googleplus | I was gently nudged to repost here, i.e. pls someone else organize this.

quote from LJ post:

I am sick and tired of being told that in order to participate in the internet I have to tell you my full name and gender. I am tired of being told there's nothing wrong with this by people who obviously are not women and/or a minority on the internet. It's impressive that a company like google can operate in willful ignorance of basic internet history. One of the reasons the internet really caught on was that it ,it let scared, afraid and lonely people connect with other scared, afraid and lonely people with similar problems. One of the reasons these people were/are scared is that simply being themselves puts their lives/jobs/safety at risk.

Forcing me to be female on the internet, no matter what I'm doing, is just an open invitation for harassment as soon as I dare to be controversial in the wrong male forum. In this case controversial means having a mildly different opinion than the majority. Imagine if I were to do something radical like talk about my disability, psychological problems and sexuality in an atmosphere that does not care to protect me in any way.

Apparently this is a concept google has not strained itself to understand.

I would love if someone could write up, with links, a clear and concise message to google that I and others would be more than happy to send to google as feedback of their new social site. Because don't get me wrong, I quite like it, even if I'm annoyed that google is being complimented with the "revolutionary" idea of filtering and circles (which seems pretty counter to their thoughts on private profiles, etc), but their disregard for the privacy and safety of a potentially large portion of their customers basically makes them Facbook 2.0 and there's a reason I don't use Facebook.