Facebook announced Thursday that its U.S. users now have dozens of options for completing the gender question on their profiles. The social media giant ha started offering a "custom" option that lets users pick from about 50 terms, including transsexual, androgynous and intersex.

Until now, Facebook's 1.23 billion members could only select male or female for their genders, which Facebook requires users to state in their profiles. Users of rival Google's Google+ social network already had an "other" option for gender.

Facebook said users also can control the audience who can view a custom choice.