Facebook took a step toward LGBTQ inclusivity with the Thursday rollout of around 50 new terms users can use to identify their gender identity.
People will now be able to identify themselves as androgynous, intersex, gender fluid or transgender, among other options that reflect a wide range of gendered experience and presentation. Facebook also allows users to keep their gender identity private.
"There's going to be a lot of people for whom this is going to mean nothing, but for the few it does impact, it means the world," Facebook software engineer Brielle Harrison, who worked on the project and is also a transgender woman, told the Associated Press.
"All too often transgender people like myself and other gender nonconforming people are given this binary option, do you want to be male or female? What is your gender? And it's kind of disheartening because none of those let us tell others who we really are," she continued. "This really changes that, and for the first time I get to go to the site and specify to all the people I know what my gender is."
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