<story><title>XKCD&apos;s Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public</title><url>https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts/SeBqgN9Zoiu</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>demallien</author><text>&quot;but VERY few&quot;
I&apos;m not sure what you&apos;re suggesting here.  You know, if it&apos;s only 1% of men that act in a sexually predatory manner (workplace sexual harrassement, groping on public transport, all the way through to rape), how am I as a woman supposed to react?  Online it&apos;s even worse, I can expect sexually explicit comments to be made to me with a probability approaching 1.0 if I reveal my gender (HN is a pleasant exception to the rule, and here&apos;s hoping it stays that way!)&lt;p&gt;Online there are many forums where I choose to hide my gender, and in the real world I am always conscious that I am being objectified sexually (an experience you probably can&apos;t appreciate until you&apos;ve been in a bar and had a fat, bald guy 20 years older than you grinding his crotch up against your leg even when you&apos;ve physically tried to push him away).&lt;p&gt;So yeah, take all the offense you like, it is an offense that is rooted in a deep ignorance of what it&apos;s like to be a woman in our culture.</text></item><item><author>_3u10</author><text>I take great offense to my culture being defined as &quot;relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them&quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes some people do that, but VERY few. It&apos;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 women, and he will get noticed, but did anyone bother to look at the VAST majority of men who do not engage in that behavior. These are also the same idiots who are getting into bar fights with other men. This doesn&apos;t make it acceptable but it&apos;s hardly a hallmark of my &quot;culture&quot;. There are people who just don&apos;t respect other people in every culture.&lt;p&gt;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. These are again averages and if you look at the deviances you&apos;ll see that there are a lot of women who are larger than a lot of men.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;I personally think it&apos;s a good idea for Google to make the settings private but it doesn&apos;t need the invocation of chivalric myths and the slander of an entire culture for it to happen. Frankly, the idea that women can&apos;t defend themselves and we need to add privacy settings to protect them seems more to perpetuate the ideals of chivalry than feminism.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fleitz</author><text>I&apos;m in support of Google changing the policy, I just think that slandering a culture is unnecessary to get a simple oversight fixed. I&apos;m suggesting that the vast majority of men (and women) are respectful of people and that there are a few who are not that we tend to notice. (selection bias).&lt;p&gt;Sorry shitty things happen to you because of your gender, shitty things have happend to me because of my gender. Most women are phenomenal people but just like men some are really shitty people.&lt;p&gt;We don&apos;t need to figure out who the biggest victim group is, it&apos;s irrelevant.&lt;p&gt;We need figure out ways to stop it from happening. If it was a man who caused you undue grief and pain then let me be the first to empathize on behalf of the gender I share with people who have treated you with disrespect. No I&apos;m probably not going to understand what it is like to be you in our society, just like you&apos;re not going to understand what it&apos;s like to be me in our society. If we can get a little closer to understanding than that&apos;s a step in the right direction. If we can work together to solve each others problems then that&apos;s even better.&lt;p&gt;If Google+ having privacy with regard to gender will help you to have a better life then I support that. I don&apos;t need to understand what it&apos;s like to be a woman in our society to know that if you say a trivial change will help you that doesn&apos;t affect me in the least then I support getting that feature changed. I&apos;m very much in favor of achieving a more polite and respectful society, regardless of the reasonable steps we need to take to achieve that.</text></comment>
<story><title>XKCD&apos;s Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public</title><url>https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts/SeBqgN9Zoiu</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>demallien</author><text>&quot;but VERY few&quot;
I&apos;m not sure what you&apos;re suggesting here.  You know, if it&apos;s only 1% of men that act in a sexually predatory manner (workplace sexual harrassement, groping on public transport, all the way through to rape), how am I as a woman supposed to react?  Online it&apos;s even worse, I can expect sexually explicit comments to be made to me with a probability approaching 1.0 if I reveal my gender (HN is a pleasant exception to the rule, and here&apos;s hoping it stays that way!)&lt;p&gt;Online there are many forums where I choose to hide my gender, and in the real world I am always conscious that I am being objectified sexually (an experience you probably can&apos;t appreciate until you&apos;ve been in a bar and had a fat, bald guy 20 years older than you grinding his crotch up against your leg even when you&apos;ve physically tried to push him away).&lt;p&gt;So yeah, take all the offense you like, it is an offense that is rooted in a deep ignorance of what it&apos;s like to be a woman in our culture.</text></item><item><author>_3u10</author><text>I take great offense to my culture being defined as &quot;relentless treatment of women as objects teaches them that they are defined by the one thing that men around them want from them&quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes some people do that, but VERY few. It&apos;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 women, and he will get noticed, but did anyone bother to look at the VAST majority of men who do not engage in that behavior. These are also the same idiots who are getting into bar fights with other men. This doesn&apos;t make it acceptable but it&apos;s hardly a hallmark of my &quot;culture&quot;. There are people who just don&apos;t respect other people in every culture.&lt;p&gt;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. These are again averages and if you look at the deviances you&apos;ll see that there are a lot of women who are larger than a lot of men.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;I personally think it&apos;s a good idea for Google to make the settings private but it doesn&apos;t need the invocation of chivalric myths and the slander of an entire culture for it to happen. Frankly, the idea that women can&apos;t defend themselves and we need to add privacy settings to protect them seems more to perpetuate the ideals of chivalry than feminism.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>muuh-gnu</author><text>&amp;#62; until you&apos;ve been in a bar and had a fat, bald guy&lt;p&gt;Since when is being bald become a derogatory term? How do you expect to get sympathy for your position if you at the same time totally deadheartedly debase a group of people purely on their looks?</text></comment>