Soviet LJ appears to be preparing to force gender ID of its users.

http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/366609.html

Currently, you can - under your 'personal info' link - tell LJ if you are male, female, or 'unspecified.' What the links in the above post show is that the new code push for LJ will take away the 'unspecified' option when you create a new account.

For many people, gender ID - regardless of where it happens - is a Pretty Big Deal. It's pretty grey as to whether or not a user will be able to change that gender ID portion of their profile after the fact.

Dang good post about why this matters is here.

If the idea of being forced to identify yourself by your plumbing matters to you, there's a push to change your gender selection to 'unspecified' here and leave a comment POLITELY expressing your concern about this proposed change here.

ETA: Apparently not an issue (though I still think awareness of it is good and I'm leaving my gender unspecified.)

ETA 2: Just for reference (as I'm prickly about being accused of this being an issue of being 'misinformed') this is the bit of code in question that will not be used and specifies that yes, gender must be specified and NO it's not an oops:

+widget.createaccount.error.nogender=Gender must be specified.

+ $from_post{errors}->{gender} = $class->ml('widget.createaccount.error.nogender')
unless $post->{gender} =~ /^M|F$/;

LJ response (a bit more detailed than what I've seen elsewhere)

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


ETA: Linked mostly for my own reference, but also a dang good 'yes this is a serious matter': http://zarhooie.livejournal.com/1741857.html

Why gender identification matters.

http://www.copyblogger.com/james-chartrand-underpants/ is one of many excellent stories about why and how gender identity online matters.