Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 298 posts

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

#161

Post by mentat »

demallien wrote: post #147
temphn wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am always conscious that I am being objectified sexually ...fat, bald guy Again, lack of introspection. You complain about being objectified sexually while dissing fat, bald (and no doubt short) guys. Of course men are going to objectify women, just as you and other women objectify men. In other words you have nothing to complain about.

"introspection" You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Seriously. Well, either that or your reading comprehension could do with some work. Also, you seem to suggest that I am sexually objectifying men if I don't find every single one of them attractive? Absurd.

No, he's saying that judging sexual attractiveness is inherently objectification and that both sexes do it. Though I believe it is a fallacy to say that you can't dislike to be objectified if you are in fact objectifying others, in non-logical areas (like here) it does tend to weaken one's perceived case.

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

#162

Post by Duff »

iron_ball wrote: post #156
Duff wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same logic is applied by extremist religious groups to "protect" women from lecherous men. Enter the burka or the nun's habit. If you have a service where you publish your name, link people together into social networks, engage in video chat, post pictures, post status updates and converse with people, gender will become obvious very quickly, regardless of whether the male/female box is ticked. Since you seem to…

So privacy is either impossible or mandatory? The slopes sure are slippery around here. I shouldn't have worn my dress shoes.

Not at all. I just don't think that hiding gender is meaningful beyond making some people feel good. It's a false set of security -- gender and identity are linked.

It's a social networking application. Knowing what people put on social networking sites, my guess is that if you couldn't see someone's name/alias or gender, you could identify the gender of a user with a reasonable degree of confidence.

The predators (rapists, stalkers, etc) are highly attuned and skilled at identifying victims. If a woman (or man) is actually awware of a specific risk of a stalker getting info about them from a social networking site, she/he shouldn't have a public profile, period. Hiding gender in that case could create a dangerous, false sense of security.

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

#164

Post by scythe »

>Many women grow up with a sense of physical vulnerability that's hard for men to appreciate. Our culture's relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them

Daaaaaamn are people ever good at misinterpreting this line. It doesn't matter whether women are at actual risk; it's about the perception of risk. They're your customers, not your students or children or friggin' royal subjects.

Answering the question of actual risk has basically turned into a playground of competitive sophistry. On the other hand, perceived risk is goddamn obvious, and it's what matters. You don't start a social network by alienating people, regardless of whether they're 'right' or 'wrong' to feel the way they do.

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

#166

Post by hugh3 »

scythe wrote: post #164

>Many women grow up with a sense of physical vulnerability that's hard for men to appreciate. Our culture's relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them Daaaaaamn are people ever good at misinterpreting this line. It doesn't matter whether women are at actual risk; it's about the perception of risk. They're your customers , not your s…

It doesn't matter whether women are at actual risk; it's about the perception of risk.

And what proportion of 'em perceive this risk when filling out a little box on the internet?

You don't start a social network by alienating people, regardless of whether they're 'right' or 'wrong' to feel the way they do.

Hang on, let me rephrase that for you:

You don't start a social network by alienating people, regardless of whether they're right or wrong to feel the way they do.

There, much better without the scare quotes around right and wrong, don't you think? Sounds less like you're trying to have and simultaneously skip a debate about epistemology in the middle of a sentence.

Aaaaanyway, what proportion of customers are alienated by this? Surely for every person who complains, ninety-nine women don't see an issue with it?

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

#167

Post by hugh3 »

fleitz wrote: post #70
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think that privacy settings for gender are a good idea. I just don't think the reasons outlined are sound. 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…

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

If you're being sarcastic, it's not obvious due to the fact that some people really do believe that.

If you're being non-sarcastic, you're crazy. First, gender isn't "state-sanctioned", it's genetically determined. And y'know what? On 99.9% of people it's pretty damn obvious. Even the folks who go to all the trouble of dressing up to look like the opposite sex are usually identifiable at a glance.

Some folks do have serious issues about their gender identity, but I think Google+ is a better place without them.

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

#168

Post by Deezul »

olalonde wrote: post #93
Steko wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, just wow. It's almost as if you didn't read what Randall wrote. He's not saying "all men are ogres". He's saying "ogres exist and some women wish to avoid them". "I take great offense to my culture being defined ..." Total straw man, he didn't define any culture as this, he noted that it's one characteristic of our culture. "Yes some people do that, but VERY few." That's irrelevant. Baghdad is still a dangerous…

> Total straw man, he didn't define any culture as this, he noted that it's one characteristic of our culture. From Randall's post: Our culture's relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them [...] > "Do you want to walk around Baghdad at night alone?" An American man's likelihood of getting killed in Baghdad is a couple of magnitude h…

> In fact, my educated guess is that far more women die from car accidents than from crazy murderers.

This has got to be one of the most overused and misappropriated statistics I've heard during a multitude of arguments. I can't even deduce what point is being made beyond X is greater than Y. You can't simply invalidate a problem, because you found a larger (scarier) number on Wikipedia. Have you considered the amount of time spent and km traveled in a car versus time spent in bars and social gathers? I hope not because it's a rabbit trail and a moot point.

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

#170

Post by hugh3 »

dazzer wrote: post #26
macrael wrote: post #2

He'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/

I vote for the solution below which asks "how do you wish to be identified" instead of "what is your gender".

Which is larger? The number of people who would object to "what is your gender" on weird-ass gender politics grounds, or the number of people who would object to "how do you wish to be identified?" on the grounds that it's ridiculous politically correct pandering to weirdoes? I don't just "wish to be identified" as a man... I am a man, and I have the external sexual organs, facial hair, Adam's apple and XY chromosomes to prove it.

Someone's always gonna complain, no matter what you do.

Post reply on HN