brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (10/31/84)
Well, we're glad to report that the first meeting of the Association for Men in Computing was a great success, attended by many men, and even some women. The meeting took place in the municipal auditorium (which, by the way, was designed by a male architect!) at 7 PM. After opening remarks, the first item on the program was a talk on the UNIX(TM) operating system. We were please to learn that UNIX is gaining remarkable popularity for an operating system that was written almost entirely by men. We were pleased to hear stories of how "Ken" and "Dennis" had bravely fought the establishment to bring their male-written OS to the public eye. After this presentation there was some talk about whether women should be allowed in the society. Some members pointed out that women had an important role in computing, and suggested they be allowed to express their opinions within the society, so long as they are fully supportive. Others felt that the presence of women in the society would just distract male members and make it harder for them to open up about problems, bugs, and algorithms to other men. The issue was not resolved. After the meeting, many went out the the McMichael Galleries to view paintings by the "Group of Seven" - a group of seven well known male painters from the early part of the century. While at the gallery where were pleased to note the music system was piping in music by J.S. Bach and other well known male composers. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Now I'll support equal rights for all people (including women, of course) any day, but those of you that were hit too close to home by this joke should remember that your goal is to tear down the artificial divisions between the sexes in our profession - not to make new ones. If it isn't biological and you can't talk about men doing the same thing without laughing, then you've just built up a fresh new division. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
smann@ihu1g.UUCP (Sherry Mann) (11/01/84)
What makes the minutes of this meeting humorous, and I did find them humorous, is not that when applied to men, the ridiculous of such thinking (applied to either gender) becomes apparent, but the merely the fact that it is not necessary to point out that a "famous" composer was a man, or the writer of a system was a man to prevent people from assuming that they were women. The reason women have to make a point of pointing out the accomplishments of women is that if we don't, they won't get acknowledged The reason women form their own associations is because they often don't have power in male dominated bastions. Far from hurting women, far from creating a "separate but equal" status, women's organizations and women's acknowledging the accomplishments of women are helping women to become integrated into society as a whole on a more equal basis.