This blog was created by Team 1 to fulfill a project requirement for English 577/477-01.
When Facebook announced their new custom gender option to help their users better express their own identity on Facebook, they 
posted the following to their diversity page:
“When you come to Facebook to connect with the people, causes, and organizations you care about, we want you to feel comfortable being your true, authentic self.”
“An important part of this is the expression of gender, especially when it extends beyond the definitions of just “male” or female,” the post continued.
The folks at Facebook collaborated with a group of leading LGBT advocacy organizations, to offer an extensive list of gender identities that many people use to describe themselves.
This change will also allow people who select a custom gender to have the ability to choose the pronoun they’d like to be referred to publicly — male (he/his), female (she/her) or neutral (they/their).
In addition, Facebook has also added the ability for people to control the audience with whom they want to share their custom gender.
The new custom gender option is available to everyone who uses Facebook in the U.S.
According to a CNN article on the change, former GLAAD vice president Allison Palmer said “Facebook users from across the country
have been asking for the ability to reflect their gender accurately, and today Facebook showed they have been listening.”
Facebook has updated their instructions to help you edit your gender status (or other personal information):
Go to your Timeline (which we sometimes refer to as your profile).
Click Update Info at the bottom of your cover photo.
Click Edit in the top right of the section you’d like to change. (The new gender options are only accessible within an autocomplete drop-down menu, so you have to begin typing to see them appear.)
Enter your new info and click Save.
Facebook also updated their privacy settings to let users choose whom they would like to share their custom gender with.
As the article notes, reaction on social media has been positive, although some people joke that they need a dictionary to look up many of the gender-identity terms.
techdocteam1 ENG 477/577 (Wednesday) 