Choose One
Facebook asks us to choose “male” or “female” on our profiles, but they shouldn’t.
By Emily Rutherford
June 16, 2009
Facebook still excludes those that don’t accept gender binaries. (Illustration: Brett Marler)Miles Wilcox, a sophomore at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, is an avid Facebook user, but he’s disgruntled with the website’s design. "I have serious issues with how Facebook is so heterosexist," he says. Wilcox, who identifies as a queer transman, objects to the very first field in the Facebook profile: a drop-down box asking users to select a sex from the options "male" and "female." He continues, "Facebook needs to get a grip on reality and acknowledge that not everyone feels comfortable with explicitly identifying as one gender or the other … I see no need for Facebook to know what is in my pants, but that’s what they ask everyone that signs up."
When the Facebook’s creators and designers decided how to structure the website’s profile, they placed strict limits on users’ choices. Users must rank sex and relationship status above political and religious views, and those above favorite books and movies due to the design of Facebook’s profile page. Furthermore, Facebook rigidly reinforces a gender binary, offering only "male" and "female" as options in the "sex" drop-down box, and only allowing users to check "men" and "women" under "interested in." The world around us is increasingly accepting of a spectrum of sexual orientations and gender identities, but Facebook is still sticking to outdated, problematic paradigms.
In July 2008, Facebook took the rigidity beyond the male/female binary in the "sex" information box, citing issues with translating the website into other languages. The company asked users to select a gender-specific pronoun, "he" or "she," so that the News Feed would know which pronoun to use instead of the ungrammatical single "they"—as in, "John added The Great Gatsby to his favorite books" or "Jane updated her political views" (emphasis added). All this is distinctly marginalizing for transgender or gender-nonconforming people like Wilcox who are less able to shelve themselves or the recipients of their interest into one of only two categories.
Ironically, groups that object to Facebook’s practices are protesting and raising awareness using Facebook itself. For example, Moriya Vanderhoef, a student at University of Wisconsin -Milwaukee, created a group called "Expand Gender Options on Facebook Petition," which currently has 2,326 members. Vanderhoef, who studies LGBT history, says that she started the group "because there are far more genders and sexes in the world than just ‘male’ and ‘female’… I do not appreciate Facebook giving me the option to name my religious [affiliations], but restricting my gender and sexuality to the ultra narrow ‘male’ or ‘female.’" However, the petition has not achieved its goal of bringing this problem to Facebook’s attention: Vanderhoef has "never once heard from anyone in power about [the] group or the possibility of changing this problem."
Rebecca Bettencourt is another Facebook user who was frustrated by the company’s lack of response to user concerns about the "sex" field, believing that "Facebook’s limited set of options is not only problematic but grossly misrepresentative and insulting to thousands—maybe even millions—of people." She tried addressing the problem in a different way: when Facebook first allowed users to design their own applications, Bettencourt says, "I immediately knew what my mission was. If Facebook wasn’t going to fix this error, I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. As soon as the Facebook API was available, I created the SGO application."
SGO, which stands for "sex/gender/orientation," provides more options than Facebook’s own, including fill-in fields so that users can describe their gender and sexuality however they wish. SGO has had a modest amount of success among Facebook’s LGBT population, but users cannot accord its content the same level of importance as the official Facebook fields.
Bettencourt would like to see a change. "I do believe that Facebook, as well as other websites, should standardize their gender and orientation options along the lines of my app,” she says. “Not all the fields my app offers would be necessary, of course; I’d just like to see the fields for Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation that offered these additional options and/or a text field.”
Wilcox, who uses the application, agrees: "The SGO app is a really awesome tool, but essentially what it is an addition to supplement where people feel Facebook is lacking or failing them. Right now it’s helping, but I do think that Facebook should identify these issues and try to fix them," he says.
However, Facebook has done little to address these concerns. The company attempted to mollify those who disagreed with its gender-specific pronouns decision with a June 27, blog post last summer: "We’ve received pushback in the past from groups that find the male/female distinction too limiting. We have a lot of respect for these communities, which is why it will still be possible to remove gender entirely from your account, including how we refer to you in Mini-Feed."
