rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (07/18/84)
Rather than engaging in my usual practice of indenting large chunks of parent articles into my own text, I'll simply advise people to have read Alan's last article before reading mine. Alan has made a lot of comments on other people's misconceptions of his articles (including mine). Apparently a lot of people have misconstrued what he is trying to say. Which just makes an old cliche like "the pot calling the kettle black" somewhat appropriate. Early on, this whole discussion sloped off rather quickly into utter deterioration. Perhaps others' misconceptions of Alan's intent are analogous to Alan's own quickly formed opinions about 'rainbow' and Trish. Not pointing fingers, just pointing things out. Someday someone will get a thesis out of this discussion: How Electronic Correspondence Over Intercomputer Communications Systems Results In Misperceptions Not Present In In-Person Or Letter-Writing Contact... I hate to say it, Alan, but the more you (and others) insist on saying (repeatedly) "Hey, I'm not one of those macho assholes. I'm against those things," I can't help but hear echoes of "But I like women. Some of my best friends are women. (But I wouldn't want my sister to marry one)..." [BOY WILL HE GET RAKED OVER THE COALS FOR THAT ONE. -ED.] Agreed, many of us out here in the so-called real world *are* looking for alternatives to the sex roles that restrict freedom of expression for both men and women, but: 1) When you (and others) deny that such roles still permeate our society, I have to laugh. No, really! I mean, I hear people proclaim "You must be a lot older than I am, but most of us young people are changing" or "Amongst the educated people that I know, such roles (and the peer pressure to adhere to them) are ignored." But that fails to explain why this 29-year-old college graduate still sees these same behaviors, not just among "uneducated" people or those of other "generations", but among people I consider to be "peers". Be it a blue collar bar, a college pub, a business lunch at a restaurant, or a "cocktail party", one can still find the attitudes and behaviors. And, just like my "some of my best friends" analogy, you may find the same people behaving almost civilly with women present, only to regress into the old patterns once the women have left the scene. 2) I agree that the (hopefully) eroding stereotypical role requirements are still a hindrance to both men and women. But if you're the one getting the extra bottle of milk delivered by mistake, you're a lot less likely to complain than the one who's missing a bottle. Sure, no one is to "blame" for the current sex-role situations, the required games, the expected behaviors. But for women to expect that men would just give back the extra bottle of milk (when some of them enjoy drinking it too much to give it up) seems pretty naive. And women being naive and complacent is one of the things that's supposed to have gone out the window. But the fact remains: much as all of us might like to believe otherwise (esp. those who seem to live in ivory towers as I often do myself), these things have NOT gone out the window! For the most part, for a large number of people in this world, they ARE still the status quo, and for those same people---men and women both---the status quo is just fine. At least that's what they've been taught to accept, and that's all they really know or care to know. And for as long as such attitudes and behaviors ARE the status quo, I honestly can't fault Trish one bit for her opinions. Alan's complaint seems to be centered on the fact that he doesn't feel that he is like the stereotype that Trish describes, and that he has been slandered in the process. Fine. That's really just tough. Seriously. When you go against the grain of societal behavior, you're up against something a lot bigger than just you. You're up against everybody's preconceptions and misconceptions and stereotypes and expectations of what they have in mind for *you*. Being an independent individual in a society that expects sheephood is not going to be easy. It's up to you to prove that you are not what other people expect you to be, and to defend that existence if need be. (Remember that e. e. cummings' statement that got a lot of airplay in this newsgroup a while back?) To be quite honest, I don't think that you, Alan, did a very good job presenting yourself as anything other than what Trish described, thus you reinforced expectations. (Just my impression. However, Chuqui also noted that those who spoke out against Trish and rainbow seemed to be 1) male & 2) shouting enough to make them seem like the macho assholes they were denying themselves to be.) I don't know if one could really expect to alter someone else's perceptions via squiggles on a terminal printout or a CRT screen. Nonetheless, it's all we (the netnewts) have. We've all got our work cut out for us. Let's not make it any more difficult than it already is by bickering about things that we proably really agree on underneath all the surface rubbish. [By the way, though this article may appear to be tough on Alan Driscoll, in private communications with Alan in the past I have found him to be much more cordial and friendly than what I have gleaned from my impressions of his public messages. Which only goes to show.] [But, then again, some people have said the same thing about me, so we can't put much credence in that notion, can we? :-] -- AT THE TONE PLEASE LEAVE YOUR NAME AND NET ADDRESS. THANK YOU. Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr
alan@allegra.UUCP (Alan S. Driscoll) (07/18/84)
[ Real Men don't tell Real Men jokes. :-) ] Rich, Some people consider this discussion pointless, and just want to see it die. I'd rather see something positive come out of it. Hence, the subtitle, "What can we do?" We can argue ad nauseum about how bad things really are. In my experience, they are not as bad as you say. On the other hand, in Trish's experience, they are. Maybe Trish has been hanging out with assholes. Maybe I've been hanging out with unusually sensitive people and have insulated myself from the real world. Who can say? At any rate, whether our culture is really rotten to the core, or just a bit rotten, eventually, we should talk about how we can improve things. This is the part of my article which you failed to address. I said: > Trish's hostility is not productive. It will *never* help > the situation. You had nothing to say about this. In fact, I haven't heard any constructive suggestions from you, just complaints. I have made a number of suggestions. For starters, if we are going to get anywhere, we're going to have to have to discard destructive feelings/actions, such as anger and blaming. By the way, your article supports a common myth, that men are "winners" and women are "losers" in our culture, a myth which encourages anger and blaming. I don't buy it, though. Sure, the Real Man makes more money for doing the same job, but does he get to enjoy it? No, he drops dead at 50 of a heart attack because he doesn't know how to feel. You call that winning? So, let's hear some solutions. What do *you* think we can do, Rich? -- Alan S. Driscoll AT&T Bell Laboratories