Gender as a data structure: Insights from an Italian toponymy

Critical data studies have shown that mainstream data representations of gender identity misrepresent or erase queer experiences. On the one hand, categorical approaches fail to capture the complexity of genderqueerness. On the other hand, psychometric femininity and masculinity scales offer greater nuance and precision. Yet, they reduce gender to numeric scores, neglecting how people express their identity through words. To tackle this gap, our paper links gender labels to the psychometric scales of the Gender Diamond, a bidimensional data-driven visualisation of the gender spectrum. We systematically map the verbal gender descriptions of 465 Italian speakers on this visualisation. The contribution is twofold. First, we propose key requirements for a data structure for gender identity. It includes independent masculinity and femininity scales, allows multiple selections, and treats labelled scales as ordinal variables. Second, we provide a revised version of the Gender Diamond for the Italian context. It embodies these requirements and provides computational iconography for the existence of genderqueerness. In conclusion, as a pilot exploration, we present our preliminary data on aporinity , a third dimension beyond femininity, masculinity, their mixture, and absence.