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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 aroun

by fleitz 15y ago

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 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't make it acceptable but it's hardly a hallmark of my "culture". There are people who just don't respect other people in every culture. 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'll see that there are a lot of women who are larger than a lot of men. 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. I personally think it's a good idea for Google to make the settings private but it doesn't need the invocation of chivalric myths and the slander of an entire culture for it to happen. Frankly, the idea that women can't defend themselves and we need to add privacy settings to protect them seems more to perpetuate the ideals of chivalry than feminism.

baconface 15y ago
"Very" in all caps? Go to walmart please.
pvarangot 15y ago
Be careful with thinking that issues you think you have solved for yourself, or that you believe your friends have solved, are issues society or culture have solved. Isn't the phrase "don't be a pussy" part of your culture? Has your culture got over with most cheerleaders being white, female and fit already? The fact things have gotten better with time doesn't mean we are living the golden age of gender equality.
- fleitz 15y ago
  Yes, the phrase "dont be a pussy" is definitely a part of my culture as is the phrase "dont be a dick". They are both colloquial expressions of undesirable behavior that refer to genitals, I don't find it to be evidence of a larger overarching problem. Has your culture gotten over most chippendales being male, well-endowed and fit? There are people who enjoy sexuality and sensuality, I personally don't care that there are a segment of women who enjoy chippendales it doesn't threaten me as a man. If women want to enjoy that sort of thing they should be free to. I would expect that a woman would be able to view chippendales and then come to the office in the morning and not slap me on the ass, just as I would expect a man who watched cheerleaders at a football game to not slap women on the ass at the office. There are going to be people who are going to look at me and think that I got to where I am in life simply by looking at the color of my skin and my gender. I'm much more interested in meeting those people who would rather know the content of my character. I know that in some circumstances I've probably benefitted greatly because of my gender, I also know very well the circumstances that have been detrimental to me because of my gender. I choose to take those detrimental gender biases and overcome them not worrying that I cannot simply because of my gender. Life is not about the hand you were dealt, life is about how you played it. In all honesty anyone born in a G8 nation regardless of gender or race has been dealt a tremendous hand that is enviable to the better part of the world.
  - pvarangot 15y ago
    That there also exist objectification of the male sexuality doesn't justify any objectification of sexuality at all. Also I don't believe by harassment and assault nor Randall nor anyone referred to being slapped on the ass. If we take domestic violence as the example, woman are a lot more often, and also more brutally, subjected to domestic abuse than men. I'm not being reductionist and suggesting that all of this is because we say "don't be a pussy", what I'm implying is that both are current examples of how western culture is violent and denigratory towards women. I value your insight into overcoming detrimental gender biases as an example, and I'm not being overly polite, I really mean it. Life is both about the hand you were dealt and about how you play it. Arguing in favour of gender equality and trying not be sexist is about trying to give everybody a better starting hand, because not every single other one is going to be able to overcome things they way you did.
wakeup 15y ago
Are you retarded or something?
Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
> 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. That would be a great analogy if the sort of violence that takes place between men and women in society was remotely comparable to war, however until we start heavily arming everyone, organising them into regiments and having them deployed in tactical situations (and a whole bunch of other things which make physical strength massively less significant as a factor than it is in civilian situations) it's just nonsense. > 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. Yes, because statistics compiled from physical life situations such as bar fights are a useful gauge of on-line behaviour. By your reasoning we shouldn't worry about on-line safety of children because the statistics show they're almost never assaulted. I agree with you that it's not the norm but that's not to say that it's not an issue. Given that there is absolutely no justifiable reason for it, a relatively small instance of it can be significant and worthy of mention. School shootings are statistically insignificant but you can't deny they say something important about society. Saying it "defines our culture" might be going over the top, but it's not a footnote either.
- fleitz 15y ago
  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 sanctioned gender on ourselves and are free to project the gender we wish others to see.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    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 the folks who go to all the trouble of dressing up to look like the opposite sex are usually identifiable at a glance. Some folks do have serious issues about their gender identity, but I think Google+ is a better place without them.
olalonde 15y ago
In addition, constantly victimizing women might be counterproductive. If all my life I'd get told I am a victim of society, am not able to defend myself, need other people's help, need special treatments to compensate for my condition etc. I'd start to believe I really am inferior.
demallien 15y ago
"but VERY few" I'm not sure what you're suggesting here. You know, if it'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'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's hoping it stays that way!) 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't appreciate until you'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've physically tried to push him away). So yeah, take all the offense you like, it is an offense that is rooted in a deep ignorance of what it's like to be a woman in our culture.
- olalonde 15y ago
  There seems to be deep ignorance of what it's like to be an old fat bald guy in our culture. Who do you think had the worse night? My guess is that it's the old fat bald guy who had to go home with his right hand, got publicly humiliated in front of all of his friends by getting rejected and physically pushed by a girl half his size. Not to forget his wallet is probably much lighter after paying all those drinks to women he won't ever have a chance with.
