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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Reply to Greenberg
Message-ID: <175@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 31-Aug-85 19:55:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.175
Posted: Sat Aug 31 19:55:53 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 12:18:39 EDT
References: <172@gargoyle.UUCP> <492@timeinc.UUCP>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 63

Ross Greenberg writes:

>Remember that this is a group where some of the members feel
>that an accurate representation of society can be described as
>"male conspiracy"! Or where "The Women's Room" is thought to be
>a treatise of major significance. Or where having a group
>that specifically excludes one sex is not considered sexist.

It was comments like these, Ross, that led me to speculate that you
are a third-grade genius with a NO GIRLS ALOWED sign on your
modem-equipped treehouse.  First, who has claimed that "male
conspiracy" is an accurate description of our society?   This is
clearly different from claiming that there are smaller-scale male
conspiracies to keep women in their place.  As to whether
net.women.only was an example of sexism, I don't think that that is
what most people mean by the term, and men who posted to that
newsgroup don't seem much different from party-crashers to me.  The
question of whether women-only newsgroups or restrooms or dormitories
or sororities or parties constitute sexism or discrimination or
injustice of some kind is really a philosophical question and should
be discussed in net.politics.theory or net.philosophy.

>Maybe the group [net.women.only] should
>never have existed at all, because it just wasn't needed?

Does this mean that women don't need support from each other in a
setting free from men attempting to control the situation?  If so, I
know of some women's support groups in Chicago who would like to hear
your advice, including a center for abused women.  Apparently you
think that there is something illegitimate about women wanting to
have a conversation among themselves, and you seem to be anxious to
prevent this from occurring.  What are you afraid they'll do, cast
evil spells?

>If ... you consider that  some of the
>women here are *not* asking for "special treatment"...

I think that they are asking for special treatment in a certain
sense, and also that they are entitled to it.

>Is the general idea that whenever
>someone expresses viewpoints you don't like, you put them in your
>kill file?  

No.  The general idea, which I thought I made sufficiently clear, is
to ignore articles from people whose articles, to me, are not worth
spending the time to read.  Since the amount of time I have available
for the netnews is limited, I have to pick and choose.  A fair number
of netnews posters are in my judgment usually uninformed, irrelevant,
irrational, delusional, or just plain stupid.  Unless I am just
curious about them, life is too short for me to read their articles.
Whether they agree with me or disagree is unimportant.

Postscript:  We all tend to succumb to what I will call the Usenet
Fallacy.  This is the belief that the contents of a newsgroup are
somehow representative of the opinions of the Usenet population as a
whole.  I would wager that the great majority of males on the net are
supportive of the women's movement and the right of women to be free
of male harassment, intimidation, and domination, and a great many of
them read net.women so that they may better understand what our
society looks like from a woman's point of view.

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes