Facebook has announced that it will now be allowing users to customise their gender on their profiles.
There will now be around 50 options including ‘bi-gender’ and ‘transsexual’ and users can choose whether they would like to be referred to as ‘she’, ‘he’ or ‘they’.
The gender options are only currently available for people using the US English version of Facebook.
This new feature is reflective of the surge in the transgender rights movement in the US.
A statement from Facebook Diversity said: "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).
"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."
The move is a genuine way of being more inclusive of everyone, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. With restrictive ‘male’ or ‘female’ options on most online forms, it is nice to see the beginning of a change.
