I am a CMU student, and the School of Computer Science has made an effort to admit more female CS students (beginning last year). The result is a lot of unqualified female CS students. My roommate's girlfriend is one.
Many of them know nothing about computers--there is a new intro course that teaches the most basic of basics (things that no other respectable CS school would find necessary to teach). It's only open to CS students, and the class is filled almost entirely with female students.
and the problem with this is what, exactly? yeah, man, how dare they start learning a new discipline and need an introductory course. when i came to college, i barely knew how to turn a computer on and off, then took an intro course which got me interested in how things work (oh yeah, and i'm a woman). now i'm a junior in comp sci, holding two techie jobs at school, my lowest comp sci grade is a B and i only have 2 of those.
now tell me again how i suck at comp sci just because i started late?
am i the only one who's reminded of that one dilbert strip (darn, wish i had it before me)? where the guy is sitting there and thinking, "why do i continue to work here? i work ungodly hours, am underpaid, the boss is a moron....i know! it must be because i _love_ this job!"
At this point in time, I feel that the general public is highly unfit to receive the arrival of such a portentous computer system at neither financial nor psychological levels.
man, forget hackers. what pains me is the thought that, once these become widely available to the public, the vast majority of the lusers will use them to run exclusively word and solitaire.
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 hate to disappoint you, but there's no such thing as more equality or less equality. you either have it or you don't. for that reason, you can't say equality "has been reached outside of" whatever. it has to be reached everywhere. last i heard, women were still making $.70 to a man's $1.
i didn't say such behavior causes women to be threatened (although some might be)--i did say it makes me, for instance, feel, as if people were trying to exclude me, as a woman. here are a couple of reasons why you might not feel the same way if the situation were "reversed", as you say:
1. you would still be a man--part of the dominating system. such a comment does not upset your status quo in any way. with women, such comments emphasize the status quo.
2. you wouldn't necessarily associate yourself with brad pitt. generally, when misogynist jerks post their crap, they (consciously or unconsciously) pick one image of a woman to represent all women. and even if they didn't do it, consider that: a) they're doing it in a mostly male, and, more importantly, mostly pro-male environment and b) generally, when one member of a minority is threatened, it threatens the entire minority (ever considered why hate crimes are different from other crimes?). so, the effect is still the same.
i've just recently started reading slashdot (i've been told to read it by both a man and a woman), and it took me, oh, i don't know, 10 minutes to notice that the vast majority of posts seems to come from men. from men who are pretty positive that they are if not the only ones on the planet, then the only ones who read slashdot and post accordingly. i saw an old article--a "dating guide" for geeks--that was in the funny section that was totally sexist not only in its presuming that all geeks were male, but also made a bunch of other sexist comments and assumption. i might get blasted as a rabid feminist with no sense of humor, but i assure you, when humor is part of a culture that is often hostile to anyone not white, male, straight, etc., it's hard to find it funny.
in other words, many people here might think that they're not contributing to biases just because they're not posting _complete_ sexist crap, but acting as if men are the only ones around here adds up to some pretty strong sexism--consciously or unconsciously, it renders women invisible.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a CMU student, and the School of Computer Science has made an effort to admit more female CS students (beginning last year). The result is a lot of unqualified female CS students. My roommate's girlfriend is one.
Many of them know nothing about computers--there is a new intro course that teaches the most basic of basics (things that no other respectable CS school would find necessary to teach). It's only open to CS students, and the class is filled almost entirely with female students.
and the problem with this is what, exactly? yeah, man, how dare they start learning a new discipline and need an introductory course. when i came to college, i barely knew how to turn a computer on and off, then took an intro course which got me interested in how things work (oh yeah, and i'm a woman). now i'm a junior in comp sci, holding two techie jobs at school, my lowest comp sci grade is a B and i only have 2 of those.
now tell me again how i suck at comp sci just because i started late?
am i the only one who's reminded of that one dilbert strip (darn, wish i had it before me)? where the guy is sitting there and thinking, "why do i continue to work here? i work ungodly hours, am underpaid, the boss is a moron....i know! it must be because i _love_ this job!"
At this point in time, I feel that the general public is highly unfit to receive the arrival of such a portentous computer system at neither financial nor psychological levels.
man, forget hackers. what pains me is the thought that, once these become widely available to the public, the vast majority of the lusers will use them to run exclusively word and solitaire.
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 hate to disappoint you, but there's no such thing as more equality or less equality. you either have it or you don't. for that reason, you can't say equality "has been reached outside of" whatever. it has to be reached everywhere. last i heard, women were still making $.70 to a man's $1.
i didn't say such behavior causes women to be threatened (although some might be)--i did say it makes me, for instance, feel, as if people were trying to exclude me, as a woman. here are a couple of reasons why you might not feel the same way if the situation were "reversed", as you say:
1. you would still be a man--part of the dominating system. such a comment does not upset your status quo in any way. with women, such comments emphasize the status quo.
2. you wouldn't necessarily associate yourself with brad pitt. generally, when misogynist jerks post their crap, they (consciously or unconsciously) pick one image of a woman to represent all women. and even if they didn't do it, consider that: a) they're doing it in a mostly male, and, more importantly, mostly pro-male environment and b) generally, when one member of a minority is threatened, it threatens the entire minority (ever considered why hate crimes are different from other crimes?). so, the effect is still the same.
i've just recently started reading slashdot (i've been told to read it by both a man and a woman), and it took me, oh, i don't know, 10 minutes to notice that the vast majority of posts seems to come from men. from men who are pretty positive that they are if not the only ones on the planet, then the only ones who read slashdot and post accordingly. i saw an old article--a "dating guide" for geeks--that was in the funny section that was totally sexist not only in its presuming that all geeks were male, but also made a bunch of other sexist comments and assumption. i might get blasted as a rabid feminist with no sense of humor, but i assure you, when humor is part of a culture that is often hostile to anyone not white, male, straight, etc., it's hard to find it funny.
in other words, many people here might think that they're not contributing to biases just because they're not posting _complete_ sexist crap, but acting as if men are the only ones around here adds up to some pretty strong sexism--consciously or unconsciously, it renders women invisible.