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Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!laura
From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.news.group
Subject: I FOUND OUT WHAT NET.WOMEN.ONLY IS FOR!!!
Message-ID: <969@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Aug-83 18:07:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.969
Posted: Sun Aug 28 18:07:07 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Aug-83 22:14:56 EDT
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 71

I found out what net.women.only is for! Or, rather, I found out what
some people want net.women.only for. It is as some of us suspected,
intended by certain people to be used for voicing hatred for men and in
general acting as if you have the Divine right to subjegate them.

You see, I just got some mail which expressed this. Some of the mail
was not very explicit, but this one, from which I am going to quote
from is. I gather that its author was rather upset when I posted my
objection to net.women.only condemning people who work for change but
are unwilling to accept the responsibility inherant in achieving that
change, but was enraged when i mentioned that i did not consider my
'femininity' to be essential.

her conclusion was that I was a traitor to women in general. After all,
I did not support her in her crusade to keep the toilet lid down and to
force men to do the same, and I have the audacity to disagree with her
on the need for both genderless language and net.women.only.

She claims that I am failing in my 'duty to fellow women' at great
length. I got news for her. Last I checked I only had a duty to myself
and that which I chose to accept as my responsibilities, and her whacko
ideas aren't among that list. And as for a 'duty' to women in general
-- I take people  as they come and don't play favourites due to sex...

At the tail end of this article I infer she was struck with a
revelation.  I wasn't a woman at all -- but a man using a woman's
name.

I do not know what I should do about this. I suppose that if everyone
who met me at Toronto Usenix or knows me for some other reason would
post that i am female it would only show that i have a lot of male
friends who are willing to help me continue the subterfuge.

After deciding that i was male, I got a long list of what the "Duty"
(yes, with a capital D ) of every woman was to man and how this defined
a woman since only such a woman "was universal in her freedom".
(Whatever that means ... ) Now I have some pretty strong ideas about
freedom myself, and one of them goes that making slaves out of men "in
payment for the many years of torture which women have endured" is a
lousy idea. And if she intends to get on with her threat and come on
over to Toronto and "place her dominion over me as befits a true woman"
then she hasn't seen anything like the hostile reaction she is going to
get from me.

I do not think that we have too much to worry about, actually, since
she went on about "mental domination" and "non-violent dominion" which
I take to mean that she doesn't know how to use force, but merely
wishes (expects?) to have it. Those of us who do know how to use force
are thus way ahead of the game.

She is doing all this out of compassion "for men, the lesser creatures",
by the way. She thinks that if all men were to "take up their rightful
place ... as servants of the superior <sex>" there would be an end to hatred.
I got some more news. You make a servant out of me, and I am going
to hate you rather thoroughly. In fact I hate you right now.

I get the opinion that male or female I have just been declared
anathema.  This is fine by me -- I have survived excommunication
already, and I was never in a position to be considered a member of a
group supporting her beliefs. She is only making formal my decision to
not support racism, one I would freely remake on the spot right now.

the problem is that she claims the word "woman" to describe only
herself and those "millions of other women" who "are true to the
feminist cause" and in general support her beliefs. This leaves me
short a word to describe myself. I tend to favour hermaphrodite as an
alternative, except that it might get confused with "Aphrodite", a
connection that I would rather did not exist. Any suggestions?

laura creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura