Tildes Survey #7: What is your gender identity? (Results)
Original post
Submit your response here!
- Direct link: https://survey.tildes.community/-/what-is-your-gender-identity-7/
- This survey closes on June 7, 2026 at 10:00 UTC
- The results will be published on June 7 shortly after the survey has closed. I'll edit this topic and post a comment about it!
The current plans for questions that will be asked in the coming weeks are as follows:
| Question | Survey opens | Survey closes |
|---|---|---|
| Vote for the next 4 surveys | ||
| What is your gender identity? | 2026-05-31 18:00 UTC | 2026-06-07 10:00 UTC |
| What's your favorite video game? | 2026-06-07 18:00 UTC | 2026-06-14 10:00 UTC |
| How optimistic are you about the future? | 2026-06-14 18:00 UTC | 2026-06-21 10:00 UTC |
| How often do you visit/read Tildes? | 2026-06-21 18:00 UTC | 2026-06-28 10:00 UTC |
Another week, another survey! Now that the next four weeks have been voted on and we know what's on the docket, we start off with the top voted question: What is your gender identity?
Special thanks to @TaylorSwiftsPickles and @DefinitelyNotAFae for helping with figuring out the survey! I could not have done it without them! <3
Please submit your ideas for questions here! Even if they've been submitted already by someone else. All input is valuable! You can view all submitted questions on this dashboard.
Thank you all for participating!
The survey has been closed and the results are in!
Thank you to all the 213 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the full results!
I'd like to thank @TaylorSwiftsPickles and @DefinitelyNotAFae once again for helping out with this survey! <3
Thank you all again for participating! Hope to see you in the next survey! :)
Notification list
@ajwish
@andreaschris
@arctanh
@arqalite
@bauke
@beardyhat
@cfabbro
@crialpaca
@endymiion
@englerdy
@f13
@fal
@froswald
@fxgn
@goose
@hamstergeddon
@intoxicated_diver
@jcphoenix
@kfwyre
@lumabop
@lunamareinsanity
@monarda
@neonbright
@noox
@petitprince
@pistos
@rip_rike
@sashashimi
@sunbutt23
@tangiblelight
@tauon
@taylorswiftspickles
@themagiulio
@themediumjon
@trim
@wafik
@weldawadyathink
If you'd like to be notified when future surveys open and close with the results, let me know here or via a private message and I'll
@-mentionyou. :)i've got sort of an interesting combination that might be difficult to articulate but essentially:
cis male, in that i don't feel "misaligned" with my assigned sex at birth, or in need of presenting or expressing differently, however in my consciousness / in my mind, i don't really feel any "genderedness" at all
i have felt frustrated by and imposed on by gender norms/expectations/stereotypes, but that's a more complex story and more to do with the flawed "traditional" way genders have been viewed
like the conscious experience of my being does not feel bound to or filtered through any particular gender, but also feels no misalignment in how i present myself
Yeah so, if you check out this model (the gender unicorn) you can see how you could identify only as a man but not feel very strongly about it! I relate a lot as someone that identifies as demi-gender. I'm somewhere on the spectrum of nonbinary to woman but I'm definitely not a dude. I just don't care about my gender enough to have a stronger opinion on it. But I do feel masc sometimes, just not as a guy.
It's complicated but I think in a good way! Infinite diversity in infinite combinations
I definitely relate to this as well. Thanks for sharing the link!
Yes! I think I meant to reply to you as well but it's too early in the morning and I'm uncaffeinated (●__●)
No worries at all, it made its way to me anyway :)
"My gender is like a doughnut. It's soft, sweet, and colourful, and it's also missing a hole"
–@TaylorSwiftsPickles to @PierogInTheButt, June 4th, 2026
Something to consider: Perhaps another checkbox can be "prefer not to say". Now, in response to this, one might ask "well, why not just not participate the survey?". This might be a mild form of selection bias, where only those who willingly share their gender identity are included in the results. I'm not saying including or not including this option will wildly alter results or anything, but it could reveal some interesting data.
People are free to enter that in the text input and not check any checkboxes. :) Someone already did something similar to that.
Personally, I disagree. If you prefer not to say, with regards to any survey question, you should just not participate. However feel free to reply "Prefer not to say" in the free-form text.
