XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
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Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#2He's written about gender very well before.[1] It is certainly a subject that I don't know very much about, but I appreciate that it can get very complicated very quickly. What are the good reasons for requiring it to be public?
Secondly, do you think that "other" is enough? To what lengths should developers go to handle rare corner cases?
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#3He's written about gender very well before.[1] It is certainly a subject that I don't know very much about, but I appreciate that it can get very complicated very quickly. What are the good reasons for requiring it to be public? Secondly, do you think that "other" is enough? To what lengths should developers go to handle rare corner cases? [1]: http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/06/sex-and-gender/
It seems that giving people an option to make it non-public would be sufficient. That's not a crazy corner case, really.
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#4more navel-gazing from the navel-gazing generation
on my deathbed i will relate the momentous problems solved by my generation - do you recall the great g+ circle jerks of 2011?
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#5He's written about gender very well before.[1] It is certainly a subject that I don't know very much about, but I appreciate that it can get very complicated very quickly. What are the good reasons for requiring it to be public? Secondly, do you think that "other" is enough? To what lengths should developers go to handle rare corner cases? [1]: http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/06/sex-and-gender/
Male, female, other, and leave blank / prefer not to disclose are all the options I would list. It's important to allow women and men who do not want to disclose their gender that option. It's also important to allow people who would like to list their gender as other to do so. Gender is an extremely tricky issue. Whatever you do, I recommend NOT listing "male to female" or anything of that sort. Transgendered people identify, from my understanding, as their adopted (actual) gender, not the one society would often assume them to have. I hope this helps.
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#6Why not simply reword the question to ask whether you prefer to be referred to as a "he" or "she"? In the rare case that it doesn't align with your genetic or anatomic gender, it's not exactly the end of the world.
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#7He's written about gender very well before.[1] It is certainly a subject that I don't know very much about, but I appreciate that it can get very complicated very quickly. What are the good reasons for requiring it to be public? Secondly, do you think that "other" is enough? To what lengths should developers go to handle rare corner cases? [1]: http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/06/sex-and-gender/
It seems that giving people an option to make it non-public would be sufficient. That's not a crazy corner case, really.
Yup I see it as an oversight.
While I believe that people get overly sensitive about gender (or any politicall-incorrectness), I also believe that it is in their right to do so, and if Google does fulfil this request then all the better for it.
Aside, though, this post by Randall seems a little overkill at this stage... unless Google has taken an obvious stance on the issue there is no reason to take umbrage.
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#8I'm not sure why Google is getting a free pass on the public profiles requirement. Every other social network I've used has an option to block search engines from indexing your profile.
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#9Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it correct to say that there are two genders, but not that there are two sexes? Since gender is only a social construct, presumably the prevailing views of the society in question are what defines it?
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#10Why not simply reword the question to ask whether you prefer to be referred to as a "he" or "she"? In the rare case that it doesn't align with your genetic or anatomic gender, it's not exactly the end of the world.
That sounds like a great option for use within your account. On the other hand, someone could easily want to be referred to as "he" in his UI, but not want to present that to other users.