Tenured Radical, tired of Facebook ads targeting her with weight loss programs and anti-wrinkle cream, decided to remove her sex from her profile. Lo and behold, Facebook saw her bet and raised her. Now, she reports, each time she clicks on her profile page, Facebook asks her to identify herself as male or female.
I tried it. Here is the pop up:
Tenured Radical’s report is confirmed! Facebook is programmed to nag you. It is so “confusing” when you refuse to be stereotyped according to your sex. Facebook needs to know because how else would it know if you wanted to buy wrinkle cream!!! Aaaaahhhhhh!!!
Tenured Radical writes:
What a hoot. And I have to hand it to them, the tone is perfect: friendly, non-antagonistic, encouraging. I imagine it’s how people might talk to me if I were on a four-day crying jag, or had had a terrible nervous breakdown, or were crashing after a methamphetamine binge. I imagine myself wrapped in lovely warm towels, on soothing drugs and in a pink room with soft music playing in the background. Nurse Ratched is smiling encouragingly with a big, whacking hypodermic in one hand, trying to encourage me in the least threatening possible way to remember what my gender is or to commit to a gender at least, even if it’s not one we can agree on. “Because you see, dear,” Nursie is saying in my imagination; “People may be confused…other people are, well, upset about this, and if you could just answer the question it would be so much better for them.”
Visit our other post on Facebook’s use of a (white) masculine avatar for all subscribers without photos and our post on avatars, gender, and neutrality more generally.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Comments 67
Vettekaas — November 12, 2009
Hmmm interesting. I never identified my gender to facebook because I do not have a fixed gender identity. But I can't say that facebook has ever nagged me about it!
I also have ads blocked, so maybe they just think I'm beyond all help.
pFranks — November 12, 2009
...or maybe they just need to put a word between 'edited' and 'profile', and 'its' may sound a little awkward, so they ask in the most polite way they came up with
but seriously, how would you manage that?
edward — November 12, 2009
I don't have my sex on my profile, and I don't get that, either.
ibis lynn — November 12, 2009
By saying "Lisa's profile has been updated."
AmandaS — November 12, 2009
"Their" is plural. Let's not toss grammar out the window. There must be some way to respect non-gendered representations and the English language in its current, standardized form.
aliciamaud74 — November 12, 2009
I did this about 6 months ago, sick of the freakin' acai berry diet crap that came up every time I logged on. They asked me to clarify, too, but after I ignored it a few times, the pop-up eventually stopped. . .
mattw — November 12, 2009
I've gotten that message as well (though not recently -- I don't think the message has reappeared since I dismissed it); I also don't like that Facebook's "lite" interface doesn't even make it possible to unselect one's sex. And on top of that, Facebook requires people to select a sex when they sign up for a new account (I just tried leaving the field blank, and was asked to "Please select either Male or Female.")
Facebook has a blog post at http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=21089187130 explaining their reasons for doing this.
John — November 12, 2009
This is interesting because, as the Facebook blog post listed notes, Facebook used to use the grammatically-incorrect (I'm guessing this will change by the time we're dead) and gender-neutral "they."
Kristin — November 12, 2009
When they first asked me to choose, I chose male - even though I identify as a female - because I thought it so absurd to ask.
Now, my partner (who is a male) and I both get lots of ads for Gay-oriented tee-shirts, etc. It works out because LGBT rights is a major concern for me, but the points listed above remain.
jenni t — November 12, 2009
i see a problem in the languages, english included, its hard to make nice personalized text ("Lisa's profile has new pics" is not nice as Lisa her or himself adding pics) on sites without referring to gender. and theres a lot of other things that would need rephrasing...i picked a few:
"send him a message"
"help make facebook better for him"
sometimes replacing gender with name would be possible, but the language works nicely this way. perhaps they could ALL be worked around in english, but not in other languages... and the site is translated in dozens of languages.
i dont think there is a need to demonize facebook over the fact that many languages have defined genders and it's hard to work around them.
i think choosing the gender, as the FB blog linked earlier explains, is not so much to do with the ads (many ads are targeted at both sexes anyway, and the number of people not willing to choose is insignificant when targeting millions of people) but FB's communication (the feeds etc). maybe we could let things like this slide, its really not quite as serious as some other gender issues in this world?
if someone really suffers mentally because they have to choose a sex on FB (as on many other sites)...they should feel lucky for not having any bigger issues (feeling asexual or not of specific gender COULD cause problems in many walks of life, i know). unless its a unisex toilet, u also have to choose which one to walk in, men's or women's. not a matter of life and death. especially online.
