Gender identity
This change has been rolled rolled back.
Right now, if you sign up for a LiveJournal account, on the second page it asks you to fill in some additional information, which includes the option ( example picture) to identify as "(Unspecified)", "Male", or "Female". While this clearly and unfortunately doesn't distinguish between users who are choosing not to disclose their gender identity and users who do not use one of those gender identities, it at least provides a little flexibility.
According to changelog (example: add gender field to sing-up [sic] ...), it's looking like all new users on LiveJournal will now have to specify their gender as either "Male" or "Female". There is no third choice. And who knows if that will end up affecting existing users too.
Writing in isn't likely to do much good; the people who deal with feedback and such aren't the ones who make these decisions. And while they can report on trends, there's nothing quite like stats to back them up. So, a challenge: Go to the Edit Profile page and change/confirm your own gender as "(Unspecified)". If you have multiple accounts, make sure you do it for all of them. Ditto for making sure if you have a basic account or plus account (that is, you are potential advertisement eyes).
A snapshot as of 15/Dec/2009 02:00UTC of LiveJournal Statistics:
* Male: 3135223 (35.2%)
* Female: 5764936 (64.8%)
* Unspecified: 4039978
Let's see if we can change those numbers.
Right now, if you sign up for a LiveJournal account, on the second page it asks you to fill in some additional information, which includes the option ( example picture) to identify as "(Unspecified)", "Male", or "Female". While this clearly and unfortunately doesn't distinguish between users who are choosing not to disclose their gender identity and users who do not use one of those gender identities, it at least provides a little flexibility.
According to changelog (example: add gender field to sing-up [sic] ...), it's looking like all new users on LiveJournal will now have to specify their gender as either "Male" or "Female". There is no third choice. And who knows if that will end up affecting existing users too.
Writing in isn't likely to do much good; the people who deal with feedback and such aren't the ones who make these decisions. And while they can report on trends, there's nothing quite like stats to back them up. So, a challenge: Go to the Edit Profile page and change/confirm your own gender as "(Unspecified)". If you have multiple accounts, make sure you do it for all of them. Ditto for making sure if you have a basic account or plus account (that is, you are potential advertisement eyes).
A snapshot as of 15/Dec/2009 02:00UTC of LiveJournal Statistics:
* Male: 3135223 (35.2%)
* Female: 5764936 (64.8%)
* Unspecified: 4039978
Let's see if we can change those numbers.