dyer@wivax.UUCP (Stephen Dyer) (12/18/83)
Hello again, While people are off pondering their reactions to the question of anonymity and net.motss, I decided to dump another article into the pipe to see if I could get more people submitting to net.motss. Before anything else I would like to go on record as considering myself completely un-qualified to say anything about Lesbian S&M. Every time I say anything about Lesbianism a lesbian friend of mine disqualifies my comment on the basis of my being a man and therefore my inability to appreciate the problems of being a woman. I wanted to make clear that when the topic is related to being lesbian, I sit and listen rather than speak. This paragraph exists because I felt guilty seeming as if I was ignoring the topic already on the floor. Those who would damn us while quoting scripture are gone but so too are so many others who have been submitting to net.motss. This problem also occured on the bboard I mentioned I read (see my previous article). Two things happened to revive that group: 1) The sysop let all the users of the bboard see that there was a gay-notes group. Previously people had to know about it and ask to get on it. This brought more people on and initiated a lively discussion of the appropriateness of giving the public access to the gay newsgroup. This will not help net.motss since it is already publicly accessible. 2) The sysop submitted an article which was an impassioned plea for submissions. He said that people should reply immediately to points made rather than waiting for some time (that usually never came) when they could carefully think out a reply. It was sort of saying that any submission was better than none. People out there running vnews have no excuse! The 'f' command automagically posts a followup article. When there is a lot of garbage flowing into the newsgroup, then we can think about holding back and carefully crafting a piece of prose. Until that time comes, let us at least fly a few lines out into this news group before it goes the way of net.micro.432 where every week or so people ask if it is dead. Right now, think of a topic and submit something to net.motss about it. There are lots of very good questions that we ask ourselves often that we would like to ask other people as well. It should be easy to stay within the guidelines of: a) No articles about steamy sex b) No articles pro and con on being gay c) No articles that should go to net.religion or net.philosophy Do it now so that we can begin to share our thoughts again, and so you don't decide against it when you're feeling self conscious. Anonymous but not self conscious, "Felix"