litphoria

I think you've got the right idea, especially since secondary sexual characteristics are all described more clearly in other traits. However, I'd change "Apparent Gender" to "Gender Expression" because that's the correct term for that aspect of their gender that a person displays openly. Putting it in terms of "Apparent Gender" puts the determining factor on the beholder, not the subject of the profile. It's way too subjective.

"Robotic" and "alien" are not gender expressions though. They're separate patterns of behavior that might include or influence gender expression. I'd use "Feminine", "Masculine", "Androgynous", "Other", and maybe "Androgynous-feminine" and "Androgynous-masculine" if we want to get really specific.

A good hint I got from Samus, you can write a longer text if you make the suggestion and then edit it instead of using the first comment for it.

The idea is good, I think it's already decided to merge the secondary-something and the gender-expression into "Gender Appearance".

What does : "The gender of a character, regardless..." actually mean? Does it mean: I see my char as a woman so the gender is female? Or is it the self-view of the char? Or how the society defines him, what is written on her ID? I generally like the idea of a "main-gender".

Nice definition of Apparant Gender, like it.

Genitalia: These are only outer reproductive organs.

What is the idea behind "non-binary"? Why not "none" and "other"?

@Pinkie Pie: It's not that easy. A robot looking like a woman isn't expressing any gender because it doesn't have a gender. Appearance and Expression are different concepts, to express a gender, you have to have a gender. You don't need a gender to appear as a female.

@Desdemona: Before we start talking past each other, it might be best to communicate, as best I can in the moment, what my definitions are and what I'm taking exception to.

Gender expression is a shorthand for communicating the socially gendered memes that a person is taking part in. A hypothetical: Mike, who identifies as male and dresses in drag, is not expressing a gender identity of female. Rather, he is taking part in a gendered meme of wearing feminine clothing. He's a man who happens to be presenting himself in a feminine way, whatever that means in his society. The term Gender expression lets that speak for itself.

Gender appearance, however, has the cissexist connotations of an other saying "Mike appears female" regardless of what Mike might think about wearing a skirt. The semantics open up some not quite friendly ideas about who gets to say what about Mike's gender.

It's the difference between somebody saying "Those are women's clothes" and somebody saying back, "These are my clothes. I bought them." Or rather, it's the difference between an observer assigning gender and a person taking part in gendered behavior.

Apparent gender also gets really fuzzy because most people are going to have different individual standards. That "apparent" gender is going to slide across a pretty wide scale depending on who is doing the observing. Gender expression is a concrete concept, based on broader social constructs rather than the individual perception that Apparent gender implies.

That is to say, from my point of view Gender expression is just plain better at answering a discrete question well. "What broad category of gender norms does this character perform?" Apparent gender isn't terribly great at that. Regardless of their actual gender, somebody who dresses like a boy and has soft features might appear to be a tomboy female to one person, but they might appear like a baby-faced male to another.

I think it would be prudent to look at the questions that users actually ask about gender when searching -- that's not to say that the questions I ask are definitive, even if I advocate for them -- and design traits that answer those questions succinctly. Maybe a survey would help?

Personally, after quite a bit of thought, I'd find it useful to be able to search for...

Genitalia
With options like Penis, Vagina, Intersex, Other, etc. Things like breast size and presence, as well as body build, are already present so you don't really need another trait for them.

Gender Performance or Gender Presentation
These are more straightforward phrasings for Gender Expression and would be as easily understood as Apparent Gender. "What are the broad categories of gendered cultural norms that your character partakes in?" It would include options like Masculine, Feminine, Androgynous, Androgynous-Feminine, and Androgynous-Masculine. This is something that I'd really like to be able to define for my characters, but I can't do it succinctly with the current setup, never mind searching for it.

Gender Context
This describes whether you're transgender or cisgender or have some other situation going on with your gender, with options like Transgender, Cisgender, Third Gender, etc. We would need to make sure that we're not letting in options like Two-Spirit though, since that's a big, racist can of worms.

