So, indeed, let Facebook know your thoughts, if you'd like, but most certainly share them with us!As Facebook grows in other languages, we are learning a lot about what the "Facebook Experience" is like for people around the world. One of the first challenges was getting words that are really long in other languages to fit on the screen properly. Recently, we've been figuring out how to deal with a new challenge—grammar.
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.
However, we've gotten feedback from translators and users in other countries that translations wind up being too confusing when people have not specified a sex on their profiles. People who haven't selected what sex they are frequently get defaulted to the wrong sex entirely in Mini-Feed stories.
For this reason, we've decided to request that all Facebook users fill out this information on their profile. If you haven't yet selected a sex, you will probably see a prompt to choose whether you want to be referred to as "him" or "her" in the coming weeks. When you make a selection, that will appear in Mini-Feed and News Feed stories about you, but it won't be searchable or displayed in your Basic Information.
We've received pushback in the past from groups that find the male/female distinction too limiting. 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.
We hope this change will make the Facebook experience even better across the world. Let us know if you have any thoughts about this on our suggestions page.
Naomi is a Product Manager at Facebook.
16 July 2008
gender identification and facebook
The following blog post from Facebook was brought to my attention today. Particularly in light of our recent readings about Mary Daly (with some discussion of the importance of language/word choice in interpretation), seemed like an interesting discussion point.
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7 comments:
Interesting. I am not a facebook, myspace, any space user. Therefore I wasn't aware this was an issue. From my limited exposure to any of these services, it amazes me this is an issue at all. Some of the pictures I have seen with preference identified, I would have guessed to opposite. Not pc I know. We have to find a way to get over the politics of sexuality and find acceptance for each other's uniqueness. My new favorite word "uniqueness."
Interesting information and a topic worth researching regarding equality. I have hear the term "metro-sexual" used more frequently these days and wonder how many other terms we will hear used to identify one's preference.
Honestly, I have never noticed how Facebook refers to a person before and also have never thought about the fact that this might be an issue for people. It is ironic though that this topic just came up on our blog because this past Sunday my sister and I had lunch with one of our friends, and for some reason people with sex changes came up. All three of us have seen or known more than one person that has undergone a sex change. My friend commented, "If this is what has happened in our life, what will society be like for our kids?"
So, my reaction is that it makes sense that Facebook is having to leave allowances. As gender isn't as clear as it used to be and as Lydia said the politics of sexuality have to be done away with to reach out to other groups.
This issue is in fact far more complicated than we tend to think. We see sex as biologically offering two options -- male or female. However, in practice, biology is not that clear. Anne Fausto-Sterling, a biologist from Brown University, has published a few books on this. Additionally, I've seen several shows on pbs and other "educational" TV stations that address "intersexed" people in thoughtful, provocative ways. Here's a link to Fausto-Sterling's wikipedia page, which gives some citations and places for further research:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Fausto-Sterling
It is cool that facebook is getting rid of incorrect grammar, such as, "Themself" to help translators in other countries. But, if the male/female labeling is to limiting for some people, why not just leave it the way it is. I mean its just facebook; its something you do when you are bored. (well, for me anyway) I think respecting a person's perference is more important than trying to correct something that is not correct grammar.
On Monday nights Jay Leno with the Tonight Show does headlines. This past Monday one headline was from a Christian website "OneNewsNow." "Here's an article about a Christian news website that replaces offensive words..." The article is about Tyson Gay, a Clemson athlete who was recently selected to represent the US at the Olympics. In the article each instance of Gay was replaced with homosexual.
"Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.
His time of 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials Sunday doesn't count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind. Here's what does matter: Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he's certainly someone to watch in Beijing.
"It means a lot to me," the 25-year-old Homosexual said. "I'm glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me."
While very humorous, this shows a breakdown in the system when a story which was not offensive to begin with winds up being very offensive.
The Washington Post recently printed an article regarding OneNewsNow's band on the "G" word. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/07/christian_sites_ban_on_g_word.html
According to OneNewsNow this was a software glitch which has since been corrected.
Don't know why my OneNewsNow posted as anonymous.
Lydia
Lydia - eh, must be a glitch. but thanks for the claim! I'm monitoring any outside comments (to avoid spam and such), and was confused! :)
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