  - silencio 15y ago
    There is a lot more to it than "old fat bald guy". I don't know why so many people keep missing the extra clues, including in this past weekend's skeptic/atheist brouhaha over Richard Dawkins being ignorant. In short, it's the same damn situation. "Nice guy" (which is an unknown to the woman) approaches woman, gets rejected, is pissed off. Nice guy forgot to look at the situation, which was woman alone with man hitting on her in elevator at 3am. > fat, bald guy 20 years older than you grinding his crotch up against your leg even when you've physically tried to push him away When you're a fat, bald guy that does exactly that, you don't get to be treated like it's all okay and the girl is obligated to spend time with you because you bought her a drink or ten. It's the attitude that is the problem, not the fat or the bald. If you are a considerate, nice, polite, friendly old fat bald guy that can respect boundaries and that people just have differing ideas of attractiveness (it goes both ways, and I know this as an overweight girl), you shouldn't be treated like a dirtbag, ever. Anyone that does treat you as such is a dirtbag in their own way.
T-R 15y ago
I don't think his intention was to characterize all men as thinking/behaving that way, but to point out that those men exist, and that there is a historical/cultural aspect to the prevalence of that behavior. That is, I think he was just trying to assert that they are effectively a minority, and that their concerns have a legitimate basis, despite the fact that many outside their group may have trouble empathizing with them.
sabraham 15y ago
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'll see that there are a lot of women who are larger than a lot of men. 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. Blatant misuse of "statistics." Not all assaults are equal. How many assaults toward men lead to their having thoughts of or committing suicide? Also, the implication that we should train women to a military standard so they are ready to fend themselves off from attack is absurd-- by your rationale, we should put all be proficient with switchblades and blame ourselves if we were unable to stop an attack. The causal is the perpetrator, and the culture that breeds feeling of ownership by men of women. It wasn't so long ago that the law explicitly treated women as property, so let's not forget that too quickly. In the UK, it was in our parents' generation that women were allowed to have a mortgage (Sex Discrimination Act of 1975) and only two decades ago that marital rape exemption was abolished (until 1991, in the UK, legally a husband could not be charged with raping his wife). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Rape_statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Rape_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_English_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_English_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape#Common_law_and_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape#Common_law_and_the...
- jaredmck 15y ago
  Fend themselves off from what attack? Oh yeah, a straw (wo)man attack. How is your argument not part of "the culture that breeds feeling of ownership by men of women"? Simply spectacular invocation of rape culture arguments, not that I've ever seen this topic discussed rationally. No one needs to be trained to a military standard to fend off any type of vicious attack that might occur, because except in ultra-rare occasions they do not happen in first world countries. The true danger in our society is not physical at all, but mental- fear cuts down many lives by silently shaving off a million tiny slices, and those who fall victim to it never even knew they had a choice, or a chance. They just listened to the unspoken messages on TV.
Steko 15y ago
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 city for Americans to walk around alone at night despite an overwhelming majority of the populace not being insurgents. Do you want to walk around Baghdad at night alone? "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" Maybe in this context you should look at Japanese men and women and find that in this case, as in pretty much every culture, men tend to be bigger and stronger then women and violence from one to the other is heavily weighted in the same direction. "Women are perfectly capable of defending themselves." Nonsense, they are not "perfectly capable", hence the omnipresent criminal justice systems in modern societies. "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." Really you're quoting generic bar fight/domestic statistics when stalking (esp cyberstalking) is obviously far more relevant? Easiest thing to find showed women as 3-1 more likely to be stalked: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svus.pdf http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svus.pdf
- olalonde 15y ago
  > 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 higher than a woman's likelihood of getting killed by a sexual predator in NYC. In fact, my educated guess is that far more women die from car accidents than from crazy murderers.
  - saulrh 15y ago
    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 100k women. Then note that, in the US, we have 28 rapes per hundred thousand people, more than three times the rate in Germany. Then note that something like half of rapes are never reported to the police [2]. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#UN_Statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#UN_Statistics [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_accident#Statistics_in_the_European_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_accident#Statistics_... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Under-_and_over-reporting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Under-_and_over...
temphn 15y ago
Randall Munroe is unfortunately often a professional white knight. Really bizarre how he understands that people differ in programming ability, but cannot countenance the possibility that there is not a completely uniform distribution of ability across all conceivable human subgroups.
- roundsquare 15y ago
  I don't understand this statement at all. Are you saying that he's ignoring the fact that women have different abilities to defend themselves from attackers?
  - temphn 15y ago
    I'm saying that it gives a sense of vertigo when an otherwise rational man propounds such laughably conventional PC views as if they were bold insights. The assumption of biological egalitarianism underpins the idea that all inequalities of outcome are due to the malice of straight white middle-class males. Yet it is not straight, white, middle-class males who are actually committing most of the rapes in America.
    - roundsquare 15y ago
