Okay, this is a can of worms I wasn’t excited to open again, but it must be done. Back before
Okay, this is a can of worms I wasn’t excited to open again, but it must be done. Back before my hiatus, there was a bit of a debacle about whether or not to include a question about the character’s physical sex. One camp wanted it so that they could specify that their character is intersex, while the other camp didn’t want it because they argued that asking about genitals is potentially transphobic. There was enough demand for a sex question that I wanted to find a way to do it in the least grating way possible. This is the solution I have come up with.First, I included a reminder that sex is separate from gender, to assure people that I am aware of that. I also reminded people they it is perfectly okay to skip the question if they are uncomfortable.I called the first two options “male sex” and “female sex” instead of “male” and “female” to avoid labeling the entire character by a gendered term. The type of reproductive cells they produce was used to be inclusive of non-human creatures. For example, male birds don’t have dongs, they have cloacas. The egg and sperm thing is the most universal biological definition of male sex vs female sex I could find.Next is intersex, self explanatory. Other sex is in case someone makes an alien race with three or more sexes in it.Multiple sexes is for all your clownfish, flowers, and slugs. I figured this was a good way to avoid using the word “hermaphrodite” (which is understandably uncomfortable for intersex people) but still include all the cases which modern biology uses that label for. Finally we have sexless, for your robots and asexually reproducing creatures, and other for anything I forgot to cover. I’m fairly happy with this solution, although there is one problem I still need to sort out–where to put it. At first I placed it right after the gender question, but that’s on the first page of the survey and it seems like an awkward and invasive question to ask right off the bat. So, here are the options I thought of: Putting it in the appearance sections because it’s a physical body partPutting it in the health and wellness section because it’s about body parts that people don’t see most of the timePutting it in the NSFW section because it’s about genitals (but this means many characters will never see the question)Leaving it where it is and letting everything be awkwardSo, does this system look good to you? What section should this question go in? -- source link