（每日一读）2014年2月高考英语考前突破 阅读理解能力 文化教育 Facebook将允许用户自定义性别信息

Facebook 将允许用户自定义性别信息Facebook has announced that it will allow users to customise their gender, after consulting on the subject with gay and transgender advocacy groups.Facebook 宣布，在向同性恋与变性人组织咨询之后，决定允许用户自己定制性别信息。 The 50-odd options, which include "bi-gender", "transgender", "androgynous（雌雄同体的）" and "transsexual", will allow people "to express themselves in an authentic way", Facebook said in a post. Users can also choose whether to be referred to as "he", "she" or "they". The new options will initially only be for those using the site in US English. The new options were formulated after consultations with five leading gay and transgender rights' organisations, Facebook says. "There's going to be a lot of people for whom this is going to mean nothing, but for the few it does impact, it means the world," Facebook engineer Brielle Harrison told the Associated Press. "For the first time I get to go to the site and I get to specify to all the people that I know what my gender is and I can let only the people that I want to know, see that," she said. The move reflects the growing influence of the transgender rights movement in the US, which is demanding similar civil rights to the gay community, says the BBC's Alistair Leithead in Los Angeles. The San Francisco-based Transgender Law Center welcomed the move, saying "many transgender people will be thrilled" at the news. One estimate in a report by the Williams Institute think tank in 2011 said that an estimated 0.3% of adults in the US were transgender, almost 700,000 people.