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How to make Facebook use gender-neutral pronouns to refer to you

Discussion in 'Entertainment and Technology' started by Owen, Nov 2, 2012.

  1. Owen

    In Loving Memory Full Member

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    (Note for lurkers: the pictures in this thread will only show up if you register and log in, as they are hosted in an album under my account.)

    As some of you know, you can make Facebook hide your sex from your profile. If you don't know how to do that, you do it by going to your profile/timeline, clicking "Edit Profile", and under the "I Am:" box, you can deselect the option "Show my sex on my timeline."

    Now that's all well and good, but Facebook still makes you pick "male" or "female" so it can use pronouns to refer to you in messages like, "X changed his profile picture" or "X also commented on her status:..." That's obviously annoying for us genderqueer and non-binary folks who don't want to be systematically mis-gendered when we use Facebook.

    Well, you don't have to put up with that; there's a way to make Facebook use gender-neutral pronouns to refer to you in those messages. As proof, here's a notification on my profile after I changed my profile picture:

    [​IMG]

    And here's a notification I got after making the change for a friend of mine on zhir account and having zhem comment on a test status:

    [​IMG]

    I discovered this method thanks to this post on Tumblr (not my own blog), and I thought I'd share it with you here, with additional details and with illustrations, to make it even more straight-forward for you to do. (I'll be borrowing language liberally from that post.) These instructions may seem imposing, but I've laid it all out step-by-step, so even if you consider yourself to be "bad with computers," you can do this. I've tested all these steps just now while writing this post, so I can confirm they work.

    Step 0: Download Firefox and the add-on Firebug for Firefox, unless your browser already supports HTML editing.
    Any web browser with an HTML inspector will work, so if you have Chrome or Opera, you can skip this step, as they have instant HTML editing built in and do not need an extension like Firefox does. However, these steps were originally written for Firefox and Firebug, and that's what I used, so they're what I'm going to write this as if you're using them. Just replace "Firefox" with "Chrome" or "Opera" where appropriate if you're using that.

    If you don't have Firefox, download it at Mozilla Firefox Web Browser. Then open Firefox and install Firebug, which you can find here: Firebug. Once you have both installed, you're ready to go.

    At the time of this posting, this link will take you right to the page you need to go to. If you clicked it and the link worked and brought you to the page on the mobile Facebook site where you can change your sex, skip right to step 5. Otherwise, keep going through all the steps.

    Step 1: Open the mobile version of Facebook in Firefox.
    You don't need a mobile device (like a smart phone) to do this. Just open Firefox on your desktop/laptop and enter the URL m.facebook.com into Firefox and you'll get there.

    Step 2: Click "Timeline" to go to your profile page.
    [​IMG]

    Step 3: Under your name, click "Edit profile".
    [​IMG]

    Step 4: Under "Basic information", click "Sex".
    [​IMG]

    If you've opted to not show your sex in your profile, this field will be blank like it is in this picture, in spite of the fact that you still haven't deselected your sex yet.

    You'll now see the circular button options for "male" and "female".

    [​IMG]

    Step 5: Right-click the selected circular button and click "Inspect Element With Firebug".
    In this case, I right-click the "male" button; those of you with the female button checked should right-click the "female" button. Make sure you click the little circular button, not the word next to it. Once you've right-clicked the button, choose "Inspect Element With Firebug" from the menu that comes up. If you're using your browser's built-in HTML editing capacities (i.e. if you're using Chrome or Opera), the option you want to click is "Inspect Element".

    [​IMG]

    If you're using a Mac and a one-button mouse, right-click by holding down the "control" key on your keyboard (it's in the same row as the space bar, and it might be labeled "ctrl") and clicking while holding that key down.

    Now the Firebug window will appear at the bottom of the screen:

    [​IMG]

    Step 8: Expand the line <label onclick="">.
    Just click this button:

    [​IMG]

    And your window will look like this:

    [​IMG]

    Step 9: Right click the line that's highlighted in blue in the above picture and select "Edit HTML".

    [​IMG]

    That will make your Firebug window look like this:

    [​IMG]

    Step 10: Now we mess with the code.
    Note: This step will not alter Facebook's code at all; all you're changing is how your browser displays Facebook.

    Note the property "value". The "Male" option has value 2, the "Female" option value 1.

    Copy the line and paste it below the first one so you have two lines of code. Remove the checked="1" from the first line of code. In the second one, change the value to zero (value=”0”).

    In other words, if you have "Male" selected, you want the code in the box to look like this:

    Code:
    <input type="radio" name="new_info" value="2" onclick="">
    <input type="radio" name="new_info" value="0" onclick="" checked="1">
    And if you had "Female" selected, you want the code to look like this:

    Code:
    <input type="radio" name="new_info" value="1" onclick="">
    <input type="radio" name="new_info" value="0" onclick="" checked="1">
    Feel free to just copy and paste which ever code block corresponds to your current choice into the Firebug window. If you're going to copy and paste one of the two code blocks above, make sure you delete the HTML already in the Firebug window before pasting this code.

