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From: era1987@violet.berkeley.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.misc,soc.women
Subject: Re: retraction
Message-ID: <3767@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 29-May-87 03:32:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: jade.3767
Posted: Fri May 29 03:32:06 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 30-May-87 10:28:06 EDT
References: <9729@clyde.ATT.COM>
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Xref: utgpu news.misc:405 soc.women:4021

In article <9729@clyde.ATT.COM> rcj@clyde.ATT.COM (Curtis Jackson) writes:
>I hereby retract my statements regarding Mark Ethan Smith, as I
>have been informed by very reliable sources that:
>
>a) I missed the earlier discussion where it was mentioned that MES
>*is* her legal name, as changed by her, and
>
>b) Mark Ethan Smith is alive and well and a Real (tm) person;
>not someone else masquerading.
>
>The MAD Programmer -- 201-386-4295 (Cornet 232)
>alias: Curtis Jackson	...![ ihnp4 ulysses cbosgd allegra ]!moss!rcj
>			...![ ihnp4 cbosgd akgua watmath  ]!clyde!rcj
>
>Aside to Jef Pokanzer (sp?): Sometimes insinuations are more fun than
>the real thing.  Sorry you didn't think so.  As it was I generated the
>responses I needed to re-evaluate the whole situation without angering
>and possibly embarrassing an innocent person by naming them.

Well, if Curtis can have fun, there's no reason I can't have fun too,
particularly if it won't anger or embarass her.

I appreciate Curtis making her retractions, however she doesn't seem
to understand that defamatory speculating about others is not an
innocent pastime and can hurt people.  I would assume that Curtis is
her real legal name and I would see no reason to discuss or challenge
that, however it is quite possible that she is a paranoid prude
who simply wants to avoid sexual harassment and changed her name to
conceal her female genitals.  How would I know?  While I would
ordinarily not intrude on somebody's privacy, she seems to feel that it
is innocent to speculate about my genital status.  If she is not paranoid,
why doesn't she tell people that despite having a name like Curtis, she
really prefers female pronouns because without them she has difficulty
attracting sexual harassment, obscene phone callers, hatemail, obscene
death threats, etc?  And if she is male, does that mean that she is
too unintelligent to learn to respect other people's privacy?

In this society, due to the prevalence of porn, is it a crime for a
person to conceal their genitals?  If private parts aren't private, what's
private?

Again, names and pronouns are not biological, genetic, or secondary sex
characteristics.  And if you only look between their legs, you'll never
understand that all men are created equal.  If it is innocent for Curtis
to discuss my sex in news.misc, it must be equally innocent and appropriate
for me to speculate about hers and to use pronouns to refer to my
speculation about her genital organs rather than the ones usual to her name.

Grow up and cut it out.  There are hundreds of women in the phone book
using initials rather than their names to avoid harassment.  You cannot
possibly expose them all, even if you devoted your life and wealth to it.
When you respect others, they'll respect you.  My sex isn't computeer
related news.  My name is indeed my true legal name and entitled to the
same respet as her name, which I will, in the future be careful to accord
her and anyone else who can't refer to me without sneaking in a blow
below the belt.

If Curtis wishes to retract her ungrammatical usage, I'll retract mine.
If she believes that all computer-related postings must be made with
specific regard to the genitals of the person posting, I feel sorry for her.

When I use feminine or diminutive pronouns to refer to somebody who is
accustomed to and normally accorded the same masculine or inclusive
pronouns I am accustomed to, I don't do it based upon gender.  I do it
to keep us on equal terms.  If they can't use masculine pronouns in their
inclusive sense, I can certainly use feminine pronouns in their diminutive
sense, to indicate that the person judges others by what's between their
legs, rather than what they said, and is therefore a diminutive or lesser
intelligence as far as I'm concerned.  That wasn't a retraction she posted,
it was a gender-based snipe, and she deserves the same in return without
regard to her sex.  If she accords terms of reference and respect based
on gender, I accord them based on intelligence and respect for the rights
and privacy of others.

I don't know whose privacy she thinks she is protecting, but it certainly
isn't mine.  One of the people spreading defamatory allegations about me,
perhaps?  Defamation is not an innocent pastime and deserves no protection.

As for Jef, he is one of the people who objected when the Well pulled
my password.  Jef doesn't agree with me on many topics, such as Affirmative
Action, but he does believe in free speech and opposes censorship--not
just for pornography and obscenity, but also for feminist views and other
legal, if not strictly Libertarian, points of view.  I have a lot of
respect for Jef because even when he didn't agree with what I said, he
attempted to defend my right to say it.

--Mark