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ABSTRACT
Many museums collect data about their staff, volunteers, and/or visitors in some capacity, and questions about sex and gender are ubiquitous on their forms and surveys. However, museums can do more to consider the inclusivity of their sex and gender questions by going beyond the male/female binary. Museums should consider the needs of transgender and non-binary respondents in rethinking their gender data collection efforts. Several options for doing so include a two-step format, an open-ended format, a hybrid format, and a direct response format. The best option for individual museums or surveys will depend on what questions need to be answered, who will be answering them and how, how much data will be collected, staff capacity for analyzing and tabulating the data, and how the information will be used. However, all options represent a move forward from only offering respondents a choice between “male” and “female,” and more respondents will have the opportunity to represent themselves accurately.
Acknowledgements
This article was made possible in part through a generous gift from Julie and Bayard Henry. The article also references data from the Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies (COVES) project, which was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [MG-20-14-0060-14] and by all of the project's participating institutions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
About the author
Alex Lussenhop is a Research and Evaluation Associate at the Museum of Science, Boston. His interests include issues of inclusion, equity, and justice in museum evaluation, as well as creating systems for collaborative data collection across museums. He works to create one such collaborative system as a member of the Research Team of the Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experiences Studies (COVES). He has a B.A. in Physics from Cornell University.
Notes
1 US Census Bureau, Why We Ask: Sex.
2 Westbrook and Saperstein, “New Categories are not Enough,” 542.
3 Williams Institute, How Many People are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender?.
4 The Report of the 2015 U.S. Trans Survey, 7.
5 Grant et al., Injustice at Every Turn.
6 For example, see Balarajan, Gray, and Mitchell’s 2011 report for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Watch’s 2011 report on anti-trans laws in The Netherlands, and the Institute of Medicine’s 2011 report on LGBT health.
7 Patton, Utilization-focused Evaluation, 37.
8 Heimlich, “The Ethics of Evaluation,” 20–6
9 National Girls Collaborative Project, The State of Girls and Women in STEM.
10 Crowley et al., “Parents Explain More Often to Boys then to Girls.”
11 Dancstep and Sindorf, Exhibit Designs for Girls Engagement.
12 Heimlich and Koke, “Gay and Lesbian and Cultural Institutions.”
13 Mertens, Fraser, and Heimlich, “M or F?: Gender, Identity,” 101.
14 Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology.”
15 Serano, “There is no Perfect Word: An Online Glossary of Sorts.” http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html.
16 Rubin, “The Traffic in Women.”
17 For examples, see the APA’s 2011 pamphlet “Answers to Your Questions about Transgender People, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression,” WHO’s glossary of gender terms at http://www.who.int/gender-equity-rights/knowledge/glossary/en/, and CIHR’s definitions at http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/47830.html.
18 Ainsworth, “Sex Redefined.”
19 Fausto-Sterling, “Sexing the Body.”
20 Butler, Gender Trouble.
21 Serano, “There is No Perfect Word”; see the entry for “Sex/gender distinction.”
22 For example, Trans Student Educational Resources (TSER) and the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) use the terms this way on their websites (transstudent.org and transequality.org).
23 Mertens, Fraser, and Heimlich, “M or F?: Gender, Identity,” 97.
24 Livingston, ExposeYourMuseum LLC, personal correspondence.
25 Reisner et al., “Monitoring the Health of Transgender,” 4.
26 Ibid., 7.
27 Hughes, Camden, and Yangchen, “Rethinking and Updating Demographic Questions,” 140.
28 Reisner et al., “Monitoring the Health of Transgender,” 7
29 Herman, Best Practices for Asking Questions to Identify Transgender.
30 James et al., US Trans Survey, Appendix B, 254.
31 The COVES Research Team is based at the Museum of Science, Boston and includes the author as well as Ryan Auster, Senior Research and Evaluation Associate in the Research and Evaluation Department. Michelle Kenner at the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) leads the COVES Administrative Team. More information about COVES can be found at http://www.understandingvisitors.org.
32 If you are so inclined, you can read more about this internet joke at http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-sexually-identify-as-an-attack-helicopter.
33 Harrison, Grant, and Herman, “A Gender Not Listed Here,” 14.
34 The guidelines can be accessed here: http://aam-us.org/docs/default-source/professional-networks/lgbtq_welcome_guide.pdf.
35 Middleton, Family-inclusive Language.