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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

#111

Post by temphn »

_3u10 wrote: post #49

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…

Randall Munroe is unfortunately often a professional white knight.

Really bizarre how he understands that people differ in programming ability, but cannot countenance the possibility that there is not a completely uniform distribution of ability across all conceivable human subgroups.

Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public

#112

Post by temphn »

demallien wrote: post #98
muuh-gnu wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> until you've been in a bar and had a fat, bald guy Since when is being bald become a derogatory term? How do you expect to get sympathy for your position if you at the same time totally deadheartedly debase a group of people purely on their looks?

Sorry, I was just describing the last guy that actually did this to me, and those were the aspects that I found physically unattractive... If I had described him as 'totally fit, washboard abs, young guy with handsome square jaw', most people wouldn't understand what I was complaining about!

Exactly.

You don't seem to be introspective enough to realize that your problem is thus not with "men", but with unattractive men. Pretty obligatory link:

http://www.dailyhaha.com/_vids/sexual_harassment.htm

It's not unwelcome if Tom Brady does it. So computer scientists get it in the neck twice, as they are enriched for unattractive men AND blamed for excluding women.

Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public

#114

Post by fleitz »

demallien wrote: post #63
_3u10 wrote: post #49

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…

"but VERY few" I'm not sure what you're suggesting here. You know, if it's only 1% of men that act in a sexually predatory manner (workplace sexual harrassement, groping on public transport, all the way through to rape), how am I as a woman supposed to react? Online it's even worse, I can expect sexually explicit comments to be made to me with a probability approaching 1.0 if I reveal my gender (HN is a pleasant exce…

I'm in support of Google changing the policy, I just think that slandering a culture is unnecessary to get a simple oversight fixed. I'm suggesting that the vast majority of men (and women) are respectful of people and that there are a few who are not that we tend to notice. (selection bias).

Sorry shitty things happen to you because of your gender, shitty things have happend to me because of my gender. Most women are phenomenal people but just like men some are really shitty people.

We don't need to figure out who the biggest victim group is, it's irrelevant.

We need figure out ways to stop it from happening. If it was a man who caused you undue grief and pain then let me be the first to empathize on behalf of the gender I share with people who have treated you with disrespect. No I'm probably not going to understand what it is like to be you in our society, just like you're not going to understand what it's like to be me in our society. If we can get a little closer to understanding than that's a step in the right direction. If we can work together to solve each others problems then that's even better.

If Google+ having privacy with regard to gender will help you to have a better life then I support that. I don't need to understand what it's like to be a woman in our society to know that if you say a trivial change will help you that doesn't affect me in the least then I support getting that feature changed. I'm very much in favor of achieving a more polite and respectful society, regardless of the reasonable steps we need to take to achieve that.

Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public

#115

Post by silencio »

ignifero wrote: post #97
silencio wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot more to it than "old fat bald guy". I don't know why so many people keep missing the extra clues, including in this past weekend's skeptic/atheist brouhaha over Richard Dawkins being ignorant. In short, it's the same damn situation. "Nice guy" (which is an unknown to the woman) approaches woman, gets rejected, is pissed off. Nice guy forgot to look at the situation, which was woman alone with man hitti…

That's all nice to hear, but the truth is that the (popular and unpopular) culture of western nations drives behavior to be outright hostile and racist to those with even minor genetic defects. And people herd themselves like sheep.

Shame on the culture that promotes hostility, but attractiveness is a personal decision. You just have to accept that some people just don't like old fat bald guys.

As much as it may seem surprising to the group of HNers that are single men that have no luck with talking to women, I am a girl that has been rejected by plenty of guys in the past for not wearing much makeup (if at all), being obsessed with certain topics to the point of overkill, spending too much time on the computer and out-geeking them (that apparently really makes them feel less manly), being Asian (and not being of Japanese heritage...yes really), being in my early 20s, being fat...

Deal with it. For every guy that has a fat Asian fetish is a guy that wants to sleep with a size 0 blonde Caucasian girl. Being an old, fat, bald guy is not the end of the world.

Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public

#117

Post by demallien »

temphn wrote: post #112
demallien wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I was just describing the last guy that actually did this to me, and those were the aspects that I found physically unattractive... If I had described him as 'totally fit, washboard abs, young guy with handsome square jaw', most people wouldn't understand what I was complaining about!

Exactly. You don't seem to be introspective enough to realize that your problem is thus not with "men", but with unattractive men. Pretty obligatory link: http://www.dailyhaha.com/_vids/sexual_harassment.htm It's not unwelcome if Tom Brady does it. So computer scientists get it in the neck twice, as they are enriched for unattractive men AND blamed for excluding women.

Bzzzt! Thanks for playing! No, I would have a problem with it from anyone if the attention was unwanted. It is the 'unwanted' aspect of things which is important. A woman in a bar is not necessarily looking for any action - she may already be in a committed relationship, she may have just had a hard week at work and is unwinding with some friends, she might be a lesbian, or whatever.

For your information I have also had to blow off very physically attractive men in much the same way. In some ways they are even worse than the fat bald guy, because they seem even less willing to believe that they are being blown off.

EDIT: Oops, forgot to make my main point. I used the example of an unattractive man because I felt that people would be better able to empathize with it, not because the situation would have been any different for an attractive man.

Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public

#118

Post by redfloatplane »

vacri wrote: post #36

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'.

I fail to see how the males aren't just the female stick figure with short hair. Your viewpoint is at fault here, not the comics.

I see what you mean in a way - that the male stick figures don't have long hair. Again, though, this is only your viewpoint - very rarely is the stick figure's gender actually mentioned in the text of the comic or otherwise. Besides, not all females have long hair, many of the not-overtly-female stick figures may also be female despite not having long hair. Only your viewpoint, again.

The internet: where you can argue about the gender of stick figures.

Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public

#119

Post by brianmatter »

nl wrote: post #37

The linked essay[1] is worth reading. I had no idea that sex testing was so complicated - it explained to me a lot about why sex-testing for (usually) women's sport isn't as simple as I'd assumed. [1] http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html

i agree that it is a complex issue. the problem is that he negates his argument by saying "many women" and trying to say what they feel. "many women" is pretty much a gender enhancing phrase

Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public

#120

Post by kiiski »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #100
ignifero wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am kind of surprised that you think the best way to amend a problem is to avoid it. How about asking Google to implement an anti-stalker program and to actively ban/restrict those who engage in such behaviour?

They should do that too, but surely preventing a problem is better than looking to address it after the damage has been done?

The question is, is the damage avoided here, or is it just moved to another place/person?

On topic though, I don't really understand why it should be obligatory to share any personal info that I don't want to share. If it's just so that the service provider can sell the info, then I think I would prefer to just pay for the service myself instead.

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