Facebook introduces LGBTQ-inclusive gender identity options for users

Users will have around 50 options of how they would like to identify themselves

Published February 13, 2014 8:41PM (EST)

                          (AP/Timur Emek)
(AP/Timur Emek)

Facebook took a step toward LGBTQ inclusivity with the Thursday rollout of around 50 new terms users can use to identify their gender identity.

People will now be able to identify themselves as androgynous, intersex, gender fluid or transgender, among other options that reflect a wide range of gendered experience and presentation. Facebook also allows users to keep their gender identity private.

"There's going to be a lot of people for whom this is going to mean nothing, but for the few it does impact, it means the world," Facebook software engineer Brielle Harrison, who worked on the project and is also a transgender woman, told the Associated Press.

"All too often transgender people like myself and other gender nonconforming people are given this binary option, do you want to be male or female? What is your gender? And it's kind of disheartening because none of those let us tell others who we really are," she continued. "This really changes that, and for the first time I get to go to the site and specify to all the people I know what my gender is."

 


By Katie McDonough

Katie McDonough is Salon's politics writer, focusing on gender, sexuality and reproductive justice. Follow her on Twitter @kmcdonovgh or email her at kmcdonough@salon.com.

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Facebook Gender Gender Fluid Lgbt Rights Lgbtq Rights Transgender Identity Transgender Rights