It’s also irrelevant for so so many forms.
Instead of worrying about changing the order, who that offends, who should be first/last or whatever, just take the box away if it’s not essential that you know.
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Leaving it out can also sometimes be problematic. The reason personal characteristics such as gender, sexual orientation, age, race, disabilities, etc are often captured is because organisations have equality related obligations that require an understanding and recognition of the demographic of their clients/employees. You can’t recognise that your service unfairly favours men if you have no record of the gender of your clients.
That said, your point does still stand. There are definitely situations where I’ve been asked my gender where I’ve felt it to be completely irrelevant.
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My credit card doesn’t need to say Miss on it
The fact that I’m going to die a crazy unmarried cat lady isn’t relevant
If Monzo don’t need gender then other places don’t either
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It wasn’t me trying to put words in your mouth. Just economical (and bad) quoting. Have amended.
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Oh I know, I was being cheeky, it didn’t bother me 
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I just saw this while idly scrolling Twitter. I can get on board with it 
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Neither are common (in your sense) men ‘gentlemen’. We contract it to ‘ladies and gentlemen’ when there are no (majesties or) peers or their wives present, not because the only noblesse happen to be female.
It would be odd as well as redundant to list ‘ladies’ twice; it’s not addressing a collection of couples.
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I get a bit annoyed at being asked if I’m Mr/Mrs/Ms/Other in forms where my gender has no relevance. Like, why does my bank care? Why do magazine subscriptions need to know how I identify? Just take my name and address. If it’s someone who might need to contact me, like a utility service, and they don’t want to misgender, they could have a ‘Prefered pronoun’ or something that their staff can see, but whyyyy does it need to be on every bit of correspondence.
I don’t even identify as non binary, or a different gender to how I was born, I can only imagine how frustrating it is to people who have changed from their default and have to update everyone they ever get mail from.
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I’ve seen company emails with
Preferred pronoun
Preferred name/prefers to be called
at the bottom.
So something like
she/her, Mrs Winterbottom
Or
they/their, Kris
Etc
I’d love to see more companies move to this, so maybe on forms:
Legal name
Preferred name
Preferred pronoun
Done!
Getting an email or other correspondence that uses your preferred name and pronouns would be quite the pleasant surprise…
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I get more and more company emails with pronouns in the signature for these days. Was a bit odd at first, but I got used to it.
I wouldn’t call them ‘preferred’ pronouns, though. Just, pronouns. Preferred sounds like a choice, whereas to many there is no choice, it’s what they are. Certainly in usage people always say “My pronouns are…” without the word preferred inserted.
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In terms of business emails, I’m with you and I think stating pronouns is becoming the norm.
In terms of forms, I’d be slightly weirded out by the fact the company I’m getting marketing emails from wants to know how to refer to me in the third person though. Why would they be talking about me 
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It’s all marketing related.
It’s a given that certain products and services appeal more to one gender over another. So when you’re outlaying a load of money on a campaign, you want the highest return on your investment. This is where demographics come in.
So using your magazine example… Lots of these own a whole suite of other publications. I believe Cosmopolitan is womens fashion (correct me if I’m wrong ) so they would waste a lot of money targeting males with this. Granted some might be interested but the ROI will be too low.
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Yeah Same - like, sorry, Fountain Pen Monthly, all you need to know is that I’m a gold nib lover, you don’t need to know my gender, pronouns, marital status, shoe size…
That said I’m 10000% on board for places that need a “Legal Name” also supporting a “Preferred” variant.
I can’t remember what Monzo do, (I think they ask for preferred name too? Not sure about Pronouns) but if I’m required to use info that’s related to my identity (if that makes sense) , then give the option for the “preferred” ones if they are not the same as one’s ID.
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Surely if someone is signing up to their emails they are worth targeting?
Depends who it is.
Currys don’t care if you’re male, female or anything else if you’re signing up to be alerted about an offer on a fridge.
But ASOS would prefer to know, not a lot of point sending party dresses to someone who is only interested in Speedo swimming trunks.
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A lot of women are interested in Speedo swimming trunks. Not buying them though
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I’m just giving you a reason from a different perspective having worked at a marketing agency for over a decade.
Whether it should or shouldn’t be asked is a different question.
Every form of marketing has a cost. Sending emails costs money, as does designing them, leaflets, online banners and everything else. Businesses want to squeeze as much money out of them as they can and they do this by doing very tailored and specific advertising, to the point that they can predict how many sales they will get.
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I think the better solution to that is to a) ask people what emails they want to receive or b) target them based on their purchases. Asking their gender and then targeting based on gender assumptions seems pretty inefficient to me.
Like why ask ‘are you a man’ instead of ‘are you interested in buying male clothes’ (or some version of that)
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I don’t disagree but that’s not (generally) how it’s done.
The list of questions would be huge.
Most companies sell a whole range of items, so they’d be asking:
Are you interested in speedos, are you interested in makeup, are you interested in hair clippers and so on.
Starting with gender they can (rightly or wrongly) answer all those questions in one fell swoop and use that as a baseline. Then as you said, refine it further on purchase history and such.
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