After Facebook, Diaspora Has a New Target: "Male" and "Female"

[Shana A]

After Facebook, Diaspora Has a New Target: "Male" and "Female"

Posted by Michael_Byrne on Monday, Nov 29, 2010

http://motherboard.tv/2010/11/29/after-facebook-diaspora-has-a-new-target-male-and-female

Diaspora, the potentially great next-generation social networking site currently under development, made one important change a couple of weeks ago in a line of code. It impacts millions and millions of potential users throughout the world, many of whom are current users of a social networking site that alienates them, relegates them to a subperson with a subgender. That site would be Facebook and those users are the masses of transgendered people in the world that don't fall into Facebook's two profile options of "male" and "female."

There's no other option. As a Facebook user, you can't even be an "other." You must identify as male or female. The many different varieties of transgender humans out there are faced with a drop-down menu that tells them that their gender is less important, or maybe just doesn't add into Facebook's data-mining schemes.

[Lukas-H]

Actually I need to point out one thing here that is an incorrect fact (at least from the article author).

You do not have to pick a gender on your facebook page. Under the Info tab of your profile page where you edit the 'About Me' info, if you leave the drop-down menu on the option 'Select Sex' it will not show any gender, or you can uncheck the box 'Show Sex in profile'.

I do agree that social networking sites should jump on the bandwagon of giving users the opportunity to select more than just 'Male' or 'Female' however you have the choice on FB to not select either.