      Sorry, I think I was unclear in my question. "cannot countenance the possibility that there is not a completely uniform distribution of ability across all conceivable human subgroups." What ability are you talking about? (This is not disagreement btw, this is truly for clarification). "The assumption of biological egalitarianism underpins the idea that all inequalities of outcome are due to the malice of straight white middle-class males. Yet it is not straight, white, middle-class males who are actually committing most of the rapes in America." Insofar as this particular argument goes, it doesn't matter if the males are white or middle-class. It is, however, straight men who commit most of the rapes as well as other sexual abuses and sexual harassment in America.
dools 15y ago
Watch series 1 of Mad Men. Spend 1 week observing all interactions around you. Return and rethink.
jfager 15y ago
You seem to be suggesting that our culture can't be described as objectifying women unless all or most men are assholes to women in bars or engage in similar behavior, and in your other comments, unless such behavior happens exclusively to women. Which is absurd. As others have pointed out, if even 10% or 1% of men behave this way, it creates a hostile environment. If 1 out of every 100 random people you encounter punch you in the arm, you wouldn't think of arm-punching as an unfortunate part of the culture? (If you don't like getting punched in the arm, maybe you shouldn't go out wearing those kinds of sleeves.) And objectification is not limited to inappropriate behavior in bars and the like. Constant sexualization and stereotyping in advertising and other media create social expectations that many people aren't comfortable with. Yes, men are sexualized as well, but not to anywhere near the same degree, and usually in a different way (for instance, it's still pretty rare to be confronted with sexualized images of men that suggest submissiveness or vulnerability, but those characteristics are very common in images of women).
- Daniel_Newby 15y ago
  "Constant sexualization and stereotyping in advertising and other media create social expectations that many people aren't comfortable with." Look, men get to use trillions of sperm cells, which means evolution has hard-wired their brains to be magnetically attracted to anything feminine. Advertising uses this not because it is "sexualized", but because men will buy toxic waste by the barrel if you draw nice titties on it. Women only get to use a dozen or so egg cells, and each one is very risky and resource intensive, which means evolution has hard-wired their brains to be an always-on filter for genetic quality in prospective mates. This is naturally uncomfortable, and has been since before their monkey girl ancestors came down out of the trees. "Yes, men are sexualized as well, but not to anywhere near the same degree, ..." Watch an advertiser sell SUVs to women: they have a big, hulking, strong look and are advertised as serving and protecting the kids. That is the masculine face of advertising. (The latest American Subaru ads have it both ways, showing the kids growing up in the vehicle, ending with a cute teenage girl getting out of a car with a ... what is that thing on the hood? ... oh yes, the air port for the turbocharger.)
  - 15y ago
JohnLBevan 15y ago
I think the point of the argument is less about getting into fights, than it is about harassment; on the internet it doesn't really matter how big each person is (except where spam is concerned); so long as address info is private, even the most dedicated stalker's got his work cut out. The issue is this attribute is searchable; so a guy can list all of them women on G+, checking out their profile pictures, and possibly contacting them. A woman with an attractive profile picture could get a lot of unwanted messages / friend invites in this way, which would lead to feelings of harassment. Even the knowledge that people may be checking out their profile pics will be upsetting to some, despite there being no direct affect on the "victim". Admittedly, all this is also true the other way around, but typically in most human societies, men are more likely to stalk and women are more likely to be upset by the idea of being stalked. However, all of that is beside the point. The simple fact is that if this information is not required for G+ to function, it should be optional. You could argue that you have the option of not signing up, which is fair, but not very constructive. As G+ is competing against FB, and their stance is that they have better privacy, this is something which is in their interest to put right.
Vivtek 15y ago
I hesitate to enter this, but ... once upon a time, I flipped a guy off because he cut me off in post-football-game traffic. For the next half an hour, he pursued me relentlessly through red lights, down streets, etc. and every time we slowed, he jumped out and tried to run over. I was terrified. Turns out he was an off-duty cop and was trying to impress his girlfriend - but it took about three years for me to stop panicking when I saw a police car. OK, so I'm male and he was male, but let's assume that Google+ had one single thing on its profile that you had to fill out, and it was "Cop" vs. "Civilian". Do you think that I would feel comfortable broadcasting my non-cop status because Google hadn't thought about it? I'm sure a cop would be really offended. But think hard about this. And then take this kind of crap off Hacker News, man, because there are better venues for bleating that women shouldn't feel threatened by physical power and we all have better things to do with our time.
scott_s 15y ago
The difficulty is that the aberrations in a large group can have disproportionate impact on those outside of the group. So, men who abuse women may be the exception, but for those abused women, their perception and comfort with men may be permanently changed by those exceptions. Randall is not saying all men are the exceptions. Rather, he is saying recognize that those exceptions have had an enormous impact on some women's lives, including simple things like being uncomfortable publicly identifying their gender.
lhorie 15y ago
I think people are blowing things way out of proportion when they start talking about the sexual assault risk implication of a setting in an web app. Imho, what happens when gender is given undue relevance is what you see in a Youtube comments to a guy playing guitar vs comments to a girl playing guitar. On the former, the worst you get is guitar skill/technique bashing, on the latter, creepy lewd comments about your body. When you're in a social environment, giving prominence to irrelevant facts, no matter how true or harmless they are, that's just noise that detract from the experience.
jberryman 15y ago
> 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.
crux_ 15y ago
> Yes some people do that, but VERY few. 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.

