I don't get this trend at all. Something is wrong with priorities and perceived risk vs. real risk.
It's pretty difficult to assault someone physically over the internet (http://bash.org/?4281). On the other hand, woman broadcasts her gender when in public. Will x years from now we all be walking in some kind of uniform enclosures as to protect from anyone knowing if one is male or female?
Also, in some languages name is very clear indication of the gender. And even some ambiguous nickname won't help, because in some languages you usage of verbs, adjectives etc. differs depending on gender.
Recently I saw a story about some kindergarden in Sweden where kids were not allowed to say "he" or "she" when talking about person but rather had to use something equivalent to "it" (I don't think English has equivalent to that, Russian language has "оно" for neuter nouns).
To me it looks extremely stupid. But I guess it is easier just to ignore our differences than teach to cherish them and respect the other side.
It has nothing to do with assault over the internet and everything to do with the way others perceive you. I would love to imagine I live in a world where it doesn't matter what chromosomes and sex organs you were born with, and really, I have kind of found that in the Cocoa developer community. That is why I enjoy talking to those people.
But just /join an IRC channel with a female nickname. Play online games and talk with a female voice. Someone somewhere is going to make some kind of fuss over it and it is incredibly annoying. I like to do things like raid in WoW...and most raids want people to join ventrilo/mumble voice chat. I never talk unless a friend is in there with me or unless I hear another female voice. Period. I do not want to hear "IT'S A GIRL (or prepubescent boy)!! /whisper Can I see your tits?".
So I may not care about hiding my gender on my google+ profile because it's mostly just a bunch of people that know me already some other way in circles, but there are definitely places where even my thick skinned attitude towards "tits or gtfo" can't help and I don't want anyone to know what I might be. I understand some people may think that about google+ and fully respect and support their desire for such a feature.
I can't say I know the best way to deal with this problem, but I don't think it has as much to do with ignoring differences as much as it is not infusing our own gender biases into the way children think and learn about how to interact with each other. In a way, ambiguity can foster a sense of respect (or at least, caution).
There is no other reason for me to be running around with gender ambiguous usernames on websites, IRC, chat, and more where I am interacting with people I don't know.
As a random suggestion for the WOW raids, might it be possible to use software to distort your voice so that it sounds male (or at least androgynous)? Come to think of it, even males might want to do that so they can have, like, a really deep voice that sounds like the big heavy warrior character they're playing, or maybe an old gravelly voice if they're playing a wizard--or a female voice if their character is female, for that matter.
I've considered it! I used to play with someone that liked doing that to poke fun at someone else who had one of the deepest voices I had ever heard, too.
I think the problem would lie in that the distortions might make it harder to understand someone. The primary goal of talking is to draw attention to a problem or strategy, not to make it harder to understand someone. Hard enough time doing that with accents and varied dialects and fluency of English :(
Usually when I am in a situation where I don't want to talk, I just say that I'm listening but I don't have a mic. It's usually not a problem because I type fast enough that I can yell in text without needing to pause playing my character.
As an experiment, I spent nearly two years in a community of people my age (16-25, mostly 18-20) of all genders, advertising myself as a girl and communicating in a relatively gender-neutral way. I marked my gender as "Other" and only claimed to be a girl when queried directly, with the response "I'm a girl."
My experience was that girls seek the camaraderie of other girls online, and tend to be more aggressive about privately establishing lines of communication outside chat rooms, but otherwise there's very little difference in the way that people act towards people that they suspect to be girls online. Notably, there were just as many sexual or suggestive advances from women as there were from men.
The punchline, of course, is convincing people that "MostAwesomeDude" is a girl, but that's not exactly magic.
I have had that experience in some communities. I have not in others. Like I said, the Cocoa developer community? I have a hard time thinking of the last time I had a problem with someone. Online gaming? It happens half the time I open my mouth to talk. Sometimes it's just honest surprise, like a guy I know that was shocked the person he talked to occasionally over text and had respect for being pretty good at what I played was female the whole time. Most times it's just someone being an idiot. Usually the latter seems to be because there is some kind of anonymity involved (see also: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/). It's one thing to be `YouJustGotOwned` in a game or `foobar` on irc, it's another to be talking from a twitter account that is associated with your name, company and professional reputation, for example.
> Notably, there were just as many sexual or suggestive advances from women as there were from men.
Well, two things:
1. I never claimed women weren't capable of doing that. I have participated in female-majority communities where the men were hit on and treated badly, and I didn't like it. Everyone needs to treat others with respect as much as possible.
2. A big part in whether or not that is acceptable behavior from anybody is if the other person is/people are okay with it. I feel okay flirting and hitting on others when I know the interest is mutual, and I don't feel bad doing it. I can be as sexually suggestive and crude as I want in front of friends and people I know. What is distasteful is doing this to someone that doesn't want any part of it. What is also distasteful is misreading someone's behavior as implicit permission to do things like hit on them.
> otherwise there's very little difference in the way that people act towards people that they suspect to be girls online
I like to subscribe to the theory that the vast majority of people are somewhat reasonable. Most of the time there isn't a difference and that is where I'm perfectly fine being open about who/what I am. It's definitely a small minority (and partially due to selection bias) that can cause headaches though, and they're not always obvious or in public. That doesn't mean they don't exist.
