I always try to be tolerant and accepting of folks who don’t want to “conform” to societal norms. Who am I to judge? But sometimes, under the guise of promoting tolerance, some politically correct groups, businesses and activists go too far in seeking to redefine basic concepts to force societal buy-in, promotion and endorsement of concepts that are hardly settled or mainstream. And when you don’t immediately accept them, you’re labeled a bigot or insensitive — or both.

On Thursday, Facebook revealed a customizable option with about 50 different terms users can adopt to identify their gender. Yes, 50.

Though confusing, apparently there are up to 50 (possibly more) types of genders one can be. They range from transgender to androgynous, and intersex to gender fluid.

I’m not certain what some of these labels mean. Some of the communities these folks belong to don’t even know what they mean. “(By the way, does gender and sexuality mean the same thing? Sometimes it does? Sometimes it doesn’t? It’s confusing and inconsistent.) Take for example, “transgender.” The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center can’t really define what transgender means — and they have transgender in their actual title. They write:

Have you heard the word “transgender” in the media, at school, or some other place recently, but you have no idea what it means? Well, you’ve come to the right place.

The term “transgender” means different things to different people, which can make it rather hard to define.

Let’s break it down:

• “Transgender,” at its most basic level, is a word that applies to someone who doesn’t fit within society’s standards of how a woman or a man is supposed to look or act.

• For example, “transgender” may be used to describe someone who was assigned female at birth but later realizes that label doesn’t accurately reflect who they feel they are inside. This person may now live life as a man, or may feel that their gender identity can’t be truly summed up by either of the two options we’re usually given (male or female). They might feel like they’re in between those two options; both male and female; or outside the two-gender system, entirely, neither male nor female.

• “Transgender” can also be used as an umbrella term, meaning it groups together a variety of people with different identities. The common link is that people under the “transgender umbrella” don’t really fit within their society’s standards of how women and men are supposed to look and act (in other words, they’re “gender non-conforming”).

It’s awfully confusing when a supposed gender “means different things to different people.”

I don’t care how people identify themselves, but let’s be clear: this is how individuals choose to identify themselves. There are two genders: male and female (though there are certainly rare instances in which folks are born intersexed). Want to update that category to include 50 or more? Fine. Go for it. But don’t just unilaterally decide you’re going to make the change and then label folks who are resistant as bigots (or homophobic or transphobic or whatever). You need to start by getting an organic societal buy-in.

How do you do that? Education. The battle over gay marriage is being won right now because society, over the last several years, has been exposed to gay people. They realized their neighbors were gay, their family members, their teachers, mailmen, lawyers, doctors, teammates were gay and they finally figured it’s not that big of a deal. We’re all the same. And then gay marriage started to pass and gay people became more accepted.

Do that with these 50 different so-called genders. Explain what it means to be transgender. Explain what the heck cisgender means. Try to explain what it means to be gender fluid. Then answer some questions about it — and don’t get mad that some will have questions. Then, once you have a basic societal understanding, should you so choose, start introducing the use of the terms in vehicles like Facebook. You’ll have much better success. But what Facebook did Thursday is invite resistance and mocking from people like me.

I know folks who are transgender (at least based on the definition above). I know gay people, straight people, bi-sexuals, and I’m near certain, an asexual. I’m accepting and don’t particularly care — I believe everyone is born the way they are. But I’m not going to endorse changing basic and mass-accepted labels (on a whim) without any meaningful, widespread discussion.

KIRO Radio’s Jason Rantz Show can be heard weeknights from 7-10 p.m.