of course there are always a few exceptions, perhaps even including myself, but most of the women engineers I've known have been more than competent, becasue if they weren't, they would have gotten fed up years ago. (the best defense against sexist bastards is being good -- they have less to complain about):)
I haven't found this true with regards to computer work really. I'm not sure why - my IT department seems to have a lot of women, in management, in networking, database chicks, mainframe programmers, and regular old PC programmers. Myself, here and at other jobs, I have not felt like I had to be better than the guys.
In chemistry, where there were MANY more women, there were a lot of places where we DID have to be better than the guys to make it. One of my college profs had NEVER given a female an A - the year before I got him, he had given a B to a woman with a higher average then aseveral guys who got A's - claimed he had weighed the one test she did more poorly on than them more heavily. I knew darned well I had to get a higher grade than every male in the class on every test to get an A - so I did.
But I really haven't found nearly as much sexism in programming as there was in chemistry. I'm wondering if this is because geek guys tend to be less stereotypically jerky than the average guy or if it isn't even partly because computers are such a new field and therefore don't have enarly as much of an old boys network with attitudes inherited generation to generation.
Not that it's anywhere near perfect - sexism, and other ism's, definetly exist here as they do elsewhere. It just doesn't seem nearly as prevalent as elsewhere.
This just seems to me to be terribly reminiscent of the old madonna/whore split of women.
Why is being sexual and sexy contrary to being being bright, talented, and generally all-around good people?
Why would a woman have to be desperate to enjoy male (or female) attention? Why would it necessarily be degrading; couldn't she just enjoy it?
Why does being thoguht of as sexy exclude being seen as who you really are?
No one wants to see this greying, nearly middle-aged bod in latex - but I had no problem dressing slutty when I was younger and there was less of me - when in a safe place to do that. The positive attention was fun.
While we're discussing geekiness and sex, let's remember that back in the old days when only geeks knew about Usenet, one of the most popular early newsgroups was alt.sex.bondage - and yeah, there were chicks on there from the beginning.
I greatly respect your post and admire what you've made of your life. I relate tremendously as well.
The thing is... it seems to me that the vast majority of humans beings do not have the what-it-takes (whatever the hell that is) to really rise above their circumstances - if said rising is going to be REALLY hard.
I believe in the power of will and knowledge to enable us to change ourselves, to become whomever we want to be regardless of what the world throws at us. I believe in individual responsibility as the primary determinant of what my life is about. I don't believe this because it's what I think is really true, but because it's the set of beliefs I find most useful to getting what I want.
But one can't help but notice that the majority out there... it just doesn't work for them. I have 3 siblings - none of whom ever really recovered from the abuse we suffered as kids and 2 of whom have become much worse in their adulthoods than they were in adolescence.
I often wonder what really made me so different from them - so determined to rise above the crap. I used to think it was because my daughter inspired me - but 2 of my siblings have become parents and are completly screwed up. So I don't know...
Yes, an individual can become any damned thing they want to if they set their mind to it and work their ass off and just GO there. But for the vast majority of people, that doesn't appear to really be an option - they tend to go wherever life takes them...
We have all of these people here posting about how they don't want these gadgets - they want their 'puters. This is cause we're a bunch of geeks - of COURSE WE want 'puters. When did any of us ever have ENOUGH of 'puters?
As geeks, there is a MAJOR upside to this whole notion of getting the non-geeks of the world to give up their PCs...
Remember the Internet before September was permanent? Remember the old BBS communities? I remember when anyone I "met" online had a minimal IQ, because they had to figure out what to type at SOME prompt to even get online. I was a chemist back then and I do web programming now. I hand hold users who find completing a web form to be very confusing and difficult. I also find being online boring as hell most of the time - same damned thing as real life, the world mostly made of idjits.
And all of you know why - you have seen your offline friends and relatives get online over the past few years. You've experienced your prim-and-proper aunt forwarding you dirty jokes, your clueless friends sending you "virus warnings," your cousins forwarding jokes that were old before they even knew what a computer was, your mother being unable to open a simple jpeg file after MONTHS of you tech-supporting her in email and voice. And all of you know as well as I do that these people ought not own computers - these are people whom can't program their VCRs, whom find it confusing to remember how their calculators work, whom barely can handle getting the AM and PM straight on their digital clocks so their alarm doesn't go off druing dinner isntead of before breakfast. What the HELL do these people need a real computer for? So they can break it and call you to fix it on your day off?
