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From: jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson)
Newsgroups: soc.women,news.misc
Subject: Re: Response to abusive email.
Message-ID: <4028@teddy.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-May-87 12:34:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: teddy.4028
Posted: Thu May 21 12:34:06 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 11:41:28 EDT
References: <365@dasys1.UUCP> <6278@reed.UUCP> <489@gryphon.CTS.COM> <18872@uc <3101@well.UUCP> <144@ksr.UUCP>
Reply-To: jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson)
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 27
Xref: mnetor soc.women:3911 news.misc:427

>Imagine being referred to as "she" on an ongoing basis. Imagine it
>hard. Examine your feelings. I'll be very surprised if down there
>somewhere you don't feel insulted, and that the "accuracy" of the
>reference is the least of the issues.

I don't mean to fan the flames, but if I told people my name was
"Linda", or "Sue", I would expect them to assume I was female, unless I
specifically said otherwise.  I don't understand why Mark should be so
annoyed - her name is a traditionally male one.  If that bothers her so
much, I think she should take action: either change her name legally,
or take to using a nickname or other transformation of her name that
will not cause so much confusion.  Otherwise, she should not be
surprised at any gender confusion that occurs.

>This post is entirely designed as an answer to people like Tom Mandel
>(and even to a certain extent Erik Fair) who don't seem to see what
>the fuss is about. 

I STILL DON'T understand what all the fuss is about.  I don't subscribe
to soc.women, I didn't see any of the fracas until it spilled over into
news.misc.  It appears to me that several people have overreacted to
some ordinary USENET flaming.  I have yet to see anything that looked
remotely like discrimination due to gender.  Can we please move on now?

Flames cheerfully redirected to /dev/null,

				John P. Nelson