Facebook: In Need of Gender-Neutral Pronoun

From a software development perspective, I think this should take minimal resources and time since it basically just expands the functionality they already have. They should make gender a text field rather than a dropdown, and if the user writes something other than male/man, or female/woman, ze should be prompt to enter a pronoun. Very few people will want to use this functionality, so it shouldn't require much database space.

Signed.

 

While I'm all for this, it isn't necessarily so easy a solution for all languages. It'd be easy enough in English, but other languages, Hebrew comes to mind, have different grammatical structures depending on whether a male or female is speaking. Other languages tend to make a much bigger deal on the gender of nouns.

That being said, no reason not to do this for English.

 

/Singed

 

then why not simply not list a gender at all if you dont want to be designated as one or the other?

 

As a software developer, I know that gender is often registered as a boolean type, 1 or 0. I've even done it myself for physical sex in a weight tracking app I've written; I called the field "isFemale": True would be female and False would be male.

This can pose a significant challenge for facebook to add, compared to the very small amount of people who identify as non-binary, so I wouldn't be surprised if they don't honor the petition.

 

I don't use Facebook - can someone give an example where 'he' or 'her' is actually used? I would've thought that they would've stuck to just using the account name when referring to someone, or 'they'.

 

____(name)____ changed his/her profile picture.

 

Well in that case, if it was up to me I'd just change it to 'their.' No fussing around with having to deal with pronouns at all. Then they can type in whatever they want for their gender and there isn't any programming overhead as a result.

"____(name)____ changed their profile picture."

 

But they could just add another Boolean field to the database table for the user detail for non-standard genders and then make a table for the gender detail which would probably not be used by more than 2% of the users.

They actually think they already have it this way. I thought I had seen updates from people like this. I just hate singular they, and I want real gender pronouns. But I don't want gender-neutral ones. I want ones the users can customize.

 

the main reason I ask is that I have never heard a gender-neutral pronoun that wasn't considered offensive.

 

Signed!

 

I've heard this already exists as an option. However I think it sets it so your profile views all of your friends as gender neutral, as opposed to them viewing your stuff as gender neutral. I could be wrong though.

 

They/them/their is not offensive. Ze is not offensive. Maybe?

 

It's not up to one person to decide what is or isn't offensive; just 'cause I'm not offended doesn't mean someone else isn't.

But there is a gender-neutral option in English; like seeksanctuary said, they/them/their.
These are perfectly acceptable in English to refer to individuals of unknown or unspecified gender. Though not everyone uses it, it is acceptable, and not, to my knowledge, considered offensive.

I wouldn't use an alternative pronoun like "ze" unless asked to.

As for the article, I totally support a gender-neutral option. When I joined, I hated that I had to specify a gender; I can't come out as female, but I don't want to be called male. I wish I could change it to gender-neutral.

 

Signed!

I know of people who always had their gender hidden, or didn't select a gender and so facebook referred to said people as 'they/them/their' etc. And there is a way to get around this if you have the old profile, but now with timeline, the old hacks don't work.

I really hope they eventually allow it. Google+ has an option for 'other' in gender, surely facebook can? I would definitely make use of it.

 

I was going to sign it, but I'm not clear as to why they want my full address before my signing of the petition can be counted. So, hopefully they got enough votes without mine

 

There isn't that many people that qualify for that category, despite their sexual orientation. I'm gay, and I think I'm a male. There are some people that qualify for some other thing, something in between, but I don't get how this helps people. Seriously.

I would sign it, but I don't know. I just don't like sending messages to some unknown person. Sorry. For those who qualify for it, they should do something like that.