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Facebook and gender


Leolith

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Hi everybody,

I'm sorry if this isn't an appropriate question, but I don't know where else to ask.

I remember reading that facebook allows their users to choose betwewn 50+ genders - today I had to create an account (to get access to information) and there were only the options of male and female....

Did they stop offering more? Are those settings hidden somewhere?

I'm thankful for responses :)

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NerotheReaper

I haven't heard about that before, I would hope there would be more than just two options. Even a third one 'prefer not to answer' could work.

Some dating websites will sometimes let you pick your sexuality, Okcupid gives you the option to pick asexuality. Now this is not the same thing you are talking about, but some websites do allow their users to have more options.

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Hi everybody,

I'm sorry if this isn't an appropriate question, but I don't know where else to ask.

I remember reading that facebook allows their users to choose betwewn 50+ genders - today I had to create an account (to get access to information) and there were only the options of male and female....

Did they stop offering more? Are those settings hidden somewhere?

I'm thankful for responses :)

Yes you can definitely set a differnt gender, the setting is just a little more hidden.

To change the setting go in your "About/contact and basic info" there you can set your gender on "custom" which activates a (different) field somwehat below, where you should be able to write in several possible gender options.

I changed the setting a couple of days ago so it should work.

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I think your gender options depend on the language you have set up. It may only work for English..

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Hi everybody,

I'm sorry if this isn't an appropriate question, but I don't know where else to ask.

I remember reading that facebook allows their users to choose betwewn 50+ genders - today I had to create an account (to get access to information) and there were only the options of male and female....

Did they stop offering more? Are those settings hidden somewhere?

I'm thankful for responses :)

Yes you can definitely set a differnt gender, the setting is just a little more hidden.

To change the setting go in your "About/contact and basic info" there you can set your gender on "custom" which activates a (different) field somwehat below, where you should be able to write in several possible gender options.

I changed the setting a couple of days ago so it should work.

thank you! it worked :)

I think your gender options depend on the language you have set up. It may only work for English..

for me it worked using facebook's german version. Sadly, in german there is no equivalent to the english neutral "they", so it displays my content with he/her, which isn't perfect, but still acceptable

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German has a gender neutral pronoun??? I heard that german was just as gendered as a language.

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German has a gender neutral pronoun??? I heard that german was just as gendered as a language.

As I said, there is no equivalent to "they" in German, but there have been efforts to create new and genderneutral pronouns like xier, per or nin. Or neutral pronouns from other languages are used (like the Swedish hen or dey (which sounds like "they"). But none of those are used widely and some people simply prefer to leave out all pronouns when talking in German.

Facebook seems to "solve" the problem by using "he/she" (er/sie) for everything.

Generally speaking, yes, German is a rather gendered language, although unlike Spanish, you can't tell the gender of the speaker if they are talking about themself.

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I never heard of nin before, I think I like it!

I really dislike the ihr/sein option, it totally contradicts me being agender. Like, I don't want either of those, so don't give me both at once please haha

When I refer to people that use they pronouns in English when I'm speaking German, I just use their name more often and don't use pronouns at all. Except for when I have an agreement with that person about which pronouns (er or sie) would be okay to use. I have a friend that doesn't want me to use either so I still just don't use any pronouns when I talk about em.

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