Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!samsung!uunet!ora!ambar
From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: sexist space
Message-ID: <1991Mar7.181157.11340@cbnewsj.att.com>
Date: 8 Mar 91 14:08:11 GMT
References: <1991Mar4.150345.7223@midway.uchicago.edu>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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Approved: ambar@ora.com

In article <1991Mar4.150345.7223@midway.uchicago.edu> erm2@midway.uchicago.EDU (elizabeth r morgan) writes:
> I was in the all-female class, and it was shocking. For the first six
> weeks to two months, the classroom sounded like a graveyard. No hands
> were raised, no suggestions were offered, participation occurred only
> when the teacher called on someone by name. Then, around the end of
> October, everyone woke up, realized there were no men around, and
> began to participate. [...]

> In February, the men's teacher left the school for medical reasons,
> and the classes were recombined. Two weeks after the recombination,
> all the women had shut up again.

I fail to see how this proves that single-sex (all-female)
environments help women to cope with the real world.  If anything, it
disproves it--in spite of learning to participate more in class, as
soon as these women went back to a sexually integrated class, they
stopped participating.  Far better to learn how to deal with the real
world than an artificially restricted one.

Evelyn C. Leeper  |  +1 908 957 2070  |  att!mtgzy!ecl or  ecl@mtgzy.att.com
--
"Why can't they have gay people in the army?  Personally, I think they are
just afraid of a thousand gay guys with M16s going, "Who'd you call a faggot?"
                                           --John Stewart