KDR Support

From  Sapharoni Sep 25, 2015 06:26

Hello,
My partner and I are frustrated by the insistence that we select either male or female in our profiles. My partner does not identify exclusively as male or female. Please change your settings so that more inclusive gender descriptions are available (i.e. the option to choose multiple identifiers and/or other gender identifier options such as: both, genderqueer, transgender, neither).
Thank you for your consideration of this request.

From Sapharoni Oct 27, 2015 11:09

Hello Beth,

Thank you so much for getting back to me promptly regarding my request for changing the options in the gender identifier field. My apologies for not responding sooner.

It seems to me that it would make a lot more sense to have people select either "looking for sperm" or "have sperm" (and "looking for eggs" or "have eggs") instead of using male or female. I can imagine many situations where husbands or male identified partners would set up profiles to look for sperm to inseminate their partners, as well as situations where the persons' gender identity does not indicate whether or not they have sperm. For example: A transgender women who identifies as female and is offering to donate sperm, or a transgender man who identifies as male and is looking for sperm.

So, I recommend making the search and suggestion fields based on the selection of "looking for sperm" or "have sperm".

To make the website gender inclusive, I recommend that you add a place for people to select which pronouns they prefer (i.e. "he/him", "she/her", "they/them"), and that you have multiple options for gender identity, including a option for typing in an identity that isn't listed. Here is an example of a more inclusive list of identifiers (taken from the Transgender Law Center website):

What is your gender identity? *
Transgender Woman/MTF SpectrumTransgender Man/FTM SpectrumFemaleMaleGender Non-ConformingGender QueerOther
Please check all boxes that apply to you.

Thank you for taking time to consider these recommendations. Because so many people in the LGBTQ community use known donors for conceiving, I believe it would be highly beneficial to your site to make your site more gender inclusive.

I'm definitely in support of and in favor of gender inclusion. The challenge I will have in making this change for this particular function is that the gender field serves to match "people who produce sperm" with "people who put sperm in them to conceive." I am not aware of any non-binary set of terms that will delineate that, and it's part of how some of the search and suggestion functions on the site work. I'm open to ideas here.

Does the partner who will be conceiving have a binary, or mostly binary gender identity?

Sounds reasonable to me. I don't know how difficult it would be to change the settings, but Beth should be able to find out.

Regards, Mark