I meant to say and is *NOT* always necessarily correlated to genetics, etc.
On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 08:25 -0800, Paul C. Bryan wrote: > Gender is a social construct, and is always necessarily correlated to > genetics, birth defect, surgery, etc. > > I propose that gender is all MB should be noting. MB is not a DNA or > health records database. > > My vote would be for: male, female, blank (unknown). > > If a gender changes, my vote would be to have a new artist, and use an > AR to tie the two artists together. > > Paul > > On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 10:55 -0500, Brian Schweitzer wrote: > > The second question is one I've seen discussed (in the hypothetical, > > if we ever did have artist genders) many many times, including in > > http://chatlogs.musicbrainz.org/musicbrainz/2010/2010-01/2010-01-20.html#T18-26-42-754738 > > > > Question: Person artists currently can be set to (blank), male, and > > female. > > > > * What about support for those who fall outside of the male/female > > definitions, due to an accident of birth, surgery, personal > > identification, or whatever other reasons? Should there be support > > for these to accurately be recorded? > > > > * How accurately - is "it's complicated" enough, or do we add > > "transgender" and/or "intergender", or other terminology (ie, if you > > say yes we should have more than just male/female, exactly what > > terminolgy should be used?) > > > > Caveats: > > > > 1) When answering the terminology question, the terms used will be > > used by an international audience, so they have to be translatable. > > (And when the site has i18n support, the MB site will have to be able > > to translate/support whatever terminology is selected for addition.) > > > > 2) Remember that this is a question about *GENDER*, not *SEXUAL > > ORIENTATION*, therefore the decision, and terminology, should focus on > > potential genders, not "gay" or "lesbian" or other sexual > > orientation-related discussions (with the possible exception of gender > > involving different personal identification?). > > > > > > Personally, I'd say yes, we should have more than just male and > > female, but I'm not sure yet what terminology I'd support. I do think > > we have to be careful with terminology, however, for two reasons. > > First, MB's roles don't include sex education; while some listings may > > not be family-friendly, I think we do want to keep the editing forms > > from drifting anywhere where we could be accused of being too sexually > > explicit (by getting too detailed and adding lots of various terms for > > all sorts of various alternate genders.) Second, most people aren't > > experts on alternate genders - they have trouble enough (if they even > > can) differentiating "transgender" from "intergender". Thus, whatever > > terminology we do end up using, we need it to still be correct, still > > be translatable, still not be explicit, but also it has to be > > comprehensible by someone who may only have a limited understanding of > > alternate gender issues. > > > > Also, I'd note, whatever the terminology or decision here, on a > > related topic, I think, post-NGS, we'll have to re-address the > > decisions made about combining artists such as Wendy Carlos, as now > > we'll have "Wendy Carlos, female" and "Walter Carlos, male"; even > > artist credits won't let us skip the fact that the artist's gender, > > and not just name, changed at some point. > > > > Brian > > > > On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 10:49 AM, Brian Schweitzer > > <brian.brianschweit...@gmail.com> wrote: > > There currently are two related issues from the NGS developers > > which need debate and decision by the style list. Before I > > move either to RFC, I'd like to see if we can figure out just > > what guidance the RFC should actually give. > > > > As you may know, one of the new things under NGS is that > > artists now will have (among others) an additional field to > > store the gender of that artist. (See > > http://musicbrainz.org/doc/NextGenerationSchema#Artist ) > > > > Besides being generally useful to know, for the curious, for > > disambigulatory reasons, for the data client, or for any other > > reasons, it's also something that i18n (site translation) > > support will need, as sme languages (unlike English) construct > > different sentences depending upon the gender of the subject. > > (Thus something like "was a member of the band Foo" would be > > differently constructed depending on if that band member were > > a she, a he, or something else.) > > > > As I can see both questions being debated to some length, to > > help keep things easy to follow, I'm going to introduce each > > in a separate reply to this email. If you could, please try > > to keep the discussion on each to the appropriate thread? > > > > Thanks! > > > > Brian > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Musicbrainz-style mailing list > > Musicbrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org > > http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style > > > > _______________________________________________ > Musicbrainz-style mailing list > Musicbrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org > http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style _______________________________________________ Musicbrainz-style mailing list Musicbrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
