Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!mcdchg!chinet!att!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!khb@Sun.COM
From: khb@Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - Sun Tactical Engineering)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Women's Language and Computing
Message-ID: <5687@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 28 Oct 88 21:41:15 GMT
References: <5611@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <5680@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
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In article <5680@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> brantley@vax1.acs.udel.edu (brantley) writes:
>
>    stuff from the ongoing debate about language
>
>Some how, I just can't take this argument seriously.  I haven't read
>either Cisoux or Lacan, but the idea that "language and logic are
>always an alien territory to women" just doesn't seem reasonable to me.
>In what way is language alien to women??  

My advisor in school (I was a math major) was a woman. She would be
very surprised to learn that math and logic were foregin (as spelling
is to me :>). She lived and breathed number theory. I suspect that
Adele Goldberg, Jean Sammet, Grace Hopper and the famous women of
computing would also be amazed to find this out.

>skills more slowly than boys?  Do women not reach the same degree of comfort
>or familiarity with their native language that men do?  Do women in general
>have more trouble learning a second language? 

My cousin (female) is a much better linguist than I. I worked at
German, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Japanese .... the only one that really
stuck was hebrew. She did french, spanish, russian, hebrew + ?; all of
it stuck. I have an edge in fortran, c, etc. but that's probably her
lack of interest, not innate skill.

Just my $.02/worth.

Keep :>

Keith H. Bierman
It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus