Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ucla-cs.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittatc!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!ucla-cs!mccolm From: mccolm@ucla-cs.UUCP Newsgroups: net.women,net.singles Subject: Re: This, that, and the other thing. Message-ID: <9262@ucla-cs.ARPA> Date: Fri, 21-Feb-86 18:10:45 EST Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.9262 Posted: Fri Feb 21 18:10:45 1986 Date-Received: Mon, 24-Feb-86 21:07:17 EST References: <540@ism780c.UUCP> <129@sfsup.UUCP> Reply-To: mccolm@ucla-cs.UUCP (Eric McColm) Distribution: net Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Lines: 43 Xref: linus net.women:8843 net.singles:9377 Cueing off of Diane's posting (a long time ago), I did a quick soul-search on why the topic of the beach-harassment discussion changed from the original one to a shouting match about the implications of womens' clothing. I'm now convinced that there was no change. The misconceptions started from the first reading. There were several topics under discussion, and I note these as the most revealing: 1) A woman at the beach is (I think) harassed. Some questions were posed. 2) A woman who says "no" is seldom believed. This is a problem. 3) A woman at the beach acts outside societal norms. What does she mean? I discovered that (2) was initiated by women, and (3) by men. What does this mean? Simply that people, in reading a situation, automatically cast themselves in the situation without changing their gender, adopting the persona of the most prominent character of their own sex. This presents serious problems if the story is told from the other gender. As people cast themselves into the story without considering gender difficulties, they are presented with an identical situation as it would have had they actually been involved, not with a similar situation that has been restructured to account for the differences between the story protagonist and the reader. Take the beach story, for example. I suspect that the people who discussed subjects 1 & 2 above did so because they placed themselves in the female persona, while those who discussed 3 above placed themselves in the persona of a man at the beach (as in one of the men who approached her). The breakdown of original response postings by gender and the attempts at recasting the gender of the person in the story as male seem to support this. --fini-- Eric McColm UCLA (oo' - kluh) Funny Farm for the Criminally Harmless UUCP: ...!{ihnp4,trwspp,cepu,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!mccolm ARPA: mccolm@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU Reason is Peace; Fanaticism is Slavery; Tolerance is Strength.