The same logic is applied by extremist religious groups to "protect" women from lecherous men. Enter the burka or the nun's habit.
If you have a service where you publish your name, link people together into social networks, engage in video chat, post pictures, post status updates and converse with people, gender will become obvious very quickly, regardless of whether the male/female box is ticked.
Since you seem to believe that posting your gender online is analagous to walking around in downtown Bagdhad, and that women are incapable of conducting themselves in modern society, what other measures do you recommend we take?
Should my wife have to wear a Nixon mask while video-conferencing? Does she need to censor parts of photographs that would allow people to determine that she is a woman? Should she be not allowed to join groups or follow people of interest to other women?
Not at all. I just don't think that hiding gender is meaningful beyond making some people feel good. It's a false set of security -- gender and identity are linked.
It's a social networking application. Knowing what people put on social networking sites, my guess is that if you couldn't see someone's name/alias or gender, you could identify the gender of a user with a reasonable degree of confidence.
The predators (rapists, stalkers, etc) are highly attuned and skilled at identifying victims. If a woman (or man) is actually awware of a specific risk of a stalker getting info about them from a social networking site, she/he shouldn't have a public profile, period. Hiding gender in that case could create a dangerous, false sense of security.
"The predators (rapists, stalkers, etc) are highly attuned and skilled at identifying WILLING victims."
There, fixed that for you.
"Hiding gender in that case could create a dangerous, false sense of security."
It's even worse. Exploiters and stalkers build a relationship with a delusion. Maintaining ongoing contact using a mystery persona gives their imagination free rein, ungrounded by contact with reality, building up a fantasy relationship that does not exist. The solution is to use your real persona, and end all contact the moment you start getting creepy vibes.
If you have a service where you publish your name, link people together into social networks, engage in video chat, post pictures, post status updates and converse with people, gender will become obvious very quickly, regardless of whether the male/female box is ticked.
Since you seem to believe that posting your gender online is analagous to walking around in downtown Bagdhad, and that women are incapable of conducting themselves in modern society, what other measures do you recommend we take?
Should my wife have to wear a Nixon mask while video-conferencing? Does she need to censor parts of photographs that would allow people to determine that she is a woman? Should she be not allowed to join groups or follow people of interest to other women?