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From: cheryl@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU (cheryl)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.sci
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Why are there so few [female|black] physicists?
Message-ID: <771@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: Tue, 29-Jul-86 11:04:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: batcompu.771
Posted: Tue Jul 29 11:04:06 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Aug-86 19:11:43 EDT
References: <4368@decwrl.DEC.COM> <719@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU> <670@polaris.UUCP>
Reply-To: cheryl@batcomputer.UUCP (cheryl)
Organization: Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 61
Xref: watmath net.women:11699 net.sci:1402

In article <670@polaris.UUCP> herbie@polaris.UUCP (Herb Chong) writes:
>In article <719@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU> cheryl@batcomputer.UUCP (cheryl) writes:
>>It worked.  There were 8 women and only 1 man the year *I* took AP Chem!
>>And it didn't matter at all whether or not we had confidence in front of
>>men or not, because all the men who *would* have taken it were too easily
>>influenced *not* to take it--we started calling them chicken-shits later
>>in the year.  Actually, it started out with 8 women and 2 men, but we women
>>got one of the men to drop out by (a) intimidating him by working our
>>buts off on the first few homework sets and pretending the material was
>>easy and (b) telling him that if he had to work that hard to keep up with us,
>>he'd probably be "HAPPIER" in Reagents' Chemistry.  We let up on ourselves
>>once we had driven him out.  The other one was just a masochist and a 
>>martyr so it didn't work on him.
>
>are you PROUD you did this?

Yes, as a matter of fact I am.  We all got together on it, on an informal
basis of course.  Old girls.  We didn't make it impossible to even take
the class by asking that men be explicitly denied spots (the way women
couldn't attend Dartmouth in the 60's, the way women, including Marie
Curie were explicitly barred from the French Academy of Sciences....)

We merely took advantage of their own weaknesses to push things in the
direction which suited us.  It's called "POLITICS".  When it comes to
men doing this to women, then women finding themselves less qualified
for certain jobs later on in life and therefore being kept out of them,
it's called "ONLY FAIR"!  Of course I'm proud to prove how easily peoples'
interests and achievements are influenced by their social environment.

And besides, the guys who would have taken AP Chem got their precious
A's and some even thanked us for the good "advise"  in senior year when
they were applying to colleges.  

>Herb Chong, IBM Research...

Are you PROUD to work for a company that invented the female
keypunch operator, not to mention promoting  typing as "womens'
work" ?   I mean, these are cases where no historical precedent
was set (anyone who even *touched* computers were men, and 
secretaries were originally men-in-training for management positions),
and yet, IBM saw the labor pool of women and took advantage of
it in the worst way possible.  Just thought I'd point that out.

>face it Cheryl, you just hate men on principle.  no exceptions.

You just don't like seeing the subtler games men play to keep women down
exposed in such a ruthless fashion.  I don't hate men.  I'm just able
to see through their games.

>VNET,BITNET,NETNORTH,EARN: HERBIE AT YKTVMH
>UUCP:  {allegra|cbosgd|cmcl2|decvax|ihnp4|seismo}!philabs!polaris!herbie
>CSNET: herbie%ibm.com@csnet-relay
>ARPA:  herbie@ibm.com, herbie%yktvmh.bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu

Did you know that when IBM puts these addresses on business cards,
they're using the ARPA INTERNET (paid for by TAXPAYERS) for their 
OWN business purposes?  The use of USENET (paid for by the individual
sites) for business purposes is a faux-pas, but the use of ARPANET
like this is ILLEGAL.    Just thought I'd point that out.

Cheryl