Hello folks, LGBT guy here. I can’t really think of any dedicated features for LGBT+ members, but I find @tina’s suggestion very good. @Jesse says
I believe Tina’s suggestion would accomplish that.
Not just being able to select that relationship as part of your profile, but making it a mandatory part of it. By default, you are either a part of the LGBT community or you don’t have a problem with them at all.
Actually I don´t want badges like this. I don´t like gamifications or to host in order to to score game points. It should be made optional, or I just would take care not to host LGBT persons. As few compulsory badges as possible, please.
The whole thread makes me confused. For some people a certain religion is a very important part of their lives, and they put it on their profiles. For others it´s important but not in a Couchers context. For others gender preferences are important, others just don´t care. In Couchers or in other contexts, beloning to the LGBT group or not. To make it obligatory is like demanding certain people to walk around with a yellow badge on their clothes.
I also don’t like this idea. Gamification is good but people of a certain identity should not be considered “tokens” for other people to earn.
Sometimes it’s good to revisit the initial intention:
I started this topic because we had quite some discussion about gender issues. There were arguments to have the possibility to filter by gender or even restrict visibility of profiles to certain gender. Others argued to not fragment the community with such distinctions and rather focus attention on having a safe environment overall. But these discussions were also strongly about men trying to date women on the platform.
If we’d introduce gender filters and safety features, I think it’s important to reflect how these would play out across a wider gender spectrum. So the intention of this topic is to collect some feedback on this and I believe we did hear quite a range of interesting thoughts already.
Ultimately I think the most inclusive thing for trans/nonbinary people would be to have pronouns listed on profiles and not specific gender markers. I know that gender markers are an important deciding factor for some hosts/surfers, so I understand that may not be possible. Maybe the gender filtering features could be based on pronouns instead? For most people it would be the same as basing it on gender markers, but it would make things a little easier for trans/nonbinary people.
The difference between the two is that gender markers can be more complicated for some trans/nonbinary people than pronouns, especially if their presentation doesn’t specifically fit into one category. I think that basing it on pronouns could make things more simple and then if people want they can elaborate in their bio.
Having the male/female/nonbinary markers creates more rigid expectations for people than the pronouns options. As a nonbinary person I don’t really feel comfortable listing it on my profile, since its more personal and because people might have misconceptions about it that could affect my ability to make connections. However, I also don’t really feel comfortable choosing man/woman because I don’t want to give people the wrong expectations, especially since I have had top surgery etc. This is the case for many transfeminine and transmasculine people who are nonbinary but use he/him or she/her pronouns.
Gender is complicated! It would be easier going into it with just pronouns listed and then people can discuss it if they want. I personally prefer getting to know people without going into all of it at first, same as sexuality.
If that isn’t feasible, I think a smaller change to make things more inclusive would be giving people the ability to change their own gender on their profiles and having admin approve the change afterwards. It’s not a big difference from the current system, but I know that a lot of trans/nonbinary people would feel too uncomfortable emailing admins to ask for a gender marker change.
It’s a difficult topic to explain, so let me know if you need any clarifications!
My wording was misleading I apologize, I meant profiles having just pronouns instead of pronouns and gender marker. It’s wonderful that the pronouns feature already exists! Also great point about how the gender markers don’t work with group accounts
We did have the option to change gender yourself previously. The reason it was taken out was because when we eventually implement gender-based options (hiding, filters, whatever it may look like), someone could just change their gender temporarily to evade this.
I agree having to email isn’t an ideal solution though.
That makes total sense. Do you think it would be better with an admin approval requirement before the gender marker officially changes? That way people can request the change in their profile settings instead and it’ll just show “gender change requested” or something until the approval goes through
Yes, we will need members to mark their gender for the options @lucas mentioned. But on the other hand, do we indeed need to present it on their profile?
We should certainly have the pronouns on the profile overview, as they are important to know about another member.
But for the gender options to work, it would actually be sufficient to have the gender marker in Account Settings. We already have the note about contacting support to change your gender label right there. It seems sensible to have the marker there as well, same as other personal information that will not be changeable on the fly, like verified date of birth or name.
That sounds great to me!
Though if we don’t have the gender marker publicly visible, what would stop guys from just marking their gender as female (while showing pronouns he/him) and making all the considered gender filters useless? We certainly wouldn’t want to start ‘verifying’ the gender marker…
Good point. Maybe pronouns could be included with the gender marker in that you request support to change them, or you change them in your settings and admin approves it?
I think it’s fine. That kind of user isn’t going to get glowing references and if it’s obvious they are abusing the system to solicit people, they can be reported.
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@anon14140932, I don’t see it being so muddled.
One of the needs we recognized because of feedback from the community is the power for women to “tune out” men, without needing to argue, discipline or educate. That’s a main driver behind the gender filter.
@tonga246’s feedback that the platform would be improved for trans/nonbinary people when pronouns, rather than gender markers are listed on the profile is exactly the kind of suggestion I hoped for when opening this topic.
Both approaches would help us in building a community where all members feel in charge. But it’s always a task of balancing various considerations. Just the same as building the gender filter needs to be weighed against encouraging arguments and education.
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I totally get what you mean! Ultimately I think the gender based filtering system is a necessary compromise. It’s not ideal, but I think it’s an important feature for a lot of people using the platform.
If the gender marker isn’t publicly visible and is just used for the filtering option, then perhaps the best option for genderfluid individuals would be choosing the nonbinary gender marker and then changing their pronouns as necessary, as well as maybe noting in their bio their gender? It’s my understanding that “nonbinary” is an umbrella term that encompasses all genders outside of the binary, but also I understand that that may not be a universally agreed upon definition so maybe having the option be “other” rather than “nonbinary” could be more inclusive.
It’s definitely complicated trying to find a balance between making it as inclusive as possible for trans/nonbinary people while also providing the features necessary for the portion of hosts/surfers that utilise the gender based filter!
Something else to figure out is how the nonbinary/other gender marker would work with the filtering option. Would the option be more like “do not show profiles of men”/“do not show profiles of women” or “show only profiles of women”/“show only profiles of men” ? The former would definitely be more inclusive of nonbinary people. I don’t think it would be a good idea to have an option to specifically filter out nonbinary people since its such a broad category and at that point I think people can decide based on individual profiles
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Hey @anon14140932! To my understanding, the purpose of even categorizing gender on this website is, among others, ensuring the safety of users. One of the purposes of even identifying our gender on Couchers is for searching and filtering, and giving the opportunity of genders like women (and people whose gender identity is not binary) to create safe spaces and events for themselves.
I am also deeply invested in the issue of gender identity (even though I am binary myself) and was also initially skeptical about limiting options to woman, man, non-binary. But (and as @tonga246 said above) the definition of non-binary is already inclusive of other gender identities that do not fall neatly within the masculine/feminine binary. I think that, between profile descriptions and the ability to define one’s pronouns, someone with a gender identity that is not “man” or “woman” can very clearly define their gender identity and describe their authentic self. Creating a custom field for “Gender” on what is primarily a “filter” of a profile will provide more opportunity for abuse than meet an actual need.
That being said, I would definitely consider the third option being “Non-Binary/Other” instead of just “Non-Binary.” But we would have to somehow make sure that this is also used appropriately.
