aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent) (01/21/84)
I apologize for occasionally posting articles (usually followups) to net.women.only which did not really belong there (I have received a mild dose of flame in private communications). Now, on to the real point of this article: Why does net.women.only exist? To discuss matters of concern more or less exclusively to women. Why do men (or at least why do I) read net.women.only? Because I want to find out what matters concern women. Why that? Because there's a reasonable chance that one of these days I may find myself dating some wom[ae]n and eventually marrying one, and I want to know what goes on inside women's heads (and bodies, for that matter) in order to make such relationships work. Unfortunately, the traffic of actual woman-related articles in net.women.only has been disappointingly light! C'mon, women, speak up! I suspect that if there were sufficiently many women-related articles in net.women.only, i.e. if it were well used for its original purpose, we encroaching males would be driven back by main force to net.women and its more general forum. I am on the fence as to whether we need a special group for male concerns. On the one hand, there are still many relics of the patriarchal society which flourished in this country (according to archaeological studies) earlier in this century. One salient characteristic of that society was that men did not reveal their concerns lest it give power to women and/or other men. Thank goodness men (especially we younger ones) have been freed from that straitjacket to a large extent; I would not want to live without friends with whom I could share my real concerns. But still--I've admitted that I don't know nearly enough about women; but let's look at the flip side--how much do women really KNOW about men? Even in the outspoken atmosphere of net.singles, contributors of neither sex really dig too deep into their feelings surrounding the particular concern of "special" relationships. (In some ways this is a good thing; I've been dealing with a lot of angry and destructive feelings which nobody should have to face.) But I ramble. My point is: net.women.only exists; USE it! The same would go for any opposite number created for men. Of course this brings up another point: if it would be good for men to know about women's concerns, and similarly good for women to know about men's concerns, why bother with separate groups at all? I haven't really strong opinions one way or the other on the creation of separate newsgroups; but I've tried to lay out some arguments for both sides (much as I lay out arguments for various ways I could make a new feature behave, and let my boss pick one). But whatever you folks decide, let's at least get some articles out! -- Jeff Sargent/...pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq