Hieee so I’m nonbinary and so is my partner, the main other person I sew for. Is there a way to change the default of any new pattern/project to be “gender: neutral”? (I would also be happy to talk about more up-to-date gender options other than “male/female” which I’d argue are less of gender options and more of sex options. I know it’s a tough one for an international crowd though because language can vary so much!)
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Hi 
Definitely.
Being able to set various default options is on the roadmap: Stash Hub Roadmap · GitHub.
You’re right about the naming. What would you prefer to see it called and what would you like the options in the drop down to be?
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Hmm so it depends how people are using it. It’s not a simple decision but also not a boring one! If I wanted to be able to sort my patterns by gender expression (ie ruffly blouses vs more butch/masc vests/waistcoats or jackets), then I might say “femme” and “masc” or “masculine” and “feminine”. Even listing examples of femme and masc garb is weird because…gender just isn’t a binary and neither are clothes!
Then if I wanted to sort my patterns by whether they’re designed for “male” (huge quote marks) and “female” bodies, like broader shoulders vs fuller busts, then I would define those as “designed for male bodies though sex is also not a binary and also what is a male body” and etc. Primary sex characteristics ie underwear with a bulge vs flat front, and secondary sex characteristics ie higher or lower waist-to-hip ratio, are also separate things. (For example, I had an estrogen puberty 30 years ago and am now having a testosterone puberty…so my long bones grew in an estrogen-dominant context but my waist/hip ratio are now shifting but also I’m microdosing so my waist/hip ratio are shifting mildly…) basically gender and sex are both not binaries and I don’t know how yall people with genders sort your garment patterns so maybe can folks say more about how they interact w that category in their patterns? Is it like “this might be suitable for my mom vs my dad” or “for my son vs my daughter”? Tell me more about beng cisgender and/or subscribing to the gender binary.
Maybe instead of the app providing those options, can the options themselves be customizable? That way each user can label them in the way that makes the most sense for them.
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Thanks for your detailed thoughts. I’ve gone and changed it to “Body Type” with the options of “Masculine”, “Feminine” and “Unisex” but will have more of a think if there’s better options in the future.
This is a good idea and I’d like to add this as part of the broader “Customise-ability” update I have planned for the future.
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thank you for being very responsive - but I think more discussion is needed before landing on language! I realllllly dont think body types are masc or femme. Gender expressions can be. Or bodies can be driven by xx/xy programming, or estrogen/testosterone dominance, but none of these things are binary and unisex isnt the nonbinary option. Can we discuss before deciding? thx!
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@TheWizard my questions were also not rhetorical! this feels like an opportunity to discuss. it feels kinda bad to me that you responded that way. I hope we can have more conversation instead of quick decisions about such complex things.
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I agree that users need to be able to label them how they want - my preference would be as they already were - male / female / neutral - as that is how my mind works. Nothing else makes sense to me.
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ive noticed that the default for a new pattern is still “female”. can that be undone, if not on the individual scale then on the system level? im guessing most users are women which often correlates with femaleness, but…it seems unnecessary for it to default to anything. thanks.
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I think the tags field would work well for categorizing patterns by gender expression. You could input whatever you want and be able to sort by “masc”, or “femme”, or “wear with binder”, or “wear with bra”, or whatever makes sense for you.
The body type field just gives information about what physical characteristics the pattern designer had in mind when creating the pattern. Male/Female/Unisex is a convenient shorthand that may not reflect your reality, but I think it’s meant to reflect the proportions of the pattern. This information is important so you can choose a pattern that requires less adjustment in order to fit your body how you want it to fit.
Being able to customize the labels you use to describe these differences would be great! Also, the field not being pre-filled would be good. Since I mostly sew for myself, I wouldn’t bother using this field because ALL the clothing patterns I own are for my body type. I don’t know if you’d run into some trouble using Magic Input, because the information about body type would come in as whatever the designer called it. Or would it automatically get changed to your custom label?
Anyway, tl;dr: use Body Type to specify what body type the designer designed the pattern for (even if you change what you call it)
Use Tags to create categories you can use to sort your patterns by gender expression or whatever makes sense for you
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