Has any of you yet REALLY gotten used to the fact that there are e-commerce commercials on TV, that nearly every product in your kitchen has it's web address on it, that the WORLD has gotten online? Part of me wants to know who the hell TOLD them about it anyways, whose the traitor in our midst that let in all these idjits and marketing people? I didn't EVER, EVER need a web address on my soda or toilet paper; this has not improved my life.
So take these idjits and give 'em gadgets, NOT Windows-based crappy GUIs, but REALLY inuitive, easy-to-learn, foolproof gadgets. Let 'em get all over the net with them. Let gadgets be for email and web access and word processing and games and for doing basic math and all the various uses that non-geeks have for 'puters. (Yes, I know geeks do all that stuff too, but we'd have computers even if there were better ways of doing all of it - we LIKE computers).
And then write a protocol that won't run on ANY of the gadgets so that geeks can reclaim a corner of cyberspace for US, someplace they CAN'T go, someplace where you have to have the brains to figure out how to do something without a GUI before you can get in. We used to go online to find each other. Now online is full of idjits and we go to LUGs to meet. Does ANYONE see how ironic this is, that geeks have to have face-to-face meetings in order to socialize cause those IDJITS took over the online thang?
I WANT gadgets to replace PCs - I want those people off PCs as soon as possible - so we can build a corner that only works on PCs. If they have gadgets instead of computers, it'll be a lot easier to build some place they won't be capable of getting into.
Someone send me an invite when it's up and PLEASE don't tell them this time around!
This argument MAY apply to books - depending on how good the book is and at what level you really want to learn your stuff - cause if you want to be a real expert at anything, you're better off doing the research yoruself to really learn it.
Also, it depends on where a field is - 8 years ago the web was not only the best place, but pretty much the ONLY place to learn HTML, JAVA and JavaScript.
But it most certainly does NOT apply to an instructor teaching a course - whom cannot possibly speak as fast as I can read.
How can they say that the GUI's are hard to use? Sounds like it was written by someone who has never seen XFree86. It's almost as simple to use as Windows or MacOS.
Neither the Windows or MacOs are easy to use for the *average* person. When you sit through a training of folks who haven't used either of them, you remember how stupid the GUI's really are.
They seem easy once you've learned them, but they're not remotely intuitive for new users at all.
Which is ironic as hell when you think about it - the idjits CAN'T use them, and the non-idjits are forced to...
There is not necessarily a correlation between what the majority of net users are versus the majority of slashdot users versus the majority of flamers. These are separate, but overlapping populations. Unless you know that ALL net users are white males, you can't make assumptions about slashdot users or flamers based on the larger population they belong to.
Jon, how the fuck do you KNOW that slashdot posters consists primarily of technical white men?
You keep making this assumption about who the majority of the posters are here - and I don't see how the hell you know. You DON'T know, you're just assuming.
Your assumptions say more about yourself than about the flamers.
I find your assumption that flamers must be white males to be both sexist and racist, and terribly offensive.
Hrm. I'd debate that you or I qualify for the 'majority' part of that sentence -- if there's an elite, we're it.
I didn't mean "elite" in some conspiracy sense - the handful of folks running the world. I meant it more specifically for any particular situation - upper management at my place of employment consists of both males and females; but the average employee is not part of that group, regardless of gender.
Years ago, these various little elite groups as well as most of politically elite consisted nearly entirely of males. During the fight against institutionalized sexism, someone overgeneralized and decided that "males" were the enemy, apparently not noticing that while most of the elite were male, most of the males were not part of the elite.
I disagree that we have reached equality IRL, as those times I have spent talking about these issues with male friends have not led me to believe that what they deal with for being male in the world is similar to what I deal with in being female in the world. Yes, it's unfair in both directions, but that isn't the same as it being equally unfair.
I do think we have largely reached equality online and I think it's cool.
Let me clarify here: Jackie Patti is not a userid, it's my actual name. All the living male members of my family other than my stepfather, are named "Patti," whether you heard the name or not. It's sort of the Italian version of "Kelly" as a last name.
It may be a "part of the country" type thing, cause now that I think of it, I haven't heard "Jackie" used for males much elsewhere - but in Mass, it was very common for men to be nicknamed "Jackie."
The only other "Jackie" I know on Usenet is a male.
I find it amusing that you find my name feminine - I found it very unfeminine growing up and did my darndest to get people to call me Jacqueline for a few years. It STILL sounds like a male name to me.
But... my name is irrelevant, really. I happen to use my real name to post - here, on Usenet, on BBS's, everywhere. I have been using my real name since about 8 years ago when I decided to cease using handles (though sometimes I just use "Jackie" rather than the whole thing). But I could have just as easily registered on slashdot as JohnWayne as JackiePatti.