by fleitz 15y ago

baconface 15y ago

"Very" in all caps? Go to walmart please.

pvarangot 15y ago

Be careful with thinking that issues you think you have solved for yourself, or that you believe your friends have solved, are issues society or culture have solved. Isn't the phrase "don't be a pussy" part of your culture? Has your culture got over with most cheerleaders being white, female and fit already? The fact things have gotten better with time doesn't mean we are living the golden age of gender equality.

fleitz 15y ago
Yes, the phrase "dont be a pussy" is definitely a part of my culture as is the phrase "dont be a dick". They are both colloquial expressions of undesirable behavior that refer to genitals, I don't find it to be evidence of a larger overarching problem. Has your culture gotten over most chippendales being male, well-endowed and fit? There are people who enjoy sexuality and sensuality, I personally don't care that there are a segment of women who enjoy chippendales it doesn't threaten me as a man. If women want to enjoy that sort of thing they should be free to. I would expect that a woman would be able to view chippendales and then come to the office in the morning and not slap me on the ass, just as I would expect a man who watched cheerleaders at a football game to not slap women on the ass at the office. There are going to be people who are going to look at me and think that I got to where I am in life simply by looking at the color of my skin and my gender. I'm much more interested in meeting those people who would rather know the content of my character. I know that in some circumstances I've probably benefitted greatly because of my gender, I also know very well the circumstances that have been detrimental to me because of my gender. I choose to take those detrimental gender biases and overcome them not worrying that I cannot simply because of my gender. Life is not about the hand you were dealt, life is about how you played it. In all honesty anyone born in a G8 nation regardless of gender or race has been dealt a tremendous hand that is enviable to the better part of the world.
- pvarangot 15y ago
  That there also exist objectification of the male sexuality doesn't justify any objectification of sexuality at all. Also I don't believe by harassment and assault nor Randall nor anyone referred to being slapped on the ass. If we take domestic violence as the example, woman are a lot more often, and also more brutally, subjected to domestic abuse than men. I'm not being reductionist and suggesting that all of this is because we say "don't be a pussy", what I'm implying is that both are current examples of how western culture is violent and denigratory towards women. I value your insight into overcoming detrimental gender biases as an example, and I'm not being overly polite, I really mean it. Life is both about the hand you were dealt and about how you play it. Arguing in favour of gender equality and trying not be sexist is about trying to give everybody a better starting hand, because not every single other one is going to be able to overcome things they way you did.

wakeup 15y ago

Are you retarded or something?

