GROUP LOBBIES FACEBOOK ON TRANS USERS

An Australian LGBT rights group is lobbying Facebook to widen its gender categories to include transgender people.

The Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays Association in Brisban says that the ‘male’ or ‘female’ options when joining the social networking site are too limiting and that users should have the option to also choose ‘transgender’.

“They should definitely do it and they’d be quite surprised by how many people there are in the community who are transgender that do use Facebook,” Shelley Argent, the group’s spokesperson, told the Courier-Mail.

Facebook responded that users could remove the gender option entirely from their profiles, should they wish to do so.