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David Cameron: Make it a legal requirement to not have to fill in gender options on forms.

David Cameron: Make it a legal requirement to not have to fill in gender options on forms.

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This petition has been created by Saorla H. and may not represent the views of the Avaaz community.
Saorla H.
started this petition to
David Cameron

There are many reasons why you should not have to fill in gender options on forms. These range from forms of prejudice that take place to people not being comfortable selecting from the binary genders (male and female).

Prejudice

Filling in a gender option allows people to be judged before having even being met. For example, many employers would rather have a male work for them than a woman, so they would turn away female applicants without giving them a proper chance. If they could not be sure of the applicant’s gender, they would not be able to judge them so early on.

Non-binary

Non-binary gendered people often have difficulty selecting from the binary genders (male and female) made available for them to chose, as they feel they can only identify as somewhere in between, as neither, as both or something else. Gender, for many people, is not simply a black and white choice between male and female, but a greyed spectrum.

Alternatives

Even having an “other” option is not necessarily enough, as this could be interpreted as their gender not being important enough to list specifically. Having a list of both binary and non-binary genders to pick from would be almost impossible to please everyone with, as there are so many different gender identities that it would not be possible to include them all. A type-in gender option would almost be pointless, as if every non-binary gendered person filled in what they identified as, you would get many that would not be self-explanatory, so would have to have an explanation in order to show what was meant.

Irrelevance

Gender identities are not relative to anyone except the person themselves. Your gender identity does not influence what you can or cannot do, so are irrelevant to almost all times your gender will be asked for.

Posted (Updated )