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From: crs@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: What's net.women for, anyway?
Message-ID: <30211@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 27-Aug-85 09:46:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: lanl.30211
Posted: Tue Aug 27 09:46:26 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Aug-85 20:43:51 EDT
References: <962@druxo.UUCP>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 79

> 
> >                                          ...Was there any other group
> > where the *majority* of the people on the net were told that they were
> > not to post to it so that the minority...
> >              ...could have the group all to themselves?
> 
> It was my understanding that, except for the "general" groups, each group
> is intended for a minority of people on the net who share a particular
> interest.  Hence, the answer to the question is "Yes, the majority is told
> not to post to a newsgroup so that the minority for whom it was created can
> have it all to themselves."

I'm sorry, Nancy, but I think you are wrong about this.  The following
is a quote from net.announce.newusers, Subject: Rules for posting to
Usenet:

	net.women.only	Men are discouraged from participating, and 
			are forbidden from criticizing a topic or 
			person in this newsgroup.

I think you are confusing being "told they were not to post to it"
with the statement of the specialty for which a group is formed.
Saying that net.blivets is for the discussion of blivets is not the
same thing as telling a large segment of the net that they may *NOT*
post to net.blivets.

Net.women.only was most certainly a *special* privilege for women (as
opposed to the *general* privilege of Usenet in general.  How anyone
can claim this is not so escapes me.

> 
> So, the question, it seems to me, is "What is the common interest for which
> net.women exists?"  Is it supposed to be a forum for saying anything one
> wishes about women?  For slinging mud at those with whom we disagree?  For
> women to share experiences and encouragement?  Many of us think it should
> be the latter, with, perhaps an opportunity for others to "listen in" to
> what women are thinking, feeling, and doing.

This is another issue entirely.  From net.news.group, Subject:  List
of active newsgroups (August, 1984):

	net.women	Women's rights, discrimination, etc.

While mud-slinging is not expressly forbidden, one would hope that common
courtesy and good taste would apply to *both* men and women.  And hope and
hope and ....

> This is not women asking for special privileges.  It is a group of people
> (male and female) who share a particular interest asking that the group not
> be dominated by people who are not contributing to that interest.

Fair enough...  But not always obvious from some of the posting (again
by *both* men and women); it certainly was not obvious (to me and
apparently to others) in the article that began this particular
discussion.  The principle complaint that I perceived in that posting
was that more men than women posted to net.women.  That doesn't
surprise me as much as the fact that the ratio isn't more extreme than
it is.  There are, I suspect, more than three times as many men as
women on the net as a whole, but that is another (earlier) article.

> It is a group of people frustrated because it really does appear that we
> are being discriminated against on the net...we are not accorded the
> same courtesy that other "minorities" (subscribers to net.politics,
> net.religion, etc.) are given.

Perhaps there isn't as much interest in politics and religion as there
is in women on the net as a whole.

As to courtesy, see above.

> Nancy Parsons
> AT&T ISL

-- 
All opinions are mine alone...

Charlie Sorsby
...!{cmcl2,ihnp4,...}!lanl!crs
crs@lanl.arpa