@Pinkie Pie: Gender is a social concept, like for example nation. I can speak English and wear a T-Shirt with the US-Flag while I still be German, but I cannot express my German nationality with this. If Mike wears feminine clothes, then he wears clothes his society defines as feminine, because he wants to appear feminine. It may be an unfriendly idea, that his society defines what is feminine and he cannot express that he is a manly macho by wearing lipstick and a skirt, but it is still the case.

Apparent gender is fuzzy but more than gender expression? The question is, what gender expresses the char? His own gender? And how does he express the gender. Can a man who wears a skirt have a male gender expression since he thinks men should be allowed to wear skirts like women?

Regardless of their actual gender, somebody who dresses like a boy and has soft features might appear to be a tomboy female to one person, but they might appear like a baby-faced male to another.

Yes. And this is not the case with gender expression? If I dress like a boy and have soft features, is this gender expression female (tomboy) or male (babyface guy)?

I think it's best to keep this from becoming overly complicated and esoteric...

Just use mental gender for a character's gender identity, gender presentation for feminine/masculine/androgynous behaviors and expression, and genitalia for, well, genitalia. Secondary sex characteristics and other ambiguous things can be defined in other traits.

And here's the talking past each other part. I think there's a language barrier that we're getting caught up in.

Gender expression, as I'm using it, is an established phrase in gender studies with a nuanced meaning. Yes, gender is a social construct and I would never dream of disputing that. But you seem to be confused about what the trait Gender Expression (though I'm going to be using Gender Presentation from now on, since it's a clearer term) is meant to convey.

If you dress like a boy and have soft features, then you're presenting as masculine. Your soft features don't come into the equation of your gender presentation. Your gender presentation encompasses everything outside your naked body that is gendered. Clothes, mannerisms, social responsibilities, insofar as they're determined by your society's concepts of gender.

@Alva, that sounds like a fantastic solution to me.

@Desdemona The difference between Apparent Gender and Gender Presentation is that Apparent Gender semantically bundles in a lot of little things like facial features, body build, etc. that have nothing to do with gender, and which are better expressed with their own traits.

@Alva: Which other traits would that be? If I play a shemale, a woman with a penis, it's: Mental gender:feminine, gender presentation:feminine, genitalia:penis. If I play a transgender man, it's the same. How do I distinguish a shemale from a transgender man?

@Pinkie: If I got this right you want to remove the "secondary sexual characteristics" from the gender-appearance, that's why you want to call it gender-presentation?

@Desdemona
You have this completely backwards.

1. Nope. Nu-uh. That needs to stop. "Shemale" is a rather hateful epithet for transgender women, which is what a feminine mental gender, feminine gender presentation, and penis genitalia would represent. A transgender man would be masculine mental gender, masculine gender presentation, and vagina genitalia.
2. Except those second two traits in either set can each vary wildly from person to person. There are plenty of transgender women who, for one reason or another, present masculine or who have had corrective surgeries to make their genitals (and other parts) align with their mental gender. Same goes for transgender men who present feminine or get an entirely distinct set of corrective surgeries.
3. No, I want to call it Gender Presentation because it's the most concrete, clear cut term we have. Secondary Sexual Characteristics are already described better in other traits like Facial Hair and Breast Size. Getting rid of Secondary Sexual Characteristics is just getting rid of a redundant trait.

Also, Gender Presentation and Secondary Sexual Characteristics don't overlap at all. They are two completely different things. Apparent Gender would conflate the two in a way that would be really unhelpful in both profile making and searching.

Gender expression is a shorthand for communicating the socially gendered memes that a person is taking part in. A hypothetical: Mike, who identifies as male and dresses in drag, is not expressing a gender identity of female. Rather, he is taking part in a gendered meme of wearing feminine clothing. He's a man who happens to be presenting himself in a feminine way, whatever that means in his society. The term Gender expression lets that speak for itself.

In the hypothetical scenario of a Mike profile, then gender expression is always going to be Feminine, whether Mike looks like this, this, this, or this.

