Thread by @DrCharlotteTate

I wanted to share my panel comments at the #GenderPreconference at #SPSP2020 with the folks of the Twitter Machine.

Typing the Twitter Machine reveals the facts that I am not a skilled Twitter user and have no sense of how to best organize this. A giant thread follows:

I have seen the giant thread before, which is why I am doing this. @ZSchudson and @ChristiaBrown, feel free to sub-post on these threads...

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown Q1. “What are best practices for asking about gender, especially gender identity?”

A1: My research group (viz., myself and my grad students) has advocated, since 2012, for the use of a 2-question or 2-step method.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown You can find the original article here (no paywall) in Journal of Sex Research: online.sfsu.edu/ctate2/Tate-Le…

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown Our current use of this method is:

Stem1: What is your current gender identity?

Options1: Woman // Man // Trans Woman // Trans Man // Nonbinary/Enby // Intersex

Stem2: What gender were you assigned at birth?

Options2: Female // Male // Intersex

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown {if a person selects “Intersex” at birth, we branch to “as which gender were you raised?” Options: Female // Male}

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown We believe that the 2-question method can be better than open-ended (i.e., please provide your gender identity in this space) for participants. This is largely because the participants become the coders, as it were. They know which close-ended options best fit their experience.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown The key, however, is to provide as many options as possible. We have done this in our work by providing over 20 specific nonbinary labels for participants who choose that option in web-based surveys.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown For paper-pen surveys (or voice surveys), we advocate for allowing a person to chose nonbinary as an option, and then prompting that respondent a specific label.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown If researchers use the open-ended method, the researcher needs to explain how the coding of those responses, through the mental lens of mostly cisgender and heterosexual research assistants is going to adequately and accurately represent concepts like “nullgender”, “voidgender”

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown and language that most of these assistants—through no fault of their own—may not even realize are specific nonbinary labels used in interacting nonbinary communities.

The caveat to the use of the 2-question method is when participants are not anonymous...

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown ...(i.e., could be identified) in behavioral research. (Medical record surveillance is a different context.) In cases where someone’s trans status could be unintentionally outed, we advocate for using the Stem1 only. This allows a respondent to choose whether to disclose.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown Q2: “Related to Q1, what statistical considerations for analyzing data from non-binary folks have you considered? esp. for power, sample size, exclusion”

A2: My research group advocates for running multiple replications of the same study design as secondary or tertiary questions

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown ...in other new designs and new data collections. This has been our generic cumulative science practice since the beginnings of my research career (back in 2002) to make sure that we replicate a phenomenon of interest multiple times.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown This procedure has an interesting benefit for low numerical incidence populations like nonbinary respondents in general survey contexts.

Think about this as we want to Answer Question X for nonbinary respondents, and we do this when we have Designs A, B, C, D, and so forth.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown Over time, we build the sufficient sample size to analyze nonbinary respondents on that specific Question X, because that design was built into other Designs (A thru D and so forth).

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown To be sophisticated about this Question X analysis, statistically, if there are at least 5 total designs (better if more) in which the Question X was collected, then we can use techniques like linear mixed effects modeling (LMM) to estimate the Question X results across Designs.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown Q3. “Given the shift in how we view gender, is it ever scientifically justifiable/appropriate to conduct research that views gender as binary? If so, when? On a similar note, can you think of instances when it would not be possible to view gender as non-binary?”

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown A3: I think it’s always appropriate and justifiable to study phenomena in a piecemeal fashion, so long as the scholars recognize the pieces are not the whole and that we always remember what the whole looks like.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown Considering gender, we need to remember that binary and nonbinary experiences exist—and in different ways across the facets—and that we are always “plucking” pieces to examine.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown The danger becomes when we, as scholars, either think (a) the pieces are the whole (or complete) picture or (b) that some other researcher will explore the pieces that we did not.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown To combat both, our conceptualizations of the phenomenon have to be inclusive from the outset and we have to commit to following up on the phenomenon with samples from other populations that are implicated within the phenomenon.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown The latter can, and should, be in collaboration (rather than mere consultation) with the scholars from the populations of interest.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown Q4: “What does rethinking the gender binary mean for all of the existing work on gender and sexism? What needs to be re-examined? What can we reasonably assume will generalize?”

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown A4: I think we need to understand that most work on gender bias (aka sexism) is mostly about heterosexual folks dealing with the complexities and insufficiencies of heterosexuality as an interacting system of behaviors, expectations, and negotiations.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown I think ambivalent sexism theory is actually about just this: heterosexual gender bias.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown If we want to consider what gender bias looks like, writ large, we need to start over. We need to carefully consider how to measure gender bias in a way that includes nonbinary folks (as social targets) from the beginning...

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown ...and, simultaneously, in a way that allows for the *possibility* that particularly cisgender perceivers may ultimately treat trans women like cis women as social targets and trans men like cis men as social targets.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown The main point is that we need to redesign the measurement tools that exist and consider making the existing ones explicitly about heterosexual gender bias—as in how heterosexuals experience gender bias when interacting with and considering only other heterosexuals.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown Q5: “Is there a concern that re-thinking the gender binary could lead to denying the impact of gender stereotypes and a sense of gender-blindness?”

A5: In general, no; expanding how researchers think about gender beyond cisgender heterosexuals will not do this. HOWEVER...

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown I would like to pivot and to megaphone the perspective of some nonbinary activists and scholars with whom I collaborate. Some of these nonbinary folks have concerns about cis women and men in particular co-opting and displacing nonbinary folks’ experiences...

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown ...in trying make everything nonbinary and expand the use of "nonbinary" to being bisexual, gender-fun in clothing and attire presentation, and using “they” pronouns casually as a way to avoid the consequences of gender stereotypes.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown I want to remind people that this nonbinary community used to use “genderqueer” in the 1990s and early 2000s as self-label until (mostly) cis women lesbians co-opted it and started describing “futch” (femme/butch) or “andro” (androgynous) social presentation through clothing...

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown ...and also gender role adherence using that same term. Now, this community is using Nonbinary / NB (U.S.) / Enby (U.K.) as a way to focus on the self-categorization piece of their lived experience.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown So, let’s not make nonbinary folks get another term because we as binary folks are using language that they created for a different phenomenon to voice our frustration with heteronormative gender roles, social presentations, and the imprecision of using “masculine” and “feminine”

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown Q6. How do you teach this to nonbinary and other folks?

A6: Editorialize. That is, state all the biases that the researchers displayed in their conduct of that study or series of studies. You can update the older, usually less inclusive, language to near-modern language...

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown ...which marks for the students the hidden assumptions all along. In all of this, calibrate to your student audience based on political climate, campus climate, and your scholarly rank as tenured or non-tenured.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown Q7. How do we use longitudinal methods to understand gender experiences?

A7: Try to collaborate with lifespan development researchers at every level. It would be aspirational (and still worth trying) to get parallel questions for phenomenon from the childhood years...

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown ...into the late adult years. Also, try to use the same measurement tools (e.g. question wordings) if you can, because, otherwise, we don’t know whether the phenomenon legitimately changed or whether the new question wording is actually read as a different question altogether.

@ZSchudson @ChristiaBrown -END-