That is not an adequate solution, however, for those who actually want to display a gender option outside of the male-female binary. Bettencourt, who has followed the issue closely, observed, "This is the only peep ever heard from Facebook regarding this issue, and it only confirms my suspicions of transphobia among the people running Facebook." (Facebook did not respond to requests for further comment on the policy.)
Other efforts to organize on Facebook as a means of changing its available options have been successful in the past. A few years ago, a different group of concerned Facebook users was able to successfully expand the options available in the "political views" field beyond a spectrum from "very liberal" to "very conservative." In 2007 and early 2008, as Facebook became increasingly popular in countries outside of the United States, a series of groups and petitions with titles like "By ‘Libertarian’ I mean Anarchist" generated a fair amount of attention from the Facebook user base. In contrast to the company’s unresponsiveness on the gender issue, Facebook seemed to have taken notice of this campaign. As of March 2008, users are now allowed a fill-in-the-blank political views field.
Of course, the political views movement had numbers on its side. Demographically speaking, far more people desire to label themselves as "socialist" or "libertarian" than, say, "genderqueer" or "pansexual." The minority of gender-variant individuals who feel limited by Facebook’s gender binary—unable to sustain a critical mass or to impress upon Facebook’s staff the importance of their cause—has been unable to lobby successfully for the change it wants to see.
Some might argue that Facebook is not doing anything particularly shocking—after all, we are asked to choose from "male" or "female" just about every time we fill out a job application, complete a silly online quiz, or use a public restroom. But a policy is not the right choice simply because it is the status quo. Because of its ubiquity among our generation, Facebook plays as important a role in shaping cultural norms and expectations as it does in reflecting them. Facebook has done much to revolutionize the way we present ourselves and communicate with one another, but it could be even more revolutionary if it were to embrace the diversity of its user base.
Emily Rutherford is a staff writer with Campus Progress.
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Comments
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I totally agree. I identify as genderqueer, and really just wish I wouldn’t have to put a gender on my profile at all, as everyday, my mind changes. Why do you have to put ourself in these little boxes?
— Ashley - Jun 17, 10:35 PM - #I agree as well. I’m not trans, but whatever I am or may yet become is none of anybody’s bizniz, nor should it matter whether I even have a gender at all. This is also a common evil at many activist sites, which – tho they do much good work – almost always ask for a gender-specific prefix.
— d - Jun 18, 02:23 PM - #Gender identity and sexual orientation are separate. Having only a gender binary is wrong, but it’s not “heterosexist.”
— MC - Jun 18, 02:26 PM - #If they can liberate us from choosing one of 5 political identities, they can liberate us from only 2 gender identities.
Fortunately this seems like something that the Facebook people would be amenable to.
— ForStudentPower.org - Jun 18, 02:34 PM - #ummm, okay… First of all, gender and sexuality are not being used interchangeably by Facebook. And if you are making the argument that gender is not biologically based, and is just an “identity” chosen by the individual, then you have done a very poor job. You alone are responsible for expressing your opinion in a compelling way. Seriously, i’m sure your time could be better spent on real issues. Simple solution: Facebook make “Decline to State” or “Both” an option, besides Male and Female. Problem solved. NEXT!!
— Averroes - Jun 18, 02:51 PM - #I think they should keep the gender binary. Users can choose which gender they identify with, prefer to appear as, or were born into. I do agree, however, that the sex one is interested in should be broader.
— Chantel - Jun 18, 03:02 PM - #For Facebook there’s a very compelling reason to ask for your gender: advertising. Try changing your gender on Facebook for a week or so and look at the change in ads. I did this, and suddenly I was getting lots of ads for “girl” stuff. More jewelery, more pink, etc. I conducted this little experiment during my engagement, and suddenly for the first time I started getting all kinds of wedding related advertisements as well.
There’s more reason to not select a gender on Facebook than gender binary. Doing so makes it more difficult for Facebook to single you out for targeted advertising.
— Alex - Jun 18, 03:06 PM - #Frankly, I disagree with this column’s position and the opinions of its sources. Facebook uses the term “sex,” not “gender” and allows users not to choose at all. Sex IS biological. If a user feels that his or her sex does not adequately define that user’s identity, gender, or sexual orientation, decline to fill out the field. For example, I feel that inserting a one- or two-word phrase describing my political affiliation would be misleading, so I choose to leave that field blank.
I think the primary issue here is that Facebook is a free service, provided by a for-profit business and underwritten by scores and scores of advertisers. Facebook can do as it pleases. If a user finds its policies offensive, that user is free to boycott the service and communicate through a different forum.
— Jessie - Jun 18, 03:06 PM - #Get over it. There are many other issues out there that we can focus on that need attention and we’re worried about what we fill out on a form that is completely voluntary? You’re not applying for a job. If you don’t like it then don’t type www.facebook.com into your browser. What a complete waste of time.
I, personally, would like to start a website called “ban Expand Gender Options on Facebook Petition,”
— Patrick Moreno - Jun 18, 03:20 PM - #OK…..so you can’t figure out your sex or gender preferences today – - why should anyone care? Go ahead and change your profile.
— mighty aphrodite - Jun 18, 04:05 PM - #Jessie is right-Facebook uses the term “sex,” not “gender.” We are born with a sex, no matter what we discover our gender to be. This is of paramount importance to the logic of the article and the underlying arguments; how did the author (and those cited) miss that?
Do they owe their users a field for declaring their “genders?” I’m not sure how we could argue that they do…given that they are a voluntary site with a format that users choose to use on their own volition. They could provide such a field, much like they provide fields for other elements of users’ identity and existence. This would be nice, and probably appropriate. We might wonder if this logic has an infinite regress problem: how many fields would be enough for Facebook to adequately meet its users’ needs? Are we doomed to always lack that one last field for self-expression? Honestly, Patrick is also right—this piece is looking for controversy where it doesn’t really exist. It’s these sorts of spurious arguments that leave progressives looking so out-of-touch and whiny. Why don’t we spend our rhetorical outrage now on health care and the environment?
— CPW - Jun 18, 04:20 PM - #Since they use the term “sex,” they really only need three categories: Male, female, intersex. Those are the three medically recognized categories. But they also could add a “gender” question with a text field and a “preferred pronoun” question with “he” and “she” as the choices.
— Wolfgang - Jun 18, 04:59 PM - #A counter-argument to those saying that Facebook is asking for “sex, not gender:”
Just because the field says “sex” doesn’t mean that Facebook is treating it as such. They really are asking for your gender because, as someone pointed out, the purpose of the “sex” field is for ad targeting. By asking what is between your legs, Facebook is assuming that you are going to be interested in a certain product—which is gender-related, not sex-related.
Change “Sex” to “Gender” and make it a text box, then ask which pronouns the user wishes to be addressed with. Half of that is already done. Facebook ads should be based solely on what is written in the “interests” fields, not by which organs someone says they have. My genitals have no bearing on what internet ads I’m going to click on, unless Facebook is going to start advertising Viagra.
— JD - Jun 18, 05:03 PM - #Enough of this PC garbage.
— MJ - Jun 18, 08:04 PM - #This article is disappointingly sloppy. While I agree Facebook should change the “sex” field to a text “gender” field, we need to carefully distinguish between the two when we have discussions of this nature. As others have noted: sex is biological, gender is a social construct. The lack of clarity in the article betrays the importance of addressing discrimination against those who do not identify with “traditional” gender roles.
Also, the idea that “because of its ubiquity among our generation, Facebook plays as important a role in shaping cultural norms and expectations as it does in reflecting them” is patently absurd.
— BurnItDown - Jun 19, 10:28 AM - #Of course Facebook doesn’t “owe” us anything. That’s why these groups are asking, not telling, Facebook to change their policies.
Personally, I prefer the approach h2g2 uses. One massive input box: define yourself however you like on your personal space. And that’s it.
But h2g2 doesn’t run targeted advertising. Or any advertising.
TRiG.
— Timothy (TRiG) - Jun 19, 10:46 AM - #This is an intelligent and thoughtful article, and it is all the more so for avoiding the simplistic distinction between “biological sex” and “cultural gender” demanded by many of the comments above (for a sophisticated exposition, see postscript to Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (NY 1990).
If this issue ought not to be raised in such a major cultural forum as Facebook has become, then where? Telling people to simply find another networking site is intolerant.
— Interestedreader - Jun 19, 02:52 PM - #A fill-in-the-box gender field would ruin the search function. Utility over warm fuzzy feelings, I’m afraid, and since it’s a site used by hundreds of millions of people, I assume, further assuming that the vast majority of those people are straight, Facebook is probably interested in delivering the most convenience and utility to the largest customer base.
— Cook - Jun 19, 09:36 PM - #Don’t like it, find a gender-focused personal networking site. The answer is not to expect anyone else to care how you identify sexually. I don’t care, Facebook doesn’t care, nobody cares.
I have NEVER liked having to put my sex in an internet profile. It’s something I have always avoided for various reasons.
— Cute Bruiser - Jun 21, 06:19 PM - #I thought this was a joke article until i started reading the comments.
— David - Jun 22, 10:07 AM - #Hi all,
Thanks very much for offering your thoughts! As the author of this article, I wanted to respond in a general fashion to some of the issues you raised in your comments.
Firstly, it seems as if there’s a prevailing sentiment that Facebook and its attitudes toward gender identity are not as important as some issues that Campus Progress could be covering. While I can certainly see that Facebook seems trivial, I decided to write about it because this issue is a good example of how gender is represented in our culture—that is, binarily, in a way that conflates it with the differing concept of biological sex. Facebook is also is overwhelmingly populated by users under the age of 30—the group that is meant to be more progressive than ever before on social issues such as same-sex marriage, and yet is perhaps less aware of the more theoretical and perhaps less political aspects of gender identity and our culture’s often-gender-essentialist nature. My belief is that, while this issue may not have as convenient a political application as something like same-sex marriage, it is no less essential to understand. Moreover, this article hasn’t caused Campus Progress to lessen its coverage of issues such as health care and the environment—we continue to address a wide variety of issues important to young progressives.
To those who believe I misleadingly conflated sex and gender: if my writing was anything less than clear, I apologize. I am well aware of the distinction between those two concepts and it wasn’t my intention to confuse them. However, the problem, as commenter JD helpfully pointed out, is that Facebook is conflating sex and gender, which can lead to some very confusing language and difficulty in rendering Facebook’s own definitions in terms of modern gender theory rhetoric. I do certainly grant that I could have tried harder to lessen the confusion, though.
And to those who believe that this issue is a non-issue because Facebook users are not obligated to list a sex, or who believe that it could be easily solved by adding an “intersex” or “both” or “neither” option: it’s not as simple as that. Just as sexual orientation is often conceived of in broader terms than “straight/gay/bisexual,” gender identity has as many gradations as there are people. While this article was more intended to raise awareness of how websites like Facebook implement a binary understanding of gender than to hand Facebook a policy proposal, I believe it would be best to have either a fill-in field or no field at all. The most progressive way to treat people is to allow them to define themselves, rather than attempting to choose their labels for them.
I understand that the way I addressed identity and its social constructions in this article may seem reductive to people more familiar with august writers who advance more complex academic theories of gender. I was writing with the knowledge that Campus Progress is not a publication dedicated to queer issues, and so its readers may very well be new to thinking about gender in an abstract way—as, perhaps, some of these comments indicate. I had hoped that the words and experiences of the people I interviewed for this article might have helped deal with this problem of writing to a variety of levels of familiarity—but if they didn’t, I’m happy to self-promote the personal essay I wrote last February which gave me the idea for this article, and which deals with more theoretical issues. (It’s posted on my personal website here .)
If you’re interested in discussing this any further, feel free to contact me.
Emily Rutherford
— Emily Rutherford - Jun 22, 04:15 PM - #Editorial Intern and Staff Writer
CampusProgress.org
I’m so glad I signed up before they made you choose a sex, the jerks. Though once they changed that, I was greeted with a lovely “are you a his or her?” type of message every time I signed in. It seems to have gone away now, which is nice.
I see no reason it can’t be just another blank box you can choose to fill in if you want, like ‘Religious Views’ or ‘Relationship Status’. It wouldn’t be difficult.
— Traduit - Jun 22, 10:12 PM - #Let’s not forget that Facebook has another motive for asking you to specify your sex: they use it to choose which ads to display on your page. I think that’s evidence of a larger bias in our society which is, unfortunately, supported and strengthened by Facebook’s marketing strategies. It operates off of and perpetuates stereotypes about which interests are appropriate for men and which are appropriate for women (mostly weight-loss ads), and in doing so furthers the false idea that male and female are opposite and mutually exclusive.
— Rachel - Jun 25, 01:46 AM - #