The gap between apparent gender and gender expression in real life is a serious issue for the transgender community, a large source of anxiety, depression, and sometimes even suicide. Characters--like the four just posted--on the other hand are fictional, and that gap only exists when the author of the profile wants that gap to exist and be one of the themes of the profile. Transparent is an awesome show and choosing to cast Jeffrey Tambor instead of someone like Judi Dench was a deliberate choice on the part of the creators. In the same way, there's nothing to stop someone from using this picture for their character that is male but simply likes wearing dresses, even though that's very clearly a picture of a female korean idol.

Now, say someone wants to play a transgender character. One who was born male, then transitioned to female. They would have a female gender, a feminine apparent gender, and a vagina. For the profile, there would be no difference between them and every other female character. I'm not sure that this would be a bad thing.

All that said, my current thinking is to add Gender Expression as the fourth option. So in the end, it'd be

Mental Gender renamed Gender

Gender Expression left as it is.

Secondary Sexual Characteristics renamed Apparent Gender

Sex renamed Genitalia

The best part of this is that it'd make converting profiles to the new system pretty easy, I think.

But then what's the standard for "appearing" male or female? As a transgender viewer I see a completely different dichotomy at play with those characters. It's not a scale of "appearing feminine" that I see, it's a scale of beauty (or moe moe as the case may be) and of passing for cisgender. And, yes there are points in each where I see possible relatability or wish fulfillment regarding gender dysphoria. However, that's not really here nor there.

My point is that "Apparent Gender" lends itself to a specifically cisgender standard of passing as cisgender or not. That is what you describe above. Especially if we're converting Secondary Sexual Characteristics directly into Apparent Gender. So are we then speaking to a specifically cisgender audience, or regarding them as the default?

If you could clarify, are you saying that you want a system with Gender, Gender Expression, and Genitalia, with no Apparent Gender? Or something else? What is your proposal?

I expressed approval for Alva Hargrave's proposal just up-thread. I still think that's a fine solution.

I think it's best to keep this from becoming overly complicated and esoteric...

Just use mental gender for a character's gender identity, gender presentation for feminine/masculine/androgynous behaviors and expression, and genitalia for, well, genitalia. Secondary sex characteristics and other ambiguous things can be defined in other traits.

Okay. That clears things up. The thing is, we both agree that gender expression/presentation and apparent gender are both two completely different things. These are things that the creator of a profile and those looking for profiles will be aware of.

It's possible to put Apparent Gender in "other traits"...but shouldn't it be in the gender category?

We should also keep in mind that profile inspirations may be a thing where we can search multiple traits at once so the need to use "apparent gender" is basically useless when you can search for traits a user may find important like body type, hair, facial hair, or any new ones that may arise to cover whatever passing means to them.

Also as a tiny add-on, like Pinkie, as a transgender user I have a slightly different concept of what "passes" as male/female. Using a single trait to define that is extremely confusing because I have to use other people's views of my character as a point of reference, which I won't know because I can't define their perceptions. If I have a character who is across the board feminine/female in expression and gender but has facial hair of beard...do I put apparent gender of female or apparent gender of androgynous? To me that completely passes as a female character but to someone else that probably doesn't.

Basically gender is really confusing and I think we really, really need to stick with the most simple and concrete ideas and terms for everyone's sake.

I agree it's appropriate to be sensitive to the needs of trans characters and users here.

However, we have another group to be sensitive to the needs of: cisgender people, and those playing or looking for cisgender characters. In these scenarios, gender isn't confusing at all. These people just need a trait that asks what Professor Oak does: "Are you a GIRL or a BOY?". It has a straightforward answer for them. It's also a foundational question for searching: when you're gay, or straight, or bisexual but in the mood for one or the other right now, just being able to say "find profiles who are dudes" or "find profiles who are chicks" is important.

(It's even an easy-to-answer question for herms, usually.)

Given most of society is cisgender (as far as we can tell), cisgender characters tend to make the majority of roleplaying sites (in my experience), and most of society would just say "I'm into dudes" or "I'm into chicks" or "I'm into both" and leave it at that (again, as far as we can tell), I cannot understate that this question will be totally foundational. Even as a pansexual individual who's usually looking for things in a partner which can't be answered in traits, I want for a "are you a girl or a boy?" trait sometimes.

