting results, everything must be changed at the same time, or what is done in one area will tend to be counteracted in another area (e.g. bringing women into higher-paying fields in large numbers will result in those fields becoming lower-status and lower-pay). At the same time, of course, such wholesale change is a practical impossibility; incremental change is the only realistic option. Because of this, an organic approach – one that considers as many aspects as possible of a particular problem and works on it from as many angles as possible – is most likely to produce (eventual) results. For this reason, while I will save my outrage for the truly outrageous, I will also spend time and energy on being an instrument for change in less obvious ways and areas.
Although this is not an area in which you have stated an especial interest, I must mention here the book [i]Paradoxes of Gender[/i] by Judith Lorber. Not only is it a fascinating study of gender in U.S. society, it is the source (through its citation of various studies) for my examples of workforce inequality above, and for much of my understanding of and perspective on gender issues.
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Oh, bother, HTML fail on my part – sorry. Paradoxes of Gender, that is.
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“Oppression Olympics” is not helpful. Specifically, you are participating in the behavior that trans* people are complaining about: erasure. It isn’t that having two boxes (and worse, making them mandatory) is “discrimination”, it is that it asserts that there are two choices. That’s not even true in all cultures today, much less historically. What Randy did is excellent: clarify why the information is relevant, ask for relevant information and when he used that information in ways that weren’t originally foreseen he included a disclaimer about the inaccuracy of the classification tool he used.
This isn’t simply an issue of the privileged, even though it may be that the technical audience here has privilege. Trans* people exist around the world, in many cultures, and all those other issues you named are experienced by trans* people, plus additional oppression because they are trans*. This is the concept of “intersectionality”, and it is incredibly important. Even limiting it to the US, trans* people are more likely than the general public to experience violence, to be unemployed and unable to find a job, to be homeless, to lack health care, to be unable to legally use a bathroom outside their house, to be murdered. Trans* issues are matters of life and death. If you think otherwise, your privilege is showing.
Not to mention that if you want to be horrified, genital mutilation of intersexed infants is still common practice, in this country, today. People who *don’t* force their children to conform to gendered behavior are accused of child abuse, up to and including having their children taken away by CPS. The American Pediatrics Society just issued recommendations that allowed infant girls to have their genitals “nicked” in the name of religion. These are not hypotheticals.
How do all these things tie in to one question on a form? Because when people assume that there are two boxes, and the only possible way to be is to have a doctor say which one you belong in, that’s it for life and any deviation from that is justification for violence, of course parents should be required to do everything in their power to force infants into one of those boxes at birth. By erasing the possibility of swapping boxes, falling outside the boxes or vast disparities within those boxes, each survey that includes only those two boxes denies the existence of real people living under discrimination.
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Hey, OP. I really appreciate this post. Thanks for taking the time, *and* taking the time to tell the internet about it in a straightforward, sensitive way.
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Thank you Meg, Magpye & Elizabeth for all the information and clarification.
@ Meg, Magpye – a lot of food for thought indeed. Thank you for taking the time to write about this. Really. Boy, I used to think that being a mix of 6 different races/ethnicities (and facing enough stereotypifications for each kind) and a geek-girl (who was often bullied in school) was feeling a bit ‘not-belonging-to-any-one-group’ enough, but reading on all the information of the very real discrimination faced by trans* people in our society is really touching and has made me ponder how it must feel for them to struggle daily with gender identity and to be left somewhere in a no-man’s-land even in this country where just because they are a ‘minority’ the discrimination and/or victimization they face are swept under as not being as important as other issues. That is really sad. I’d visited many war-zone countries through work and it was awful to see what was going on there, but I realize now that just because we are lucky to live/born here does not minimize the real sadness and problems that go on here too for the transpeople, who had no choice over their biological conditions – human suffering and psychological trauma and isolation occurs uniformly in all minds all over regardless of country. It must be even more awful to feel that society limits options to ‘belong’ even here – where it should not, due to relatively greater awareness and opportunties. And yet it does……That is truly sad.