And regardless of my name or anything I've said, you sitll have no idea what gender I am unelss you actually know me real time anyways - you have only my word for it.
My POINT, which seems to have gotten lost in this discussion of my name... is that the net is the dumbest place of all to claim stuff like "this space is hostile to women" due to sexism or racism or heterocentrism (unless it's a SPECIFICALLY sexist or racist or homophobic place, if you're hanging on www.godhatesfags.com, obviously this is not gonna be gay supportive space).
Long time ago, this jerk logged onto a BBS I was on. Got in a big argument with me and a couple others - basically, he was nasty, arrogant, rude and pissed a bunch of us off and we gave him a hard time. He later claimed we were all discriminating against him cause of his race... which none of us knew until he told us! And then he didn't believe that several of those he was arguing with were of the same race, graduated to arguing against the BBS overall, insisting on statistics that did not exist cause no one asked...
I see the same crap in this "hostile to women" complaint - the net CAN BE hostile to ANYONE in spots. It's not *specifically* hostile to *women* unless you're talking alt.feminism or similar spots.
Flamewars, in most Usenet communities and communities like slashdot are not hostile to women... they're not even hostile in general, they're hostile sometimes, to some people - and gender hasn't got squat to do with it.
You *CAN* *NOT* be treating me any particular way due to gender or race or orientation on the net - as you don't know and you have no way of knowing.
...the new 786 processor IBM SP computer located in Bowie, Md.
Five times faster than the Cray C-90 it replaces, the new IBM can make 690 billion calculations per second. By September it will be speeded up to 2.5 trillion calculations per second... Yeah, it sounds sort c00l, but can it run Linux?;)
Hang on there -- your unwarranted assumption almost cracked my windshield there. "Dominating system," my left foot. Outside of the victim-cult world of academia and possibly the highest of high-tech, sex equality has been reached in the USA, although the situation might be different elsewhere.
I understand what you are saying here... but I'd express it differently. Men overall are NOT members of the dominanting system - and they never have been. Patriarchy was not about men as a group having power over women as a group, but about a handful of men having power over everyone else - including the majority of men.
The difference today is that the controlling group has female members. There is still a control of the majority by the minority - men look at that and blame women, women look at that and blame men.
The radical elements of "feminism" (which I put in quotes because they are NOT feminists as far as I'm concerned) don't want anyone to admit this - it's a lot easier to wage a war if you can identify the enemy. This is why you see this radical element in bed (figuratively) with the reactionary right on some issues (like pornography).
I understand a lot of men are really pissed off at being treated like the enemy for so long. I understand that they're tired of male-bashing jokes. I understand that they're tired of being treated like second-class human beings, and angry at a world that makes it PC to do so.
I understand that because I've talked with them. Not at them, not about them, not to them, but WITH them - and having done so, I "get" their point of view. Having had those conversations, I know enough to not make comments about how they're members of the dominating system - I know they are not the enemy.
If you have these types of conversations with women, about what their experience in the world as a woman is really like - you won't make silly comments like how women are equal now. Because I have a pile of experiences that you are unlikely to share... there are sexist jerks out there, just as there are racist jerks out there. If you're not experiencing the world as a woman, you're unlikely to know that. I could tell you stories for days... problems at school, difficulties at work, heck, just walking down the street and being harassed... literally thousands of experiences over the decades.
I do NOT happen to believe that means I should be treated as a victim, which is an insulting, patronizing and disempowering way to treat a woman (especially when it's another woman treating her that way). No, my world does happen to consist of some real jerkoff sexist pigs occasionally, and given that I am NOT a victim, I will deal with it. Sometimes, that means biting my tongue and putting up with it. Once it meant that the only way to get an "A" was to be better than every man in the course. Sometimes, it means the jerk will walk funny afterwards.;)
But... the point is, I am an adult person and will deal. That is not the same as saying there's nothing to deal with.
So... do me a favor, don't tell me how "equal" the world is for me, cause my experience suggests otherwise. In return, I will try to remember that all of you guys aren't sexist pigs and not to paint you all with the same brush - to remember that jerkhood is not a gender-specific trait.
And the other thing to remember is... there is no such thing as "men" and "women" as categories in the real world. What there is are individuals of each gender, none of whom fit any stereotypes precisely. It is by talking to each other, not assuming about each other, that we find out what we are like.
Actually, I feel similarly to what you're saying when I read Jon's article. By claiming that the net is a male environment, built by males and for males, I feel that myself and all of the women I have known on BBS's, Usenet, etc. are being dismissed. It's pretty similar to the default assumption that a geek has to be male.