Those of us who make characters who don't fit the gender binary will need to find a reasonable way to express that, but that doesn't preclude that we should have a straightforward Professor Oak-style question for the sake of an enormous proportion of users.

Oh, I need to say: I understand that for a lot of people, Professor Oak's question just wouldn't be answerable. So I don't expect that such a trait would only have options equivalent to "boy" and "girl". But a trait that at least covers that ground, plus whatever options are needed (such as "nonbinary"?), should be had.

When I say those of us with nonbinary characters will need to find a reasonable way to express that, including extra options to make that expression possible is also within the realm of possibilities.

@Satsuki: Yes, it's extremely important to make sure that this is easy to use for cisgender people as well since I'm assuming that's what most users are. Which is exactly why I don't want something like "apparent gender" to be used because it complicates the system for everyone, not just trans folk. If someone wants to search for a cisgender character using apparent gender, they could get a variety of results that aren't. The only thing that really works in my mind as a "quick fix" for this would be something like gender context which would define a character as being transgender, cisgender, etc.

I'm not entirely sure how the inspiration system will end up working but it might be able to help define these things as well? But it seems like that's further down the line so a stand-in might be needed for now.

I had a long reply almost all written up, but Alva summed up all the points I was going to make, and more, very nicely. So all I have to say is "This. All this. Yes."

Since the inspiration system doesn't exist yet and we don't know how it'll work out, my personal preference is to assume it won't help us sort this out at all. Its roots are, after all, in filling out a profile quickly with sets of single pre-set options, not in searching a range of options.

Anyway: ok, "apparent gender" might not be a perfect question to ask. (Frankly I'm okay with getting some not-what-I-was-looking-for results, as long as there's pagination to keep moving past them onto good results, and the good results are the vast majority.)

But, there's surely a question or trait to which most people can answer: "I'm a boy", "I'm a girl", or "I'm not one of those". When I'm filling out paper forms for The Man, it's usually "Sex" or "Gender", and the third option is "Prefer not to say" or "Other". But we know both "Sex" and "Gender" won't be quite workable labels here for various reasons. Is there a trait that can have those options straightforwardly?

I don't see anything that can't be substituted with a search for a certain gender/genitalia (or what-have-you) combination and yield the same results.

But if you really want a shorthand, maybe Gender Summary?

Yeah, it's just that with a range of potential options, I'm not just searching for "has breasts", I gotta pick particular sizes at that. (Hm, maybe that should be an intelligent expansion on our search engine.)

Gender Summary could do it.

We should also keep in mind that profile inspirations may be a thing where we can search multiple traits at once so the need to use "apparent gender" is basically useless when you can search for traits a user may find important like body type, hair, facial hair, or any new ones that may arise to cover whatever passing means to them.

There is only one body type (curvy) which tells something about the gender appearance. If a woman chooses "average" or "lean" this says nothing about if she has the body of a man. Facial hair "none" could be a female body or a shaved guy. Hair-length says nothing. I don't want to check half a dozen traits to make a guess. I want a summary. An apparent gender.

I think gender summary is maybe the most useful option at this point because it's the most simple and to the point for now. The more I think about it the more useful it's probably going to be. Also adding pagination to search results (why don't we have that already?) is going to help a lot with any other issues.

@Desdemona I think I'm a bit confused now, if we search female/vagina will that not turn up obviously cisgender female characters 95% of the time since most people make characters that fit into the gender binary? It's not making a guess, you're going to get a girl. There's a lot of variance between characters as it is so if you want something specific you'd have to search for that and if there are traits that are lacking, then we'd add new ones like gender summary. That's what I meant by that. My objection is just that apparent gender as a trait is too vague and potentially problematic to use.

But isn't the gender-summary already the first trait, "gender"? I wonder if it would make sense to add "transgender" or "transgender-woman" and "transgender-man" or whatever is the right term as options.

@Ava: It's true, it's only a minor problem, the true problem are the gender-preferences. Gender-Appearance might be vague but it's more useful for me. Assumed there are options for "both", Gender-Appearance "male" means, the guy talks, dresses, looks like a guy. That's what I want to know. Assumed I want to distinguish cis-gender chars from transgender or mixed-gender chars, Gender-Appearance is more useful than Gender-Expression.

