Hello Gendergappians,

I was recently chatting on Wikidata-l about the model that exists on Wikidata for classifying sex [1].

If you didn't know of Wikidata, people are supposed to be classified as Male, Female, or Intersex. I once did some research on the composition Wikidtata given that classification [2] then Markus Kroetzscher investigated linking personal names to sex using this data [3].

Well when Markus released his research on-list, I applauded his innovative methods and techniques. I also wanted to remind that forcing this binary or trinary classification onto people is not something that the software is making us do, but rather the us inflicting our bias onto the database. At that point I received a dismissive answer that if I wanted to talk about the gendergap that I should this mailing list, and that my comments were off topic. Then another user responded saying that my comments were very much on topic, and that's where the conversation stopped.

I haven't wanted to continue the thread because of the emotional investment in what seems to be a fruitless debate. Although recently I was chatting to a friend of mine about my dissatisfaction who said something I really liked:

"basically since the categories are male, female, intersex, that means 1) you are talking about a person's gonads, not their gender identity, which means 2) applying that category to most historical figures should count as "original research" it's not like anybody's done a major interdisciplinary study to confirm the chromosomes of every historical figure we aren't even sure shakespeare was a real person. how in the world should we guess what medical conditions he had in conclusion, "sex: male female intersex" is utter nonsense"

I would like to send the point to the list, but am fearful that it will be muddied again in that this is "gendergap issue not a wikidata one" when I am really just trying to talk about classification schemes.

Do you have any advice on whether a) I should re-engage the debate, and if so b) how to best deliver my sentiments?

[1] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P21
[2] http://hangingtogether.org/?p=2877
[3] http://korrekt.org/page/Note:Sex_Distributions_in_Research