He? She? Facebook wants to know your gender

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New rule: Facebook says you now have to inform the world whether you are female or male.

Facebook says it’s a grammar issue that has reared its ugly head as the popular social network seeks worldwide domination.

‘Ever see a story about a friend who tagged ‘themself’ in a photo? ‘Themself’ isn’t even a real word. We’ve used that in place of ‘himself or herself.’ We made that grammatical choice in order to respect people who haven’t, until now, selected their sex on their profile,’ Naomi Gleit, a Facebook product manager explained in a press statement today.

But, Gleit says, translators and users in other countries say that not specifying your gender is confusing. And it leads to people in mini-feed stories defaulting to the ‘wrong sex.’ (Is there a right one?)

So Facebook is asking for you to declare yourself. If you don’t, you will soon get a prompt to choose whether you want to be referred to as ‘him’ or ‘her.’ That information won’t be displayed in your ‘basic information,’ but it will appear in mini-feed and news feed stories about you.

To their credit, Facebook folks realize this is a sensitive issue. ‘We’ve received pushback in the past from groups that find the male-female distinction too limiting,’ Gleit wrote. ‘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.’

-- Jessica Guynn