
Male, female or custom? Facebook adds options for users to self-identify - Kopion
http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2014/02/13/apnewsbreak-new-gender-options-for-facebook-users
======
wpietri
Sweet. Like they say in the article, this won't matter for a lot of people,
but for those who use it, it matters a great deal.

I have one friend who changed gender and it really opened my eyes to how
poorly a societally mandated absolute gender binary serves some people. And
the extent to which that gender binary is actively enforced by society. I just
never noticed before, because I fit reasonably well into one of the available
boxes.

~~~
slg
Most people never really notice how much of life in designed for the people in
the meaty part of the bell curve unless they are or are close to an outlier.
It can range from something like the inability to distinguish certain colors,
being exceptionally tall, not having a binary gender identity, or those people
who implanted electromagnetic sensors into their body to sense electric
fields. But having at least one outlier trait that makes you not _normal_ can
give you a new appreciation for all the challenges that people run into on a
daily basis for just being a little different. We as developers have an
obligation to think about these things. And if the opportunity presents itself
to remove one challenge by turning a select input into a text input (or a
binary radio button to a select), we have an responsibility to do it.

~~~
wpietri
Yes, definitely.

I never thought I'd be grateful for being a fat, nerdy, awkward kid. It sure
sucked a lot of the time then. But now those experiences really help me
appreciate why it's important to try to be especially respectful toward people
who are different not just in my specific ways, but in their own fashion. They
are already getting enough crap.

------
chimeracoder
> "It's impossible to deny the biological reality that humanity is divided
> into two halves - male and female"

Actually, it's pretty easy. Even on a biological/genetic level, the lines can
get rather blurry.

There are people with male genitalia who have two X chromosomes, people with
female genitalia who have a Y chromosome, and a bunch of other
variations[0][1][2][3].

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex)

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome)

[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome)

[3][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRY](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRY)

( _EDIT_ : added citations, which scott_karana linked to in another comment
thread)

~~~
sliverstorm
It's quite accurate as an approximation though, is it not? Genetic
abnormalities are just that, abnormalities.

I fully support equality, but... if I said _" Humans have five fingers on each
hand"_, would you disagree and declare _" clearly humans have no defined
number of fingers on each hand, as every now and again a human is born with
four or six fingers on a hand"_? I don't personally care how many fingers you
have, but it seems pretty clear to me that is a biological accident, and does
not refute the notion that _" Humans have five fingers"_.

~~~
wpietri
All of what we are is biological accident.

Your notions about what makes for a human is something that lives in your
head. Which is fine; the world is a complicated place, and we can't represent
it in 3 pounds of meat without simplifying.

But the mistake many people make with gender (and a lot of other things) is to
try to reverse the flow, demanding that the world correspond to the mental
model.

As a non-gender example, I have friends who are ethnically complicated.
Sometimes people will just ask them, "What _are_ you?" Even strangers on the
street. By which they mean, "I am uncomfortable because you don't conform to
my notions of race. Please put yourself in one of my boxes." Those people
always look like assholes.

When I arrived in San Francisco 15 years ago, I used to worry about what
gender people were. I was uncomfortable that they didn't fit in the categories
I had inherited. Was that person "really" a woman? Eventually I learned that
gender was much more complicated than I expected.

But I _also_ learned that other people don't have an obligation to fit neatly
into my prejudices. Now my take is practical: unless I'm intending to have sex
with somebody, what they have in their pants is none of my business. English,
alas, makes ignoring gender entirely impossible. So sometimes I am forced to
ask, "Hey, what pronoun would you like me to use for you?"

~~~
sliverstorm
_By which they mean, "I am uncomfortable because you don't conform to my
notions of race. Please put yourself in one of my boxes."_

You seem to be assuming.

At least when I ask what background someone is, it's usually either:

\- bewilderment. I'm mildly interested in the differences in morphology
between ethnicity, so I get very curious when someone's ethnicity is
completely ambiguous. I also get excited when I can successfully identify the
ethnic background of people with a mixed background, which of course requires
asking. _" Your cheekbones look Native American; your nose & eyes look
Swiss...?"_

\- an attempt to quickly sketch out an early mental model of that person, to
understand them better. Does every asian kid have super-strict parents? Of
course not! But it is a common theme, so it gets tacked on to the early mental
model: "May have had strict parents?".

~~~
wpietri
I'm assuming for a given individual, but I'm confident in the aggregate based
on other data.

Yes, some people are legitimately curious about the great tapestry of ethnic
diversity. (I'm one of them.) I think there are reasonable, polite ways to
handle that. Walking up to strangers and demanding that they say what they
"are" is not one of them.

