I recently was filling out a screening form for a Google research study, answering questions such as how much I trust tech companies to protect my data (not much), and how much I worry about that lack of protection (also not much). In the section where they ask for demographic data, I checked off my age (alarmingly, everybody over 55 is assigned to a single age category, which I suppose is known within Google as “going to die soon”) and my household income (which probably isn’t enough to interest marketers, given that our household consists of two retired people and an unemployed 26-year-old).

When I got to the question about gender, I checked off “male,” as I always have, despite the fact that there are now multiple options such as “non-binary” and “prefer to self-describe.” This had always seemed like a routine question, but this time, it suddenly occurred to me: Why do they want to know that?

As we’ve all come to learn in the 21^st century, sex and gender are more complicated than many of us had previously accepted. What if, instead of routinely selecting “male,” I’d chosen “prefer to self-describe”?  I’d probably have to write a whole essay in the blank line that followed that option.

I remember the first time I was called a man. I was probably in my late teens. I was knocking on someone’s screen door, and a young child peering through the screen called out, “Mommy, there’s a man at the door!” I was so jarred by that description that I almost turned around to see whether anyone was standing behind me. Despite the fact that Jewish tradition had declared me to be a man at age thirteen, I’d never really adopted that identity. I still haven’t — being called “a man” still feels strange to me. I’ve always thought of myself as a person who happens to be of the male gender.

I’m attracted to women, but that attraction has always felt more like-to-like than opposite-to-opposite. As a child, I would have loved to hang out with girls — they were smarter, more feeling-oriented, and less physically aggressive — but that wouldn’t have been acceptable (particularly to the girls). I’m still much more comfortable in the company of women than of men. A gay woman friend of mine once gave me a sticker that said “Honorary Lesbian,” and oddly enough, I truly felt honored.

At the same time, in a society that until recently assumed everyone to be either male or female, I’ve never had any trouble being male. I’m perfectly comfortable using men’s bathrooms, wearing men’s clothing, and checking “male” on questionnaires. I have a man’s body, complete with a beard, male pattern baldness, and male genitalia. That’s always felt perfectly natural to me.

So I’m confused and intrigued by the now-mainstream idea that people can be non-binary. After all, we’re all non-binary to some extent. I once took an online test that purported to tell you to what degree you’re masculine and to what degree you’re feminine. I came out half-and-half, which seems about right, but I doubt that there are many people who would come out 100% on either side. Yet most people, like me, don’t feel the need to declare themselves non-binary and ask to be called “they.”

The difference, so far as I can tell, is in the level of comfort with and acceptance of one’s assigned gender. I’m still uneasy with being called a man, but I have no trouble with maintaining that role in society. The non-binary and trans people that I’ve talked to do have trouble — they don’t just have mild uneasiness with their assigned gender role; they have painful, deep-in-the-soul discomfort: This isn’t me. I don’t know where that acute discomfort comes from, and why they have it and I don’t, but I can certainly accept that difference without having to understand it. So, I guess I would have had to write all this in the little space on the Google form next to “prefer to self-describe.” That brings me back to my original question, though: Why do they need to know my gender? I suppose it’s because marketing is statistics-driven, and that there’s some discernible pattern by which self-identified males prefer one thing and self-identified females prefer something else. They don’t need to hear about what’s going on in my mind and body; they just want to know where I fit into the pattern. In which case I say: Google, you’re not worth the trouble. I’ll just check “male.”