Facebook users don't have to be just "male" or "female" anymore. The social media site has now added a "custom" choice to the gender option menu.
The change allows people to identify themselves with words like androgynous, bi-gender, intersex, gender fluid, or transsexual.
Facebook users can also keep their gender identity private.
Debon Garrigues, from Asheville, N.C., applauded the move.
"For me, this is about much more than a button on a monitor," Garrigues said. "This encourages people to think outside the binary spectrum. It means I don't have to try to fit in the wrong boxes."
But some were less than thrilled with the development.
"Of course Facebook is entitled to manage its wildly popular site as it sees fit, but here is the bottom line: It's impossible to deny the biological reality that humanity is divided into two halves - male and female," Jeff Johnston, an issues analyst for Focus on the Family, said.
"Those petitioning for the change insist that there are an infinite number of genders, but just saying it doesn't make it so," he continued. "That said, we have a great deal of compassion for those who reject their biological sex and believe they are the opposite sex."
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