But note that in both of your forks, you're trying to place somebody in a box
in your head. In the first, bewilderment, you are uncomfortable because
somebody fails to conform to your existing boxes. You may have a much more
interesting and nuanced set of boxes than the average person. You may be much
more polite than the boneheads I'm describing. You also surely understand that
those boxes are a pretty artificial construct, and that it's not the job of
people on the street to help you improve your set of boxes. But if you think
about what goes on for people for whom none of those is true, I think you'll
find it pretty easy to imagine their side of an encounter like this.

~~~
cookiecaper
Watch out, here comes one of those ever-so-frightening generalizations...

Humans are a learning species. Everything we observe is converted by our
brains into data to be filed somewhere, even if it's only temporary storage
because we consider it unimportant. This attribute is nearly fundamental to
sentience. Let's not get offended when someone wants to learn more about the
people around them, and what makes them themselves. This, of course, doesn't
justify walking up to someone on the street and invading their personal space
and time, but it does mean your vendetta against mental organization and near-
automatic pattern matching is misguided.

Quick, tell me about people who can't recall much information at all! No,
wait, tell me about people who are vegetative or catatonic and therefore
unable to process the events occurring around them and convert them into data!
Tell me about people who have a failed mental organizational process! This,
naturally, would invalidate all of my claims and finally prove me a bigot.

~~~
wpietri
I am all for learning. But you don't get to decide what other people are going
to get offended about.

People in minority groups are understandably sometimes sensitive about people
in dominant majorities acting like the minorities are obliged to educate them.

I don't have any particular vendetta against pattern-matching. Being made out
of meat, I do it myself. But if it isn't done with respect and politeness, it
is at best negligent and at worst arrogant and self-centered. And I definitely
have a problem with those behaviors, especially directed at people who already
have a hard row to hoe.

------
Trufa
> Those petitioning for the change insist that there are an infinite number of
> genders, but just saying it doesn't make it so.

Funny that HE says that, since disregarding your moral stand point on a non
cisgender person, the reality, observational and scientific, is that sex is
much more complicated than male and female. What we do with that may be up for
discussion, but I find ironic how he's trying to deny this reality, basically,
by just saying so.

~~~
Domenic_S
Maybe _gender_ is more complicated, but sex?

~~~
scott_karana
Sex can be complicated too. Look up XXY, XYY, and the SRY protein.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRY](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRY)

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
Does any of those mutations produce fertile individuals, with both
reproductive organs fully functional though? I don't know enough to answer,
but I believe that's what the parent is asking.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
So people who are infertile don't count? I don't understand your point.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
What I'm saying is, from a _biological_ perspective, isn't sex determined by
the gametes (which as far as I known, are two), regardless of vestigial
organs, number of chromosomes, etc.? I think that's what caused the confusion
on the parent about existing more than one _sex_ (reproductive role); of
course, by that measure, infertility is undetermined as it plays no role in
reproduction.

~~~
sliverstorm
Totally agree with you. At least in humans, there are two _very clearly
defined_ reproductive roles. Test tubes and surgical procedures can interfere
a bit, but you can't be "mostly" a gamete donor or "only somewhat" of a gamete
receptor.

------
daturkel
Unexpected but long overdue. It's a feature which means a lot to those that
want it and has zero effect on those who don't. Glad to see the change.

~~~
Beliavsky
This change does not affect me, but I don't want to be pressured into
referring to a male as female if he really is a male. Part of the transgender
agenda is forcing others to accept such "gender identities". I don't want to
endorse other people's illusions.

~~~
wpietri
So it's ok if we burst your bubble about some of your illusions? E.g., that
you understand what you're talking about? Or that you are the one person
granted divine right to determine who is "really" a male?

Your personal relationship to gender is very simple. Yay, good for you. But
there are people whose relationships are more complex. I promise that they
have thought about gender 100x more than you have, and it is you that have the
illusions here.

How do I know? Well, I started out with those same illusions and then actually
talked to people who changed gender or who just don't fit well in a gender-
binary framework. I learned a lot. If you're willing to set aside your
arrogance on this, you could do the same.

~~~
ebfe
The user you're referring to made no mention of gender.

~~~
wpietri
Except, of course, when he talked about gender identity, the transgender
"agenda", how he refers to the gender of other people, and his construction of
what somebody "really" is.

~~~
ebfe
He doesn't refer to gender, he refers to sex. Please educate yourself on the
difference between the two.

~~~
wpietri
Thanks, I'm already familiar. (I'm not clear that you are, though, so unless
you start being more explicit about your point, I'm done after this.) When he
talks about how he refers to people, then we're already in the land of gender.
Biological sex is something he can't directly perceive. He is basically saying
that he wants to act as if gender is always exactly equivalent to biological
sex. His post is basically arguing for a simplistic and essentialist notion of
gender. Thus his opposition to the transgender "agenda".