Tyrannosaurs 15y ago

> 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. That would be a great analogy if the sort of violence that takes place between men and women in society was remotely comparable to war, however until we start heavily arming everyone, organising them into regiments and having them deployed in tactical situations (and a whole bunch of other things which make physical strength massively less significant as a factor than it is in civilian situations) it's just nonsense. > 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. Yes, because statistics compiled from physical life situations such as bar fights are a useful gauge of on-line behaviour. By your reasoning we shouldn't worry about on-line safety of children because the statistics show they're almost never assaulted. I agree with you that it's not the norm but that's not to say that it's not an issue. Given that there is absolutely no justifiable reason for it, a relatively small instance of it can be significant and worthy of mention. School shootings are statistically insignificant but you can't deny they say something important about society. Saying it "defines our culture" might be going over the top, but it's not a footnote either.

fleitz 15y ago
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 sanctioned gender on ourselves and are free to project the gender we wish others to see.
- hugh3 15y ago
  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 the folks who go to all the trouble of dressing up to look like the opposite sex are usually identifiable at a glance. Some folks do have serious issues about their gender identity, but I think Google+ is a better place without them.

olalonde 15y ago

In addition, constantly victimizing women might be counterproductive. If all my life I'd get told I am a victim of society, am not able to defend myself, need other people's help, need special treatments to compensate for my condition etc. I'd start to believe I really am inferior.

demallien 15y ago

"but VERY few" I'm not sure what you're suggesting here. You know, if it'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'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's hoping it stays that way!) 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't appreciate until you'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've physically tried to push him away). So yeah, take all the offense you like, it is an offense that is rooted in a deep ignorance of what it's like to be a woman in our culture.

olalonde 15y ago
There seems to be deep ignorance of what it's like to be an old fat bald guy in our culture. Who do you think had the worse night? My guess is that it's the old fat bald guy who had to go home with his right hand, got publicly humiliated in front of all of his friends by getting rejected and physically pushed by a girl half his size. Not to forget his wallet is probably much lighter after paying all those drinks to women he won't ever have a chance with.
- silencio 15y ago
  There is a lot more to it than "old fat bald guy". I don't know why so many people keep missing the extra clues, including in this past weekend's skeptic/atheist brouhaha over Richard Dawkins being ignorant. In short, it's the same damn situation. "Nice guy" (which is an unknown to the woman) approaches woman, gets rejected, is pissed off. Nice guy forgot to look at the situation, which was woman alone with man hitting on her in elevator at 3am. > fat, bald guy 20 years older than you grinding his crotch up against your leg even when you've physically tried to push him away When you're a fat, bald guy that does exactly that, you don't get to be treated like it's all okay and the girl is obligated to spend time with you because you bought her a drink or ten. It's the attitude that is the problem, not the fat or the bald. If you are a considerate, nice, polite, friendly old fat bald guy that can respect boundaries and that people just have differing ideas of attractiveness (it goes both ways, and I know this as an overweight girl), you shouldn't be treated like a dirtbag, ever. Anyone that does treat you as such is a dirtbag in their own way.

T-R 15y ago

I don't think his intention was to characterize all men as thinking/behaving that way, but to point out that those men exist, and that there is a historical/cultural aspect to the prevalence of that behavior. That is, I think he was just trying to assert that they are effectively a minority, and that their concerns have a legitimate basis, despite the fact that many outside their group may have trouble empathizing with them.