Think MPS — November 12, 2009
I vote everyone start removing gender from hir profile. :-) I just did.
Joshua — November 12, 2009
I'm at least happy that FB says, "How should we refer to you," instead of, "Choose your sex." It allows for the possibility of a gender identity that is separate from physical sex.
Joey — November 12, 2009
Eventually, Facebook stops asking.
Jennifer — November 12, 2009
You know, those advertisements really aren't THAT obtrusive. I don't even notice them anymore. I just can't imagine someone being so bothered by the ads to petulantly remove one's gender to avoid them.
peebs1701 — November 12, 2009
I have left my sex/gender listed in my facebook profile, but I've started flagging all the weight loss ads as either "misleading" or "offensive". I've gotten many fewer since then.
leisurelyviking — November 12, 2009
If you're using the Firefox browser, you can download the addon Adblock Plus to get rid of the ads.
Amanda — November 12, 2009
I identified myself as female. I get very few gender-specific ads--they're mostly related to the things that I "liked" or became a fan of. I get ads for steampunk fansites, environmental protection groups, oboe fansites, and things for my religion.
Unfortunately I also get a lot of Evony ads because I specified that I like fantasy stuff. I like that Facebook's ads are easily removable, though.
antigone — November 12, 2009
AdBlockPlus is the win. I have never seen an ad on Facebook.
lex — November 12, 2009
ps. I quoted Sarah TX to say that I agree with her, and I missed the 'n' out of 'linguistic' to be radical.
Susanne — November 13, 2009
I'm almost less annoyed about Facebook's desire to state a gender than I am about the stereotyping ads. For the past few months, all of my ads show "Meet Christian Men", "Meet Black Men", "Want A Boyfriend?", "Get the guy", etc. I'm sure it's because my status is listed as single, but that doesn't mean I'm having a hard time finding a man - or that I even want one.
Which brings up another issue - their relationship status options are pretty minimal. I'm impressed they actually have "in an open relationship" as an option, but I think the majority of their profile options should be boxes you fill in yourself, not choices from a drop-down menu they made up.
Birdseed — November 13, 2009
There are some interesting efforts on Facebook that attempt to jam the gender issue a little bit.
One I'm playing along with at the moment is a fun group called "Operation: Sex Change", which simply asks you to select the sex you do not identify with:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=173996678597
I quite enjoy being facebook-female so far, it's an interesting cultural experience and the ads for dating are totally different.
Gene — November 13, 2009
That's funny. I didn't list my gender on Facebook for a couple years. It asked me once and then went away. Maybe this is new.
Louche — November 15, 2009
WHAT???? I have never put my sex on my Facebook profile, partly because I do not identify with any gender. I have never read messages asking me to identify my sex... well, maybe I did a long, long time ago (can't remember for sure), but certainly not in recent history. I am glad I didn't put my sex as female because I don't need ads about feminine junk.
mal — November 16, 2009
Hahahaha. I'm a guy on fb b/c of this, to the confusion of a lot of my friends.
sara — December 2, 2009
my boyfriend has himself listed as a her on facebook. he did it more to make himself hard to find on facebook, but he doesn't really care when he displays his feminity. more of why i love him <3
Hulu and Targeted Marketing » Sociological Images — January 25, 2010
[...] And, of course, the real question that is being asked is “Who are you?” Like with Facebook, they need to [...]
Aaron — February 28, 2010
or just install an ad blocker and never see ads in Facebook again. lol
I use Firefox and Adblock Plus, and have never seen an ad in Facebook.
Anonymous — February 28, 2010
Could be worse, I'm lsited as an atheist, and it seems to think i'm a devil worshiping fag who hates christians so much i'd pay for a shirt with a smart ass comment mocking religion. Sheesh, i have a sharpie you know!
Rita — May 15, 2010
Yes, they base the ads on it. (Just don't look at them.) But also, if you have ever scrolled through your facebook homepage, it does list activities and updates like that. "Lisa commented on her status... Lisa edited her profile..."