The Other Side of Gender Schmender

Photo taken 22 July 2011

So, after doing these 2 photos, I had a gender WIN moment, and a gender LOSE moment, both with online registration for stuff.

The good news goes to Google+. A friend invited me to it, so I'm testing it out. Too early to tell if I like it or not, but I was quite pumped that when creating your online profile, when it asked to select gender I was given 3 options: male, female, and OTHER!!! What a breath of fresh air that was!!! I know in the earlier days of facebook, back when I joined, you weren't forced into choosing a gender, so I never have, but I've heard that they've since changed that. So- cheers to a social networking site that is trying to recognize that gender is not an either/or category!!

The bad news goes to Chapters/Indigo books. I love books. I buy books often. Since I got my eBook reader, I've bought fewer paper books, so my Chapters discount card has since expired. If you're a book lover, you know the one I'm talking about: you pay an annual fee and get coupons and a percentage discount off of everything. It seems they've changed their rewards program to offer a 2-tiered reward system. They jacked up the price of the annual fees for the card in order to get the discounts in-store and online, plus they now offer reward points. Then they added a second free card which offers a smaller percentage discount online only, but the same points rewards.

I've never been a big fan of points rewards cards. They're marketing surveys badly disguised at an attempt to buy your loyalty with outrageous points redemption prices.

In filling in the online stuff for the free card (hey- a discount on books is more money in my mortgage fund), they told me I HAD to choose a gender (M/F) and input my age (D/M/Y). They did have a "why do we need this" box next to it, so I clicked it. Apparently they need my gender (which their options don't allow for my gender) and age so that they can customize their advertising to my interests.

WTF?????

How the heck does my age and gender relate to what I like to read about? I like to READ. STUFF. End of story. I can't even begin to categorize my library, as I have so many genres that really I think it transcends the bits between my legs and the number of days since I evacuated the womb.

My sad confession? I did break down and select my age and the biological gender (it's habit to always select F, but one of these days I'll break and select M.... neither one is true so why not mix it up a bit?). All for a 5% savings on some books.