Gender presentation seems like it would be a lot more confusing than apparent gender. Say you have a character that wears male clothing. One who was born a male. One who has a penis. This would still be an entirely appropriate picture for that profile.

The other issue is that the term "gender expression" itself is just confusing. It's not in the common lexicon of people in the same way that "apparent" is.

As for Gender Summary, I think that'd be good. What categories should be added? I'm thinking keep it simple, with Male, Female, and Other. Avoid the controversy of using names like Shemale and Cuntboy.

Let me say that, explicitly, when profile creation is rewritten, regardless of how the traits look like, it will present a neat set of choice for cis people which has an option for the more complicated choices. This may or may not involve profile inspirations.

We got to this point in the first place because people felt gender traits were confusing and not intuitive. With that context in mind, I don't feel that gender expression and apparent gender both being added would solve anything - even reading this comment chain I'm still not entirely sure how the difference is split between what is expressed and what is apparent (since these are essentially synonyms ...)

Apparent Gender is a combination of "secondary sexual attributes" + "Gender Expression", while Gender Expression is, well, Gender Expression while "secondary sexual attributes" is kicked. I express my gender the way I dress, behave and speak, while my apparent gender also includes my physical shape. I don't express my gender by having breasts, but they make me appear female. That's how I got it.

I do think an overhaul is needed. The current options make me a bit uncomfortable and not want to use them fully, enough that I was strongly considering posting a topic like this before I spotted it. I'm just not going to be able to, say, apply "Sex: Male" to a trans woman. At minimum, Sex needs to be changed to Genitalia.

I don't really like Apparent Gender either for reasons Pinkie and Alva have covered pretty well. It shifts the focus from what the character does/wants to how other people perceive them, which is both pretty variable and potentially painful (due to issues like misgendering). Like applying Sex: Male to a trans woman, applying Apparent Gender: Male to a character who is not male would just make me feel uncomfortable. It reminds me too much of harmful behavior I've observed in which someone's gender identity gets undermined because they don't meet someone else's standard. And I am pretty much cis. To me, it's just not worth it to put potential convenience of some users over potential hurt and discomfort of other users, even if there are more of the former than the latter. Because here's all it really eliminates: we have to click a few more buttons if we want to see, say, a character with feminine presentation, breasts, and no facial hair. I just... can't see that as a big issue. It's a tiny amount of clicks.

Gender Summary is not a bad idea though. Male, Female, and Other (or Nonbinary) work for the categories. There could also potentially be a second set of traits beneath that heading for Cisgender and Transgender which could optionally be combined with Male and Female..? But I'm not sure how well that would work or if that amount of complexity is desired for this.

Apparent Gender or Gender Expression I don't have much of an opinion on other than I would really strongly prefer to not have them both. Pinkie's earlier suggestion of Gender Presentation could also work fine, since it's a more natural way to express Gender Expression.

Overall, I agree most with Alva's suggestion:

Just use mental gender for a character's gender identity, gender presentation for feminine/masculine/androgynous behaviors and expression, and genitalia for, well, genitalia. Secondary sex characteristics and other ambiguous things can be defined in other traits.

I'm against Gender Summary just on the principle of trying to simplify our gender system, since again, it's been a point of contention for new users. If we really need it, we can add it later, but I'm not seeing any exceptional use cases it must be present to cover right now.

I'm fine with either Gender Presentation or Gender Expression. Both make sense, and neither make me uncomfortable. I also think that Gender Summary is not really necessary. It wouldn't hurt anything either, but for me at least it's no big deal. It's a similar situation of just requiring a few more clicks to find the same information, so long as someone has set all the traits up.

How about renaming Gender Expression to Social Gender and Secondary Sexual Characteristics to Physical Gender?

Gender: The gender of a character. Options: Male, Female, Male (transgender), Female (transgender), Agender, Bigender

Physical Gender: The gender that is assumed from the character's body (except the genitals). Breasts, beard, hips, voice. Options: Male, Female, Androgynous, None, Other

Social Gender: All non-physical ways to identify the gender of the character. Clothes, haircut, make up, behavior. Options: Male, Female, Androgynous, None, Other

Genitalia: Options: Penis, Vagina, Both, None, Other

I could dig Physical Gender.

