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stunt_muppet: (omfg whut)
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And while I'm here:

posted by [personal profile] stunt_muppet at 01:13am on 15/12/2009 under
You all have probably seen this already, but just in case you haven't: LiveJournal is removing the option to leave your gender unspecified at account creation.

Two reasons this is bad:

1) It leaves people who don't fit into either gender category with no option, contributing further to the invisibility of the transgendered and genderqueer community.

2) It's most likely going to be used for gender-specific advertising, with all the gender stereotypes that implies.

If you'd like to express your displeasure with this decision, fill out the feedback form here, but make sure to be polite, as the people reading the feedback mail aren't the ones who make the decision and yelling at them does nobody any good. Synecdochic provides a god model for a feedback letter at her journal entry above. Doing something with that empty Dreamwidth account is looking like a better and better option.
Mood:: 'annoyed' annoyed
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There are 6 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] airie-fairy.livejournal.com at 07:31am on 15/12/2009
Not to mention some people just don't feel like having to give their gender info to strangers, however personally decided on it for themselves they might be.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] stunt-muppet.livejournal.com at 09:02pm on 16/12/2009
Even back when we still thought the choice was mandatory, there was a way to hide your gender in your profile so it wasn't publicly available. There's still the issue of giving your gender to the company, but not quite to everyone.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] gorengal.livejournal.com at 02:06pm on 15/12/2009
I'm not going to approach the "don't fit into either gender category" argument, but I will say that LJ is a voluntary service. If any part of the sign up process is objectionable, potential subscribers have more than a dozen other journal/blog options, such as the above-cited Dreamwidth. LJ isn't a mandatory census, or drivers license application. And while I deplore gender-targeted advertising for many reasons, there is a simple solution: buy a paid account. LJ provides a LOT of free services to people, and money for that has to come from ads. Advertisers demand maximum value for their advertising dollars, and if that means they want the ability to target ads to young, male college students or 35-year-old mothers, then I can't really find fault with LJ attempting to provide more precise demographic information.

(Ugh, I sound like I'm defending The Establishment, but I'm really not on "their" side.)
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] stunt-muppet.livejournal.com at 09:40pm on 16/12/2009
I realize that advertising is a necessity, especially for something as big as LJ, but if this was going to be a matter of policy, something should have been said in a news post. Given the way LJ has responded to it I'm inclined to believe it was a mistake and not intended to be a matter of policy, but if it was, then...yeah, I'm not making sense. It's mostly the point about gender identification that I object to; you can provide demographic information without forcing a gender binary.

But since the change has been fixed and the "Unspecified" option is back, the point's moot.
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ext_3685: Stylized electric-blue teapot, with blue text caption "Brewster North" (cybermen)

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] brewsternorth.livejournal.com at 03:06pm on 15/12/2009
Apparently LJ have gone into major backpedal/damage limitation mode by saying "this was just in dev and we have no intention of putting it live" - but as sage DWth-devs have pointed out, if it wasn't going live, how did it get as far as changelog?
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] stunt-muppet.livejournal.com at 09:42pm on 16/12/2009
I saw the updates; I don't know anything about how beta testing and the changelog work, so at the moment I'm suspending judgment as to whether the elimination of the "Unspecified" category was a mistake or not. At least until I read up on this some more.
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