* When you're a women on a forum/chat/irc/etc, you are pretty much guaranteed to get a deluge of messages/comments/etc from guys, especially socially awkward guys that would never think of attempting such a thing in person.
* It's easy for people to develop obsessions at a distance that are based on no actual reality before ever meeting someone in person. See celebrity stalkers for examples. Most of these cases are people that have never actually met the celebrity in question, but are in full out crazy mode by the time that they enter physical proximity to the celebrity.
* There's a difference between inferring gender, and broadcasting it. From the article this is portrayed as the difference between saying, "Hi, I'm Randall," and "Hi, I'm Randall and I'm a man." While both of these statements may seem logically equivalent (since you could deduce gender from the name), they are not equivalent in human interactions.
Black people broadcast their skin color when in public. In some languages, name is very clear indication of race. Therefore, let's add a drop-down to your profile so you MUST choose from one of the following: White, Black, Other.
> kids were not allowed to say "he" or "she" when talking about person but rather had to use [a gender-neutral pronoun]
At first, that struck me as excessive, too, but on the other hand, I can't help but wonder how much of an effect language has on the way people think, and gender-specific pronouns are something that really reinforces the concept of "other".
There's no logical reason for encoding gender into the grammar of a language, particularly as opposed to some other construct that would be better at distinguishing between multiple subjects in the same passage.
Of course, I wouldn't go to the extent of forcing children to use non-standard language, but I can't disagree with the idea that we'd be better off switching to gender-neutral pronouns.
Lets propose that you have a child, and in your wisdom, decide that letting your child roam on the streets is low risk and thus ok.
Do you then proclaim to everyone that they must let their children roam alone on the streets as the real risk is low?
What is important is people have a choice to act on their perceived risks. In your example, the ability to wear clothes to hide their gender is their choice, it is not imposed on them.
In this case, they do not have a choice that is sufficiently suitable.
It wasn't 'it'. It was hen, which comes from a mix of hon (her) and han (him), often used in litterature and online to avoid assumption about gender online. It has a very different meaning from it, since it obviously refers to a person of either gender. :)
I'd say that it's all ABOUT cherishing the differences.
Whether people like to or not, they force a whole bunch of assumptions and expectations on children about gender, and I don't think it's much of a stretch to think or notice that they pick up on it.
These people just try to decide and control what notions and expectations about gender and identity they give.
As an example, they had the 'boy' toys with the 'girls' toys to try and remove the notion that such things existed, to avoid that those children both don't have normal gender-identities but who wants to follow the expectations of adults and authorities would feel comfortable, and ideally not even think of feeling uncomfortable, with their choices or preferences.
They didn't force the children to play with all the toys if they didn't want to, they just tried to remove barriers created by society to allow them to be different or themselves, if that ended up being a stereotypical pink-princesses loving girl, or a boy who loves soldiers and trucks: that's perfectly fine.
But not EVERY child are these. I at least believe we should try to let those who aren't be what they are, just as we should allow those who are to be what they are.
[edit] added a smiley so it would come off as less aggressive. [/edit]
> I don't get this trend at all. Something is wrong with
> priorities and perceived risk vs. real risk. It's pretty
> difficult to assault someone physically over the internet
> (http://bash.org/?4281). On the other hand, woman
> broadcasts her gender when in public. Will x years from
> now we all be walking in some kind of uniform enclosures
> as to protect from anyone knowing if one is male or female?
It's not that easy... Are you for instance aware that many would argue there are more than two genders? And they may use not only social but also biological arguments?
Also supposedly we as humans use technology to improve our quality of life and to sometimes tame what we don't like about the current rules nature has us living in. Why shouldn't we build technology so that one can chose to not broadcast gender information? I mean, it's not as difficult as the uniform enclosures, and for example we do build dams should someone believe changing the course of a river is for the good of a bunch of people.
To answer to your own analogy with one of my own, if we could make an Android app that makes everybody on the street ignore our gender when interacting with us publicly, would it be wrong to use it if I wanted to?
> Also, in some languages name is very clear indication of
> the gender. And even some ambiguous nickname won't help,
> because in some languages you usage of verbs, adjectives
> etc. differs depending on gender.
Modern language is also somewhat a technological creation, we do study and shape language in a daily basis... and yes, it's currently sexist. That doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss and act in ways between our reach to make our social networks less sexist.
> Recently I saw a story about some kindergarden in Sweden
> where kids were not allowed to say "he" or "she" when
> talking about person but rather had to use something
> equivalent to "it" (I don't think English has equivalent
> to that, Russian language has "оно" for neuter nouns). To
> me it looks extremely stupid. But I guess it is easier just
> to ignore our differences than teach to cherish them and
> respect the other side.
One could discuss for years about to what extent those differences and sides are themselves social constructs that are today imprinted on our language... but I myself believe it would be difficult to any of us to sum it up as cleanly and insightfully as Hofstadter has already done in http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html (which reading I recommend, and has already been discussed here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1421022)
Also, in some languages name is very clear indication of the gender. And even some ambiguous nickname won't help, because in some languages you usage of verbs, adjectives etc. differs depending on gender.
Recently I saw a story about some kindergarden in Sweden where kids were not allowed to say "he" or "she" when talking about person but rather had to use something equivalent to "it" (I don't think English has equivalent to that, Russian language has "оно" for neuter nouns). To me it looks extremely stupid. But I guess it is easier just to ignore our differences than teach to cherish them and respect the other side.