sabraham 15y ago

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'll see that there are a lot of women who are larger than a lot of men. 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. Blatant misuse of "statistics." Not all assaults are equal. How many assaults toward men lead to their having thoughts of or committing suicide? Also, the implication that we should train women to a military standard so they are ready to fend themselves off from attack is absurd-- by your rationale, we should put all be proficient with switchblades and blame ourselves if we were unable to stop an attack. The causal is the perpetrator, and the culture that breeds feeling of ownership by men of women. It wasn't so long ago that the law explicitly treated women as property, so let's not forget that too quickly. In the UK, it was in our parents' generation that women were allowed to have a mortgage (Sex Discrimination Act of 1975) and only two decades ago that marital rape exemption was abolished (until 1991, in the UK, legally a husband could not be charged with raping his wife). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Rape_statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Rape_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_English_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_English_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape#Common_law_and_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape#Common_law_and_the...

jaredmck 15y ago
Fend themselves off from what attack? Oh yeah, a straw (wo)man attack. How is your argument not part of "the culture that breeds feeling of ownership by men of women"? Simply spectacular invocation of rape culture arguments, not that I've ever seen this topic discussed rationally. No one needs to be trained to a military standard to fend off any type of vicious attack that might occur, because except in ultra-rare occasions they do not happen in first world countries. The true danger in our society is not physical at all, but mental- fear cuts down many lives by silently shaving off a million tiny slices, and those who fall victim to it never even knew they had a choice, or a chance. They just listened to the unspoken messages on TV.

Steko 15y ago

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 city for Americans to walk around alone at night despite an overwhelming majority of the populace not being insurgents. Do you want to walk around Baghdad at night alone? "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" Maybe in this context you should look at Japanese men and women and find that in this case, as in pretty much every culture, men tend to be bigger and stronger then women and violence from one to the other is heavily weighted in the same direction. "Women are perfectly capable of defending themselves." Nonsense, they are not "perfectly capable", hence the omnipresent criminal justice systems in modern societies. "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." Really you're quoting generic bar fight/domestic statistics when stalking (esp cyberstalking) is obviously far more relevant? Easiest thing to find showed women as 3-1 more likely to be stalked: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svus.pdf http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svus.pdf

olalonde 15y ago
> 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 higher than a woman's likelihood of getting killed by a sexual predator in NYC. In fact, my educated guess is that far more women die from car accidents than from crazy murderers.
- saulrh 15y ago
  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 100k women. Then note that, in the US, we have 28 rapes per hundred thousand people, more than three times the rate in Germany. Then note that something like half of rapes are never reported to the police [2]. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#UN_Statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#UN_Statistics [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_accident#Statistics_in_the_European_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_accident#Statistics_... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Under-_and_over-reporting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Under-_and_over...

temphn 15y ago

Randall Munroe is unfortunately often a professional white knight. Really bizarre how he understands that people differ in programming ability, but cannot countenance the possibility that there is not a completely uniform distribution of ability across all conceivable human subgroups.

roundsquare 15y ago
I don't understand this statement at all. Are you saying that he's ignoring the fact that women have different abilities to defend themselves from attackers?
- temphn 15y ago
  I'm saying that it gives a sense of vertigo when an otherwise rational man propounds such laughably conventional PC views as if they were bold insights. The assumption of biological egalitarianism underpins the idea that all inequalities of outcome are due to the malice of straight white middle-class males. Yet it is not straight, white, middle-class males who are actually committing most of the rapes in America.
  - roundsquare 15y ago
    Sorry, I think I was unclear in my question. "cannot countenance the possibility that there is not a completely uniform distribution of ability across all conceivable human subgroups." What ability are you talking about? (This is not disagreement btw, this is truly for clarification). "The assumption of biological egalitarianism underpins the idea that all inequalities of outcome are due to the malice of straight white middle-class males. Yet it is not straight, white, middle-class males who are actually committing most of the rapes in America." Insofar as this particular argument goes, it doesn't matter if the males are white or middle-class. It is, however, straight men who commit most of the rapes as well as other sexual abuses and sexual harassment in America.

dools 15y ago

Watch series 1 of Mad Men. Spend 1 week observing all interactions around you. Return and rethink.

jfager 15y ago

You seem to be suggesting that our culture can't be described as objectifying women unless all or most men are assholes to women in bars or engage in similar behavior, and in your other comments, unless such behavior happens exclusively to women. Which is absurd. As others have pointed out, if even 10% or 1% of men behave this way, it creates a hostile environment. If 1 out of every 100 random people you encounter punch you in the arm, you wouldn't think of arm-punching as an unfortunate part of the culture? (If you don't like getting punched in the arm, maybe you shouldn't go out wearing those kinds of sleeves.) And objectification is not limited to inappropriate behavior in bars and the like. Constant sexualization and stereotyping in advertising and other media create social expectations that many people aren't comfortable with. Yes, men are sexualized as well, but not to anywhere near the same degree, and usually in a different way (for instance, it's still pretty rare to be confronted with sexualized images of men that suggest submissiveness or vulnerability, but those characteristics are very common in images of women).