I posted yesterday to say I'm a woman and don't feel flame wars, per se, are sexist. Today, I read a man telling me that women (as if *I* am chopped liver) don't like the flaming stuff.
It's really annoying to have my input dismissed like that - like it's OK to be a woman as long as I fit the stereotype someone has in their head, and if I don't, somehow I'm not really being honest or not a "real" woman. That I could LIKE the way BBS's used to be, some cool spots on Usenet still are, and slashdot is; that I could occasionally even enjoy participating in flame wars (because I'm perfectly capable of getting as annoyed as any man is); somehow means I'm not a "real" woman - you know, one of those ones we have to make the net "safe" for.
Those women piss me off - online or in the real world - going around being stupid and delicate and getting your feelings hurt so terribly easily perpetuates harmful stereotypes. And Jon's article perpetuates stereotypes also - in a particularly insulting, patronizing and victimizing manner.
In fact, if I were not answering from a state of being "meta" about flaming, I'd probably flame his ass good for being such a jerk to chicks.
Flames creating a "chilling effect" on people speaking online (esp women) was the point of an article last week on slashdot: Gender in the Internet Age
I hate the sort of thing in this stupid article. Women do not need to be coddled like this. Well, maybe some of them do, but any adult woman who wants to play rough should get some balls - not whine because the game is too harsh; there's other games out there.
There have been opinionated women posters on Usenet for years - most of the newsgroups I've used have a number of strong women posters - we stand up to flames as well as men do. My daughter has been on BBS's and IRC since age 11 (she's 16 now) and far as I can tell, she's survived flammage just fine.
I dunno - if you WANT "nicey-nice" posts all of the time, there are moderated areas that are just like that. Worrying over the notion that "The Internet is actively and agressively hostile to women" (quote from that article) is just crap - it CAN be hostile or it CAN be nicey-nice, really depends on what you want to do - and gender has NADA to do with it.
Further, no one here knew my gender until I start b*tching on one of these topics anyways in a previous thread... which means if I get flamed, I don't get to use the excuse that the flamer was being hostile to women; just as I can't claim, now, that anyone disagrees with me, or is polite to me, because of my race - I haven't told any of you what it is.
The net is a place that in and of itself allows you to escape ALL of that - you can't use sexism or racism or any of that as an excuse cause here no one knows unless you tell them!
I know a Usenet poster whose gender has been undetermined by the newsgroup sie posts in for YEARS. I have no idea what gender sie is, and don't think the majority of the other postsers do either (presumably the few that have met hir know...)
There's really plenty of nice, safe, moderated spaces on the net - there is no reason to inflict that on the rest of us who prefer arguing, b*tching, and sometimes flaming...
If you don't like spicy food, the thing to do is not eat it, not whine about the fact that the Mexican restraunt down the street discriminates against whatever-class-you-belong-to because they make their food too hot.
This is ridiculously unrealistic - flaming is NOTHING like road rage.
No matter what I say, or how nasty I get, you will not end up in the emergency room or morgue from reading it. If your feelings are hurt THAT badly, you can shut your damned computer off if nothing else.
Flaming is NOT violence; it's free speech. Sometimes it is stupid and incoherent speech, but it remains speech, not violence.
Seriously, this site is downright NICE the vast majority of the time. I have seen and participated in REAL flame wars, some of which went on for months, on Usenet. Nothing *public* on slashdot has ever gotten even remotely that bad.
For the record, I support anonymous posting - on Usenet and here. I even more strongly support pseduonymous posting, both on Usenet and here. I do not support the type of moderation where only approved posts are available at all - as on most web sites or on moderated newsgroups.
We can adjust our settings here, or our killfiles on newsgroups, to allow ourselves to see or not see as much as possible - which means we CAN check out what is being said by the less popular posters. For me, the fact that unpopular words are not deleted from the forum is what causes me to believe it is a forum and not just propoganda.
That people act like jerks in flamewars is not surprising to me; I've acted like a jerk myself under the heat of the flaming. But I feel strongly that politeness, while desirable, ought not be an imposed requirement in any discussion I find truly useful.
I'm very qualified to answer this question as I have not only gotten numerous people addicted to Discworld, but they have gone on to addict further people.;)
There's two books I tend to recommend to people first. One is "Eric" and the other is "Soul Music" - depends on if you prefer slapstick type of comedy (Eric is more like that than the rest of the books) or puns (Soul Music is the punniest of them all).
