Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ora!ambar
From: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us (Doug Philips)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: sexist space
Message-ID: <9103100912.0.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 13 Mar 91 11:28:35 GMT
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: O'Reilly and Associates Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 25
Approved: ambar@ora.com

In article <1991Mar7.181157.11340@cbnewsj.att.com>,
	ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper) writes:
> 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.

Sigh.  Come on, how can you reasonably expect that two months (or so)
of practice at participation and assertiveness is equal to the near
life time experience of males?  Indeed far better to deal with the
real world?  Tell me, do two months of karate training enable you to
deal with the real world?  And is that training most effective only
when against the best (gee, why aren't hardened criminals commisioned
to teach karate?)?

Best to use an artificially restricted world to illuminate the
problems with the real world and to help those working against unfair
advantage.  Of course, you'd have to really give the alternative
system a chance to work?  How better to undermine the whole idea than
by depriving it of the necessary resources then claiming the concept
failed?

-Doug