LJ Elimination of "Unspecified" for user's sex

I just became aware of the upcoming changes to profiles here that will eliminate the option of "unspecified" for a user's sex.

There are plenty of folks who are upset because choosing a sex can be a difficult thing, especially in a world where the idea of gender is greater than the set of chomosomes one is born with. Those people are doing an excellent job of stating the argument and certainly do it better than I could.

For myself, quite apart from whether or not it makes sense to demand that someone choose a sex to identify themselves with at all, there is also an issue here of basic invasion of privacy. Frankly, it's none of LJ's *business* which sex I am.

I provided LJ the following feedback, at this link: LJ Feedback

Hi guys

Just learned about the removal of the unspecified option for sex on account creation.

I know there is a lot of kerfuffle based on alternate genders etc. Personally, I object for the straightforward reason that Livejournal has no right to know anything personal about me. In fact, in Canada, you are not permitted by law to ask, and not provide the person the option of opting out of replying.

I know there have been several small steps towards this type of thing over the last while, but the shift towards making an invasion of my privacy *mandatory* is unacceptable.

I would very much appreciate a response to indicate that you received this feedback and understood the message.

Thank you.


--N

Reply from LJ - "Unspecified" for user's sex

I received a reply from LJ (Thank you, LJ). They say that, while they did have this feature in testing, they do not intend to go live with it now or in future.

Of course, such statements should be taken with a grain of salt, but at the moment I think the issue is now a dead one. Hopefully not to be resurrected.

>>> from LJ

Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns. We understand that gender is not binary, and intend to respect that understanding for our users.

At this time, the code you reference is not live on the site, and will not become so in the future. We know that you, and many other users, have serious concerns about any requirement to specify gender, so we'd like to take a moment to explain events and our position further.

The intention of this code was to change the sign-up process to include a field for the selection of gender; that the code would completely disable the "Unspecified" option at the same time was deemed unacceptable. While the code in question had gone to our beta (testing) server, it had not gone to our production server, and will not do so due to this problem. Furthermore, we'd like to clarify that code posted to the changelog community is not always final, as such code must then go through the beta testing process and can often be changed before actual implementation.

Additionally, some erroneous information has been spread regarding the potential public display of the gender field. We would like to clarify that gender is not currently publicly displayed on the profile, nor anywhere else on the site, and there are no plans to change this behavior.

Regards,
LiveJournal Community Care Team
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