It doesn't matter which one you start with - you will have to get them all very rapidly once you start. I read one and ordered all the rest of the series the next day. I lent a friend 2 and he came back 3 days later and said lending him only 2 was cruel, Pratchett is like chips, and 2 is just not enough.
I don't think the criticism of Hotmail is fair, In response to complaints from me, they have cancelled several accounts. They have fought against spam pretty hard otherwise as well - do a search and read up on it to see.
No they don't have to compensate you. They can take land, buildings, vehicles or cash without compensating you.
All they have to do is claim, without any evidence, that they suspect the confiscated property was bought with illegal drug profits.
People have fought for YEARS before getting their property returned. Many other have not fought.
I hate to say it - but the "gun nuts" are right - this country has been eceoming more and more totalitarian in the past decade - to a truly frightening degree.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't found this true with regards to computer work really. I'm not sure why - my IT department seems to have a lot of women, in management, in networking, database chicks, mainframe programmers, and regular old PC programmers. Myself, here and at other jobs, I have not felt like I had to be better than the guys.
In chemistry, where there were MANY more women, there were a lot of places where we DID have to be better than the guys to make it. One of my college profs had NEVER given a female an A - the year before I got him, he had given a B to a woman with a higher average then aseveral guys who got A's - claimed he had weighed the one test she did more poorly on than them more heavily. I knew darned well I had to get a higher grade than every male in the class on every test to get an A - so I did.
But I really haven't found nearly as much sexism in programming as there was in chemistry. I'm wondering if this is because geek guys tend to be less stereotypically jerky than the average guy or if it isn't even partly because computers are such a new field and therefore don't have enarly as much of an old boys network with attitudes inherited generation to generation.
Not that it's anywhere near perfect - sexism, and other ism's, definetly exist here as they do elsewhere. It just doesn't seem nearly as prevalent as elsewhere.
I agree.
I think this is an important point - and it might explain something. I've seen much less sexism in computers than I saw when I was a chemist.
Why is being sexual and sexy contrary to being being bright, talented, and generally all-around good people?
Why would a woman have to be desperate to enjoy male (or female) attention? Why would it necessarily be degrading; couldn't she just enjoy it?
Why does being thoguht of as sexy exclude being seen as who you really are?
No one wants to see this greying, nearly middle-aged bod in latex - but I had no problem dressing slutty when I was younger and there was less of me - when in a safe place to do that. The positive attention was fun.
While we're discussing geekiness and sex, let's remember that back in the old days when only geeks knew about Usenet, one of the most popular early newsgroups was alt.sex.bondage - and yeah, there were chicks on there from the beginning.
The thing is... it seems to me that the vast majority of humans beings do not have the what-it-takes (whatever the hell that is) to really rise above their circumstances - if said rising is going to be REALLY hard.
I believe in the power of will and knowledge to enable us to change ourselves, to become whomever we want to be regardless of what the world throws at us. I believe in individual responsibility as the primary determinant of what my life is about. I don't believe this because it's what I think is really true, but because it's the set of beliefs I find most useful to getting what I want.
But one can't help but notice that the majority out there... it just doesn't work for them. I have 3 siblings - none of whom ever really recovered from the abuse we suffered as kids and 2 of whom have become much worse in their adulthoods than they were in adolescence.
I often wonder what really made me so different from them - so determined to rise above the crap. I used to think it was because my daughter inspired me - but 2 of my siblings have become parents and are completly screwed up. So I don't know...
Yes, an individual can become any damned thing they want to if they set their mind to it and work their ass off and just GO there. But for the vast majority of people, that doesn't appear to really be an option - they tend to go wherever life takes them...
As geeks, there is a MAJOR upside to this whole notion of getting the non-geeks of the world to give up their PCs...
Remember the Internet before September was permanent? Remember the old BBS communities? I remember when anyone I "met" online had a minimal IQ, because they had to figure out what to type at SOME prompt to even get online. I was a chemist back then and I do web programming now. I hand hold users who find completing a web form to be very confusing and difficult. I also find being online boring as hell most of the time - same damned thing as real life, the world mostly made of idjits.
And all of you know why - you have seen your offline friends and relatives get online over the past few years. You've experienced your prim-and-proper aunt forwarding you dirty jokes, your clueless friends sending you "virus warnings," your cousins forwarding jokes that were old before they even knew what a computer was, your mother being unable to open a simple jpeg file after MONTHS of you tech-supporting her in email and voice. And all of you know as well as I do that these people ought not own computers - these are people whom can't program their VCRs, whom find it confusing to remember how their calculators work, whom barely can handle getting the AM and PM straight on their digital clocks so their alarm doesn't go off druing dinner isntead of before breakfast. What the HELL do these people need a real computer for? So they can break it and call you to fix it on your day off?