This! If you don't want to share, then don't! If it were a longer form survey I could see the point in optional questions but it's just the one question. I've skipped surveys I'm not interested in before :)
Hm, that's a tough one. On the one hand I totally see your point, but I'd also personally love to see a result that's not skewed towards e.g. heteronormative respondents by default/by unintentional questionnaire design, lest we get a false impression of the average Tildes user :-)
I'd expect the person who opts out to be more likely to be cisnormative personally. But I don't think a "prefer not to reply" would actually avoid the responses seeming so by sheer majority of nothing else.
We did remove the assumption that a "null" answer to cis/trans = "cis". So I understand the concern but I don't see how a "prefer not to answer" somehow avoids that cisnormative skewing.
The survey has been closed and the results are in!
Thank you to all the 213 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the full results!
I'd like to thank @TaylorSwiftsPickles and @DefinitelyNotAFae once again for helping out with this survey! <3
Thank you all again for participating! Hope to see you in the next survey! :)
Notification list
If you'd like to be notified when future surveys open and close with the results, let me know here or via a private message and I'll
@-mentionyou. :)@ajwish
@andreaschris
@arctanh
@arqalite
@bauke
@beardyhat
@cfabbro
@crialpaca
@cutmetal
@endymiion
@englerdy
@f13
@fal
@froswald
@fxgn
@goose
@hamstergeddon
@intoxicated_diver
@jcphoenix
@kfwyre
@lumabop
@lunamareinsanity
@monarda
@neonbright
@noox
@petitprince
@pistos
@rip_rike
@sashashimi
@sunbutt23
@tangiblelight
@tauon
@taylorswiftspickles
@themagiulio
@themediumjon
@trim
@wafik
@weldawadyathink
I would like to encourage all of you to read through our members' individual answers rather than only looking at the (limited) labels they chose; in many cases, their free-form answers will tell you a lot more than those labels will. And they're very interesting, too!
...you know the tildes brainrot is real and you're in too deep when you can tell exactly who wrote many of those answers... ahem...
Personally I loved seeing how many folks were "Simple Label" but complicated text box.
Gender is often complicated! Whether because gender roles can be dumb, or social rules about presentation being tied to gender being dysphoric or euphoric or because when you started poking your gender with a stick it didn't feel as binary as it used to!
I don't use gender queer or GNC often personally but I think I could. Because I poke it with a stick often.
This is the most relatable answer of them all!
@Bauke did you mean to make the text box a required answer or is it a limitation of the survey system you are using?
That is indeed intentional, you can enter a dot . or other singular character (not whitespace though) if you want to skip that. Was mainly done so there aren't any accidental completely empty submits as the checkboxes are completely optional.
Maybe add it to the placeholder. I was confused and didn’t know what to do until I read your comment.
Agreed, let's do that
Great idea! Just added it.
I responded Cisgender woman and 'other' because I don't care what people think I am, if that makes sense? I get mistaken for a man (or a teenage boy rather) and it doesn't bother me. People feel embarrassed when they realise (I start talking or they notice boobs) but I don't really feel any way about it. Guess the closest I've seen that described is gender apathetic?
If folks have any questions about the terms used in the survey please feel free to ask here. I suggest a search first but queer language can be "squishy" for a lot of reasons and folks may mean different things by different terms!
Can I pick man and cisgender? I think that’s right? Assigned male at birth and I’m still there now. Forgive me if it sounds like I’m being rude, I honestly haven’t followed the terms closely enough to know. This is genuine curiosity.
Sure!
Cisgender
So that would make sense for you!
You're absolutely correct in how you're using them. A very simplified way to think about it is like "What you are: man" and "How you got there: cis". Which, like you said, just means you were assigned male at birth and the doctors got it right and you're happy with that.
I'm having a slow burning meltdown around my inability to use the current internet, so I'll ask you directly (since you offered to help): Do you have any trusted starting points for digging deeper into these words and their meaning.
I am not merely interested in using inclusive language I also want to understand the nuances around the words (and other related ones) meaning in this context.
Here's a decent queer dictionary
And here's the Gender Unicorn which is a way of conceptualizing the differences between identity and attraction and presentation
And this site looks decent - I'll review a bit more
Your Crash Course on Gender | Right as Rain
Hope this helps!
I'd also point out that a lot of the ideas presented in those articles and models are heavily simplified and aren't universally recognized within the community. There are multiple schools of thought
Indeed, as I said, queer language is squishy - and constantly reinvented by virtue of queer youth not growing up in queer households as a rule.
