One advantage of publicly disclosing information about gender is that you know it's public. It's possible to glean someone's gender from the language they use

One advantage of publicly disclosing information about gender is that you know it's public. It's possible to glean someone's gender from the language they use (see http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php), meaning people who kept their gender private may be lulled into a false sense of security. Admittedly I still agree that you should always have to option to select which of your details to make public (or to limit which groups/circles this information is available to), but thought I'd chuck in a counter argument to keep things interesting.