Undocumented Feature on Facebook?
When I created a private profile on Facebook, just for one person, I was pissed to find out that the "sex" field was mandatory (and, of course, binary).
Today, when editing my profile, I tried to change that field to the only option besides male and female, which reads "Select Sex:", just to see what error message would pop up. To my surprise, the profile got saved. And to my further surprise, the pronoun used to refer to me on my profile page was changed to "they".
Of course, it's good to see that this feature exists, and I suppose it counts as a small victory, but it only brings further questions.
Today, when editing my profile, I tried to change that field to the only option besides male and female, which reads "Select Sex:", just to see what error message would pop up. To my surprise, the profile got saved. And to my further surprise, the pronoun used to refer to me on my profile page was changed to "they".
Of course, it's good to see that this feature exists, and I suppose it counts as a small victory, but it only brings further questions.
- Why is it so confusingly named? 99% of Facebook users would never even think that an option named "Select Sex:" is actually selectable. Why not do something like deviantART with its "Gender Unspecified"?
- Why isn't this option available at registration? As it is, registration forces you to choose male or female.
- Why isn't the "singular they mode" mentioned anywhere in the help?