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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

#121

Post by hcles »

demallien wrote: post #117
temphn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Bzzzt! Thanks for playing!

Please don't do this.

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

#122

Post by ignifero »

The main question to ask is: do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? For developers, when google opens up their platform, having the gender by default will make it easier to make a better interface and use pronouns correctly. On the other hand, i dont know many apps that distinguish gravely between men and women. The name of a person and their photo is usually enough to infer sex anyway. So, they're just making it easier for a developer to have the sex of the user. Another useful variable would be language.

I actually think the friends' list maybe should be private, but gender should be public by default. I think Mr. Munroe's concerns are completely unjustified. It's kind of horrifying too, it paints things as being really bad for women in america; I doubt it's really that bad. I find the whole "attracts more attention" argument rather weak. After all, when you introduce yourself in the real world, its apparent from either the looks or voice whether you're male or female.

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

#123

Post by ignifero »

silencio wrote: post #115
ignifero wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 topi…

Of course it's not the end of the world. But the societal pressure towards certain physical ideals skews everyone's perception of "attractive" (Not more than a century ago, slim women were considered unattractive). So it's not 100% a "personal decision", and i understand it's really hard as a psychological burden.

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

#124

Post by forza »

dorkwagon wrote: post #44
ern wrote: post #8

I'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.

There is an option -- check near the bottom at https://profiles.google.com/me/about/edit/d .

"If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011."

http://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2321727

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

#125

Post by roundsquare »

temphn wrote: post #111
_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.

I don't understand this statement at all. Are you saying that he's ignoring the fact that women have different abilities to defend themselves from attackers?

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

#126

Post by silencio »

ignifero wrote: post #123
silencio wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 topi…

Of course it's not the end of the world. But the societal pressure towards certain physical ideals skews everyone's perception of "attractive" (Not more than a century ago, slim women were considered unattractive). So it's not 100% a "personal decision", and i understand it's really hard as a psychological burden.

I would not disagree. I completely expect there to be some societal influence and it is definitely a hard thing to come to terms with especially when you fit the profile that your culture currently deems unattractive. It's still a personal decision though, no matter how skewed.

Ultimately, in the original context of the fat guy story, it isn't so much the appearance as it is behavior that is problematic and people latched on to mostly the appearance and not the behavior. And as I've mentioned in my comment, some people don't seem to understand the nuances of a situation. Combine both together and you basically have the recipe for some of the bitter replies and downvotes found in these comments.

A woman has every right to be disgusted at that kind of behavior alone, before we even get into what she or society might think of fat old bald men. The same applies the other way around and however which way you want to organize the situation.

So again with my ideals (hopefully everyone including myself can work towards this goal!). Act like an asshole, you'll be treated like one. Act courteously, and be treated that way in return. Anyone that deviates from that is likely to be an asshole :P

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

#127

Post by brianmatter »

perlgeek wrote: post #110
brianmatter wrote: post #77

i'd love to know what makes "Radall" the expert on what "Many women grow up with"

I've seen a video of Randall talking about a variety of stuff (I think it was "Google Tech Talks" or so), and I got the impression that he just talks to people, and listens to what they say. While reading his comics I also thought multiple times that he must be a very good observer. That doesn't necessarily make him an expert in the sense that conducting a scientific study would make him, but it's still worth listeni…

i don't doubt it. i just question his ability to talk about what many women feel. how many women do you have to "talk to", "listen to" and "observe" before you can consider yourself to be assigning what "many woman feel" without ever being capable of feeling it yourself?

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

#128

Post by [deleted] »

yid wrote: post #45
gojomo wrote: post #27

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…

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by dools »

_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…

Watch series 1 of Mad Men. Spend 1 week observing all interactions around you. Return and rethink.

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

#130

Post by rufibarbatus »

Qz wrote: post #16
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 text field option.

Relavant: Diaspora does (or did) exactly that.

http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2010/11/26/disalienation/

HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1944628

Slightly less relevant: gender done right by, of all things, a social networking game.

Here's a review: http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=3053

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