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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

#191

Post by amalcon »

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…

This seems a little off-mark. Nobody[1] is suggesting that public G+ genders are going to result in more cases like Amy Boyer. That would just be silly.

If someone decides they want as much privacy as possible, and maximally locks down their profile, they are exposing exactly two things: name and gender. The argument is that this is calling undue attention to that one particular field. No doubt Google has a reason for this -- it is an exception, after all; why implement an exception without a reason? The question is whether this reason (that we don't know) is good enough.

[1]OK, maybe somebody is, but it's not Randall, and it's certainly not me.

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

#192

Post by parfe »

lhnz wrote: post #75
dazzer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first glance at your comment I said "how would that help". Then I thought about it a second time, and I think this is actually a legitimate way to approach the problem of gender identification. So +1 for me. Wonder what others think

Some might prefer the gender-neutral pronoun "they". However, I think doing things this way is going to be quite difficult to implement when you consider multiple languages. Male/Female/Other with an option to hide this information is much easier a solution.

They is traditionally plural.

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

#193

Post by FeministHacker »

burgerbrain wrote: post #177
Qz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone care to explain why they're downvoting this?

I found the comment quite difficult to parse. I'm guessing that is why.

To be fair, it actually is hard to parse - I'm re-reading it, and trying to work out how to word it better, but the fact that I'm actually using a freeform gender, and the academic term genderfork, makes it hard to see how.

I'll have another stab later if I have time - My gender is currently busy.

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

#194

Post by gommm »

saulrh wrote: post #173
Duff wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I was simply being annoyed at an unbacked statement like that, especially given the topic. We always seem to forget that being a woman is, in fact, bloody dangerous. Something like one in five American women experiences a rape. We aren't discussing some abstract edge case; half of the population lives in completely justifiable terror of something that actually happens . I mention gender because that modifies the stat…

I don't see how you arrive at the statistic of "one in five american women experiencing a rape" from 28 rapes per hundred thousand people. Even if we considered that only women were victim of rapes and that half of the incidents weren't reported, it would still amount to something like 112 rapes/100k so around 0.1%.

Anecdotically, none of my female friends were ever raped which doesn't match with your assertion that "one in five American women experiences a rape".

I do think that our culture tends to objectifying women in the medias but I don't think that rape and sexual assault is as prevalent as many people think it is... There's also a lot of paranoia due to the media looking for good sensational stories and latching on any sexual assault story they can find.

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

#195

Post by cube13 »

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/

>Secondly, do you think that "other" is enough? To what lengths should developers go to handle rare corner cases?

Other is enough. It covers all the possible alternate cases. If the person really doesn't identify with either gender, they can select it. If they don't want it to be public, it's broad enough that selecting it doesn't reflect anything on the person, especially if they post pictures(like several people in the "other" camp do in the comments have).

Randall even admitted in his blog post that it's simply not worth the effort to cover all the possible cases. The problem with this entire thing is that it's so complicated. The original survey apparently wasn't good enough for a segment of the population, and the question was framed for pure genetics. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't, because you'll get complaints no matter what you do.

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

#196

Post by roundsquare »

sltkr wrote: post #178
hugh3 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Uhm, I was with you until: > Some folks do have serious issues about their gender identity, but I think Google+ is a better place without them. Come again? You can't socialize if you are unsure about your gender? What the hell...? I bet most gender-confused people are a lot more fun to be around than I am, despite my well-defined gender.

"them" in the sentence probably referred to "gender issues" not "folks".

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

#197

Post by FeministHacker »

cletus wrote: post #182

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm a guy so obviously don't have the experience (any) women have but I will say this. Three things will essentially give away your gender: 1. Your stated gender; 2. Your name (with a high degree of accuracy in most cultures that I'm aware of); and 3. Your photos. So for (1) to have any impact, (2) and (3) must be hidden. Since all profiles are public, I'm not sure you can hide (2).…

There are more names than you realise that give away little about gender, or are used by people across the gender spectrum. For example, Alex, Sam, Rowan, Raven, and Kim.

And as for photos, it's harder to tell than you think from a static photo, as a lot of gender presentation comes from body language. Speaking of which, photos only give you gender presentation - which can be quite different to someone's self-dentified gender.

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

#198

Post by overgryphon »

cletus wrote: post #182

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm a guy so obviously don't have the experience (any) women have but I will say this. Three things will essentially give away your gender: 1. Your stated gender; 2. Your name (with a high degree of accuracy in most cultures that I'm aware of); and 3. Your photos. So for (1) to have any impact, (2) and (3) must be hidden. Since all profiles are public, I'm not sure you can hide (2).…

2 is easy to work around- many women use generically male nicknames (such as Sam for Samantha) or have names that could be either gender. Photos can be kept private.

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

#199

Post by jberryman »

_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…

> Also, keep in mind that a man is twice as likely to be assaulted as a woman so from a statistical perspective it is men who should be fearing for their safety as they post their gender online.

He was obviously referring in this context to sexual assault. Maybe you're not one of them, but most men seem to be unaware of how common an experience rape and sexual assault are for women. You can look up the statistics if you're curious.

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

#200

Post by jules »

hugh3 wrote: post #167
fleitz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

You are coming off as incredibly insensitive and bigoted. Do you incidentally also believe that Google+ is a better place without gay people or their ability to select who they are attracted to on Google+?

Also, people who've had hormonal treatment often look like the sex that they want to be. I know this because I know some of these people, and I would not have guessed that they were born with another sex. Perhaps you even know some of these people without knowing. For the people who are not so lucky, your "Even the folks who go to all the trouble of dressing up to look like the opposite sex are usually identifiable at a glance." is disrespectful.

Does the ability to hide your gender or to select "other" harm you? Just like some people seem to think that other people being gay harms them, even though it has no significant influence on their lives whatsoever.

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