Sophie - deviantART and transphobia
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Sophie
 
Date: 2010-11-04 20:50
Security: Public
Mood:angry angry
xposthttp://soph.livejournal.com/211366.html
Tags:deviantart, link, transphobia
Subject: deviantART and transphobia

About 19 hours ago, I tweeted about transfinite's appalling treatment from deviantART. Since then, that tweet has had 184 retweets.

If you haven't seen that post yet, please do so. Basically, a few months ago deviantART removed the option for "Unspecified" from its "Sex" dropdown on the profile, in a move reminiscent of what LJ wanted to do (but in the end, didn't). Unlike LJ, however, dA aren't backpedalling on this one.

I won't reproduce the full post here, but I wanted to highlight the part that really made me angry. dA responded to a support request that transfinite opened about this issue with "My apologies but there are only two sexes; male and female so one should apply to you. In the unusual case that you are hermaphrodite then I would suggest that you select the one which you feel applies the best."

Um. Yeah.

I've never been a deviantART member myself, but this only ensures I never will be one.

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Cody B.: headdesk
User: [personal profile] codeman38
Date: 2010-11-04 22:48 (UTC)
Userpic:headdesk
Subject: (no subject)

I've got an account, but I'm tempted to pull the content I've contributed (which is just mirrors of the video game font re-creations from my own domain) down. Either way, my account's old enough that the gender is still 'unspecified', and I am leaving it that way.

Seriously, what sort of spaghetti code are they using if a 'site redesign' requires that gender be specified, but they still display the 'unspecified' option for users who never specified it? Wouldn't it be simpler to... I don't know... just leave the 'unspecified' option there? -_-;;

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Terraja
User: [personal profile] terraja
Date: 2010-11-04 22:56 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

Suddenly I regret leaving that site even less. The followup reaction from DeviantArt's ivory tower is even worse.

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tyggerjai
User: [personal profile] tyggerjai
Date: 2010-11-04 22:59 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

But we require that all deviants choose one or the other...

How can someone actually type that without halfway through thinking "Oh wait, I see the problem now....". Even if they only see the problem at the shallowest "I choose to reject your binary choice on principle" level, not even the actual "No really, the choice is not actually valid for some people" level.

Without wishing to imply, of course, that "deviant" is an appropriate term to apply to anyone for any reason, but, y'know, as a chosen label for the site, with implications of "rejecting social norms" .... surely one would put a bit of thought into that.

Spectacular fail, both in logic and treatment of a user.

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tyggerjai
User: [personal profile] tyggerjai
Date: 2010-11-04 23:07 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)

(Well, not that they should get a free pass if their website didn't have "deviant" in it. But I hope my point is clear. "We support your rejection of mainstream standards and constraints. So long as you pick a gender.")

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