Although it is commonly claimed that there are only two genders, there are actually countless genders. There are transmen and transwomen, there are genderqueers, there are intersex people and there are many many more types. These people are not secretive or rare, instead we are made to be invisible when we are forced to place ourselves into a recognizable category. These people cannot fit themselves into the categories of Female, Male, or Unknown and thus they cannot catalog themselves in GRAMPSGramps. Even if this incapability is only a mistake in GRAMPSGramps, it is a mistake which continues to invisibilize and alienate people.

I propose that to fix this, we create a new way to recognize gender within the GRAMPS Gramps databases. This can be done through the creation of a new GenderType class, a child of GrampsType that is created in a similar way to EventType or NameOriginType. Then, using this type, gender would be decided from a ComboBoxEntry system, allowing people to select Male, Female or Unknown, but also allowing people to fill in their own genders.

Some aspects of GRAMPS Gramps such as gender stats and gender-guessing (based on given name, which actually is only useful for finding the gender one was assigned at birth) would have to be retooled/rethought. Another barrier might be the conversion of the old data to the new.