Except that's not the flow they gave her. The flow she got was "surprise, you're linked!"

I have since linked it to a dead-end G+ page. However, I wasn't given the option to do so initially -- I was confronted with my name and photo appearing on a comment that I'd been leaving under my YT identity (which is deliberately blank, doesn't identify gender, etc.)

The fact that it's possible to get around this idiotic move doesn't mean that it should have been made in the first place.

Thank you for the suggestion -- it certainly would have worked out much better if that had been the procedure that I was initially presented with, rather than clicking a number of times to refuse the link (on multiple occasions, spanning weeks), and then having the link forced without my permission, and with no opt-out option visible.

So the new and improved system is that you can have your youtube account linked up to a G+ thingie you never asked for and have no intention of using, instead of linking up to the G+ account you never asked for and have no intention using, but which is connected to your real name.

Yeah. I can see how that is an incremental improvement, but it still has a long way to go over what all users are asking: Do nothing. No linkage. Leave our accounts alone.