>While we're at it, here's a random whinge...
>
>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.)
>
>To put it mildly: this annoys me.
>
>(Tangent: I just returned from 5 days interstate on business. Our
>technical director, who I also live with, informed me that there had
>been phone messages from someone I was dating a year or more ago, and
>that he wanted me to call her and get together with her in an effort to
>improve my general sanity and wellbeing. Now, I happen to know that she
>lives in a share house full of left wing greenie/hippy/queer types. Can
>you see me wandering in there after work one night and bitching about
>capital gains tax and its effect on the Australia stock market, or the
>cashflow forecasts for next financial year, let alone the difficulties
>I'm having abstracting the presentation layer in my web log analysis
>tool? I didn't think so.)
>
>Has anyone else experienced this? Any advice?
>
>If someone convinces me that there's sufficient crossover between the
>SF/Bay Area queer community and the IT industry, I'll... well, I'll have
>to try very hard to stop myself from swimming across the Pacific.
>
>*sigh* I need a life.
>
>K.
YES YES YES YES YES. I have experienced this many times. Having a cell
phone, pager, palm pilot, and laptop will me at all times, it is hard not to
get crap about working for the heteropatriarchy.
Mostly, I try to talk about idea's like opensource, empowering other women
in science and technology, and opening my own business. That seems to work.
I also avoid talking about the stock market at all costs unless it's about
how capitalism is messed up. I also started fixing up old computers and
giving them out to my hippie/queer friends who have never used a computer.
That is also a really easy way to show them how much alternative stuff is on
the internet like www.igc.org. They love it! If they don't have a computer
tell them you will give them one. WOW - friends for life. Obviously, you
can't do that everyday but I for one have a lot of computer parts and crap
in my room and having someone every now and then to put a recycled system
together for gets me motivated to clear out this junk.
My partner in crimes against nature is not interested in computers or
science fiction but we just work it out. I really wish I knew more people
that were geeks and dykes but it seems like their on this list. I know a lot
of lesbians in the computer industry but few are as geeky as me. They are
more like sports/corporate dykes. As of this date I have yet to meet
another women that is into being vegan/greenie/hippie/queer and all that
plus a geek. Maybe I will meet some, maybe their on this list, but I haven't
yet.
So, I have kinda ended up splitting up my life into compartments. I have my
computer friends from school or work and I talk about computers with them
and then I have my feminist/hippie/midwives/queer friends who I go see
movies with and go to Michigan Womyn's Music Festival with, and I have my
geeky friends who I nerd out with on science fiction and whatever else and
there isn't that much overlap.
So, my advice is to go over to that house where all those women live and
find yourself a babe and fix her up a freebie computer... Then spend lots of
your free time which I'm sure you have (ha ha) showing her how to turn the
thing on and off, save files, and whatever else. Maybe she will make you
dinner....
good luck,
helaine
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