If you don’t identify as Male or Female, having to select a gender on social networks can be frustrating process. As of today, Google+ will allow you to type in a custom gender for your social networking profile instead of having to settle for “Other”. The implementation is similar to Facebook’s own from earlier this year.
Googler Rachel Bennett posted about the change on her Google+ page:
For many people, gender identity is more complex than just “male” or “female.” Starting today, I’m proud to announce that Google+ will support an infinite number of ways to express gender identity, by giving you the option to customize the way your gender is represented on your profile.
Previously, we provided options for “Male,” “Female,” and “Other,” to encompass both those who don’t fit into the traditional gender labels and those who don’t want to declare their gender to the world at large. Now, the gender field on your profile will contain four entries, “Male,” “Female,” “Decline to state,” and “Custom.” When “Custom” is selected, a freeform text field and a pronoun field will appear. You can still limit who can see your gender, just like you can now. We’ll be rolling this feature out for all users over the next few days.
Many thanks to the people and groups who gave us advice on the best ways to do this. Your input has been really valuable to us, and we hope you like the result!
The new selection options are live on Google+ now for some users, but you might need to wait a few days to see them in your profile.
Infinite? I’m sure there is a character limit.
This could be fun. Inventing genders. Gmale.
Lol’d.