In case you haven’t noticed, there is a gender revolution happening in our culture. We’ve moved beyond binary when identifying our genders (male or female). Facebook responded and now has 58 different gender options for those that don’t fit the traditional system. But they didn’t tell anyone that you can change your gender on Facebook!
[UPDATE: This is my second most popular blog post of all time! I’m so happy to be providing a service to fellow LGBTQ+ people. Please share this with anyone you know that needs it!]
Of course I didn’t figure this out by myself. When I first read the article cited above, I mentioned it in class and a student asked me how to do it. I thought I would be able to figure it out without help but I had to look up the instructions. I wrote this blog knowing that the more resources we have out there to solve our problems, the better for everyone.
- Go to your profile
- Choose About
- Choose Contact and Basic Info
- Hover over your current gender and an Edit pencil will appear
- Choose Female, Male, or Custom
- A field will appear when you choose Custom, type the first letter of how you identify and a selector menu will appear allowing you to make a choice
- You will also be able to choose your pronoun, privacy, and whether you want it on your Timeline
only gives male and female on mine :/
I’m sorry you don’t have it yet, Tigger. It’ll come!
It keeps saying try again. Over and over
I’d recommend trying again on another day. Fingers crossed it’ll work for you!
They don’t have my choice and I cannot add my own custom choice?
There are still 58 options. If you type in the first letter of your choice, an autosuggest list pops up and you can choose from there. If yours isn’t on the list, I’m curious what it is.
If you start typing it, and it doesn’t come up, continue typing and then you can click on it, so it will basically create it for you.
Thank you!
Being in transition myself…this helps…
I already have an alternative account, but sticking to my original helps a lot…
You are welcome! This is important. Cheers to you in your transition. <3
When i click on about in my profile, it doesn’t give the option contacts and basic info……is there any other method?
About>Contact & Basic Info>all the way down Gender is in Basic Info
If you don’t have that option, look for where your birthday is listed on your profile. They are usually listed right next to each other.
Thanks for this post as im in transition.
I’m happy to share this information and glad you found it useful :)
Were can I find about?
Check out this article: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/02/heres-a-list-of-58-gender-options-for-facebook-users/
What if your sharing an account with your man??
Facebook is set up for one person per account. They don’t want people to share accounts because they need to be able to give their paying advertisers accurate counts of people viewing ads. They aren’t ever going to offer double or couple accounts and they may shut yours down if they ever notice that it’s being used by two people as it violates their terms of service. So there won’t ever be a gender option that accounts for more than one person.
Why can’t I can’t change my gender option! It’s keep saying please try again over!!