But it's a decent starting point for someone before follow up questions.
I answered "man" and forgot to check "cisgendered", so whoops. I've certainly had mild friction against male stereotypes. I'm either not masculine enough in some ways or too feminine in others. Particularly when I was younger and growing up. But feeling-wise, I am firmly man. Nothing I went through was particularly damaging or anywhere close to what any non-binary or trans person has gone through, but it has firmly cemented the idea that gender roles, stereotypes, etc. hurt everyone in one way or another to varying degrees.
I’m curious about something and hope trans Tilderinoes can answer. And this question sounds controversial, but is definitely not intended to be!
How do you feel about people adding “cis”? I always wonder if that feels like you’re still being pushed into a certain group instead of being accepted?
Sorry if this is a stupid question, I don’t want to offend anyone.
EDIT: I had no idea cis wasn’t an acronym, changed CIS because me stupid.
Grammatically, it's just a clarifying adjective, much like the floof I'm currently petting is both "a cat" and "a black cat". I treat it as a weak unidirectional signal that the person saying it is somewhere on the "ally" half of the ally-to-bigot spectrum, nothing more.
By "unidirectional" I mean its presence is meaningful, but its absence isn't. It's the same sort of thing as corporate rainbow logos: not making a rainbow variant of your logo doesn't mean you hate gay people, and making one doesn't really materially benefit anyone, but the act of doing so implies you're at least not the sort of people who refuse to do so on principle.
Identity is complicated.
We do not want to force people to label themselves as cis or trans if they do not want to. If you add just "man" or "woman" we're going to only be able to infer just that; not that you're a cis man/woman. It's true that plenty of binary people who transitioned have long dropped the "transgender"/"transsexual" labels, live stealth, and just say "woman" or "man" without specifying, and that's exactly why I pushed for this survey to be more open-ended rather than forcing people to pick between mandatory options.
To add a little of my own context: in real life I never really introduce myself as a trans woman, unless there is a legitimate requirement or need to disclose that (e.g. medical examinations). In my day-to-day presentation, since a while ago it's mainly other trans people who can tell actually tell I'm trans; your average person likely sees me as "yet another cis woman", considering I've had zero problems in public - even in busy public bathrooms - whilst living in a fairly transphobic country.
Yet, personally, I do not experience dysphoria from other people saying "cis". Because, well, that's what they are, and that's what I know I am not. Sure, it'd have been ideal for me to be cis, but, well we're a few decades too late to CRISPR some of my zygote's genes :P
To follow up on your theme of this being complicated and differing a lot between people, this is a sentiment I am very much opposed to (for myself, obviously other people can feel however they feel). I do not think that I or the world would be better if I had been born cis. I have more pride in being trans than I do in any particular other label for my gender.
This is probably in large part because with my gender identity assimilating with an existing group of cis people simply isn't possible, but I have encountered "binary" trans people that feel this way about trans-ness in the past. Removing the categories of "trans" and "cis" doesn't necessarily make for a better or more "accepting" system of categorization, because for a lot of people transness is integral to our identity and does make our experiences different than cis people with the same or similar gender identities. I think framing labels and acceptance as inherently at odds with each other simply isn't true to life (and to be clear I don't think you're doing that and I think your answers here are good and nuanced, but the question being responded to definitely does frame these things as opposites when they aren't.)
Never say never! We just need time travel! Or a new CRISPR that works retroactively!
To add to the more detailed answer, just focusing on the caps and using the term in conversation:
I'll say in my experience that the people who use "CIS" vs "cis" fall into two categories, anti-trans folks and people (usually whose autocorrect has picked up on it) who don't know any better and intend no ill will. It's why I recommend trying to train yourself out of the habit. It's not an acronym so it doesn't need to be in all caps!
But for me the emphasis on "cis" depends a lot on context. What people identify as is fine.* Are people trying to exclude trans people from something? Are they emphasizing themselves or someone else as coming from a place of not being harassed? Or emphasizing cis women as "real"?
*(There's some nuance about the folks who don't like the use of cisgender/transgender the same way people would complain about being called heterosexual or straight. Some folks want their identity to be "normal" and only make "them" label themselves, which makes conversation very difficult and inherently imbalanced. Their personal labels are still their own.)