Thank you for educating us. I used to think that facing sexism as a woman in the male-dominated construction industry was tough, but now I see that there is even greater discrimination in our society against those who are trans gender. And they have it even tougher. I’ll read up the book you suggested Magpye. Wow – this was a blog on X an Y and color, and humor, but it’s also turned into a very educative, enlightening and informative place which I hope will leave more readers sensitive and aware. And kinder.
It has defintiely given me a lot to think about. And learn about. And be sensitive about…..
And it all started with Randall’s color survey…
Thanks.
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Did you consider that the number of people without a clear male/female identity or who had had gender reassignment surgery would substantially effect the results?
Anyone unhappy with a male/female definition for themselves will be used to dealing with a world that works with only two genders, and offence occurs when something out of the ordinary does.
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Well, if you didn’t want to spend a long time boring people about sex and gender, EPIC fail 😉
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This was, bar none, the most understanding and respectful discussion I have seen on the internet, on any site, on any topic. That’s awesome. I also think it’s incredibly important that people who are not trans (at least, as far as I know) are thinking about this and caring about it. Just like racism isn’t just a “black issue” and misogyny isn’t just a “women’s issue,” queer-respect should be every one’s issue. Bigots will always be bigots, but there are plenty of good-hearted people out there who just don’t have information or just haven’t been presented with a trans-friendly view of the world. Those people will be lost to the cause if approached with anger and defensiveness, which is why this kind of level-headed, hyperbole-free, discussion is the best thing for everyone.
For what it’s worth, the color survey was cool, but the conversation it sparked is cooler.
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@ Mr. Randall Monroe:
I hope that your comment about some people actually being *offended* by your efforts to be both as scientifically rigorous and egalitarian towards your subjects as possible is another one of your jokes.
If someone out there doesn’t know that sex chromosomes affect color perception (and didn’t even bother to check up on it on Wikipedia or something before shooting off their mouth), then they should avoid the show “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader” and reproduction.
If someone out there doesn’t think that any half-way serious survey shouldn’t try to account for variations in human gender and gender perception, then they should avoid voting in the next presidential election, attempting to work for the US Census Bureau, and playing the lottery.
In either (or both) case(s), such a person doesn’t deserve to have you acknowledge their “opinion,” let alone to receive an apology from you. You should do to their “opinion” the exact same thing you did with the “opinion” of that person who decided to answer a “racial slur” as the name of every color they were asked to name in this survey – strike it from your set of valid results, Mr. Monroe.
Then, after that, keep doing what you’re doing. As a biologist, I love your webcomic because ofits attention to real science, and that shouldn’t change because of an “opinion” that in my book is less significant than a non-significant figure.
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Maybe I’m being a total jerk here, or missing the point, but I dont think gender identification has anything to do with colorblindness. If I identified more with the male gender role than I did with the female (my current gender), how would that make me more or less colorblind? Its obvious to me that Randall went out of his way to be inclusive/non-offensive. Its sad the amount of people out there who seem to want to be offended.
(Also, in reading the comments Im seeing a lot of discussion about chromosomes and not just identification. I dont know what the emails said though, and that is mostly what Im responding to.)
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This is about an older strip – http://xkcd.com/657/ But also do a timeline for LOST.
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I noticed the succinctness, relevance, and implicit acknowledgement of the text in both survey and results. I have to say that I think the way it was worded in both cases is more or less how I would see a gender-expression-aware world: you would ask for what you meant, and beyond that, it would be No Big Deal.
And for that, you are awesome.
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GG,
Thank you for taking the time to read and ponder our comments, and for your thoughtful responses. I agree with Kate – this is the single most respectful, productive discussion I have ever seen online – and I make a point of engaging in discussions almost exclusively in communities that place a strong value on respectful dialogue. Randall’s readers obviously are a special group. Thank you for your part in this discussion. I hope you find the book interesting!
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@Tiffaney: It’s not about identity, or inclusion, or offence. People who posses a Y-chromosome are significantly more likely to be colour-blind. We’re talking biology, not anthropology.
