Facebook Adds 50 New Gender Options beyond ‘Male’ & ‘Female’

Gone are the days when you are restricted to been a male or female on Facebook. The giant social network added third “custom” gender options on Thursday for people’s profiles. They now let U.S. users choose among some 50 additional options such as “transgender,” “cisgender,” “gender fluid,” “intersex” and “neither.”

Here is a quote from their Diversity Page yesterday confirming this.

“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. Moreover, people who select a custom gender will now have the ability to choose the pronoun they’d like to be referred to publicly — male (he/his), female (she/her) or neutral (they/their).”

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“We also have added the ability for people to control the audience with whom they want to share their custom gender. We recognize that some people face challenges sharing their true gender identity with others, and this setting gives people the ability to express themselves in an authentic way.”

Reactions on social media Thursday was largely positive, although some people joked they would need a dictionary to look up many of the gender-identity terms.

It’s not yet known when users outside the U.S would have the 50 gender options to their personal profiles.