carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (09/01/85)
Ross Greenberg writes: >Remember that this is a group where some of the members feel >that an accurate representation of society can be described as >"male conspiracy"! Or where "The Women's Room" is thought to be >a treatise of major significance. Or where having a group >that specifically excludes one sex is not considered sexist. It was comments like these, Ross, that led me to speculate that you are a third-grade genius with a NO GIRLS ALOWED sign on your modem-equipped treehouse. First, who has claimed that "male conspiracy" is an accurate description of our society? This is clearly different from claiming that there are smaller-scale male conspiracies to keep women in their place. As to whether net.women.only was an example of sexism, I don't think that that is what most people mean by the term, and men who posted to that newsgroup don't seem much different from party-crashers to me. The question of whether women-only newsgroups or restrooms or dormitories or sororities or parties constitute sexism or discrimination or injustice of some kind is really a philosophical question and should be discussed in net.politics.theory or net.philosophy. >Maybe the group [net.women.only] should >never have existed at all, because it just wasn't needed? Does this mean that women don't need support from each other in a setting free from men attempting to control the situation? If so, I know of some women's support groups in Chicago who would like to hear your advice, including a center for abused women. Apparently you think that there is something illegitimate about women wanting to have a conversation among themselves, and you seem to be anxious to prevent this from occurring. What are you afraid they'll do, cast evil spells? >If ... you consider that some of the >women here are *not* asking for "special treatment"... I think that they are asking for special treatment in a certain sense, and also that they are entitled to it. >Is the general idea that whenever >someone expresses viewpoints you don't like, you put them in your >kill file? No. The general idea, which I thought I made sufficiently clear, is to ignore articles from people whose articles, to me, are not worth spending the time to read. Since the amount of time I have available for the netnews is limited, I have to pick and choose. A fair number of netnews posters are in my judgment usually uninformed, irrelevant, irrational, delusional, or just plain stupid. Unless I am just curious about them, life is too short for me to read their articles. Whether they agree with me or disagree is unimportant. Postscript: We all tend to succumb to what I will call the Usenet Fallacy. This is the belief that the contents of a newsgroup are somehow representative of the opinions of the Usenet population as a whole. I would wager that the great majority of males on the net are supportive of the women's movement and the right of women to be free of male harassment, intimidation, and domination, and a great many of them read net.women so that they may better understand what our society looks like from a woman's point of view. Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
debray@sbcs.UUCP (Saumya Debray) (09/04/85)
Richard Carnes: > As to whether net.women.only was an example of sexism, I don't think that > that is what most people mean by the term, and men who posted to that > newsgroup don't seem much different from party-crashers to me ... > Apparently you think that there is something illegitimate about women > wanting to have a conversation among themselves, and you seem to be > anxious to prevent this from occurring. As someone has already pointed out, a net newsgroup is by its nature public, while a mailing list is by its nature private. The feminist mailing list, I'm told, exists. This would, in my humble opinion, meet any such need people might have for "conversations among themselves". To have a public newsgroup that a significant majority of the people on the net are excluded from _in_principle_ is abhorrent to me. However: now that the feminist mailing list is in use and net.women.only pretty much a piece of history, arguing about it seems less than productive. Can we put this to rest? -- Saumya Debray SUNY at Stony Brook uucp: {allegra, hocsd, philabs, ogcvax} !sbcs!debray arpa: debray%suny-sb.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa CSNet: debray@sbcs.csnet