I have a work-related question (or comment??), which I can easily put here as opposed to LinkedIn.
I'm working on an EDIB project, where I look through an educational product, commenting on various strands of EDIB, and one strand is on #GenderIdentity.
The criteria I must score against loosely mentions that the product includes a variety of gender identities beyond the binary.
Now, this product is not aimed at secondary students or above, so there's little chance to get into readings about people; a lot of it is image-based.
My issue with this is – we cannot (and should not) base gender identity on someone's appearance, because then we get into harmful stereotypes. Why should an androgynous-looking person be only classified as non-binary?
Surely there's no right or wrong way of presenting oneself – just like being a gay man, a trans woman or a lesbian (for example); there's not one way of being.
Possibly the only way to do this would be to be explicit rather than having to rely on appearance.
In a similar way to representing neurodivergence – not every neurodivergent person is going to wear noise-cancelling headphones or use a particular fidget toy, so again, we can't rely on appearance.
Any thoughts?
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Frigid Crystal Tormented Wrath
in reply to peter (sax) 🌈 • • •You're certainly not wrong. There are certainly other issues with Nonbinary representation but appearance based identification is definitely one of the larger ones.
They/Them-pronouns-as-default is probably the most frustrating stereotype and the one that causes me the most personal grief but I can understand that minefield being beyond scope for the intended age bracket.
Definitely another pain point to examine if applicable.