liz@umcp-cs.UUCP (08/31/83)
What can I say? I never intended net.women.only for anything like voicing hatred of men or as a way of plotting to make them slaves. If such nonsense starts appearing there, I'll start flaming! I know that some men in the past have treated women badly, but I think this kind of thing is turning around -- personally, I have run into remarkably few situations of sexual discrimination -- none I can think of at the Univ of Maryland where I'm a grad student. I realize that such situations can and do occur, but I'm mostly with Laura Creighton in that making generalizations about men (inferior sex!?!?!) in response to a few individual men will only cause many more problems than already do exist. net.women.only is a place to share comman concerns -- not hatreds. Let's work out these situations and responses one at a time -- most of the men seem to me to be trying to understand; let's not flame at them randomly... Wondering how this could even come up... -- -Liz Allen, U of Maryland, College Park MD Usenet: ...!seismo!umcp-cs!liz Arpanet: liz.umcp-cs@Udel-Relay
hammy@mit-eddie.UUCP (J. Scott Hamilton) (09/01/83)
Regarding the turnaround of men's treatment of women, I think a generalization based on college life won't work to well. Here at MIT, it seems to me that many of the students (especially in the graduate school) are chosen for their achivement rather than their social skills. As a result, some of the higher achievers often have disabilities in a social setting, and many seem to have poor interpersonal skills. An example of this is the situation in the EE&CS graduate department. Many women in this department (which has an extrememly poor male/female ratio) worked on a joint paper to express their dissatisfaction with the way they were treated as computer scientists, because of their gender. I guess my point is that the treatment a women receives in a school environment depends on the characteristics of the student body at that school. Also I think that because of the type of males that do well in CS are typically less socially inclined, it can make for a poorer attitude towards women. -- J. Scott Hamilton !genrad!mit-eddie!hammy