turner (03/22/83)
#N:ucbesvax:8300001:000:1458
ucbesvax!turner Mar 22 02:24:00 1983
Is this newsgroup dying? It is rather ironically named, if so.
Well, I do have something to talk about. While we're waiting
around for net.sex-roles (ahem), I would like to direct your attention
to an article in the latest issue of "Mother Jones" on the evolution
and manipulation of men's self-images in America over the last thirty
years.
Barbara Ehrenreich (sp?) has some interesting things to say about
counterculture and its appropriation into the mainstream, among other
things.
She characterizes men's culture as revolving around the ideal-
ization of escape from economic and familial responsibility (with the
latter tied strongly by tradition to the former.) She sees this as
endemic to both mainstream ("straight") life, and to counterculture,
at least as it manifested itself into the late seventies.
I wonder how this might relate to the (relative and ever-shrinking)
male domination of computer programming as a "profession"? I mean, here
I am at two in the morning...a man, out late at night, doing something
that mostly men do, and mostly for fun, while my girlfriend sleeps at
home. A long pattern of subtle (and not-so-subtle) discrimination puts
me in a situation where I have more freedom and more fun. Not that
I feel so terribly guilty about this, but I do wonder what, if any,
self-correcting factors are at work.
Michael Turner
ucbvax!turner@ESVAX