Facebook Broadens Gender Options For 150 Million Users

Interesting news! Facebook announced a new option for users based in the United States to customize their gender on their Facebook profiles "About" section. I was able to change my facebook profile so that it says "cisgender male."

The Williams Institute, a think tank based at the University of California, Los Angeles, estimates there are at least 700,000 individuals in the U.S. who identify as transgender, an umbrella term that includes people who live as a gender different from the one assigned to them at birth.

The change at Facebook drew dozens of appreciative postings on the company's diversity website, although there were some pointing out the need to change relationships beyond son and daughter, and asking for sexual preference options.

The move by Facebook represents a basic and a yet significant form of recognition of the nation's growing transgender rights movement, which has been spurred by veteran activists and young people who identify as transgender at younger ages. The Human Rights Campaign last year found that 10 percent of the 10,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender youths it surveyed used "other" or wrote in their own gender terms.

Will you change your gender identity on Facebook?

Hat/tip to Wonder Man