Brooklyn web-user Ryley Pogensky has started a Change.org petition asking OkCupid to offer more options for users' gender identity and sexual orientation.
Pogensky explains:
With such a strong presence of queer, trans*, and poly folks utilizing OkCupid every day, it is extremely limiting on those members to have to fit such rigid gender and sexuality options. Trans* individuals for instance are forced to chose M or F and then Gay, Bisexual, or Straight. These binaries do not fit for all of us and you will see more often than not a paragraph (or more) in these profiles devoted to trying to explain who they are and questioning why OkCupid has yet to catch on. The time has come for OkCupid to take notice of all of its members.
Unlike Facebook's expanded gender identity options which include 50 choices, Pogensky's petition only asks that OkCupid expand its orientations to include straight, bisexual, gay, and queer and that its gender options include male, female and trans.
At the time of this post's writing, Pogensky's petition had 1,130 out of 1,500 signatures.
OkCupid showed its support for the gay community when it temporarily blocked access to its site from Mozilla's Firefox in protest of Mozilla appointing anti-gay CEO Brendan Eich. Although it later came to light that OkCupid's co-founder Sam Yagan had once made a campaign donation to an anti-gay politician, Yagan apologized for it.
