It's been a while since I've been furious with anything LJ has done; having DW has done a lot to calm down my knee-jerk "AUUUGH NO" whenever Moscow does something stupid again. But this one takes the cake:

* Gender will be a mandatory field at account creation [...]

* LiveJournal is removing the Unspecified option for the gender field. That's right: you get to be male or female. Period. That's it. (Source.)

If this pisses you off as much as it pisses me off, go to Edit Profile and select Unspecified for your gender option. Then, go to http://www.livejournal.com/contact/?dept=feedback and politely register your displeasure. (The people who read and process Feedback are not the people who make the decisions. They are often the people who are yelling internally about the decisions.)

(This will likely take place at the next code push, which given LJ's history will be either this Thursday or next, so spread the word fast, especially to the genderqueer community. After that point, you will no longer be able to pick "Unspecified" as your gender.)