    So, because my sex was originally listed as "Male", my window looks like this after making the changes:

    [​IMG]

    And now, because of making those changes, the selection buttons look like this:

    [​IMG]

    Step 11: Click "Save".
    The bottom-right button will already be selected, and that's the one you want selected. So leave the circular buttons as they are and click the "Save" button.

    [​IMG]

    And you're done!

    To close Firebug, just click the little X in the top-right corner of its window.

    [​IMG]

    And now when Facebook talks about you, it will use messages like "X changed their profile picture" or "X also commented on their status:...". Happy happy joy joy!!
     
  2. Ridiculous

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    If you use Chrome or Opera you can skip the download Firebug step - these browsers have instant HTML editing built in and do not need an extension like Firefox does.
     
  3. Owen

    In Loving Memory Full Member

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    I'm gonna add that to the post, if you don't mind.
     
  4. Ridiculous

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    Everything will be the same for them, except the menu option will just be "Inspect element" rather than "Inspect element with Firebug".
     
  5. Owen

    In Loving Memory Full Member

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    Cooleo, I've added that too. Thanks for the extra info. :slight_smile:
     
  6. Austin

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    Location:
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    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Gay
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    Their seems very plural...
     
  7. Owen

    In Loving Memory Full Member

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    It is, but it's the only widely recognized gender-neutral pronoun, so personally, I'm cool with it. Besides, I don't think there's a way to make Facebook use zhe/zhem/zhir.
     
  8. Owen

    In Loving Memory Full Member

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    I've edited the post because the first picture in Step 10 showed the wrong code. It's fixed now.
     
  9. TabooVivant

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    I have been trying to do this for a long time and it is simply not working: The end result shows up (the menu saying male, female, and the new option) - but after the coding is tampered with and saved, I refresh the page and it still refers to me as my initial pronoun...

    I've tried this and several other codes I've found online. It's really creating a lot of annoying dysphoria, any ideas on why it may not be working? :-/
     
  10. Owen

    In Loving Memory Full Member

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    Has your profile been updated to timeline? A friend of mine hadn't had zhir profile updated yet, and zhe couldn't get it to work, so that might cause it. See if you can change your profile from whatever gender it's set as now to the other one (so try changing it to female if it's male now, and vice verse), and let me know whether that works as it should. Are you using Firefox with the Firebug addon, or a browser with built-in HTML editing?
     
  11. Bree

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    Just did it! Fantastic!
     
  12. Rainbow Music

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    I am not Trans, however I am actually really glad that you have found that out because people who are, can feel more comfortable with being themselves on Facebook. Kudos to you.
     
  13. Lapequenasamita

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    Thank you!!!

    Much love!
     
  14. Hexagon

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    Brilliant. Not that its relevant to me anymore, but its still good for others. :slight_smile:
     
  15. Maxis

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    Gender Pronoun:
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    Sexual Orientation:
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    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    Just did it without a problem, thank you! :grin:
     
  16. iwanttoseephoto

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    facebook mobile looks different for me. is there any way i can still do this?
     
  17. 4stro

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    Thank you so much! This still works in 2013

    ---------- Post added 3rd Mar 2013 at 12:17 AM ----------

    Use this mobile link
     
  18. Caudex

    Caudex Guest

    What about schlee?
    Anyway, it would be much better if it didn't make Facebook's grammar atrocious.
     
  19. littlebird

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    i all i am new to this so i have not figured out how to quote people yet sorry but i am using chrome and i am also using the link that 4stro provided and i do all the steps and everything however when i click save it suddenly says at the end of the blue line that i have just altered it says disabled at the end and that there is a problem. sorry for the big ramble i just need help....

    ---------- Post added 17th Mar 2013 at 01:49 AM ----------

    hahaha dont worry just figured it out.. sorry, btw this is a great post. cant stop smiling at it :grin:
     
  20. Ridiculous

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    If anyone is having trouble with this, here are simpler and easier instructions that don't require you to add any lines of code; all that is necessary is to change a single number.

    If you are using Firefox then you will still need to install Firebug as outlined in the first post.

    All you need to do is:

    [1] Go to this page: https://m.facebook.com/editprofile.php?edit=gender&type=basic&refid=17 (make sure you are already logged into Facebook)

    [2] Select one of them: either Male or Female, it doesn't matter

    [3] Right click on the button you have selected, and click Inspect Element. Make sure you right click the button, not the text saying "Female/Male" next to the button

    [4] In the panel that appears down the bottom with the website code, this line should be highlighted: <input type="radio" name="new_info" value="1" onclick="">

    [5] The value will be value="1" if it was female you selected, or value="2" if it was male you selected in the previous step. It doesn't matter either way.

    [6] Double click on this number, and then change it to 0

    [7] Click the Save button on the webpage

    Refresh the page, and if neither of them are selected then it means it worked.