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Salutations Congress.
Nice of you to show up.
I'm very glad to be here.
I'm Linda Todaro and I can't see
you anymore. Very good.
I'm usually of findable
at the Acme Labs assembly
and I have
come to you to talk about
gender.
I know. Interesting topic, right?
So a couple of things about
me, I am many things among
them nonbinary and master
of science in intelligent systems
currently. So my background is in
computer science, currently
a Ph.D.
at the University
of Ellingham,
and I also do science
labs. And basically, this is
just another one of those for me,
and I've been doing
this for roughly
while I've been pondering this topic
for roughly 10 years.
That doesn't make me necessarily an
expert, but at least
it makes me enough of an expert so that I
think I can stand up here and tell you
something, OK?
Why is this talk?
This talk is about this exact thing.
We this is a
form that a good friend of mine who
wanted to partake in a scientific study
had to fill out.
And it's in German.
I'll translate.
It's a question on a scientific
survey that asks you for your gender, and
it gives four options male, female,
other and no answer.
And while that is not technically
the worst thing you can do, it was
the motivation of for
asking myself of how can we do
better in this type
of situation?
So this is a talk about
our responsibilities as software
craftspeople, what we can
do to reflect these
things and what responsibilities
we have and how the tech
itself by itself, just
by the virtue of being
tech is not neutral.
There there's some contact notes I want
to hit on first.
This talk will deal with descriptions
of transmis here, so hatred against trans
people, intimacy and
involuntary surgery.
If that's not something you want to deal
with, there will be a recording
if you want to see this at a better time
for you.
And otherwise, I want to follow roughly
this
the split.
I want to do one part education,
one part form design advice
and one part fun.
Because even though it is the year 2019
and you really think that by now,
the basics would be down, you still
sometimes get forms on the internet
like these.
I must say at this point, none of these
screen grabs that I will show you are
made up.
I have done exactly zero of them.
They were all found somewhere on the
internet.
OK, a few things.
This talk is not.
This talk is not an invitation to debate
the human rights of people, especially
trans people or people in a different
culture. So
if you want to yell about attack
helicopters and please,
there's your fish, do your extremely
unfunny jokes somewhere else.
All right.
So why are forms important?
Why is it important that we deal
with this at all?
Well, if you do sloppy work,
it hurts a lot of people.
First of all, your data if
your input form for anything.
But in this talk, we'll use gender as
an example.
But if your input form doesn't
let people input the correct form
or the correct answer to a given
question, then that hurts your data
because you will get incorrect data.
It hurts your users.
And I can tell you from first, second and
third hand experience that it is
really, really, really frustrating.
If you're supposed to tell somebody
something about yourself and the correct
answer is not an option,
and it also hurts yourself because
someone somewhere down the line, these
people will complain to you or not use
your service when they otherwise would
have.
So nobody likes this extra
frustration. Let's see how we can do
better.
That brings me to my conclusion slide,
which I like to put in front of.
The central points are as follows
Make the model fit the user.
You are modeling your user if you know
it or not, and it's important
that you make your model fit the actual
users in the world and don't
chuck any model out there and say that
the user has to conform to that.
The next one is humans
are moving targets.
Humans change.
Their names change.
Their gender sometimes changes its.
Really, really, really difficult to just
get everything right the first time.
And so we change
and your model should reflect that.
Of course, the easiest thing to do is
just not ask a
certain question because with that, you
make the fewest mistakes.
But sometimes if you do ask something,
be at least very precise and
upfront about what you're using the data
for, just so people know which
is the correct answer to give you.
All right. Now that we got the boring
stuff out of the way, we can talk about
the fun stuff.
The talk is titled Hello, I'm
Your Edge case, and that is based
upon mine and others.
Some of my friend's experiences at
university when whenever we wanted
to sign up for something like a sports
club or a student
union or something whenever there was
like a little field that says,
Oh well, please select your gender, male
or female.
Then we would not be able
to give the correct answer, and we would
have to go talk to an actual person.
And the introduction, usually when
something along the lines of Hello, I'm
the person that doesn't fit your system
or hello, I'm your edge case
and the format the
rest of the talk will take is
that we will go through some of the.
Maybe incorrect or
maybe a bit biased, or
maybe a bit.
Well, let's
say updatable functions
or preconceptions you might
have and then talk a bit
about the facts and about the problem
and see what we can learn from that.
The first one is maybe the most popular
one.
It's there's only two genders.
Well, some
people don't even manage that.
And again, these are not
made up of some people apparently
still believe that, well, there's just
one. And it's male, so
you're all the same.
I mean, while I appreciate
generally that the the
the the the
impetus into the direction of everyone is
everyone being equal.
I don't appreciate just everybody calls
it being called male instead.
But no, seriously,
there's a there's a lot
of non-binary people that are neither
male nor female.
Non-binary people have been part
of almost every culture for
almost as long as we have records
going back.
