Given the nature of the program and the primary demographic that it serves, I would say that this is an example of "no one cares" to fix the problem.

Trillian, an instant messaging system, has a specific nature and a primary demographic?

More likely, the people that care don't set the priorities for code changes, and the people who do set the priorities have prioritized other matters ahead of this one.

Of course, that leaves us with the question of where this should be prioritized. :>

When I was a producer, I did my best to make sure this sort of thing never got to this stage by making sure that features that touched on gender and sexual preference were designed properly to begin with. (Which is not to say that I always managed that. It's hard to swing an MMO without a fundamental male/female character dichotomy at this point.)

Um, I'm not really getting this: why is the picture of a human being with two arms, two legs and a head being described by the author as "a man"? Last I checked, most women look kinda exactly like that too and it should perhaps be the disabled members of the population that should be offended by their exclusion. From a feminist point of view however, I have always found the suggestion usually offered by such WC-type icons that women are just men with skirts much more problematic.

By the same token, I'm not really seeing why a couple consisting of one person in trousers and one in a skirt should be automatically assumed to be a straight one.

What's under the "gender" drop-down?

It's not actually that easy to fix. I was a web developer for years and left the field after being burnt-out, essentially by requests like yours. Minute changes in function or display generally take pretty massive background development work... and since you're trying to maximize value and time both for yourself and your client you need to develop a system that has the smallest number of serviceable code components while still functioning. Also, the majority of web users skim any information presented to them, thus instantly recognizable cues - whether offensive to some or not - are the economical choice. It is fun to nit-pick though... love your commentary all around :)

I see there's no option for "asexual" or "nonsexual" either.

i'm curious: what happens if you choose "bisexual," a state of being ignored even, apparently, by this website? do you get a cumbersome female-male-female symbol? or nothing at all? or what?

So now I've been poking at this a little more. "In a relationship" gets you the male/female couple you see above; "Married" gets the same image, but with a heart over it. What that says about non-married couples, I'm not sure, but at that point they've strayed pretty far from "instantly recognizable iconic imagery".

The one saving grace in all of this is that, even though it's not obvious, you can actually type whatever you want into the blanks (at which point you don't get one of the clever little symbols). The fact that the drop-down menu doesn't have nearly as many options as it should is still problematic, but at least you can in fact type "Neither" or "Other" or "Subtle" where it asks for gender, orientation, and so forth.

"Easy problem to fix"?

If I were a software developer working for Cerulean Studios, and I was the one who got assigned the "icons for gender-related personal information aren't specific enough" bug, I would wonder if someone was pulling a prank on me, or I was getting canned or something.

Developers like to write code, to fix problems that are mathematical in nature, to restructure things efficiency. They have other things, besides this "issue" to worry about, and to 90% of their userbase, this is irrelevant. Of those 10% that it may be relevant, probably less than half really care.

The relationship status symbols don't look "male" and "female" to me. They look more like "wide-legged stance" and "standing straight up".

what a load of utter rubbish

Oh pish-posh anonymous... get over yourself, by declaring this conversation rubbish you only implicate your lack of engagement with humanity. Viva Discussion!

Interesting stuff. I've written about how eHarmony, a 'relationship site' doesn't let you choose men & women in the 'interested in' but forces you to choose one or the other, and how various sites force you to define your gender as Male or Female (as if those are the only genders in life). Groupon asks if you're Male or a Married Woman (Mr. or Mrs.?). I think any website with user profiles should have someone with a basic understanding of identity politics check their forms before going live.

If identity was truly postmodern, everything would be an input box (even the categories we ask people to define themselves with), and radio buttons and drop-down menus would cease to exist ;)

You can read some of my gender related web user interface posts at http://bethgranter.com/blog/category/feminism/