2010-11-03 deviantART, binarism, and transphobia

2010-11-03 dreamwidth/transfinite  \deviantART\gender binarism\transphobia\intolerance\customer relations http://transfinite.dreamwidth.org/215469.html deviantART, binarism, and transphobia deviantART, binarism, and transphobia  I deleted my old account at deviantART because I was tired of the username and embarrassed about the old crappy art I'd posted years ago. Starting over with a new account sounded pretty good. But when I went to edit my profile settings on my new account, well...

I was pretty confused at how there were only options for "Male" and "Female" in their gender dropdown box. I distinctly remembered there being some third option, which I had chosen for my previous account. A brief Google search later, I found that as of May, the "Unspecified" option had been removed. I'm sure this sounds familiar to those of you who witnessed LJ's gender fail several months ago; however, unlike Livejournal, deviantART has not backtracked on this. Despite (or maybe in spite of) the numerous user complaints, dA has not offered an explanation of any sort.

I had to wonder why, so I asked in a support request. Maybe they just hadn't considered that non-binary people used their site? Or, well, existed. It wouldn't be the first time. I got a response from a user named realitysquared, aka Daniel Sowers Jr., the site's Copyright & Etiquette Administration manager:

Thank you for contacting deviantART, I will be assisting you with your support ticket.

A relatively recent redesign of our profile setting page now requires that you designate yourself as being male or female.

If you do not wish to designate your gender and prefer to deactivate your account due to being forced to make this choice then you may do so if you choose. A long dialogue ensued, in which dA representatives moved from ignoring the substance of the question to outright denial of nonbinary genders.

A neutrois user decides to create a new account on deviantART, but is dismayed by the new binary gender requirements of the sign-up process. The user contacts dA customer service, and they respond poorly.   