On 20 Feb 2000 23:17:58 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Kirrily 'Skud' Robert) said:
>Occasionally (less often than I used to, for this very reason (among
>others)) I will meet an interesting-looking MOTSS and get chatting,
>until the topic of "what do you do?" comes up. I tell them what I
>do, and almost invariably, their response is one of:
>1. blank incomprehension (you mean you're not a student, a waitress,
>a social worker, a drug dealer, or unemployed? uhh...) 2. political
>outrage (Computers are tools of the heteropatriarchy!) 3. fear and
>avoidance (Oh. Computers. I don't understand them. Bye.)
You think this is bad. My ex has a master's in mathematics. When
people (mostly women, but also some men) find this out they invariably
go "ooooh, math" and I think a lot of them immediately decide that
she's some sort of weirdo (because only a weirdo would pursue graduate
studies in mathematics), and doubly weird because she's female, too.
Some of the reaction you're getting is because you're in computers;
it's not all because you're female (or gay) in computers. The bulk of
the general public is still afraid of computers ("We don't like what
we don't understand, in fact it scares us"), and often that fear gets
transferred to the priests and acolytes of the Holy Order of the CPU.
Kelly
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[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