Daniel_Newby 15y ago
"Constant sexualization and stereotyping in advertising and other media create social expectations that many people aren't comfortable with." Look, men get to use trillions of sperm cells, which means evolution has hard-wired their brains to be magnetically attracted to anything feminine. Advertising uses this not because it is "sexualized", but because men will buy toxic waste by the barrel if you draw nice titties on it. Women only get to use a dozen or so egg cells, and each one is very risky and resource intensive, which means evolution has hard-wired their brains to be an always-on filter for genetic quality in prospective mates. This is naturally uncomfortable, and has been since before their monkey girl ancestors came down out of the trees. "Yes, men are sexualized as well, but not to anywhere near the same degree, ..." Watch an advertiser sell SUVs to women: they have a big, hulking, strong look and are advertised as serving and protecting the kids. That is the masculine face of advertising. (The latest American Subaru ads have it both ways, showing the kids growing up in the vehicle, ending with a cute teenage girl getting out of a car with a ... what is that thing on the hood? ... oh yes, the air port for the turbocharger.)
- 15y ago

JohnLBevan 15y ago

I think the point of the argument is less about getting into fights, than it is about harassment; on the internet it doesn't really matter how big each person is (except where spam is concerned); so long as address info is private, even the most dedicated stalker's got his work cut out. The issue is this attribute is searchable; so a guy can list all of them women on G+, checking out their profile pictures, and possibly contacting them. A woman with an attractive profile picture could get a lot of unwanted messages / friend invites in this way, which would lead to feelings of harassment. Even the knowledge that people may be checking out their profile pics will be upsetting to some, despite there being no direct affect on the "victim". Admittedly, all this is also true the other way around, but typically in most human societies, men are more likely to stalk and women are more likely to be upset by the idea of being stalked. However, all of that is beside the point. The simple fact is that if this information is not required for G+ to function, it should be optional. You could argue that you have the option of not signing up, which is fair, but not very constructive. As G+ is competing against FB, and their stance is that they have better privacy, this is something which is in their interest to put right.

Vivtek 15y ago

I hesitate to enter this, but ... once upon a time, I flipped a guy off because he cut me off in post-football-game traffic. For the next half an hour, he pursued me relentlessly through red lights, down streets, etc. and every time we slowed, he jumped out and tried to run over. I was terrified. Turns out he was an off-duty cop and was trying to impress his girlfriend - but it took about three years for me to stop panicking when I saw a police car. OK, so I'm male and he was male, but let's assume that Google+ had one single thing on its profile that you had to fill out, and it was "Cop" vs. "Civilian". Do you think that I would feel comfortable broadcasting my non-cop status because Google hadn't thought about it? I'm sure a cop would be really offended. But think hard about this. And then take this kind of crap off Hacker News, man, because there are better venues for bleating that women shouldn't feel threatened by physical power and we all have better things to do with our time.

scott_s 15y ago

The difficulty is that the aberrations in a large group can have disproportionate impact on those outside of the group. So, men who abuse women may be the exception, but for those abused women, their perception and comfort with men may be permanently changed by those exceptions. Randall is not saying all men are the exceptions. Rather, he is saying recognize that those exceptions have had an enormous impact on some women's lives, including simple things like being uncomfortable publicly identifying their gender.

lhorie 15y ago

I think people are blowing things way out of proportion when they start talking about the sexual assault risk implication of a setting in an web app. Imho, what happens when gender is given undue relevance is what you see in a Youtube comments to a guy playing guitar vs comments to a girl playing guitar. On the former, the worst you get is guitar skill/technique bashing, on the latter, creepy lewd comments about your body. When you're in a social environment, giving prominence to irrelevant facts, no matter how true or harmless they are, that's just noise that detract from the experience.

jberryman 15y ago

> 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.

crux_ 15y ago

> Yes some people do that, but VERY few. 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.