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As a guy, I was recently wondering how you could find better names for colours after talking to my 2yr old daughter. I was showing her: this is blue and that is blue – when one was a light blue and one was dark and they were both clearly different. I’m not concerned about the gender angle and more interested in how I could improve my colour vocabulary. Thanks.
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It makes me really sad whenever someone describes other people as seeming to “want to be offended.” Clearly, you “want” to misunderstand them and perpetuate conflict. That’s the effect, so it must have been your goal, right?
Writing off other peoples’ actions (or in this case, reactions) as illogical is intellectually lazy, in that it’s easier than genuinely trying to understand. Everyone acts in ways which follow logically from what they believe, observe, and interpret; working from that premise, you can backtrack from someone else’s seemingly-illogical behavior and infer what those beliefs, observations, and (especially) interpretations could have been in order to lead logically to that result. Suddenly they won’t seem so crazy; you’ll be able to see the difference which causes your disagreement, and likely some common ground as well. From there, you can actually do something useful about the problem, rather than just flaunting your ignorance of it.
Incidentally, I have pretty much the same beef with people who like to point out that “most people are idiots” (except, presumably, them, and people who think so much like them that to understand them isn’t too much trouble).
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I’m a giraffe.
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Randall & Elizabeth, my sincere thanks.
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John: the Ford Prefect quote is from “Mostly Harmless”
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So, you had really good rationale for asking for chromosomes rather than gender. It was well thought out and reasonable.
But then in your survey reports graphs, you said “if you’re a girl” and “if you’re a guy.” Essentially incorrectly labeling every gender variant person who, in good faith, gave out their chromosome data (which can be a very sensitive subject for many of us). You labeled every man with out a Y chromosome a “girl.” You labeled every woman with a Y chromosome a “guy.” And you misgendered every non-binary person.
This is really offensive. I’m disappointed. Really disappointed.
P.S. Anyone who doesn’t think gender identity is important: Just because you don’t think a problem is significant doesn’t make it insignificant to others who have to live with it every single day. No one wins the Oppression Olympics.
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thanks for caring about this issue Randall, and for knowing a lot about it. it’s not easy to get it right and impossible to please everyone.
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Having not read all those comments (just a few), I’m sorry if this has already been said.
When programming Bucket (the IRC bot), why all that effort for the gender pronouns? Wouldn’t it be easier to ask the user when signing up for the pronoun they want to be referred to? No need to create any script that tells the correct pronoun when you can just ask the user what they prefer, isn’t it?
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I think that we oughta respect transexuals’ ability to differentiate “gender” as a social construct and “gender” as a less-malleable biological reality. I thought that the viewpoint of the question was fine and patently inoffensive, though we are beating around the bush a little if we think somebody’s going to refuse to answer a question out of offense at its lack of sexual subtlety.
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@foracoffee: Because there are /sets/ of pronouns, that apply in certain conditions, and you want to use a matching set. 🙂
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The Western view that Gender is essentially socially constructed is not entirely true. The west may actually learn something from the indigenous societies in this respect, as well as acknowledge their point of view.
When the west talks about Gender, it only talks about ‘gender roles’ which are socially constructed. And it defines gender as such. But it fails to consider the ‘gender orientation’ of individuals, which are also biologially determined, just like our ‘sex.’ It is our ‘gender orientation’ which drives us to adopt the gender roles of either men, women or the third gender (a gender that the west doesn’t recognize biologically, since it only considers gender to be socially constructed.)
It’s completely possible, normal and healthy for an individual born with male sex to have a female ‘gender orientation.’ The male then would not relate with the ‘man’ gender identity, and (s)he then starts to look for ‘separate’ identities from men. Since, his/her sex is not ‘female’ he can’t be a woman too. A third gender identity is perfectly biologically viable.
