In this report, I am referencing to this issue:
https://github.com/mozilla/diversity/issues/96
I understand and respect the suggestions that people posted on the issue "Gender Identity - Legal Concerns (age)", quoting them here:
School victimization of Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender‐related is strongly linked to young adult mental and physical health. I believe that part of the LGBT+ teenagers that are in high school might not want to reveal their genders because they don't want to take the risk of suffering school victimization and suffering because of that. Even though the data might have standards that will ensure that final results will be anonymotized beyond any recognition adolescents often lack privacy when completing surveys [2] and that lack of privacy may be a relevant cause for them to fear school victimization and other kinds of negative consequences.
Another reason why we shouldn't accept gender related answers from people with less than 19 years old might be that a considerable part of teenagers who answer the survey may not be fully familiarized with terms like "transgender", like the study [2] points out. I imagine that other terms like "non-binary", "gender fluid" and "genderqueer" might also be equally confusing preventing some people to express themselves correctly.
I want to throw some light towards the another side of the coin. I support the idea that we souldn't limit the survey questions on Legal Concerns based on some age bar such as 19, as mentioned in #96
- By asking the gender specific questions from a teenager i.e person <=19 years of age can be of a lot of help for producing statistics which can address the issues of those who feel that they need community support due their gender issues or if they are facing self-acceptance issues because their gender doensn't match with their in-born sex. If we could collect truthful data, it will help us understand the need to take required steps for those who are looking for support and inclusiveness but are too afraid to ask or talk about it openly and freely. We can get their responses through anonymized forms.
And I'd say, this becomes even more crucial in case of teenagers by extending them help at younger age so that they are not scarred for life due to victimization and due to their apprehension to talk about it or to raise a voice against it. We could possibly introduce them to the online communities that are vailable for people between the age of 13 and 19 which they can join to connect with other Gender-expansive youth and their allies.
But for this, we need to gather their honest answers. Just closing the matter at "them being not comfortable" won't solve this persistent problem.
- Through such surveys, we can get an idea of how many people ticked that "I don't understand such jargons" or "I haven't heard of such a disection of genders ever before" to get a sense of where our "Gender Education" lies in the real world. Are we actually able to educate people regarding this or are these just bookish terms?
This will help us know that who all need to be made more educated and self-aware, and how to make them understand what is meant by "self-acceptance".
And I'd emphasize on the fact that its better to help the people understand and aware of such things during teen age rather than during their 30's when they already would have gone through worst horrors of the societal mentality (which I hope is changing slowly).
And I don't really think that people under 19 years of age are not grown/mature/aware/mentally prepared enough to talk about gender? Or sex? If I talk in the context of the society where I live, even the Child Labour law is applicable only to childern below 14 years of age. Which means, government considers children >14 to be grown ups.
And even if there are not yet aware of "Gender Issues" before 19, our responsibility should be to educate them in this subject and not to put the matter aside for somebody else to solve.
It is as important as Sex Education. (Lack of which is creating fatal consequences in India; like ever increasing rate of rapes and sexual, physical and mental harassment cases.)
These children are the future of the nation. Educating them would help in creating a better society for the future which will be more inclusive, accepting and open-minded.
- One more thing that I observed in some gender related surveys is: "Are you a straight male or a straight female?"
I don't approve of this. I feel that we have got the fundamental terminologies very wrong. Calling only heterosexual people as "straight" is itself a sexist statement. And asking out some non-heterosexual being a question whether they are a straight gender or not is derogatory. It can be offensive to someone who is sensitive to such topics, including myself.