Facebook Gets Gender Sensitive With New Gender Options
At the wake of Valentines Day, the popular social website Facebook has taken a big step towards gender equality and freedom in gender recognition. Facebook today has added new options to its Gender option list providing an opportunity and freedom to those who would not be restricted to be tied down to just the choice of Male or Female.
Face Book users now have the choice of selecting from an extensive list of about 50 different terms and can identify themselves as female, male, androgynous, bi-gender, intersex, gender fluid, or transsexual etc.
On the Facebook Diversity page the content read “When you come to Facebook to connect with the people, causes, and organizations you care about, we want you to feel comfortable being your true, authentic self. An important part of this is the expression of gender, especially when it extends beyond the definitions of just “male” or “female.” So today, we’re proud to offer a new custom gender option to help you better express your own identity on Facebook.
We collaborated with our Network of Support, a group of leading LGBT advocacy organizations, to offer an extensive list of gender identities that many people use to describe themselves.”
Facebook has also added a ability to choose a specific pronoun when a custom gender has been selected on how they would want to be addressed like male (he/his), female (she/her) or neutral (they/their).
In a statement Human Rights Commission President Chad Griffin “Over the past few years, a person’s Facebook profile truly has become their online identity, and now Facebook has taken a milestone step to allow countless people to more honestly and accurately represent themselves, Facebook’s action is one that I hope others heed in supporting individuals’ multifaceted identities.”
