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

-Why are we making such a big deal about exception cases? (1%, as you say)

-You know, right up front, G+ is asking you to do something you feel uncomfortable with. They aren't being sneaky about it, making it opt-out, or changing policies after the fact.

-You have to evaluate, for yourself, if the usefulness of G+ outweighs the level of uncomfort

-G+ will probably fail if they can't get a large and diverse userbase, this will probably cause G+ to evaluate why and possibly change their policies

-Munroe, as someone with a lot of followers, is correct to voice his opinion because it will be heard. Someone like you or I will actually have to do some work to be heard, so we'll have to go right to Google with our complaints. Please tell me you have brought it up with them...

I don't like the idea of people feeling that, every product (especially global products) being made needs to be tailored to their views of the world (ESPECIALLY at an initial beta release). Give Google some time to learn and react to these "bugs". If G+ wants to have a narrow view of this, let them and watch them fail, as other companies learn from those mistakes and put out a better product.

You can deal with jerks at the bar, tell the bouncers to remove them and see if they do, go to the bar down the street, or build a better bar yourself.

How many TV shows present that reality? Movies? How many advertisements? Popular music? Dare I mention video games?

"Relentless" is a very accurate way to summarize the situation.

If you're interested in thinking about our culture, the correct mirror is the artifacts we produce and consume; not behavior.

An aside: Men may be more likely to be assaulted than women, but you're measuring the wrong thing again. How many men are assaulted solely because of their gender?

Our culture is quite frankly abhorrent to me in how it dehumanizes women. That's an honest opinion; not slander, and it's one formed with ample observations to back it up.

>> 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—men who are usually bigger, stronger, and (like any human) occasionally crazy. This feeling—often confirmed by actual experiences of harassment and assault—can lead, understandably, to a lifetime of low-level wariness and sense of vulnerability that men have trouble appreciating. I want to comment on the attitude Randall is projecting in the above referenced quote. It's a commonplace attitude in the modern world today. That a woman's only protection is a man's forbearance. I feel this attitude is also toxic to our social fabric -- it really is just another form of gender bias. Attitudes like this lead to strange unintended consequences: Single, unmarried men cannot be seated next to unaccompanied minors on a plane. Men are now less likely to come to the aide of a screaming or crying child in public.

Just because some Vikings rape and pillage does not mean that all men do. Just because my grandfather was of German descent and fought in WWII should you assume he was a Nazi (he was a medic for the Allies).

Google+ is supposed to have privacy options "superior to facebook". (And considering they also have access to our search history and email, they had better be). Women online (and this is likely not their first social networking experience) have the same access to those privacy tools as everyone else. Let them block the harassers and those that objectify them.

(But still some really good points made about co-opting "Other").