Live, and you can accomplish much more;

I've had reservations about dA's policies for a while (blocking adult-rated material to everyone who isn't signed in, as though your age and maturity were void unless you agreed to register with them is one example), but refrained from public commentary since I don't have an account there and it didn't seem worth the rage. Those were happy days.

Recently a post came up detailing one user's struggle with several dA administrators over the issue of dA's newly implemented mandatory gender designation. Most popular websites, notably LJ and Dreamwidth, give you at least a choice ranging from male, female and unspecified/other upon registration. (Not touching upon Facebook here since their gender-related fail is on par with dA's antics lately, except they're not amenable to changing it at all and have it backed by cissexist legislation.) This was the case with dA as well, until they not only went out of their way to remove the "unspecified" option, but had the site scheme actively preventing even the remaining binary gender options from being hidden (despite the administration's insistence to the contrary).

Going with the good old "benefit of the doubt" principle, it could have been honest ignorance when these changes were first made. Turns out? No. The post I linked above showcases the replies made by dA staff, in the first of which some high-and-mighty admin both brushes the complaint aside as irrelevant and, in a staggering display of clueless bigotry that sent my jaw dropping to the floor, "explains" to the user how "there are only two sexes" unless you happen to be the "unusual case" of a "hermaphrodite". When the same user pointed out that this was a) missing the point of the complaint and b) being hugely offensive in addition to the ignorance, what followed was basically various staff members deflecting the problem, marking the complaint as "resolved" though it had obviously been far from such, essentially telling the user to either pick one or GTFO, all the while concentrating more on covering each other's asses than addressing the point.

It's disturbing, to say the least, that a major site like dA can get away with this sort of patronizing attitude to people who are obviously much better versed in matters of gender vs. sex (and binary vs. non-binary, which spawned this clusterfuck) than the dA staff can say for themselves. This is identity policing, unrepentant erasure of their fellow human beings for no other reason than someone's non-conformity to an unfairly narrow mold.

Tying in with this is an obvious question: what does a person's gender have to do with the art they post? Right, I forgot - so dA can give you ads for lipstick or aftershave, as there obviously is nothing in-between, and everyone who does identify as male or female is going to want one of those. /sarcasm (They do seem to care about ad revenue more than their users, considering some of these ads have actually spread malware to users' computers.)

Last but not least, viewing this in context, you will notice dA had recently joined the number of leading sites who participated in Spirit Day, an event meant to raise awareness of and fight LGBTQ bullying. What this says about the reason of dA's involvement in this high-profile, well-publicized cause should be obvious.



An update to the linked entry says dA has added a third option after having this blow up in their faces - but changing the required field to "sex" instead of owning up to their original fail. If this doesn't scream "I'm right even when I'm wrong!" complete with the immature stomp of the foot, I don't know what does.

So here's the deal for me personally: until they clean up their disgusting act, I am not touching that site. No, I'm not so naive as to think one random person's boycott of passive resistance is going to change anything, but I'm a (genderqueer, pansexual and outraged) man of principle, and my principles are now saying that dA is not seeing a single hit from me. Don't send dA links my way - I ain't clicking.



PS: For those unaware of non-binary gender identities and/or intersex conditions, which specifically came under attack here, this is a useful pointer towards resources.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.