Has any of you yet REALLY gotten used to the fact that there are e-commerce commercials on TV, that nearly every product in your kitchen has it's web address on it, that the WORLD has gotten online? Part of me wants to know who the hell TOLD them about it anyways, whose the traitor in our midst that let in all these idjits and marketing people? I didn't EVER, EVER need a web address on my soda or toilet paper; this has not improved my life.
So take these idjits and give 'em gadgets, NOT Windows-based crappy GUIs, but REALLY inuitive, easy-to-learn, foolproof gadgets. Let 'em get all over the net with them. Let gadgets be for email and web access and word processing and games and for doing basic math and all the various uses that non-geeks have for 'puters. (Yes, I know geeks do all that stuff too, but we'd have computers even if there were better ways of doing all of it - we LIKE computers).
And then write a protocol that won't run on ANY of the gadgets so that geeks can reclaim a corner of cyberspace for US, someplace they CAN'T go, someplace where you have to have the brains to figure out how to do something without a GUI before you can get in. We used to go online to find each other. Now online is full of idjits and we go to LUGs to meet. Does ANYONE see how ironic this is, that geeks have to have face-to-face meetings in order to socialize cause those IDJITS took over the online thang?
I WANT gadgets to replace PCs - I want those people off PCs as soon as possible - so we can build a corner that only works on PCs. If they have gadgets instead of computers, it'll be a lot easier to build some place they won't be capable of getting into.
Someone send me an invite when it's up and PLEASE don't tell them this time around!
This argument MAY apply to books - depending on how good the book is and at what level you really want to learn your stuff - cause if you want to be a real expert at anything, you're better off doing the research yoruself to really learn it.
Also, it depends on where a field is - 8 years ago the web was not only the best place, but pretty much the ONLY place to learn HTML, JAVA and JavaScript.
But it most certainly does NOT apply to an instructor teaching a course - whom cannot possibly speak as fast as I can read.
How can they say that the GUI's are hard to use? Sounds like it was written by someone who has never seen XFree86. It's almost as simple to use as Windows or MacOS.
Neither the Windows or MacOs are easy to use for the *average* person. When you sit through a training of folks who haven't used either of them, you remember how stupid the GUI's really are.
They seem easy once you've learned them, but they're not remotely intuitive for new users at all.
Which is ironic as hell when you think about it - the idjits CAN'T use them, and the non-idjits are forced to...
There is not necessarily a correlation between what the majority of net users are versus the majority of slashdot users versus the majority of flamers. These are separate, but overlapping populations. Unless you know that ALL net users are white males, you can't make assumptions about slashdot users or flamers based on the larger population they belong to.
You keep making this assumption about who the majority of the posters are here - and I don't see how the hell you know. You DON'T know, you're just assuming.
Your assumptions say more about yourself than about the flamers.
I find your assumption that flamers must be white males to be both sexist and racist, and terribly offensive.
I didn't mean "elite" in some conspiracy sense - the handful of folks running the world. I meant it more specifically for any particular situation - upper management at my place of employment consists of both males and females; but the average employee is not part of that group, regardless of gender.
Years ago, these various little elite groups as well as most of politically elite consisted nearly entirely of males. During the fight against institutionalized sexism, someone overgeneralized and decided that "males" were the enemy, apparently not noticing that while most of the elite were male, most of the males were not part of the elite.
I disagree that we have reached equality IRL, as those times I have spent talking about these issues with male friends have not led me to believe that what they deal with for being male in the world is similar to what I deal with in being female in the world. Yes, it's unfair in both directions, but that isn't the same as it being equally unfair.
I do think we have largely reached equality online and I think it's cool.
It may be a "part of the country" type thing, cause now that I think of it, I haven't heard "Jackie" used for males much elsewhere - but in Mass, it was very common for men to be nicknamed "Jackie."
The only other "Jackie" I know on Usenet is a male.
I find it amusing that you find my name feminine - I found it very unfeminine growing up and did my darndest to get people to call me Jacqueline for a few years. It STILL sounds like a male name to me.
But... my name is irrelevant, really. I happen to use my real name to post - here, on Usenet, on BBS's, everywhere. I have been using my real name since about 8 years ago when I decided to cease using handles (though sometimes I just use "Jackie" rather than the whole thing). But I could have just as easily registered on slashdot as JohnWayne as JackiePatti.
And regardless of my name or anything I've said, you sitll have no idea what gender I am unelss you actually know me real time anyways - you have only my word for it.
