University gender identity survey offers a mind boggling 57 different options but none are simply male or female

Norrie has won a High Court decision that paves the way for there to be three classifications of gender/sex — male, female, and other. Picture: Adam Taylor Source: News Corp Australia

A Sydney University online survey now offers a staggering FIFTY-SEVEN different possible answers to the simple question: “What is your gender identity?”

It comes following a High Court decision upholding the right of transgender Sydney resident Norrie to be classified as neither male or female.

The survey, composed by Sydney University newspaper Honi Soit, includes such options as:

• Gender Nonconforming (those who act contrary to expected gender roles)

• Bi-gender (identifying as male and female at different times)

• Intersex (born with a mix of male and female sexual anatomy)

• Gender Fluid (those who display male and female behaviour at different times)

• Gender Questioning (those who haven’t worked out their gender)

• Transmasculine (a female who identifies with some male characteristics, but not entirely as a man)

• Pangender (all genders)

• Neutrois (no gender)

• Two-Spirit (an American Indian term for someone with male and female characteristics)

Remarkably, there are no actual options for basic male or female. Instead, respondents must choose between “Male (Cis Male)” and “Female (Cis Female)”.

The prefix “cis” indicates that your gender role conforms with your birth sex. For example, if you’re a woman who acts like a woman, you’re a “Female (Cis Female)”.

“We decided to provide non-binary gender options to make our survey as inclusive as possible for our readers,” Honi Soit’s editors explained in an email to the Daily Telegraph.

“Most of our respondents have not commented, albeit for a small minority who did not immediately understand terms like ‘cis’. Several respondents have also privately expressed their appreciation for not prescribing gender-binary options.”

Other responses weren’t so enthusiastic. “Where is ‘bloke’?” asked one commenter after the list was published online by the Daily Telegraph.

“This has to be a joke, right?” asked another.

It is not the first time the university newspaper has courted controversy in August last year after publishing a graphic cover featuring 18 unconsored vaginas.

The newspaper lifted its gender list from Facebook, which now offers the terms for reader profiles in the US (Australian Facebook users are stuck with “male” or “female”).

One of the software engineers who helped compile the list, Brielle Harrison, is herself undergoing gender transformation from male to female.

“All too often transgender people like myself and other gender nonconforming people are given this binary option, do you want to be male or female? What is your gender? And it’s kind of disheartening,” Harrison told Associated Press in February.