dyer@vaxuum.DEC (Official Mail of the 1984 Olympics) (03/29/84)
| Sexual Equality is a Two-Way Street | I'm pretty ambivalent about the issue of net.women.only. If some women want a women-only forum, I'm not about to suggest its can- cellation. On the other hand, I can't help but find sexist overtones in the suggestion that every man is going to hurl criticisms and no woman is going to. I realize the likelihood of that occurring in gen- eral, but I feel that exclusion of participants on basis of gender does little to discourage sexism. I feel that the problems we now face between the sexes are largely precipitated by the seperation of the sexes from childhood through adulthood. Little boys and girls are encouraged to play apart from each other. When puberty hits, those with heterosexual desires now have to deal with what they've always thought of as crea- tures from another planet. And now, in adulthood, far too many lack friends (non-sexual) of the opposite sex. Our current social mess (the international situation is des- perate, as usual) is a result of an overemphasis of the so-called mas- culine side of humanity. Our only way out of it is to restore the balance of our (so-called) feminine and (so-called) masculine sides, and our only way to do that is together. <_Jym_> | Jym Dyer | DEC Documentation Production Software | Nashua, New Hampshire | | ...{allegra|decvax}!decwrl!rhea!vaxuum!dyer |
dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) (03/31/84)
From: dyer@vaxuum.DEC (Official Mail of the 1984 Olympics)
Subject: Sexual Equality is a Two-Way Street
Message-ID: <6595@decwrl.UUCP>
| Sexual Equality is a Two-Way Street |
I'm pretty ambivalent about the issue of net.women.only. If
some women want a women-only forum, I'm not about to suggest its can-
cellation. On the other hand, I can't help but find sexist overtones
in the suggestion that every man is going to hurl criticisms and no
woman is going to. I realize the likelihood of that occurring in gen-
eral, but I feel that exclusion of participants on basis of gender
does little to discourage sexism.
The real problem, I think, was one of finding a forum where (some) women can
feel free to post things without getting comments which are unconstructive or
just downright stupid thrown at them, inhibiting them from posting further.
It may be true that only a small minority of men made net.women unpleasant
for these women, but these few were enough. Someone suggested creating a
newsgroup which excluded men in order to provide this forum, and it was
created. Now this does not mean that anyone felt that "all men are going
to hurl criticisms", but that restricting input from all men was the only
PRACTICAL way to draw a dividing line.
Someone has now set up a mailing list as another attempt to provide a
women's forum. It seems to be working much better than net.women.only
did. There are many women contributing to it who never did to
net.women.only, and discussion is much more open. And there are some
men who contribute, though they are a definite minority.