Hiding Gender/Sex Fields on Your Forum

[Japanese Metal Forum]

I find that removing those kinds of fields actually helps with keeping female users coming back more often, because of fears of stalkers and whatnot. There are also people who have gotten hate for transitioning. The point is that these details are unnecessary, at least at my forum.

Of course, it's totally voluntary to outright mention what you are on the forums, but at least you're not required to. A big problem would be assuming that a female user is male, just because there aren't any giveaways on feminine attributes. If your avatar, your username, and your signature don't have any feminine characteristics, then most would probably assume that you're a guy. I suppose that can be a problem, but we can try to work for a better, welcoming environment.

 

[Jason76]

I say ban them, though hypocritically I don't, cause it's really not anyone's business and also a lot of people's names makes it obvious anyhow. I mean, more than likely Jim isn't a girl and Amanda isn't a guy. 😱

 

[Corzhens]

I have to agree that gender should not be required. That's as far as stalkers are concerned. But in reality, it doesn't matter to me if the gender is specified or not because I use my profile name in all sites that I join and likewise with my avatar picture. Unless I look like a man, well, it's up to your optic capability. I sometimes receive messages of friendly greetings but I never reply unless the message has something substantial about business.

 

[Azareal]

I never really got why some sites are so hung up on gender gating sections and why so many software feel like they have to cater to it. I personally find it meaningless and leave it out entirely in my forum software.

At best, you might get some analytics data out of it, but how many people are going to fill it out? And your advertisers probably know every little thing about them down to the depths of their psyche from chasing them across the entire internet.