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Facebook Rolls Out Gender-Neutral Family Options

facebook-thumbs-upDo you have a trans parent? How about an intersex sibling? Maybe a bigender child?

For most of us, the answer is no. But for those who do have family members who fall outside the gender binary, you’ll now be able to define your relationships on Facebook more accurately.

A new set of options for family connections has been rolled out to give people a wider spectrum of gender-neutral terms to choose from:

Facebook

Earlier this year, Facebook introduced a new set of labels to self-identify, offering 50 options including androgynous, bigender, intersex, genderfluid and transsexual. Following user feedback, the list was bumped up to 70.

Trans Facebook software engineer Brielle Harrison said:

“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.

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.

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.”

Professor Stephen Whittle, Vice-President of Press for Change added:

“Gender identities are complex and for many people, describing themselves as just a man or just a woman has always been inadequate.

By challenging the gender binary, Facebook will finally allow thousands of people to describe themselves as they are now and it will allow future generation of kids to become truly comfortable in their own skins.”

h/t: Pink News

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