It is long established that digital identity is a highly fluid concept. Since the earliest days of public engagement with the Internet, this has been a feature of the discourse: the realm of the virtual allows one to construct identity from the ground up, to assume a kind of control over self-presentation not possible in the realm of the flesh, to be or to seem to be anyone, anything, anywhere.

In practice, of course, this is clearly not the case–or not the whole case. Virtuality affords people a kind of power in the construction of the digital body that they do not have with their actual body. But when one presents the self online, they most often present that self in settings and contexts that other people have constructed. This is one place where problems with the presentation of the digital body tend to arise. When one plays in someone else’s garden, one might be expected to play by their rules. This is generally well and good, but things turn problematic when the “rules” involve the imposition of categories or identities that people may not accept.

This issue recently came to a head regarding deviantART’s “gender” field in its user profile. The trouble in question started when a user who identified as “neutrois” took issue with the fact that the choices in the field were restricted to male and female–there had been an “unspecified” option, but for unclear reasons it had been removed, forcing users to choose between only the two. There followed a number of exchanges with deviantART support personnel. These got rather heated, and it became clear that there was significant confusion on deviantART’s part regarding the difference between sex and gender (which amounts to the difference between genitalia and identity). In the end, though an “other” option was added, most people following the exchanges felt that it was not a satisfactory solution.

In addition, the confusion on deviantART’s end between sex and gender continued. As an example, the VP of marketing at deviantART listed one of their options thusly: “Keep the change from ‘Gender’ to ‘Sex’ at registration because this is the information we need as a company.”

The response from the user: “Sex, of course, refers to the physical configuration of someone’s genitalia. That you feel you need to know what your users’ private parts look like is worrisome and troubling; it’s also dismissive of the identification of transgendered users.”

For anyone outside the gender binary, Facebook presents its own version of this problem. Facebook allows a user to select only “male” or “female” in its “sex” field. It allows a user to keep this particular piece of information private, but for the purposes of joining Facebook, the user must still select one of the two. This is additionally problematic given that Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities reads: “You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook”. Yet for some users there is literally no way to avoid doing this, given the constraints Facebook places on its users when it comes to the self-identification of sex and gender. At one point in Facebook’s existence, users were not required to choose between binary options; however, as the site has grown, this has changed.

Such constraints put users in the position of feeling like they are being forced to lie to themselves and to the world. More, they are made to feel that the site they are using does not recognize their identity’s existence. Gender/sex specifications on sites like Facebook are frequently used in the targeting of advertising; this is problematic for all the reasons that lack of representation usually presents. It is also worth pointing out that it is additionally problematic for the websites/companies involved, who are then in a position of potentially targeting advertising in the wrong directions.

But the problem goes even deeper here, beyond advertising and representation and into the core of identity and self-presentation. We are, as I said above, becoming used to a degree of control over our digital self/body that we often do not have in real life. To encounter such profound and intimate constraint in a setting of expected freedom is therefore jarring to the point of violation for those who may especially value that freedom. In addition, there is something about the online representation of the self, the “digital body”, that is essential; it is an identity predicated on, among other things, all the vital non-material aspects of what make a person powerfully unique. Online, ideally, I am a mind. I am a collection of thoughts and experiences and feelings, gendered in whatever way I prefer–or not gendered at all… until I am forced to select one of two options from a drop-down menu. At that point the constraints of the fleshly realm intrude, as do social conventions of sex and gender. In the context of a social networking site, to which we attach increasing levels of importance in the presentation of our digital bodies, is it any wonder that the pain of seeing one’s identity denied is especially cutting?

I want to close with a question: if the way many sites currently do things is inadequate to capture the richness of human experience and self-presentation, what might work better? The category of “other” presents its own problems–but if more categories are included, who decides what those categories will be? What would happen if sex/gender specification of any kind were made universally optional? And what would be the implications for targeted advertising, which, like it or not, forms a large part of the online economy?

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