No, LJ No!

[eumelia]

*Sigh* via synechdochic:

* Gender will be a mandatory field at account creation, and it will be able to appear public on one's profile. (I can't tell if people with existing gender specification will be defaulted to "nobody can see it" or "everybody can see it".) (Subsequent changelog reading indicates that the public specificity has since been removed. It is unknown whether this is to require public specificity in the future or if it will remain private.)

* LiveJournal is removing the Unspecified option for the gender field. That's right: you get to be male or female. Period. That's it. (Source)

If this pisses you off as much as it pisses me off, go to Edit Profile and select Unspecified for your gender option. Then, go to http://www.livejournal.com/contact/?dept=feedback and politely register your displeasure. (The people who read and process Feedback are not the people who make the decisions. They are often the people who are yelling internally about the decisions.)

(This will likely take place at the next code push, which given LJ's history will be either this Thursday or next, so spread the word fast, especially to the genderqueer community. After that point, you will no longer be able to pick "Unspecified" as your gender.)

This is the letter synecdochic wrote for the feedback:

Hi there,

I read http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/7932846.html and subsequent commits with dismay, particularly the part where gender is now a) a required field and b) a binary option. Gender is not a binary; there are many people who do not identify as either male or female.

LiveJournal always received high marks from the transgender and genderqueer community because it didn't require people to specify, and didn't require people to choose either/or, when it came to the gender field. LJ also received heavy pressure to offer an "Other" option in addition to the "Unspecified"; you can read the early history of the "gender_petition" community for details. (http://community.livejournal.com/gender_petition/38651.html and earlier entries)

I am particularly dismayed by this change, because LiveJournal under both Danga and Six Apart said, repeatedly, that a). the Gender field would never be a mandatory field to fill out, and b). if it became so, the options would be expanded to include "Other". (http://community.livejournal.com/feedback/9967.html)

A simple interest search on "transgender" or "genderqueer" will illustrate how many people are aware of this issue, and you can review suggestions going back to 2001 (http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/36453.html) about it.

Transgender and genderqueer individuals experience discrimination every day when they are forced to identify themselves with the gender binary when it doesn't apply to them. Please do not contribute to this oppression.

Please keep the "Unspecified" option for gender, and add an "Other" option, if you are making the gender field mandatory. Please do not contribute to the oppression of others. While I recognize that having a user's gender makes advertisers happier, collecting revenue at the expense of human suffering is not the action of a company I want to do business with.

Best,
[Your name here]


To also reach someone who's higher up the food chain than the poor staff members who have to read and reply to Feedback, also email anjelika@livejournalinc.com who is Anjelika, GM of US operations.

Livejournal has done some bad coding shit over the past four years that I've been using - I was here for strikthrough, boldthrough, the breast feeding icon fiasco and probably more but I don't recall.
In all those instances I've seen LJ users come together and fight and WIN.
I have a Dreamwidth account, if this gender crap passes I'll not be renewing any payments to Livejournal and making it my business to monetarily support Dreamwidth.

This is being done for advertising purposes (most likely) and it keeps on confirming that ads, advertising and the whole copy-writing industry is evil.
Just my opinion of course.

This is my letter, written in my own words and inspired by the the letter posted above:

Hello,

I've just read http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/7932846.html and subsequent commits with dismay, particularly the part where gender is now a required field and binary option. Gender is not a binary; there are many people who do not identify as either male or female.

Many (including myself) feel that that having a binary field is discriminatory. LJ has a huge amount of Transgender and Genderqueer people (and communities) who would feel this requirement is a violation of privacy and self-identification.

A large portion of women do not specify their gender because the Internet is no in fact a safe place in which to "be out" as a woman for many.
Sexism is still something we all have to live with and automatic assumptions regarding one's gender abounds.

It is my understanding that previous management of Livejournal has stated that the gender field would not be mandatory and should it become so the option of "Other" would be added.
Why is current management ignoring this?

This may not seem like a big deal, but for many people the requirement of the specification of gender is oppressive and damaging.
Livejournal is a space of expression and disseminating of content that we, your users, create.
Please, don't make this platform another oppressive place for Trangender and Genderqueer people.

Thank you,
Mel.

Comments

[nurint.livejournal.com]

One of the replies to the log post contained the reply one of the posters got when contacting LJ directly about it:

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

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Yep, I got that reply.

Hopefully they really won't go through with it. I like LJ!

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got that reply also. Still very much not impressed that one of their devs thought that was even remotely a good idea, but at least it's *not* going live.

/eta: absolutely definitely not going live: they've submitted another bit of code to the changelog comm rolling back the proposed changes instituted in the first commit.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Eh, you can't expect every dev and tech to be clueful (says the oft-clueless tech). That really is why beta-testing exists.