On Thu, 7 Oct 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 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".
That wasn't true for me when I was 20. However, I'm 40 now. :)
Even male 40-year-old obsessed geeks calm down from when they were 20.
> 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.
True enough. I now see why my beau didn't have a gf when I met him. He's a
wonderful guy, but he was really involved in things where there weren't a
lot of women. No one asked him out and he never asked them out. (And that
holds true with us either as neither of us asked....)
> 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.
I've actually lost at least one job because of this.
> 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.
Yep!
--
_Deirdre * http://www.linuxcabal.net * http://www.deirdre.net
"Mars has been a tough target" -- Peter G. Neumann, Risks Digest Moderator
"That's because the Martians keep shooting things down." -- Harlan Rosenthal
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, retorting in Risks Digest 20.60
************
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
