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

[elionwyr]

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 $post->{gender} =~ /^M|F$/;

Comments

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

I think you have probably seen by now that this is not true.

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

Well, it was true in that it was indeed in the beta code, as the linked post showed, but I'm pleasantly surprised by the response from LJ support, which I've posted.