My POINT, which seems to have gotten lost in this discussion of my name... is that the net is the dumbest place of all to claim stuff like "this space is hostile to women" due to sexism or racism or heterocentrism (unless it's a SPECIFICALLY sexist or racist or homophobic place, if you're hanging on www.godhatesfags.com, obviously this is not gonna be gay supportive space).
Long time ago, this jerk logged onto a BBS I was on. Got in a big argument with me and a couple others - basically, he was nasty, arrogant, rude and pissed a bunch of us off and we gave him a hard time. He later claimed we were all discriminating against him cause of his race... which none of us knew until he told us! And then he didn't believe that several of those he was arguing with were of the same race, graduated to arguing against the BBS overall, insisting on statistics that did not exist cause no one asked...
I see the same crap in this "hostile to women" complaint - the net CAN BE hostile to ANYONE in spots. It's not *specifically* hostile to *women* unless you're talking alt.feminism or similar spots.
Flamewars, in most Usenet communities and communities like slashdot are not hostile to women... they're not even hostile in general, they're hostile sometimes, to some people - and gender hasn't got squat to do with it.
You *CAN* *NOT* be treating me any particular way due to gender or race or orientation on the net - as you don't know and you have no way of knowing.
Five times faster than the Cray C-90 it replaces, the new IBM can make 690 billion calculations per second. By September it will be speeded up to 2.5 trillion calculations per second... Yeah, it sounds sort c00l, but can it run Linux? ;)
I understand what you are saying here... but I'd express it differently. Men overall are NOT members of the dominanting system - and they never have been. Patriarchy was not about men as a group having power over women as a group, but about a handful of men having power over everyone else - including the majority of men.
The difference today is that the controlling group has female members. There is still a control of the majority by the minority - men look at that and blame women, women look at that and blame men.
The radical elements of "feminism" (which I put in quotes because they are NOT feminists as far as I'm concerned) don't want anyone to admit this - it's a lot easier to wage a war if you can identify the enemy. This is why you see this radical element in bed (figuratively) with the reactionary right on some issues (like pornography).
I understand a lot of men are really pissed off at being treated like the enemy for so long. I understand that they're tired of male-bashing jokes. I understand that they're tired of being treated like second-class human beings, and angry at a world that makes it PC to do so.
I understand that because I've talked with them. Not at them, not about them, not to them, but WITH them - and having done so, I "get" their point of view. Having had those conversations, I know enough to not make comments about how they're members of the dominating system - I know they are not the enemy.
If you have these types of conversations with women, about what their experience in the world as a woman is really like - you won't make silly comments like how women are equal now. Because I have a pile of experiences that you are unlikely to share... there are sexist jerks out there, just as there are racist jerks out there. If you're not experiencing the world as a woman, you're unlikely to know that. I could tell you stories for days... problems at school, difficulties at work, heck, just walking down the street and being harassed... literally thousands of experiences over the decades.
I do NOT happen to believe that means I should be treated as a victim, which is an insulting, patronizing and disempowering way to treat a woman (especially when it's another woman treating her that way). No, my world does happen to consist of some real jerkoff sexist pigs occasionally, and given that I am NOT a victim, I will deal with it. Sometimes, that means biting my tongue and putting up with it. Once it meant that the only way to get an "A" was to be better than every man in the course. Sometimes, it means the jerk will walk funny afterwards. ;)
But... the point is, I am an adult person and will deal. That is not the same as saying there's nothing to deal with.
So... do me a favor, don't tell me how "equal" the world is for me, cause my experience suggests otherwise. In return, I will try to remember that all of you guys aren't sexist pigs and not to paint you all with the same brush - to remember that jerkhood is not a gender-specific trait.
And the other thing to remember is... there is no such thing as "men" and "women" as categories in the real world. What there is are individuals of each gender, none of whom fit any stereotypes precisely. It is by talking to each other, not assuming about each other, that we find out what we are like.
I posted yesterday to say I'm a woman and don't feel flame wars, per se, are sexist. Today, I read a man telling me that women (as if *I* am chopped liver) don't like the flaming stuff.
It's really annoying to have my input dismissed like that - like it's OK to be a woman as long as I fit the stereotype someone has in their head, and if I don't, somehow I'm not really being honest or not a "real" woman. That I could LIKE the way BBS's used to be, some cool spots on Usenet still are, and slashdot is; that I could occasionally even enjoy participating in flame wars (because I'm perfectly capable of getting as annoyed as any man is); somehow means I'm not a "real" woman - you know, one of those ones we have to make the net "safe" for.
