Comments

1
A (possibly incomplete) list of every gender possibility I could find that Facebook would accept in their new custom gender profile field:

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 Noncomforming
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 Woman
Trans* Female
Trans* Male
Trans* Man
Trans* Person
Trans* Woman
Transgender Female
Transgender Male
Transgender Man
Transgender Person
Transgender Woman
Transmasculine
Transsexual
Transsexual Female
Transsexual Male
Transsexual Man
Transsexual Person
Transsexual Woman
Two-Spirit
3
Am I the only one that immediately thought this is just an attempt to better target their advertising?
4
Slog has been weirdly silent about it, but Lambda Legal, and Dan's pal Dru Levasseur, recently took up the case of "Robina Asti, a 92-year-old transgender woman who was denied survivor benefits by the Social Security Administration (SSA) after her husband’s death. The agency denied her benefits after it determined that she was “legally male” at the time of their marriage despite all the legal documents to the contrary."
5
yawn
6
You're welcome.
7
Can I pick hyper-masculine homosexual? Or maybe just Megaman for short.
8
Right on. We didn't need the word them for use as a plural pronoun in the first place. Who care if the writer mean one person or many? Plural and singular: it are both the same. Insisting on using a singular pronoun to refer to a single person are ridiculous.
9
I'm shocked at how long it took them to implement something like this. I remember Facebook used to just default people to "she" and "her" if someone didn't put in their gender.
10
@8 eeeew. If you can't figure out plural or singular via context clues you must be daft. I'm all for the informal singular "they."
11
I've been told that the phrase "What pronoun do you prefer?" is actually offensive because people don't "prefer" one pronoun, they just are. I wonder if they'll change that to something like, "What pronoun do you want displayed?"
12
Very cool. I'm almost comically cis-gendered. But not out of some rigidity to the gender binary. It's just who I really am. Glad people have the option to express themselves I. That way. Even if it is just Facebook.
13
@10: We completely agree with you. All person should know what we am writing about, regardless of the words we uses; he can always figure them out from context. Any choice of pronoun are good.
14
@8 Do you have trouble with 'sheep' and 'deer' and 'moose' as well?

Plurality as actually studied by linguists is actual far more interesting and perhaps counter-intuitive than most people imagine. Considering the sentence below might cause one to reconsider what they think they know about plurality.

I walked 1.0 miles
15
@8

Shakespeare didn't think it was ridiculous. You're entitled to your opinion, but if your opinion is that Shakespeare didn't know how to speak English, well... good luck with that.
17
Thanks for the list, @1. Kudos to Facebook for including cis-qualified genders and not just trans-qualified genders.

@8: Singular they has been a part of the English language for centuries. http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/aust…
18
Why are everyone arguing about this? Can't it all just get along?
19
People like to be called whatever she want. It's none of anyone business, myselves included.
20
The singular they has been used historically in English for centuries. As stated, it was used by Shakespeare. It was also used in the King James Bible. The backlash against it only started recently, as a reaction to feminism. The only reasons to be against the singular they are pure ignorance, pure bigotry, or ignorance mixed with bigotry.

And yes, you may have had ignorant English teachers -that happens sometimes. They may also have misled you about whether it is okay to split infinitives (it is) and whether it is okay to end a sentence with a preposition (it is). The reaction against those perfectly valid language uses were created out of a desire to sell books.
21
@13/18/19: I know you think you are proving your point, but you are kind of doing the opposite. Your sentences have not been at all difficult to understand.
22
Oh my god this shit gets so complicated beyond what anyone else actually cares.

Ohhh you're gender fluid, not intersex! My bad! <--- problems that never happen
23

How about Heterosexual Male With Dimorphic Preference
24
I'm fine with "they". "Ze" and "zir" can die in a fire.
25
People still use Facebook?
26
@24 There's a real difference between singular 'they' and things like 'ze'. There a bunch of different word classes and some, like verbs and nouns, readily admit new members (google, selfie, etc.) and can be subject to humans consciously adding them. These are called 'open class' categories.

Others categories, like pronouns and prepositions, are called 'closed class' and they are extremely conservative and admit or drop members very rarely and over long periods of time.

Independent of whether it would be a good idea to adopt non-gendered animate pronouns like 'ze', it is simply basically impossible. Those who want to push for things like 'ze' should try to imagine what it would take for a new preposition to take on.
27
I prefer womyn and that is not one of their new choices. but there are buttplenty of cis words, which are offensive to many lesbians older than 35.
28
This is wonderful. Very happy about this, and I hope all other companies and governments follow their lead - like the government of Australia, India, and Nepal, and the UK is working towards.
29
Un-hiding @20's comment:

The singular they has been used historically in English for centuries. As stated, it was used by Shakespeare. It was also used in the King James Bible. The backlash against it only started recently, as a reaction to feminism. The only reasons to be against the singular they are pure ignorance, pure bigotry, or ignorance mixed with bigotry.

And yes, you may have had ignorant English teachers -that happens sometimes. They may also have misled you about whether it is okay to split infinitives (it is) and whether it is okay to end a sentence with a preposition (it is). The reaction against those perfectly valid language uses were created out of a desire to sell books.


30
Female, woman, male, man... That's just silly.
31
this is getting way too granular... it's like every person wants their own personal description. There will be 500 soon. Everyone isn't a special snowflake. It's like trying to find missing links - there will always be another one just in between the two you've listed. It gets tiring.

waiting to be "hidden". :sigh:
32
This is great, though likely at least partially to gain some "market share" with queer folks who identify in a lot of different ways.

But I also notice that they only have "Women" and "Men" for "Interested In" menu. Then again, who really uses that option?
33
There is no singular they. They are plural. Do your research.
34
But if gender isn't real, then where does that leave transgender people? If neither their birth sex or the sex they identify with is real or objectively exists, then what difference would it make? It seems to invalidate the feelings and experience of people who claim that from a very early age they could tell what sex they were. I have mixed feelings on this myself.

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