Facebook Now Lets You Select a Custom Gender on Your Profile

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Emil Protalinski

Emil was a reporter for The Next Web between 2012 and 2014. Over the years, he has covered the tech industry for multiple publications, incl (show all) Emil was a reporter for The Next Web between 2012 and 2014. Over the years, he has covered the tech industry for multiple publications, including Ars Technica, Neowin, TechSpot, ZDNet, and CNET. Stay in touch via Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Facebook today announced it has added the ability to select a custom gender on your profile, a change it has made after working closely with LGBT activist groups. The feature will only be available to people in the US for now, but Facebook plans to expand availability “in the future.”

A custom gender on your Timeline means that aside from male and female, you can choose a third category: “other.” This will open up a menu where you can select up to 10 gender definitions, including “cisgender,” “transgender,” “intersex,” as well as many other options the company says refers to as “nuanced.” The feature also lets users define which pronoun they’d like to be referred to as on the site: male (he/his), female (she/her) or neutral (they/their).