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From: saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: re:  They say we're moving ahead!
Message-ID: <8335@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 15-Jul-84 12:40:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.8335
Posted: Sun Jul 15 12:40:57 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Jul-84 23:31:38 EDT
References: <435@hou5g.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 43


That article and the conclusions it comes to are interesting and very clearly
demonstrate how much we live in a man's world.

Assuming for a minute that the accusations against that woman in the hot-dog
stand were founded, i.e that some men would actually look at her and get into
accidents.  The obvious conclusion would be that men should be given stricter
driving tests before getting their driver's license, maybe have to go through
an area where there are beautiful women around to see how they handle the
situation. (and women would be exempted from this part of the test since  they
apparently are superior drivers, not being so easily distracted by members of
the opposite sex (-:).

This would be consistent with other ways of dealing with other obstacles
encountered while driving.  After all, trees are not cut down because some
people drive into them, instead people are taught not to drive into them.
But in the case of women, things are different: because they cause a hazzard,
they have to be removed.  I don't know what the probability of a woman causing
a traffic accident is compared to the probability of a tree having a a car
run into it, but I would assume that they are similar.  So in this case trees
are assumed to have more rights than women: they have the right to be the
way they are but women don't.

Fortunately this is a very silly incident and I would hope that nowadays people
would be able to see through such reasonning, but having had a few discussions
on this matter with some friends, I have found to my surprise that the attitude
that women might be a "hazzard" to men is still not completely dismissed as
silly by many men.  A friend of mine complained once to me how women shouldn't
wear shorts in the summer because it made him and other men so miserable to
have to watch without being able to touch.  When answering that women look at
men without touching and are not miserable, I have gotten the response that
"men are different, women don't care as much as men, men are more visual, etc.."
While I am not convinced that this is so or that the differences are biological,
(I have met enough men who are not this way to have doubts about the
universality of such behaviour)  I think that the fact that the question is
raised points to a serious problem:  a lot of men are not responsible human
beings when it comes to their dealings with women.  People who cannot see a
person of the opposite sex without either being miserable, violent or
destructive are not well-adjusted to a society which allows basic freedoms such
as the universal right to be.

Sophie Quigley
...!{clyde,ihnp4,decvax}!watmath!saquigley