On Wed, Oct 06, 1999 at 12:59:54PM +0800, Deidre L. Calarco wrote:
> BTW, I've been with the same guy for eight years (we're not married, but we
> own a house together). He's even more technically oriented than I am. I
> think he would have a lot trouble relating to a woman who wasn't into
> computers, although he does have many other interests.
At the risk of running close the the issues/grrltalk line, I just wanted
to comment that since I've become even more involved in the technical/
open source world (i.e. changing from "just a job" to running my own
company) I've found it harder and harder to spend time with people who
are less technical and/or don't understand open source. This has,
predictably, impacted on my social and sex life (lives?).
I've often commented that female geeks, on average (disclaimer! disclaimer!)
tend to be less obsessive than male ones and more likely to "have a life".
Lately, I'm finding myself to be an outlier on that continuum, to the
point that my housemater/partner David is thrilled that I'm going out
socially on the weekend -- to a friend's house to install linux distros
*other than debian* (we're having a "let's see what the others are like"
day with a few friends; no redhat, no debian, but we're going to play with
suse and caldera and mandrake and so on, and see if any of them would be
suitable for desktop boxes in his organisation).
I don't think it's the gender imbalance in the tech world that makes
it hard for male geeks to find partners. If this were true, all female
geeks would be constantly busy and male geeks would be uniformly
lonely about 95% of the time. Instead, we see a correlation between
those with the time and interest and social skills and *lack of
obsession* required to have at least a little bit of a life, and actually
having a life.
And as soon as you have a life, you're seen as less of a techie in the
great dicksize war that is techiedom. People may envy you for a while,
but then they'll start commenting on how you're only working 40-50 hour
weeks and not pulling all nighters because you have a life now. Soon,
you're seen as a light-weight, and you can't compete in the race.
Every time the issue of women in computing comes up in slashdot, the
comments from the male geeks fall into two categories:
1. female geeks are lightweights and don't code obsessively enough
2. I wish more females geeks were socially/sexually available to me
They're going to have to pick one or the other. Duh.
K.
--
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http://netizen.com.au/ - Internet and Open Source development and consulting
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