On Wed, 6 Oct 1999, Deirdre Saoirse wrote:
> My SO and I went out with a couple last week (and a fifth person who
> missed all the interpersonal play between them). He put her down several
> times and did the "stick with me and you'll understand this some day."
>
> It was disgusting. I wanted to throw my plate at the guy. And male geeks
> (like my oblivious friend) say they don't see discrimination -- they
> DON'T even when it happens right in front of them.
This was something that particularly bothered me while I was in college.
Sometimes professors would ask about treatment by my male peers, and if I
had anything to say other than "they treat me no differently than other
males," I was told that "boys will be boys" and I'd better learn to live
with it if I'm going to succeed in "the real world." Fortunately, I have
yet to encounter workplace situations that parallel ones like the time a
fellow CS student told me I wouldn't succeed in the field because women
don't have problem-solving skills. (This was in a conversation in which he
was kindly explaining to me the differences in male and female abilities.)
> My SO and I have been together seven months and pretty much live together.
> He is more of a networking dweeb than I am and I'm more of a coder. In
> other words, we're both geeky but we have areas where we out-geek each
> other. I like that.
My situation is like that and it's perfect. My husband is a networking
geek who wants to get into admin more. I'm a unix admin who's interested
in learning more about networking. Since we have our respective
strengths, we can help each other out without feeling like it's a
student-teacher relationship.
I've also noticed that my husband and I are often far more willing to help
someone out with a technical question than many of our (male) friends who
take the "rtfm" attitude, and I think it's because we're comfortable with
changing roles between expert and novice. Many of our friends seem to pick
one area of expertise and ignore the rest of the world so they never have
to admit that they don't know it all. ;) I've read things that suggest
that men are more likely to pick a few things to focus on intently, while
women prefer to explore the world in more breadth. Looking at the world
around me, people *do* seem to fall into those patterns. So another big
thing I grapple with in trying to make sense of the lack of women in
computing is the fact that there are surely differences between men and
women, but how big are they? Am I kidding myself if I'm telling myself
that I can do anything men can do?
Sometimes I question my motives and wonder if the only reason I'm not a
content little housewife is just to spite the chauvenists out there.
(And I know that part of this is just frustration that even until the end
of high school I had to have explicit permission to use the family
computer just to type a paper, while my counterparts were disassembling
and reassembling theirs already in grade school. Even as far as I've
come, I feel like I'll never quite catch up.)
I guess this has been a really long, drawn out "me too". I'm new to the
list and it's great to have something tangible to remind me that I'm not
the only one. At the same time, I sometimes wonder if I spend too much
time dwelling on negative issues and doing nothing concrete about them...
JM
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