February 14, 2014 | Online

Facebook allows users more gender options in profile

After receiving a lot of pressure from the LGBT community, Facebook has finally announced that users will now have more choices in order to customize their gender on their profile page.

About 50 new options have been created, including "pangender," "transgender," "androgynous" and "transsexual." Facebook said this would allow users "to express themselves in an authentic way." 

Sounds great! Just as long as we don't have to have fifty letters in the inclusive gay acronym -  "LGBTQ" is just enough. 

As well, users can choose how to be addressed, with either "he," "she" or "they."

Facebook released : "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)."

"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 engineer Brielle Harrison added. "For the first time I get to go to the site and I get to specify to all the people that I know what my gender is and I can let only the people that I want to know, see that."

Initially, only English speaking users will get the change. Facebook hopes to roll this out in other languages soon.

Now if only Facebook would stop removing pics of two men kissing ...