This is not a new phenomenon.
This is not just a trend, and
it's gotten so far to the point
that even some countries you can see here
have started adding legal
recognition to non-binary genders as
well, including
Germany in some
sense. We'll get to that a bit later on.
But the list is there.
It's not very short and it's only ever
getting longer.
So maybe don't
store gender in a Boolean anymore.
I beg of you, please don't.
It is just not enough.
It can only hold two things when there's
clearly more than two things.
OK, now that we've done that,
the next step that somebody
might take is OK, OK, OK, OK, OK,
I get it. Not to it.
Three, Right? Three.
That's what you said. That's like male,
female and all of the others
or the other.
So I'll just do three instead that I
can do. And of course,
first of all, I would like to ask
of you if you're designing a computer
system and you want to give a third
option in gender.
Please, please make sure it's actually
a gender.
This thing was given
where you have female, male and LGBT.
LGBT, of course, stands for lesbian,
gay, bisexual and trans,
and none of those genders.
You're trans if your gender doesn't match
the gender you were assigned at birth,
otherwise you're cis.
But it's not a gender in itself.
It's not the third option.
Please, please never do
male, female, trans.
It's it just shows how ignorant
you are.
OK, but if you don't do that,
even some corporations have caught on to
that. There might be more than just
those or just three
options of male, female and other.
Tinder has thirty seven by now.
And of course, thirty seven is a lot.
But the thing is, is that now
the exact number.
And of course, it isn't.
Whenever you get to a finite
number, there will somebody there will be
somebody on Earth and probably somebody
within your user base that doesn't fit
into any of those boxes you've laid out.
I mean, just from the thirty seven here,
we also have gender
fluid, and I think this is gender, queer,
sorry, gender, queer and gender fluid
and age, gender and neutral.
And we have by gender transgender.
We have poly, gender and transgender
and a range of other non-binary
identities.
And the idea is just
whenever you get
to a certain certain finite point,
it is always some somebody
who is also beyond that.
Don't just put out a limited number of
boxes and say everybody fit into that,
OK?
And the next step, of course, would be
OK. You said 37 and then you said some
others. I'll just build all of those.
And is the interactive
part of the talk.
I don't know if we can get the room
lights a bit up.
If not, that's also not probably whoever
here has heard of something
called a demi boy.
That's a gender identity who has,
um, that's around
half a dozen people that I can see,
and there's at least 100 people
here. So that's a perfect illustration
of why you would need a text box
because you don't know all of the
possible answers that you can give.
And for that, this slide
is gives a,
you know, it's a reasonable
approximation, and it's also a little bit
of a humorous take on something extremely
serious. Human humans
still change.
Humans are still a moving target,
even if you know about all the.
Genders that exist today,
you might want to add another one
tomorrow because you get a new user
that has that gender.
And for that,
it would be ideal if you can have
a a text box where
people can just add their own gender.
It's not a statistical outlier.
If enough people do, it is, of course, a
little bit of a funny take.
But it's also an
invitation. If you if you
are non-binary yourself and you
feel safe in a certain space, please.
If somebody gives you a text field,
do enter your true gender.
Because if, if more people
do it, it will create more visibility.
All right.
So from that, we've seen that maybe
don't store gender in an enum either.
OK. Next up,
this is also a bit of a contentious
subject, but a lot of people
come to me and say, Well, I learned
in school that there's only two
biological sexes, right?
Well, you might have learned that
in school. I won't dispute that, but
I can tell you from my side of things
that I once learned in school that
there's no gravity in space.
Well, that is obviously wrong,
even though it's a simplification,
something that my younger self
was or needed to be told.
So I couldn't understand
or have my understanding
move forward a bit.
So I can then later understand
the more complexities that, of course,
there's gravity in space, but it behaves
differently than the one, you know,
and it in same
things goes with biological
configurations. And as that relates to
gender, there's something called intersex
people. And that is, if you are born
with any configuration
of your biology, that might be your
gonads, that might be yours,
that might be your chromosomes.
That might be a lot of things.
Your hormone levels a bunch
and any of these can fluctuate
so that you don't fit into the two
classical categories.
And if you
are, if you are born such,
then you might find yourself into the
label. Intersex and
intersex people don't necessarily be
our don't necessarily become
non-binary automatically.
They are not non-binary automatically,
but some of them might claim that label.
It's up to them.
Of course, gender is something
you know best what you are.
So please just let
people talk for themselves
while I'm on the topic.
Also, there's a very serious thing
that I want to mention where
a lot of intersex people, when they
are born and people notice that
maybe their genitals don't conform to
one of the two classical categories,
then people are still being
subjected to unnecessary surgeries
like there's no medical
need for them. But just to make
it easier for the person,
a functioning set of testes as a removed
or the clitoris is reduced.
And that is still happening today in
Germany, too, and in the US and
in a lot of other places.
