As of Thursday, Facebook users have new gender options– — in addition to “male” and “female,” users can now choose from a list of more than 50 different genders.
“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,” Facebook Diversity wrote on its page Thursday. “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.”
After choosing “custom” as a gender option, Facebook users will see more than 50 gender options — which include bigender, gender fluid, gender nonconforming, intersex, pangender and many variations of transgender and cisgender — appear in a drop-down menu as they type in their preference. Other new features added allow users to decide who can see their custom gender and which gender pronouns they prefer: male, female or neutral.
“I am so happy to see the implementation of new gender options on Facebook,” sophomore government and politics major Josh Deese said. “It shows how far the LGBTQ movement has come, in terms of making gender identity more understandable, and allowing LGBTQ folks to feel more accepted within their own community, the environment around them, as well as themselves.”
Deese, who identifies as a gay man, said the options are a step toward equality for all, especially because social media play a large role in people’s daily lives.
For senior German and journalism major Zachary Mellen, who identifies as transgender and queer, the addition of these more than 50 new gender options came as a surprise.
“I was not expecting that to happen,” he said. “It’s really cool that they’re making that effort. I was expecting maybe they would put a neutral option in at some point, since people had been asking for it for so long, but I was not expecting 50-plus different options.”
Users don’t have complete freedom, however, as they must choose one of the available gender identities; there is no write-in option.
Mellen said two possible reasons for the absence of a write-in option are advertising challenges and to avoid people writing in “all kinds of random stuff like people do with the political and religious boxes.”
“I do think it would be better to have people be able to write it in, just because there are a couple words that are left out,” Mellen said. “I’m not sure why they’re still using the terms male and female, and they don’t have man or woman as an option at all. Like you can choose that you’re a cis man or a trans man or a trans woman, but there’s no just man or woman, which I think is kind of strange.”
Sociology professor Nancy Forsythe, who teaches classes on gender sociology, said the new options are a step forward, but Facebook could take further action, such as allowing users to list multiple genders.
“They missed an opportunity to push the issue further,” Forsythe said. “What if they had simply eliminated the requirement to pick a box to fit yourself into altogether? Would that have gotten the same amount of attention?”
Despite this, Forsythe sees the new gender options as a “conscience-raising moment.”
“It may send people to explore what all those terms mean,” she said. “I imagine it is eye-opening for many people who never thought of gender difference in any terms other than the femininity-masculinity binary categories.”