Those women piss me off - online or in the real world - going around being stupid and delicate and getting your feelings hurt so terribly easily perpetuates harmful stereotypes. And Jon's article perpetuates stereotypes also - in a particularly insulting, patronizing and victimizing manner.
In fact, if I were not answering from a state of being "meta" about flaming, I'd probably flame his ass good for being such a jerk to chicks.
I've known more men than women named Jackie in my life. It's a fairly ambiguous name.
I have a horrible image in my head of a dancing fork in my microwave... the image resembles a certain paperclip. Nightmarish.
I hate the sort of thing in this stupid article. Women do not need to be coddled like this. Well, maybe some of them do, but any adult woman who wants to play rough should get some balls - not whine because the game is too harsh; there's other games out there.
There have been opinionated women posters on Usenet for years - most of the newsgroups I've used have a number of strong women posters - we stand up to flames as well as men do. My daughter has been on BBS's and IRC since age 11 (she's 16 now) and far as I can tell, she's survived flammage just fine.
I dunno - if you WANT "nicey-nice" posts all of the time, there are moderated areas that are just like that. Worrying over the notion that "The Internet is actively and agressively hostile to women" (quote from that article) is just crap - it CAN be hostile or it CAN be nicey-nice, really depends on what you want to do - and gender has NADA to do with it.
Further, no one here knew my gender until I start b*tching on one of these topics anyways in a previous thread... which means if I get flamed, I don't get to use the excuse that the flamer was being hostile to women; just as I can't claim, now, that anyone disagrees with me, or is polite to me, because of my race - I haven't told any of you what it is.
The net is a place that in and of itself allows you to escape ALL of that - you can't use sexism or racism or any of that as an excuse cause here no one knows unless you tell them!
I know a Usenet poster whose gender has been undetermined by the newsgroup sie posts in for YEARS. I have no idea what gender sie is, and don't think the majority of the other postsers do either (presumably the few that have met hir know...)
There's really plenty of nice, safe, moderated spaces on the net - there is no reason to inflict that on the rest of us who prefer arguing, b*tching, and sometimes flaming...
If you don't like spicy food, the thing to do is not eat it, not whine about the fact that the Mexican restraunt down the street discriminates against whatever-class-you-belong-to because they make their food too hot.
No matter what I say, or how nasty I get, you will not end up in the emergency room or morgue from reading it. If your feelings are hurt THAT badly, you can shut your damned computer off if nothing else.
Flaming is NOT violence; it's free speech. Sometimes it is stupid and incoherent speech, but it remains speech, not violence.
:)
Seriously, this site is downright NICE the vast majority of the time. I have seen and participated in REAL flame wars, some of which went on for months, on Usenet. Nothing *public* on slashdot has ever gotten even remotely that bad.
For the record, I support anonymous posting - on Usenet and here. I even more strongly support pseduonymous posting, both on Usenet and here. I do not support the type of moderation where only approved posts are available at all - as on most web sites or on moderated newsgroups.
We can adjust our settings here, or our killfiles on newsgroups, to allow ourselves to see or not see as much as possible - which means we CAN check out what is being said by the less popular posters. For me, the fact that unpopular words are not deleted from the forum is what causes me to believe it is a forum and not just propoganda.
That people act like jerks in flamewars is not surprising to me; I've acted like a jerk myself under the heat of the flaming. But I feel strongly that politeness, while desirable, ought not be an imposed requirement in any discussion I find truly useful.
You can't say anything about what "women" want, only about what a particular woman wants.
There's two books I tend to recommend to people first. One is "Eric" and the other is "Soul Music" - depends on if you prefer slapstick type of comedy (Eric is more like that than the rest of the books) or puns (Soul Music is the punniest of them all).
It doesn't matter which one you start with - you will have to get them all very rapidly once you start. I read one and ordered all the rest of the series the next day. I lent a friend 2 and he came back 3 days later and said lending him only 2 was cruel, Pratchett is like chips, and 2 is just not enough.
I don't think the criticism of Hotmail is fair, In response to complaints from me, they have cancelled several accounts. They have fought against spam pretty hard otherwise as well - do a search and read up on it to see.
Except in those cases when they are NOT men.
--
Jackie
Geek-bitch-from-hell
All they have to do is claim, without any evidence, that they suspect the confiscated property was bought with illegal drug profits.
People have fought for YEARS before getting their property returned. Many other have not fought.
I hate to say it - but the "gun nuts" are right - this country has been eceoming more and more totalitarian in the past decade - to a truly frightening degree.