~~~
ebfe
This user quite clearly refers to people in regards to their sex, rather than
their gender. You're making the mistake of assuming that he cares about
gender, when sex is what he uses for his classification of male or female.

~~~
wpietri
If he is classifying them as male and female and treating them as such, then
both parts involve gender.

The first half involves judging people by appearance; unless he's running DNA
tests, ultrasounds, and fondling everybody he meets before he uses a pronoun,
then he his judging at least partly by how they present. That's gender.

The latter half, how he treats people based on his gender-presentation-
mediated perceptions of sex, is pure gender, because there we're entirely out
of the realm of biology and clearly into the social side of gender roles.

I understand why he (and apparently you) would like it to be simpler. It's
more convenient _for him_ if everybody goes around hiding the complexity for
him so he doesn't have to have a more accurate view of the world. But it's
bunk. Pretending that it's "just" sex he's talking about is part of the way he
hides, presumably also from himself, that it's bunk.

------
regleo
Reg: But you can't have babies.

Stan: Don't you oppress me.

Reg: Where's the fetus going to gestate? You going to keep it in a box?

Francis: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.

Reg: It's symbolic of his struggle against reality.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/quotes](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/quotes)

~~~
cookiecaper
The sad thing is most people don't understand how frighteningly representative
this is of much of today's social activism.

~~~
chc
The weird thing is that I haven't seen all that many examples of reality-
rejecting social activism, despite your claim that there is "much" of it. Are
you sure you haven't just failed to understand what the people are actually
saying?

------
hermannj314
Everyone seems proud of themselves for realizing that both sex and gender do
not divide into two nice halves. I guess I have just taken it as a given that
is how the world is.

Nevertheless, Facebook is still predicated on the the worst false dichotomy of
all time: someone is either my friend or they are not my friend.

Do we need an entire generation of friendism movement to raise awareness the
world is full of colleagues, acquaintances, etc. I know this doesn't matter
for a lot of people, but for those of us with nonconforming relationships,
being forced to choose a binary option as friend or not friend is
disheartening.

It is the reason I quit Facebook.

~~~
jerf
Hmmm... I think trying to link binary friend to binary gender weakens an
argument that is perfectly capable of standing on its own. (It's pretty
obvious there's a huge range of "friend"ships in the real world.)

------
jaimebuelta
As I have a lot of friends in Facebook that I assume do not share the same
language preferences than me (they are from around the world), this feature
had made think about how hard internationalisation can be... I'm pretty sure
than translating all the possible options, plus pronouns, etc, will be an
interesting problem ;-)

PD: I've checked and the option is only available so far to users using US
English interface, so not a problem currently. I can imagine it will be at
some point.

~~~
brandonbloom
Proper internationalization [1] is _really hard_. Seems like Facebook has done
a great job though. The documentation [2] for this feature points out that if
you choose "custom" gender, you need to choose your preference for male,
female, or neutral pronouns.

[1]: Heh, I'm so used to typing i18n, that was weird to type out.

[2]:
[https://www.facebook.com/help/276177272409629](https://www.facebook.com/help/276177272409629)

------
nfoz
I'd rather they just remove the box altogether.

But I'd also rather we just do away with the concept of gender. Sex is a
thing, and is also non-binary. But "concept of gender" is something strange
altogether.

~~~
danellis
Presumably the only reason for having it at all is that advertisers assume
they need that information. In which case, 'Male', 'Female' and 'Other' would
suffice. It's a pretty safe bet that if you don't identify as simply male or
female, advertisers aren't going to bother caring about how to advertise to
you.

~~~
sliverstorm
I'm sure it serves other purposes too, even if they are as simple as
displaying your sibling as "brother" vs. "sister", or your brother's children
as "nephew" vs. "niece".

------
vezzy-fnord
Sincere question: Why would a transgendered person specifically want to
identify as a "trans ___" as demonstrated in the screenshot? Wouldn't they
simply want to identify as their preferred gender (male, female, neutral,
etc.)?

I'd understand the importance of explicitly using trans as a distinction when,
for example, speaking to a medical professional or discussing a social issue,
but on a public profile?

~~~
audreyt
Well, for some, trans* is their preferred gender. That is, the experience of
transition forms part of their identity.

Compare, say, people who self-identify as "German-American" instead of simply
"American".

------
chiph
When I worked at Peopleclick (HR applicant tracking software), we didn't go
quite this far, but we had 7 gender options: Male, Female, M-F Trans, F-M
Trans, Neuter, Other, and Declined To Identify. Which was pretty progressive
for 14+ years ago.

------
waterlesscloud
Putting on the mercenary hat for a moment, I wonder how this affects
advertising targeting...

~~~
devindotcom
I wondered this too, but to be honest I imagine it's not a problem. LGBT is a
small, fairly tightly defined group (compared to, say, men age 18-25) that
skews in known directions (liberal, urban, etc).

