Facebook has rolled out the red carpet of gender identities for their users to choose to identify themselves.
The social networking site, which has about 1.15 billion users (and in all honesty, is probably up in a tab on all of your computer screens right this second) recently opened up a customizable gender option that lets users write in one of about 50 new allowed terms.
This is a big step for an online networking website to take, and will make a big difference for the LGBTQ+ community. In my opinion, it’s an awesome idea. A lot of people forget or aren’t even aware that sex and gender are actually very different things. Let’s talk about this.
To put it simply, sex is determined by biological reproductive organs. Gender, on the other hand, is largely a social construction.
Gender is a personal sense of who you are, and for a lot of people, that’s very different from just a binary version of male or female. How people identify themselves and the terms they use to do so vary over a wide range and is also is completely different from sexual orientation.
For many people, gender identity is of great importance, and it’s definitely better to let people tell you about their gender rather than assuming you know how they identify based upon appearance or manner. Facebook’s awesome new customized option gives people a chance not to not make assumptions.
The new gender options offer a way to express your authentic self to others. I consider this to be a great thing, because that is really what online social networking, and life in general, is all about.
