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From: flaps@dgp.toronto.EDU (Alan J Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Viewing Gifs
Message-ID: <91Jun13.112531edt.619@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Date: 13 Jun 91 20:20:41 GMT
References: <1991Jun11.155757.17816@aero.org>
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mjm@ahimsa.intel.com (Marjorie Panditji) writes:
>Does anyone know why people display these pictures at the office?

I can speak to this as a man who has been approached by men attempting
to share pictures.  I think that it's mostly "male bonding"..  Women
are supposed to be disgusted at these pictures and men are supposed to
leer cooperatively.  Men point them out to other men and nudge them
and try to get the other men to leer, thus mutually re-affirming their
manliness and non-homosexuality.

>men may do it to intimidate women (perhaps to claim their personal
>territory?)

There is certainly also something to this.  Ed Falk's posting about
the locations of posted pictures was interesting.  A small group of
engineers I know used to contain one (1) woman.  When she moved on to
another job, the pictures went up.  It looked as if the remaining
people wanted to guard against the future hiring of more women, but I
don't know the real motive.

>and women may do it as "revenge" or to show men how it feels to be
>displayed

Men may orchestrate women's displaying of pictures of men too.  One of
the gimmicks of a completely awful and right-wing Toronto newspaper is
to display a colour photograph of a scantily-dressed woman each day on
page three.  Women complaining about this are referred to the
black&white male equivalent on a page numbering in the 100s.

ajr