~~~
MrZongle2
_LGBT is a small, fairly tightly defined group_

Odd; most online and conventional media outlets are saying something
completely different.

------
devindotcom
Here's the announcement on Facebook:

[https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=567587973337709&set=...](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=567587973337709&set=a.196865713743272.42938.105225179573993&type=1&stream_ref=10)

Solid step in the right direction.

Also, this is an area of sexual politics that is generally not well understood
by the majority of people — being that the majority are not gay, trans, or
otherwise off the traditional dipolar gender and sexual attration axis. I
don't know about you, but I prefer not to comment on things I don't understand
so as not to put my foot in my mouth or inadvertently cause real offense.

------
k-mcgrady
Good to see them do this but I'd have preferred if they'd come up with 3-5
different ways to describe gender that we could use across the web. Have 50
different customisable options is a pain to implement for everyone. Maybe I'm
wrong though - can someone with more knowledge on this tell me whether that
many options is really necessary?

~~~
wpietri
As a comparison, look at the spectrum of race. How we look at it keeps
changing. Could we get by with a binary? Sure, we could have "white" and "non-
white". Could we do 3-5? Sure, that's what Brazil's government does. They have
white, brown, black, yellow, and indigenous; you can pick one. [1] But people
in Brazil don't really like that. It may serve the governmental need to have a
simple system. But for the individuals expressing their racial identity, it
doesn't really fit their self-perceptions, and they don't like having somebody
else's categories imposed upon them.

If you are looking for a simple way to solve this problem, just drop gender
from your system. If you really need to use pronouns, just use singular they
[2] for everybody.

I think the second-simplest thing would be to not ask about gender, but to ask
about what pronoun to use. Facebook's going with he/she/they, which isn't what
every activist would want, but it's way better than a simple binary.

If you really need gender, then I'd probably follow the Facebook model; the
alternative is to basically repeat Facebook's process of talking to a lot of
people and finding some other workable solution.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_Brazil#IB...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_Brazil#IBGE.E2.80.99s_racial_categories)

------
paulnechifor
Damn, this doesn't work for me yet. I wanted to identify as a "just this nice
uber trans-trans-awesome-guy".

~~~
ItendToDisagree
It's progress at least.

Maybe someday there will be a setting for 'sexless elder god' so Cthulhu and
the rest of the gang don't feel left out.

------
qeorge
Way to go, Facebook.

~~~
angersock
Now it's even easier to mine graphs for deviancy and persecution!

------
cinquemb
I wonder if they will expose it on the public graph api?

This will make it really interesting to better infer parts of some peoples
personalities with the rest of the data people want to share on facebook, and
serving ads to demographics who are going to want to click on your ads because
it conforms to their views.

Well played from a data-mining perspective.

------
cllns
This is awesome!

Diaspora did this a few years ago too (more or less)
[http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2010/11/26/disalienation/](http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2010/11/26/disalienation/)

------
megaframe
I wanted to put "Meat Popsicle" but they have pre-defined "custom" tags

~~~
izzydata
I've been trying to enter "Alien Robot", but I keep getting an error. How do I
even add a custom gender? Everything I put in gives an error.

------
farginay
Does anyone have a list of the 50+ options? No article seems to show them.

~~~
nbm
From [http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/02/13/male-female-or-
custom...](http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/02/13/male-female-or-custom-
facebook-announces-major-expansion-terms-to-identify/)

    
    
      Agender
      Androgyne
      Androgynous
      Bigender
      Cis
      Cis Female
      Cis Male
      Cis Man
      Cis Woman
      Cisgender
      Cisgender Female
      Cisgender Male
      Cisgender Man
      Cisgender Woman
      Female to Male
      FTM
      Gender Fluid
      Gender Nonconforming
      Gender Questioning
      Gender Variant
      Genderqueer
      Intersex
      Male to Female
      MTF
      Neither
      Neutrois
      Non-binary
      Other
      Pangender
      Trans
      Trans Female
      Trans Male
      Trans Man
      Trans Person
      Trans*Female
      Trans*Male
      Trans*Man
      Trans*Person
      Trans*Woman
      Transexual
      Transexual Female
      Transexual Male
      Transexual Man
      Transexual Person
      Transexual Woman
      Transgender Female
      Transgender Person
      Transmasculine
      Two-spirit

------
snaky
>50 different terms people can use to identify their gender

wow

------
Havoc
Custom...jedi. Your move FB.

------
yetanotherphd
This is great, but we can take this a lot further. Submit pull requests to fix
gender-binary assumptions in open source software.

If an engineer refuses to accept your PR, they are an insensitive asshole, and
deserve the public criticism and dismissal from their job that will inevitably
follow.

~~~
milesokeefe
>dismissal from their job that will inevitably follow

That's a bit unrealistic.

