The social networking website Facebook introduced new gender identity options in United States by allowing its users to select a "custom gender" for their profiles, Mashable, a New York City based online news site, reports.
Users who do not identify as male or female can select a neutral gender identity From Thursday.
Before users could only select their gender as female ("she" and "her"), or male ("he" and "his"). Now, users in the United States can choose gender neutral ("they" or "their"), the report said.
When a male user celebrates a birthday, friends may be alerted with a message that reads, "Write on Matt’s wall for HIS birthday.” If a user elects to identify as gender neutral, the Facebook message would change to, “Write on Matt’s wall for THEIR birthday.”
Facebook announced the change on the company's Diversity page, and says that it worked with "a group of leading LGBT advocacy organizations" to compile a list of gender options. Users can change their gender settings by clicking "About" and selecting the edit icon in the upper-right hand corner of the "Basic Information" tab.
There, users can set their genders to "Custom" and then select from a long list of specific gender options. New option include transgender, bigender, cis, and gender questioning, among many others. Cis, or cisgender, refers to those who identify as the same gender that they were assigned at birth.
"While to many this change may not mean much, for those it affects it means a great deal," a Facebook spokesperson wrote in an email. "We see this as one more way we can make Facebook a place where people can express their authentic identity."
It's unclear how many Facebook users self-identify as gender neutral, and a spokesperson did not provide numbers.