Xref: utzoo news.admin:3057 misc.legal:5319 soc.women:12007
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!fluke!tron
From: tron@tc.fluke.COM (Peter Barbee)
Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal,soc.women
Subject: Re: Proposed lawsuit
Message-ID: <4502@fluke.COM>
Date: 19 Jul 88 21:59:42 GMT
References: <12165@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <6278@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <12180@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: news@tc.fluke.COM
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 67

The only real reason I'm posting this is that I'm hoping Mark will
elevate me to immortal USENET status by either suing me or declaring
me a pseudo.

Mark,

I know that you have female sex organs because you said you do.
Furthermore, you keep telling us.  It is as if you are screaming
at the top of your lungs "I'm a woman but call me a man!  I'm a 
woman but call me a man" and are then surprised that the people
of USENET know you're a woman.  At the end of this article I
pulled two quotes out of your recent posting.  While I did not
include the rest of the posting the two quotes did appear in
the order shown and I did not include any partial sentences.
In the first quote you tell us how you, a woman, fought for the
right to not be classed female.  Now I only have a bachelor's
degree in engineering and didn't take too many logic courses
but still I can't help but conclude that only a woman would
fight for such a right.  In the second quote you accuse "the
Usenet bigots" of distributing this information (that you
are, in fact, a woman who chooses to use a traditionally
masculine name).

Really Mark, I don't mind calling your Mark and I don't mind
referring to you as he (although I am lying in my mind when
I do that, you see, I associate pronouns with the referred
person's gender not their name).  You see, you're right,
your gender doesn't matter to me in almost any discussion
we might have here on USENET (although sometimes it is nice
to know considering the vastly different socializations
girls and boys receive in the USA).  I do mind being accosted
with this inane verbiage about rights, lawsuits, EOE/AA,
and all the persecution you have endured.  It seems that
you could endure less persecution, and maybe be happier,
if you would be more humane.  As an experiment why don't 
you start up a new account with an androgynous (or even
male) login/signature and see if the persecution is based
on what you write or on who you are.

Finally, in the first quote below you write "I am not female,
my sex is."  You may have gotten some legal eagle to agree
but it seems to me (and probably a few others trained in
science) that female is a label associated with the type
of reproductive organs a being has.  To attempt to disassociate
the label female from yourself seems to be akin to disassociating
the label blue from your eyes.  What color are your eyes if
they are not blue?  What gender are you if you are not female?

Peter B

included quotes below:

$ Mark writes (in article <12180@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>);
 quote #1:
$ >The reason my name is Mark, is so that people will have no need to
$ >use diminutive, sexual, exclusive terms to refer to me.
$ >Otherwise, if I had a traditional name, and was referred to with
$ >traditional pronouns, every single reference to me would refer
$ >to my sex instead of to me.  Think of it this way, Peter.  I am a
$ >man in the Constitutional sense that all men are created equal.
$ >The inclusive sense.  I am not female, my sex is.  I am not blue,
$ >my eyes are.  
$ >
 and later quote #2:
$ >...  It is because of
$ >the irreparable harm done me by the Usenet bigots, that you would
$ >know my sex before you know my name, and refer to me differently
$ >than you have ever referred to anyone else with my name...