At 09:47 PM 1/8/00 , Jenn V. wrote:
>Cat wrote:
> > To me, that experience was exactly the sort of thing that women are
> > talking about when they talk about the fact that even though
> > certain opportunities seem to exist, in a significant way they don't.
> > Wow, I really *am* riled about this!
>
>I don't blame you. It's precisely this sort of thing that's so hard to make
>some people understand. :/
>
>They see the veneer of equality and don't look beyond it.
<nodnod> Unfortunately, these people often add insult to injury by
claiming that if the woman in question were "tougher", more
"thick-skinned", or somehow different, she would have been able to get
through despite the hardships involved and persevere in shop, math, CS,
etc. That kind of determination does exist, of course, but to make it
essentially a requirement for continuing on in a male-dominated class is
absurd, even if done unwittingly.
I see this as just one more example of putting the onus on women (and also
a common attitude of blaming the individual while ignoring the effects of
larger systemic forces) for something that should be *everyone's*
responsibility. There's nothing inherently wrong with women learning to be
tougher, mind you. But in the situation Cat described, I have to wonder
why it never seemed to occur to the teachers/counselors involved to direct
their efforts toward teaching the *others* to be more accepting instead of
taking the "easy" way out (which probably made it harder on her in the long
run) and steering her in a different direction.
--------------------------------------
Danyeke "D.J." Swanson http://www.bogon.net/~danyeke
"Artificial stupidity (AS) may be defined as the attempt by computer
scientists to create computer programs capable of causing
problems of a type normally associated with human thought."
--Wallace Marshal
************
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