Oh god, I had no idea it wasn’t an acronym! Just put me in the dumb category.
No no no, it's become a weird common thing. I did not suppose anything about you and you're not dumb for not knowing language
I'm not really familiar with the use of "CIS" in all-caps, that way of writing it seems weird and unnecessary to me, but in the context of gender surveys and other contexts like this, I generally prefer it when cis people are self-aware enough to include "cis" as a descriptor. Since I'm non-binary, surveys like these always force me into a category, so I'm not particularly sympathetic to the idea that just specifying that cis people are cis is bad because it pushes people into a certain group rather than accepting them, as I don't think categorizing people as cis or trans is mutually exclusive with accepting them, at least not in the context of gathering data like this. In a context where distinguishing between the two is unnecessary and discriminatory, like when advertising something exclusively for cis people or exclusively for cis women, that's another story. But in my experience cis people who don't accept trans people are more often to be the ones whining about the word "cis" and demanding people not use it than the other way around.
And this is not what I was expecting! I thought it would be bigots who would try to make the distinction. But TIL.
And it was me being dumb and not knowing cis isn’t an acronym.
Fun fact, "cis" is actually derived from a Latin prefix that means "on the same side of", as opposed to "trans" meaning "on the opposite side of." You can see it used this way in older words referring to place, like "cisalpine" vs "transalpine", and they've been used in chemistry to describe certain isomers. It was borrowed in the 2010s to be used as a counterpart to trans in the context of gender for this reason.
It's a context thing. "I'm not cis, I'm a WOMAN, JUST A WOMAN" sort of thing. Maybe you're describing a "this is for CIS WOMEN" scenario?
Exactly this. In my head, cis was connected to excluding trans people from sport events.
Gotcha yeah it just depends on the situation. Transphobic shit is transphobic regardless
Can I ask, why is this? For transparency, I did not include cisgender in my response to this survey, although it would be correct to describe me as cisgender. I did so because the survey asked about gender identity - cisgender does not form part of my gender identity. For me, the only use of cisgender is to contrast against transgender, but I don’t have any particular desire, as part of my identity, to draw a line between myself and a transgender person.
As an aside, my understanding of cisgender/transgender was that these are not gender identities, but rather words to describe how a person’s gender identity relates to their biological gender. However this thread has led me to question whether or not my understanding of this is correct.
In my personal experience, people who most want to draw the line between themselves and trans people will insist on not using labels like "cis" because they want to just be "normal". When you get to define the categories as "woman/man" and "trans woman/man", there's an implication that trans people are less part of the category man/woman, at least compared to using "cis woman/man" and "trans woman/man". It's much like a label like "straight", in my eyes. Obviously most cis people won't have being cis as a core part of their identity, just like most straight people don't, but including this separate label makes it feel like a more equitable "here are two different equal descriptors of different types of men/women" rather than "there are normal people and then there are trans people".
Not sparksbet, but to me it's about "safety". If I hear/see someone describe themselves as cis (or trans), I'm instinctively going to feel like I can slightly drop my guard and not hide parts of my history/self, should any relevant topic come up. Granted, it's not the only signifier. E.g. back in 2021, my FIL once screamed to the TV "this is such bullshit, trans people have always existed you fucking dumbasses" when it was playing state-sponsored anti-trans propaganda. And this is something I'll always remember.
Also, P.S.:
Lots of people under the trans umbrella would point out that this is a bit of a misnomer in various senses. Personally I think "natal sex" is a lot more accurate
I feel like "CIS" in all-caps often times is just an autocorrect fuckaroo for this
I don't think I've ever even seen that term in my life much less had my autocorrect catch it.
I do think that it is an autocorrect thing but I also think the folks who don't know better are more willing to misuse it, intentionally so it's become a small red flag.
I have never seen all-caps CIS before outside of in Star Wars fan spaces tbqh.
In the UK, I'm somewhat involved with software that interacts with the CIS Gateway. So I see it quite a bit.
Acronym for the Construction Industry Scheme. A thing run by uk.gov
I knew the uk govt was behind the cis agenda!11
Cis heterossexual male.
Genuine question! Why did you feel the need to include your sexual orientation here too?
Idk it's just what people do.
If you don't know, that's fine! I was genuinely curious.
It doesn't mean much for me it just felt like it was relevant information.