I can understand that this is useful for some people but is there a way of not having to provide your preferred gender pronoun on your personal details page?
Hi, As of this moment in time, it is a required profile field to ensure that staff and members are able to accurately refer to members based on their identified pronouns. If that information isn't a required field, it creates a situation whereby members could be misidentified, which can be counterproductive to a supportive environment within certain situations. For example, it would fundamentally undermine the supportive values of the Gender Identity forum if users frequently misidentified a member's pronouns, so having that profile option helps ensure that a member has all the information they would need to provide inclusive support and advice in all situations. I appreciate it isn't necessarily relevant to certain users on the site, but having it as optional would begin to create gaps which are otherwise easy to avoid. For those it's not relevant to, it's just a piece of information which sits there. To those it serves more of an inclusive purpose for, it helps ensure that their identity is respected within discussions. The profile fields are still very much on a trial basis, and also have a pending technical limitation which is on the to-do list to address, so it may be subject to change depending on the type of feedback we get on it. Our general thought process is that it provides less problems for us all by having it be required but not serving a purpose for some people, rather than having it as optional but causing us to misidentify vulnerable users who are hoping to feel part of a supportive environment. Martin.
