On the gender question

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tchekof_     2022-01-22 23:20:10

Hello everyone, I'm fairly new here and I'm having a fun time solving the proposed problems

I also appreciate the special attention given to "programmer girls", as they are under represented in the programming community.

One small issue tho, I consider myself to not be a man nor a woman. I consider myself to be nonbinary.

I know this is probably not on theme with the whole "abbey" religious thing but still

What about also giving a special attention for people such a myself?

Best regards.

Rodion (admin)     2022-01-23 07:57:27
User avatar

Hi Friend!

Thanks, that's curious question, indeed. And it was expected that "girl's certificates" would lead to some issues like that... And I'll need to scrap my little brains into one heap to formalize the situation :)

on theme with the whole "abbey" religious thing

Ha-ha, while the site is slightly aligned with the religious mood (and I personally identify myself with religious people), it is not supposed that members need to believe in anything except The Good And Clean Code! It was rather called abbey initially in the seek for some yet unused name :)

Briefly - I guess the answer is most probably "no" - but not because any wrong feelings to nonbinary.

By "most probably" it is meant that below follows the motivation and anyone is free to suggest amendments.

So as said, it is not because of any personal hostility (which, please believe, do not exist - I'm quite ok with people feeling themselves whatever they want (though in extreme cases this may lead to collision between people).

There are roughly two main thoughts - one logical, other social.

Social motivation - it is all about meaning of underrepresented - e.g. girl's certificate was created in hope to improve situation that while natural earth population has, say, over 40% women - there are far less women among programmers (and particularly on this site). There are other classes traditionally thought as being treated unequally - say, people of African and Asian descent, people over 40 (I joined this category recently, ha-ha), people with mental deviations and so on. However I'm not aware of these categories being underrepresented in IT (and on this site). Same with nonbinary - according to various polls there could be anything between 0.2% and 2% of people identifying as nonbinary (probably depending on background, culture, country etc) - but the category doesn't seem underrepresented (according to my personal experience - it may be even overrepresented since seemingly percentage of nonbinaries among people with advanced education is higher).

Logical motivation - while definition of two traditional genders is generally influenced by observable nature, it is more difficult with classifying of people not conforming to this pattern. In the sense of preferences in love there are seemingly at least two additional classes - bisexual and asexual. Switching from physical layer to logical, there seem to be more than single way as identifying oneself as neither man nor woman - e.g. there could be nonbinary people - and people who prefer to be neither man, nor woman, nor nonbinary. Wiki says that is "umbrella term" for various ways of feeling oneself - and I'm just not feel ready to start inventing certificate types for every of these ways (despite I don't object them) - especially given social consideration above :)


To conclude: I believe real goal generally should be main certificate, not "special" one (moreover I see some strong players even do not care of claiming that main certificate) - and it seems for you that would be easy!

Meanwhile I can use time (spared from researching modern gender ussues and inventing fancy auxiliary certificates) on trying to provide people with more problems, hopefully some of them could be interesting enough :)

However feel free to share your opinion whether it agrees or disagrees - there is always space to discuss and improve things, of course.

P.S. However remember that "main certificate" could have its design somewhat altered according to wishes of the person to whom it is granted. This seems to be suitable for people of various special categories which are not considered "underrepresented". Say, you can tell "put non-binary flag on it somewhere" - and I (if can solve that many tasks myself) may put "40+" mark on it etc, etc - hopefully this will do? :)

Shoshannah     2022-01-28 17:50:49

Hello tchekof_! Would you mind sharing your pronouns? (both in English and in your native tongue)

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