Xref: utzoo soc.women:10096 soc.motss:3902 soc.men:3008 news.admin:1756
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!era1987
From: era1987@violet.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: soc.women,soc.motss,soc.men,news.admin
Subject: Warning: Offensive to techies
Message-ID: <7614@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 12 Mar 88 02:57:06 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: era1987@violet.berkeley.edu (Mark Ethan Smith)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 54



Ever notice that in rec.humor you can avoid offensive postings
because there is a warning in the header, but in soc.women there
is no freedom of speech, and you cannot choose what you wish to read
and avoid abusive postings, because the headers deliberately do not
contain warnings?  Ever wonder why?

The answer is that the techies who wrote the usenet software, maintain
it, are the majority of net readers, and are the only ones with the
power to enforce standards, are not willing to enforce any standards
in noise groups, or to permit technical status to a group involving
women or human rights.

These are the same kind of guys who take time off from developing
nuclear weapons to molest children or harass women, but are
mostly incapable of human relationships.  

And the offensive postings are not always from sexist males.  Sometimes
they are from lesbian sadomasochists, women who emulate only one
aspect of stereotypical male behavior, that is, the absolutely worst
behavior of the absolutely worst men in society, those who abuse
women, in order to prove how women-identified they are, and because
men will not permit them equality in any other arena.

If you can't avoid abuse here, I don't believe you can avoid abuse in
any other aspect of your life.  And there is absolutely no way to enforce
the same standards here that are enforced in comp. and rec. groups
because the patriarchy considers computers and recreation worthwhile
but does not consider women worthwhile.

Well, you can always use your 'n' key to avoid abusive postings,
IF you were warned by the header, which is NEVER the case in this group.

And there is no way to establish a group where women would not be
subjected to abuse, because the techies are so good at breakins,
forgeries, using pseudos and copying people's writing styles,
etc.  They're good at it because nothing is more important to them
than abusing women.

In the Spring/Summer '88 issue of _Changing Men_, John
Stoltenberg, cofounder of Men Against Pornography, explains that,
"You can't fight homophobia and protect the pornographers at the
same time."  Stoltenberg defines porn as the exploitation and
eroticism of sexual discrimination, and argues that you cannot
fight homophobia while leaving male supremacy and misogyny in place.

I've often wondered why people defend porn with such hysteria, but
are not equally angry when the rights of women are denied.  Maybe
they could live very well without women, so long as they had porn,
but cannot survive in a world where women exist unless they have
porn to perpetuate stereotypes and make them feel superior.  

--Mark