Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!agate!lsc@Sun.COM
From: lsc@Sun.COM (Lisa S Chabot)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Women Wizards?
Message-ID: <12213@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 15 Jul 88 23:06:43 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: Sun Microsystems -- Graphics Standards
Lines: 55
Approved: skyler@violet.berkeley.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts)
Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu
Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu


I suggest we conduct this discussion not as

	Why aren't there any women wizards?

but rather as

	Show us the women wizards!

Or in other words, if we start from a position of "there aren't any",
we'll have a harder time acknowledging the testimonials pouring in of
well-known women wizards.

I know all of us aren't perfect at times, but you're going to have to at
least check in your wizard badge (or turn it upside down, or something
to indicate temporary disgrace), if you complain that no one shows you
how to do something.   The more effective mode is to demand help or a
demonstration--come on, now, us hackers are well-known for uncomfortable
notions of social graces.  Barring that, another method is to always be
around so that they can't do something with the computer without you
watching and getting in the way.  And there's always the tried and true,
hack-it-yourself-til-it-works, but this has limits, and if you init the
system disk too many times [where "too many" is a locally-defined
qualifier], you'll get booted out.  Still, there are worse things!
--like being uninformed.

I'll admit: these graces are re-learned.  A good little girl isn't heard
asking such questions and she doesn't have printer toxins all over her
hands.  On the other hand (which is cleaner), we're all adults here.
Some of us have or will have to learn to make compromises between how
we're expected to act and how to get things.  What's the worst those
coworkers can say: she works all night because she can't get a date.
Does a real wizard _care_?  ("Boys steal your compute cycles.")
If you're thinking of a model woman wizard as:

	she's gorgeous and a demon on the keyboard too!

you've got your priorities bungled.  Wizardry comes first.  An air of
insouicance towards those petty things (life, salary, recognition) is
one of the most highly cultivated skills of those of us who crawled under a
keyboard.  

Okay, so the above may not The Best Way For All Womankind in Computers.
Yes, well, that's because there isn't one, mostly because there's more
than one of us.  Still, I'm happy.  Yes, in the past, I've had male
coworkers take credit for my ideas.  That's easily dealt with--stop
having ideas in their presence or, if you're devious, feed them bad
ideas on the side.  Didn't you ever deal with the twit who tried to
copy your answers in grade school? 

Off to commune with the caffeine dispenser! 
lsc


All power corrupts, but we need electricity.