Also, just because a person adopts a role or behaviour that is considered specific to one gender, doesn’t mean that the person identifies with that gender. Eg, if a boy sometimes plays with dolls, it doesn’t necessarily signify that he feels ‘female.’ Afterall, GI Joes can be seen as male forms of ‘dolls.’ What we should be looking for is ‘gender orientation’ rather than socially constructed ‘gender roles.’
In other words, gender roles don’t really represent one’s gender identity, and therefore, gender roles cannot be identified as the origin of gender identity. Rather its the other way round.
Western science has failed to establish the biological basis of ‘gender’ (as different from sex) for the simple reason that it doesn’t even study ‘gender’ biologically. It doesn’t even want to consider the biological validity of gender as a theory, because of the strong cultural negation of it in the West.
However, a close study of the concept of ‘sexual orientation’ will establish that it is actually a category of ‘gender orientation,’ with a history and biology of feminine gendered males (with the added qualification that they like men and or other third genders). And, it is no surprise, that every western scientific attempt to study ‘sexual orientation’ of individuals who self-identify as ‘homosexuals’ who mostly happen to be (and even reported in these studies) as ‘gender discordant’ (or third genders or feminine gendered males) has thrown up results that show the differences in terms of ‘gender orientation’ such as a feminized brain, feminine hormones and other feminine traits, aspects that have little to do with sexual desires. No effort has been made to establish if masculine gendered males (who often do not acknowledge their attraction for men) share the same attributes of ‘homosexuality’ as reported in these studies of those who openly identify as ‘gays.’ Indeed, when you don’t acknowldge a human trait as valid, you won’t study it either. Thus, unfortunately, ‘gender orientation’ is being mispropagated in the west as being ‘sexual orientation,’ confusing both the terms even further.
The above western view of gender and sexuality (including the confusion created in the west between sex, gender, sexuality, gender roles and gender orientation) has been influenced first by the needs of Christianity + then the compulsions of science + and now the compulsions of feminism. Each of these human ‘movements’ or institutions have influenced/ distorted the western view of gender to suit their own short sighted needs, which were often dogma directed and far away from reality. E.g. Christianity was driven by the religious views about male-male sex as well as male femininity being condemnable sins. Science considers sex primarily for procreation, and thus exclusively between males and females. Feminism views human gender only the perspective of how they tend to, at least outwardly, put the females at a disadvantage. So, their entire focus about gender is on socially defined gender roles that tend to bother the feminists. And the entire western outlook on ‘gender’ is defined by the interplay of these three different institutions with varied needs and goals.
Categories, or rather people who make up the categories of ‘man’ ‘woman’ and ‘third gender’ don’t change over time. Rather they remain fixed. What changes is their social roles and expectations, and therefore, their attitudes and behaviours. But attitudes and behaviours are wrongly associated with Gender. They may wrongly seek to represent gender, but ultimately, the core of gender identities have been Gender orientation, not gender roles.
Which means that essentially the gender differences between men and third genders remains that of masculine and feminine gender orientation. If the society defines penetration as the gender role of ‘men’ and being penetrated as the ‘gender role’ of women and third genders, then its not that the masculine gendered males who get penetrated now all shift to the ‘third gender’ identity from the ‘men’ identity. Rather, the masculine gendered males change their behaviour and attitudinal patterns and give up being penetrated, and adopt penetrating behaviour where not already present, in order to qualify for manhood, and to avoid ‘third gender’ category which is also stigmatized (apart from not suiting the masculine gendered male biologically).
Similary, when they are defined in terms of sexual desire, (as heterosexual for manhood/straight and ‘homosexual’ for queer/gay), its not that masculine gendered males who like men suddenly now come to the other side of the ‘men’-‘third gender’ gender divide, but that the masculine gendered males adopt heterosexuality while the feminine gendered males, on the whole (consciously and subconsciously) adopt homosexuality. This process is greatly obscured in the west because gender categories have been redefined in terms of ‘sexual orientation.’ So, the essentially gendered categories of ‘men’ and ‘third genders’ have been defined in terms of hetero and homo, and gender orientation is defined in terms of ‘sexual orientation’ calling for a great deal of confusion.
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