Oh fuck off! If you want to be a woman, you're a woman, a man, then you are a man.
XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
151–160 of 298 posts
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#152I 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…
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…
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 believe that posting your gender online is analagous to walking around in downtown Bagdhad, and that women are incapable of conducting themselves in modern society, what other measures do you recommend we take?
Should my wife have to wear a Nixon mask while video-conferencing? Does she need to censor parts of photographs that would allow people to determine that she is a woman? Should she be not allowed to join groups or follow people of interest to other women?
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#153Guys, lets not get carried away by the issue here. The issue is NOT about gender identification. It is Google+ not providing the ability to hide your gender on your profile (I won't say they're FORCING you to post your gender). The issue of Gender Identification is merely an example provided to justify the usage of such a feature. So let's avoid a massive gender debate here, when you can read all about it in the post…
Exactly. I would like to hide my gender not for any gender related issues but for purely aesthetic reasons. You could play a game of “which one doesn't belong” with my profile and gender would win. There is no reason to explicitly name my gender in my profile. Google did a nice job with making nearly everything optional and making sure your profile looks great no matter how much or little information you enter, gender just sticks out like a sore thumb.
Google should just leave everything as it is and let us hide gender. Other profile fields already have an UI for doing just that.
That's not to say that other reasons for hiding the gender are invalid, it's just not even necessary to discuss them. Google should allow us to hide the gender even if those reasons were invalid.
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I vote for the text field option.
The range of answers you get when you give a free text entry field is wonderful, and proves why this is the best route. On matters like forced revealing of gender, my gender is rage. I'm in the process of trying to convince an genderfork academic I'm friends with to actually put a 20 marks question on an exam "what is your gender?".
Anyone care to explain why they're downvoting this?
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. That's true. However, if I'm doing my math right, the statistics for rape and sexual assault are an entirely different story. The US isn't on both of these lists[0][1], so we'll take a proxy and compare: Germany has 6.5/100k deaths/year in accidents and 8.9/100k rapes/year. Note that that's per 100k people, not per 100…
Great statistics. What is the point?
Are you suggesting that knowing the gender of people is a risk factor for rape?
It seems like a few people are making this odd connection between assault, stalking and rape with knowing somebody's gender. You do realize that most humans can sit on any street corner and identify the gender of passers-by with a high degree of certainty, right?
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#156Earlier 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…
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.
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#157As a heterosexual, male-identifying, rather vanilla-sexed individual, I instinctually chose 'Other' nonetheless when I signed up for Google+, much like Facebook, which still refers to me as "you" or something like that. Computers are not for that.
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I have some female friends that would prefer to talk only to other females as well, it doesn't even have to go as far as preferences for dating. Why not only add female friends to their circles then?
Well, Google+ and many social networks feel designed to be opt-in so interaction between people that aren't directly connected somehow is limited and suboptimal. For example, some people I don't know have added me to a circle of theirs on google+ and have shared some bizarre pictures and things I don't care for, and I have to purposefully seek these out if I cared to look at them. That solves a lot of problems right…
I would +1 this, if I could!
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. That's true. However, if I'm doing my math right, the statistics for rape and sexual assault are an entirely different story. The US isn't on both of these lists[0][1], so we'll take a proxy and compare: Germany has 6.5/100k deaths/year in accidents and 8.9/100k rapes/year. Note that that's per 100k people, not per 100…
I don't think any of this really matters to the original topic, however...
I really doubt those German statistics can be compared to the US, without taking this into account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_p...
Re: XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand your point. It goes both ways; most men would have a problem being forcefully harassed by an unattractive woman, and perhaps not when by an attractive one. Her point is that she's being harassed by someone she does not want to be harassed by. Don't turn this into a bitter "you don't give unattractive men a chance" argument. The same concept applies with men towards women.
You say "harassed", but the correct phrase is "hit on". Which makes all the difference in the world from a legal and moral perspective.
I'm sorry, but I don't see how a man "grinding his crotch up against your leg" can be considered a "hit on" a woman. I think you're arguing about something else entirely.