61–70 of 298 posts
I've always found Munroe's position on gender equality weird - despite what he says, he 'others' women in his main work. Female stick figures have long hair, even if the strip has nothing to do with gender. Male stick figures have no such indication. That is: 'male' is 'default'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Better to correct earlier than later.
> no reason to take umbrage.
I don't see umbrage, just a desire to have something fixed.
I take great offense to my culture being defined as "relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them" Yes some people do that, but VERY few. It's as silly as thinking that all gay men speak with lisps, yes some do and those that do are very identifiable as likely gay. Yes there is always that guy in the bar that is inappropriate with wom…
Online there are many forums where I choose to hide my gender, and in the real world I am always conscious that I am being objectified sexually (an experience you probably can't appreciate until you've been in a bar and had a fat, bald guy 20 years older than you grinding his crotch up against your leg even when you've physically tried to push him away).
So yeah, take all the offense you like, it is an offense that is rooted in a deep ignorance of what it's like to be a woman in our culture.
I take great offense to my culture being defined as "relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them" Yes some people do that, but VERY few. It's as silly as thinking that all gay men speak with lisps, yes some do and those that do are very identifiable as likely gay. Yes there is always that guy in the bar that is inappropriate with wom…
That is, I think he was just trying to assert that they are effectively a minority, and that their concerns have a legitimate basis, despite the fact that many outside their group may have trouble empathizing with them.
I take great offense to my culture being defined as "relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them" Yes some people do that, but VERY few. It's as silly as thinking that all gay men speak with lisps, yes some do and those that do are very identifiable as likely gay. Yes there is always that guy in the bar that is inappropriate with wom…
Be careful with thinking that issues you think you have solved for yourself, or that you believe your friends have solved, are issues society or culture have solved. Isn't the phrase "don't be a pussy" part of your culture? Has your culture got over with most cheerleaders being white, female and fit already? The fact things have gotten better with time doesn't mean we are living the golden age of gender equality.
I don't buy this reasoning. Phrases like that tend to lose the connotations implied by their origin within a generation or two.
For the longest time as a kid I had no idea "pussy" or "bitch" had anything to do with women. I still don't associate them with women even though I now know the origins.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Be careful with thinking that issues you think you have solved for yourself, or that you believe your friends have solved, are issues society or culture have solved. Isn't the phrase "don't be a pussy" part of your culture? Has your culture got over with most cheerleaders being white, female and fit already? The fact things have gotten better with time doesn't mean we are living the golden age of gender equality.
Isn't the phrase "don't be a pussy" part of your culture? I don't buy this reasoning. Phrases like that tend to lose the connotations implied by their origin within a generation or two. For the longest time as a kid I had no idea "pussy" or "bitch" had anything to do with women. I still don't associate them with women even though I now know the origins.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearly, gender should be represented as a user-chosen 32-bit value with separate R, G, B, and A channels, and conveniently represented as an 8-digit hexadecimal number. In this Portable Network Gender (PNG) system, the R channel is degree of traditional female gender; the B is degree of traditional male gender; the G is a catchall for other gender expressions (or perhaps a lookup table rather than a magnitude); the…
Jokes aside, I like to fit people into two numbers between 0 and 1, non-inclusive. The first, number A represents your gender identification, with 0 being ideally female and 1 ideally male (remember the scale is non inclusive of the bounds). The second number B represents the gender identification that you're attracted to. So, for example: Hetero male: A=0.8, B=0.2 Gay male: A 0.7 b 0.9, or a 0.8 b 0.7 It's a conveni…
Clearly we would need a graph with a bunch of data points representing the person's attraction to humans everywhere along the gender scale. For example, at a resolution of 0.1:
gender score: attractiveness
0.0: ----------------
0.1: ----------------
0.2: -------------
0.3: ---------
0.4: ---
0.5: --
0.6: ----------
0.7: ----
0.8: -
0.9: ----
1.0: --------------
Some people--probably people who spend a lot of time dating, and who are attractive enough to be able to choose for whatever traits they want--would actually find useful the ability to specify things like that. Others might not care, or might not even know what difference most of these traits make to them (I would probably fall into this last category). Mmm, it might be interesting to see what the hardcore daters would discover about their own preferences (and how they might change over the course of dating). Does anyone know of any interesting studies or results in this area?
I take great offense to my culture being defined as "relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them" Yes some people do that, but VERY few. It's as silly as thinking that all gay men speak with lisps, yes some do and those that do are very identifiable as likely gay. Yes there is always that guy in the bar that is inappropriate with wom…
Be careful with thinking that issues you think you have solved for yourself, or that you believe your friends have solved, are issues society or culture have solved. Isn't the phrase "don't be a pussy" part of your culture? Has your culture got over with most cheerleaders being white, female and fit already? The fact things have gotten better with time doesn't mean we are living the golden age of gender equality.
I've always found Munroe's position on gender equality weird - despite what he says, he 'others' women in his main work. Female stick figures have long hair, even if the strip has nothing to do with gender. Male stick figures have no such indication. That is: 'male' is 'default'.
The male stick figures have short hair, as is typical of men in the society from which XKCD originates. Your criticism is very strained.
This is part of the 'othering' of women - "you look different to what 'normal' looks like".
In any case, common male hairstyles in anglo societies still stand out from the head, as much as the non-dangling part of ponytails.
I take great offense to my culture being defined as "relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them" Yes some people do that, but VERY few. It's as silly as thinking that all gay men speak with lisps, yes some do and those that do are very identifiable as likely gay. Yes there is always that guy in the bar that is inappropriate with wom…
> As to being bigger and stronger, perhaps we should look to the nation of Japan and the feats its military was able to achieve with men roughly the size of north american women. Women are perfectly capable of defending themselves, not that they should have to, just like smaller men are perfectly capable of defending themselves, not that they should have to. That would be a great analogy if the sort of violence that…
In my mind all you really need to say is "Some people don't want to share their gender and we'll all enjoy a better service for having that feature" it seems pretty self evident that the sharing of gender is not an essential feature of a social network, just as in real life we don't walk around with our state sanctioned gender on ourselves and are free to project the gender we wish others to see.