I recently submitted a report disputing the gender of an artist here on MA and promptly received a dismissive reply stating that MA respects artists preferred gender identity. Now I was not suggesting that everyone have their biological gender displayed, I suggested that certain artist entries have transgender displayed as the gender. I thought that actually was the respectful way to address non gender conforming individuals, and there already are multiple artist entries with transgender being the listed gender.

Of course artists are free to categorize themselves however they please and I know there also are artist entries where the gender is listed as male when the artist is biologically female and vice versa and I have no issue with that. What I do have a very slight issue with however is the particular artist I reported on is known more for the person they were outside of heavy metal than the non gender conforming individual they identified as in a heavy metal band. To be more specific this person had multiple articles written about them where they were identified as their biological gender, but on MA that same person released a metal demo and their corresponding artist page has the gender listed as the opposite.

Again, I am NOT advocating that artists be strictly classified by their biological gender; I'm advocating using more specific language like transgender male or transgender female in instances where the artist has notoriety identifying them as different or multiple genders periodically.

I would also like to make it clear that this is only in regards to individual artist pages and has nothing to do with the music created by said artists. If MA truly is a non political archival site then the users should be able to update pages with additional information to be the most accurate if it's done so respectfully. Its inconsistent for the site to give actual bands a "disputed" status or be selective of what's considered official discography but take a hardline stance on individual artists gender.

The point being accepting preferred gender without allowing additional information on that artist for context is selectively political and it doesn't have to be. These artists can have their preferred gender identify affirmed respectfully while still maintaining the archival integrity of the site. Can a rapper upload a mixtape to MA and classify it as technical death metal because he identifies as one? Can a country and western band add their album to MA and call it atmospheric black metal? Of course not because that would not be accurate.

I will close this out by stating that I genuinely don't think this is a big deal and if it really is a big deal for transgender or non gender conforming individuals to list whatever gender they want then I really can accept that. If people have an argument that certain gender classifications are hurtful to them then I can put that above my feelings of annoyance over accuracy because I don't at all feel as though I'm being hurt and wouldn't want to impose on someone who does. I'm just saying that to the best of my knowledge terms like transgender male and female are respectful and they can be used to keep the site more accurate.

Currently we do not have transgender options, though the "Unknown/other" is often useful in ambiguous cases. When further clarification is needed a note can be added, but artists are generally listed by the gender they currently identify as. Genres/band inclusion is a different subject - rap is inconfusable with atmospheric black metal regardless of what an artist might claim, and genres are listed based on what the moderators hear.

I have a feeling you care more about this than you let on, considering your choice of wording and source in the report you made and the rather asinine analogy in your post connecting music genres to gender identity (as if the two subjects were remotely similar).

Anyway, such options are not needed at all; many trans people prefer NOT to be labeled as such and we respect that. Nor are we here to dissect every artist's gender under a microscope.

"I totally respect gender identities except I call misgendering someone "accurate", compare gender identities to music genres, link to transphobic resources, and repeatedly use transphobic dog whistles".

Yeah, no. We're not doing this.