I would not rename Gender Expression to Social Gender: Gender Expression (gender.wikia.com) is the established and common term for describing that thing. If we're gonna describe that thing, let's go with the term people are using for it. We don't benefit from inventing another.

Physical Gender has the same problems that using Sex to mean genitalia does for me. Let's please not align gender with physical configuration more than necessary.

And yeah, I really think Gender Expression or Gender Presentation is the way to go.

Gender expression sounds good. So no "physical gender" at all? Gender as a mental concept?

Yeah, I'd prefer no physical gender at all. We can use other, specific traits to define our characters' specific physical characteristics (breasts and facial hair traits already exist, sex can change to genitalia, etc.). Mental gender for gender identity, gender expression for how they express themselves. I think that would allow for everyone's needs and not be too confusing either.

The use case of "physical gender" can be covered by "genitalia" among other traits. Here again is the most reasonable to me, from Alva:

Just use mental gender for a character's gender identity, gender presentation for feminine/masculine/androgynous behaviors and expression, and genitalia for, well, genitalia. Secondary sex characteristics and other ambiguous things can be defined in other traits.

Particularly since there's been more than one complaint that the current (well-meaning) set of gender traits makes them uncomfortable, and the current set has an analog to "physical gender".

I just saw this was open for endorsement and put a few points in. If I could review how this is going so far:

• Mental Gender is staying untouched, I believe.
• Sex has been renamed to Genitals.

That makes us halfway toward the end state, and leaves the following:

• Gender Expression is already present. Do I understand we're planning to rename it to Gender Presentation?
• Secondary Sexual Characteristics has about 45 endorsement points toward its removal in other feedback. Is the plan to let it disappear because it's defined in other traits, and not rename it to anything?

My understanding is that mental gender is staying, SSC has the potential to be deleted if that gets to enough points, and expression might change to another label if people feel strongly enough for that to make a suggestion and get it endorsed.

My impression is, there are two general ideas. The first is similar to Griz suggestion and the second is: Mental gender but no physical gender traits, instead many detailed physical traits like genitalia, breasts, beard, body build, etc. The second idea is probably the one with better chances, because the first is seen as discriminatory.

Right now, I'll take the points I have in here and put a few more into the SSC trait deletion feedback.

I'd say till now we have:

• Mental gender stays (maybe renamed to "gender"? )
• Sex renamed to genitals
• Secondary Sexual Characteristics removed probably

Remains Gender Expression. I doubt renaming it to "Gender presentation" will really be helpful. How about treating it the same as SSC? Removing and defining it with other traits like "Clothes", "Behavior", "Make up", "Appearance".

Mental Gender's sort of redundant in that it can just as well be "gender", but Gender is interchangeable with Sex on things like paper forms people fill out. Better to have the "Mental" there just to remind people this is the brain thing not the body thing.

Would it make sense to have a trait which combines genitals and chest? Named "Sexual characteristics" for example. Sexual characteristics: Male: Penis and male chest. Female: Vagina and breasts. Mixed: Penis and breasts. Hermaphrodite: Vagina and Penis.

Or alternatively a trait Chest like the trait Genitals which appears at the Gender section which would then have four traits and look like this:

Gender

• Mental Gender: female
• Gender Expression: female
• Genitals: Vagina
• Chest: Breasts

this is all good, and I would also like to be able to get detailed when it comes to characters capable of changing their gender via shapeshifting or are transgender.
But my opinion for what I would want for it is basically:
biological gender for the gender the character was originally born or created as. ( Male, Female, Hermaphrodite, None)
mental gender the gender that the character expresses and identifies with (Male, Female, Both, None, Non-binary, agender, varied)
gender presentation what is physically represented (Masculine, Feminine, Androgynous)
gender context such as transgender, intersex, shapeshifter, or third gender
genitalia for.. basically what's between their legs

imo we want this to be as simple as it can be, but no more simple. In this context I'm not sure we'd see a lot of things like biological gender or gender context

then how could we rightfully detail character gender such as them being trans, intersex, or can change the gender? Can't really just add it as a comment, because no one really reads the added notes next to the traits... which is because they are usually hidden.

