Facebook’s Gender Labeling Revolution

At age 8, Eli Erlick wanted to be treated as a girl. But teachers denied the child’s request to join the girls’ gymnastic team or play on the girl’s side in the “Battle of the Sexes” academic competition. “That’s impossible, Eli,” they said. “You’re a boy.” Still, Eli persisted in wearing lip gloss and skirts, and spent the rest of elementary school eating lunch alone to escape the daily harassment of classmates. By 13, Eli’s parents allowed their child to begin the transition from male to female, which meant adopting a feminine appearance, changing school records, and starting hormone treatment a few years later. That’s also when she learned about the concept of transgender, an umbrella term used to describe people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. “It was such a relief. I found a word to finally describe who I was,” says Erlick, 18, a freshman at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, who founded the national advocacy organization Trans Student Equality Resources. She also found joy in Facebook’s announcement last week that the social media giant has added 58 new options to the binary “male” and “female” choices in the user profile gender question. They include everything from androgynous to gender questioning to pangender. Erlick checked three boxes she felt represented her: Trans Woman, Trans Person, and Trans Feminine (because that’s how she presents herself to the world). “Being able to identify as a trans woman is so powerful,” she said. “I want to be among people like me.” Mental health professionals who serve the transgender community overwhelmingly praise the decision for giving a voice to the more than 700,000 transgender people living in the U.S. who have long felt invisible. In 2012, the term “gender identity disorder” was stricken from the The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) in 2012, though gender dysphoria is recognized and describes those who experience emotional distress over “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender,” which can lead to depression, post-traumatic stress, suicide, and other mental