And if you're maybe social
justice adjacent and
looking for a good cause to spend some
time in, maybe read up on this and
learn about that and see how
you can affect that. It's definitely
something extremely troubling
to me.
OK, so biology,
maybe bimodal, that is the distribution
that Mesa has two peaks with the most
common with the most common outcomes,
but it's definitely not binary either.
OK.
Also, you probably don't need to know
unless you're a doctor and
making some input
form for very specific
medical procedures, then you probably
don't need to know if you're just a
social media site or something.
You do not need to know your uses
biology.
Yeah, well, this I also hear
a lot there's
so many options now you've you said
there's at least 37 or might be more that
sounds like work.
And sure, but
I don't buy that.
There's a here's
a form from the German military
interest union or
something, and they give you two options
for gender and they give you seventy one
options for academic title.
I could read them all to you, but I
literally do not have enough time left in
the talk.
And with that, I just don't believe
you that it's too much work if you do
something like this.
So if you don't want to deal with
the whole thing BS, please be advised
that not asking is always an option.
You can always just not ask about
it.
The information is either needed or not
act accordingly.
If it's needed, get the right one.
If it's not needed, maybe just don't ask.
Some people also say, Oh well, I'll just
ask for preferred salutation and inferred
gender from that.
Yeah.
Spoiler alert.
Guessing gender doesn't work.
Not from name, not from face, not from
the tweets from you.
There's nothing that you can guess
gender from, except a field where the
user can input the agenda.
And so you will get
this wrong. Even if there are some online
services who tell you that they can, they
only give you a best guess.
And that's usually not enough if you
want to do salutations.
Sure. More power to you, but
at least include, like, a neutral option.
This is one from lobby control.
I like that a lot.
They have two options and they have a
third one that just says hello in German.
And the English language also has
mics for not Mr Not Mrs,
not Miss, but mixed.
That's gender neutral is in the
dictionary.
But when whatever language you're using,
hello just works everywhere.
OK. Quick case study in the case
and you're working in Germany in
particular, we have for
gender markers and our passports.
We have numerous options in biology
and we have countless options in gender.
And I wanted to see, OK, political
parties, how do they do this?
Who have them shapes up the best?
And well, to nobody's surprise,
the Social Democrats do it the worst.
They just ask for binary gender,
nothing to do about it.
And since Germany has the third entry,
I'm pretty sure that's illegal or
at least legally questionable by now.
So. Hmm.
Next up, also, to nobody's surprise, the
two conservative parties just ask
for binary salutation.
That's not very good.
We have the free Democrats
that ask for male, female or diverse.
At least they mention all of them.
The Green Party has male, female,
entire or diverse or no answer,
which is basically OK.
And the Left Party, the socialists,
they don't ask at all, which I think is
really the best way the empty model makes
the fewest mistakes.
Yes, thank you.
OK.
My time is running to an end, but
you kind of also came for this
next slide. No, seriously.
How do you ask people for their gender?
So here's my best take before asking.
Make sure you need the information.
Make sure this is the information
you need and you're not really asking
something else.
Make sure it's mutable in your model.
Make sure you can change it.
And then just ask
either tell them.
Definitely tell them what
they need, what you need the answer for
it and definitely tell them
that they can just enter a freeform
answer in a text field.
But then you can give either no options
and have everybody use the text field or
give as many as reasonable possible.
That's more than two, and then
also have some text field for the ones
that are not in the boxes listed above.
This is very popular with the target
demographic.
I also would very much like that
more seen, even though there's no text
field.
Of course, this applies to other
questions too.
I don't know if you could be Danish, but
apparently you can.
But generally, this is not just gender,
it's not just sexual orientation.
It's also names, addresses
all of these things.
Not everybody has one, even if you think
they do. And it can be really, really
complicated once you get down to it.
My conclusion slide is this again,
if you wanted to talk to me again, you
can come up after or meet me at the
Acme Labs assembly.
Here are some recommendations if you want
to read more.
That's all I have.
Thank you for your attention.
APPLAUSE, applause, applause, applause.
And on the left and on the right are the
usual microphones, if there are any
questions from the audience.
It's now the time or perhaps from
the internet, so somebody
is running. It's a good sign that kind of
sir.
But um.
Yes. Yes.
Hi.
Hey, ah, is there?
You said that in the beginning
there there were bulletins
to store gender, which is not
recommended. Do you have any data on
whether there was a preference to give
the true and the false to male
or female or vice versa?
Well, the thing is, both are false.
I don't know what you are.
The thing is, there's not enough answers
in to most polls.
It was just idle curiosity as to whether
there is some
preference in the data as
to in which direction
they got it wrong.
My preference is to not give the wrong
answer.
Good.
OK, second question.
Or anyone from the internet.
No question that means thanks
a lot. Another applause for
Lambda tutorial.