There is usually no trait-option for "changing". So if you hair color is sometimes red and sometimes black you wont find an option for this. Or if your breasts are sometimes small and sometimes big. Shapeshifter is a trait under "supernatural nature". A transgender has "gender expression: female" and "mental gender: male".

Yes, we don't really present shapeshifting options at that fine-level a detail, as it would basically amount to adding a varies to every single trait. You would indicate this in your trait context instead, and have the shape shifting nature that desdemona was talking about.

then why not just gender, mental gender,gender presentation, and genitalia? at least until someone sees use in including gender context and such. It's four tags in gender, but it's nice and simple and everyone wins.

The basic idea is, that gender is a mental trait. The physical gender (or sex) is expressed by traits like genitalia, breast-size, facial hair, body build.

Yeah, gender as a stand-alone is completely redundant with those other traits present. Gender identity (however we're expressing it as a trait), gender presentation and genitalia combined with various sex descriptors gives plenty definition for that. If you want to say that they are definitely cisgender, that's what writing in the context field is for.

Gender as a stand-alone, as defined as "what was stamped on your birth certificate". Often this is a given regarding their genitals and/or is perfectly viable as a context for another trait.

whatever we can agree on, it needs to be able to work out, is what I am trying to get at. If need be then just go with Gender Identity or mental gender, gender presentation, and genitalia. If people want something like gender context or etc for things like trans, intersex, or the like, then they could make a feedback of that on a later date.

I think the most important thing is to finish reading the Gender section and be left with no real questions in your mind about the character, except maybe "how big is her penis?" for example. (This means I'd also like to see some enforcement or special encouragement of selecting preferences. Tired of wondering if they like my gender or not, which is kind of a big question.)

One thing that bothers me is that the Gender Expression trait is being conflated with how the person acts. That is something that may or may not come out in RP, and would be an obvious possibility if Mental Gender is female and Apparent Gender is male. The whole point of an RP might be that apparent gender falls away to an expressed gender. The point is that initially to you, and to NPC characters occurring in the plot, the Apparent Gender might be fully male, but the Gender Expression which is evolved over time, or something that only comes out in private interactions, would only eventually be revealed as female, as an example. But, a larger selection of options under Apparent Gender can cover more cases and essentially capture whether a character is visually male, or visually male with obvious attempts to feminize themselves. To what degree the character "acts" female still needs to come out in actual RP.

Gender pop-up: The gender self-identity of the character, regardless of genitalia or natural appearance. ((I prefer the name Mental Gender or GenderSelf-Identity for this, personally.)) optons: Male, Female, Agender, Bigender, Non-binary ((does Agender cover the case of not applicable for those rare cases? NBD))

Apparent Gender pop-up: The gender that is observed from the character's physical appearance, clothing, jewelry, make-up, etc. options: Male, Female, Androgynous, None, Male with Female signifiers, Female with Male signifiers. (("signifiers" being make-up, gendered speech patterns, jewelry, hair-style, or clothing, i.e. short hair, work-shirt, etc. on a female, or lipstick on a male.)) ((Note that this distinction permits RP with a starting point of perceiving the character as opposite of their self-identity.))

Genitalia pop-up: The reproductive organs of the character. options: Penis, Vagina, Both, None, Other

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

The problem is that the preferences don't work well for gender traits. I like penis and vagina, breasts and beard, just not in every combination. In retrospective I would say, there should be one main gender-trait.

Gender (A combination of the mental gender identity with physical traits): Female, mainly Female, Male and Female, mainly male, Male, None, Other

Gender might be too complex to split it up without causing confusion. So one gender trait and many gender-relevant traits like:

Genitalia: Breasts: Clothing (The clothes but also make-up and accessoiries): feminine, masculine, other, none Physical appearance: Masculine, androgyn, feminine, feminine curvy Body built: Facial hair: