Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!xanth!mcnc!ecsvax!ron@hardees.rutgers.edu
From: ron@hardees.rutgers.edu
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Women and Usenet
Message-ID: <6226@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 12 Jan 89 22:22:17 GMT
Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
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Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts)
Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu
Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu


I was first going to say that the reason more women don't post is
that they are more intelligent than the average person who goes
shooting their mouth off on the net :-), but I fear there is a
more insidious underlying reason.

I had always figured that this field (computer hacking, etc...)
that most of the major net news readers are involved in was a
more enlightened group spiritually.  For instance, the fact that
homosexuality seemed to be more pronounced, and at least more
open, lead me to believe that the community was more liberal
and non-prejudiced.

I guess my original vision was tinted by the way I thought the
world ought to be.  I was wrong.  The same phenomena that allows
normally sane and rational in real life to become raving flaming
lunatics when shielded in their postings seems to show that the
supposed enlightened individuals to be rather blatent sexists.
The detatchment from face-to-face communications that blasting
away from behind a keyboard provides allows these people to show
a less gentle side to their personalities.

What this means is that just as people with unpopular views get
tired of being trounced upon stop participating, so do the woman.
Using a user name that is indicates that the user is apparently
female opens up all sorts of abuse both in posting and in on-line
messages.  Were it easy to determine a person's race from his
user name, I'd expect that we'd see a lot of on-line racism as
well.

-Ron