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From: era1987@violet.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: soc.women,news.misc
Subject: Moderation
Message-ID: <4117@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 26-Jun-87 03:30:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: jade.4117
Posted: Fri Jun 26 03:30:30 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Jun-87 07:46:32 EDT
References: <699@hjuxa.UUCP> <4009@sri-unix.ARPA>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: era1987@violet.berkeley.edu ()
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 57
Summary: Alan Curtis, in her postings, has proven that it won't work.
Xref: mnetor soc.women:5033 news.misc:629

In article <4009@sri-unix.ARPA> maslak@sri-unix.UUCP (Valerie Maslak) writes:
>How about a quick consensus-posting about moderation for this group?
>Not formal, just how do we feel about the idea? ALL NOTE: I would NOT
>support prohibiting men from posting. I would support limiting postings
>from men to those directly concerning the subject at hand and not
>containing ad hominem (ad feminem?) attacks or female bashing or
>gratuitous rambling.

You know I'm all for it, but in her continuous postings, Alan Curtis
has proven that it won't work.  She can post to moderated groups, and
if her only purpose is to attack a woman, disrupt soc.women, or malign
feminists, nobody can stop her.

The simple fact is that all usenet sites are either privately owned by
or under the de facto control of males, and except for sexualizing,
trivializing, or harassing women, they have no use for women at all.
They either don't notice, or don't care about the hostile, intimidating
atmosphere that keeps most women from participating.  While people are
quick to write to SA's if a woman responds with justifiable anger to a
personal attack, and most SA's are quick in such cases to remove the
offending woman's access, either nobody has complained to Alan's SA, or
her SA felt that since she was only attacking a woman, no problem existed
even though she posted an unauthorized article to a supposedly moderated
group.  Had the moderator of comp.risks, Peter Newman, taken his
responsibilities seriously, he'd have written to Alan's SA, requesting
that Alan's access be removed.  But as a male, Peter is well aware that
the site adminstrator will also be male, and will simply laugh off all
breaches of netiquette by males, while severely punishing women who
"might," but actually haven't committed any breach of netiquette.

There is nothing to be done.  We are in a patriarchy, and if soc.women
were moderated, Alan and her friends, with the permission and consent
of her SA, would continue to post whatever she wished directly to the
moderated group without authorization and without penalty.  I wish it
were otherwise.  I wish women musicians could participate in music groups
without receiving obscene death  threats, and women doctors could post to
sci.med without receiving obscene death threats, and women of all walks
of life could post to soc.women without being subjected to personal attacks,
but in a patriarchy, that's not how things are.  

There MIGHT be some possibility of attacking the problem from the area
of the use of federal funds and common carriers to perpetuate discrimination,
but with the Reagan Administration still in power, and males in control
of the courts and regulatory agencies, there's not really much hope there
either.

I'd like to see Pat Schroeder run for President in '88.  I'm sure that
if Representative Schroeder was elected, we'd have more women appointed
to policy positions, and we could begin to hope for the right to 
participate in "public" forums on an equal basis.  We happen to be
half the "public" and the majority of computer users in industry,
although you sure wouldn't know it from usenet.

The boys are running the show, and as Randy Seuss said in another posting,
"That's the biz, sweetheart."  

--Mark