how to codify gender for your database:

• take your best guess
• wrong
• consult with multiple trans and genderqueer beings
• wrong
• perform a 17-year research study with a sample size of 10,000,000
• wrong

• radio buttons with the options “male”, “female”, “non-binary”
• wrong
• radio buttons with the options “male”, “female”, “transgender”, “non-binary”
• wrong
• checkboxes with the options “male”, “female”, “transfeminine”, “transmasculine”, “non-binary”, “queer”, “other”, “none of these”
• wrong
• text field with a maximum length of 32 characters
• wrong
• text field with a maximum length of 1024 characters
• wrong
• up to 64 KB of text and up to 30 MB of images
• wrong
• 300 MB of arbitrary data
• wrong

@kasdeya foreign key to a table with a VARCHAR(MAX) gender field: also wrong, bc of gender georg, whose gender is esoteric enough to not fit into a VARCHAR(MAX) column

“my gender can only be represented by putting :3 in your database and then adding a RAT to your server’s crontab”

@kasdeya what about radio buttons with "would provide answer if required" and "would prefer not to answer / is unable to provide an answer"?

@eclairwolf @kasdeya a gender of “:3” with 6TB of unprintable characters