…ahem

At first I thought "But it's ok...?"

Then 2 seconds later it was like WHY NOT SIMPLY A STRING???!!!

Quantum computers: let me introduce myself🤠

I would name it isMale not gender.

While sex still can be accurately modeled as a bit set of length 2, gender has become more like a free-form text field without any actual relevance for anything now. I wouldn't even collect it if not forced to.

But no matter what: If you have just one boolean being true for male - then the correct name for that field indeed is "hasPenis" and not "gender" or even "sex".

@Oktokolo

technically, through a sad accident, a cis-man might also lack a penis. I generally wonder why the bureaucracy is so interested in people's pants' contents.

@msdsk Well in this case "patient" makes it seem medical, in which case a binary gender kinda makes sense

rename from "gender" to "sex", problem solved.

@Hazarth but what abt neutrum ppl ..

hasPenisAndBalls would be the most hilarious thing to see on API docs I would fucking die 😂

wouldSmash() ?

@joewilliams007 we can treat them as "null"

@Hazarth pointing them Nulls an Exception _again_ ...

@msdsk True, would better name it hasYChromosome.

@Oktokolo the best name so far. Gender-neutral, inoffensive.

@Oktokolo

yes but... https://t.ly/4QEW

its wrong cause it is implying that the females are NEGATIVE ;| which is true but not fair ;|

@msdsk So what - people with Klinefelter syndrome are considered males even by the scientific community. And technically, they do have a penis and balls. So the hasYChromosome field works fine for categorizing them into the classic binary scheme that states all over the world love so much for no apparent reason.

@Xoka Not negative - false...

@Oktokolo
Have you read the abstract? Because it literally states that there are ALSO people with XXY and female phenotype.

@msdsk I missed that. But it really doesn't matter anyways as they literally still have an Y chromosome and therefore hasYChromosome would still be a thruthful name for the field.

The whole thing is about the impossibility to clearly categorize each human by sex for their lifetime. So it shouldn't be a surprise that hasYChromosome doesn't guarantee a penis and balls or any body shape...

hasYChromosome is a trivial way of replacing the sex field with a categorization that is provably logically and scientifically correct and stable as you can't have an Y chromosome while not having one and you can't change your chromosome configuration after birth. So it is a field you can use for statistical needs and to anchor sexist rules (like women may / may not / have to / must not serve in the military) or sports rules (splitting athletes into female/male) on. It is also impossible to deliberately exploit the categorization as it is determined before birth and immutable.

@msdsk unfortunately typically the interest stems from marketing.

Collecting usage data stats on your primary customers means you can target your ads better at them.

If your user base is 80% male then you make masculine ads.