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So LJ has decided to change my profile's gender field from "unspecified" to "It's personal", which is irritating me quite a bit. My gender's not a *secret*. It's not something I am ashamed of, or am unwilling to talk about.
Does anybody remember a livejournal meme, years ago, where you put in your username and it generated a world map showing the locations of you and those of your flist who've also signed up? Those who had told LJ they were female were represented as red triangles, and those who'd said they were male were blue triangles.
I didn't want to be a red triangle. Not because I didn't want people to guess I was a girl*, but because I don't like red very much. I could have switched my gender info to "male" and gotten a blue triangle, but that would have been *lying*. So I changed it to "unspecified" and hoped for the best.
And I turned out to be a green triangle! Win! I like green far better than red, so I was much happier with this new avatar.
And that why I chose not to specify my gender to LJ. A scandalous tale, I am sure you'll agree.
Of course, after LJ implemented ads, I had new, much solider reasons for leaving the field blank-ish, but those are not secret either.
*Although sometimes I'm made uncomfortable by things like female-specific honourifics, so I will not swear there were no such issues involved.
Does anybody remember a livejournal meme, years ago, where you put in your username and it generated a world map showing the locations of you and those of your flist who've also signed up? Those who had told LJ they were female were represented as red triangles, and those who'd said they were male were blue triangles.
I didn't want to be a red triangle. Not because I didn't want people to guess I was a girl*, but because I don't like red very much. I could have switched my gender info to "male" and gotten a blue triangle, but that would have been *lying*. So I changed it to "unspecified" and hoped for the best.
And I turned out to be a green triangle! Win! I like green far better than red, so I was much happier with this new avatar.
And that why I chose not to specify my gender to LJ. A scandalous tale, I am sure you'll agree.
Of course, after LJ implemented ads, I had new, much solider reasons for leaving the field blank-ish, but those are not secret either.
*Although sometimes I'm made uncomfortable by things like female-specific honourifics, so I will not swear there were no such issues involved.
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Apparently, (when the code propagates, it is taking a *while*) it'll change to "other/unspecified" which is better. (Dreamwidth has four options: m/f/other and "rather not say" which is not 100% excellent but closer. 'S why I started crossposting after LJ's last genderfail.)
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