[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> From: Lynette Quinn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: [issues] Does Jane Compute
> Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 06:52:29 -0800
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> One thing that hasn't been touched upon in this discussion is the attitude a
> girl's father plays in all of this. I have read information and studies
> about the importance of adult male comments at this stage in a girl's life.
> I think everyone wants to feel desirable. Girls at the age of 12 or so have
> a lot to sort out about their own sexuality etc. It is helpful for both men
> and women to portray smart women as attractive and desirable.
>
> Another place to look for studies relating to this topic might be an
> organization called girls, inc. I didn't see anything on their website
> concerning this research, but I know from the past, that they have some
> research about this. Perhaps if you contact them via phone or email, they
> would point in the right direction.
>
> Lynette
>
> issues mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hi. I am Doug, a guy. Hi and all that. :) I would be more verbose in
introduction. I have written some possible introductory text, but it
all seemed too narcissistic. Oddly, to introduce is to explain one's
self, which ought to be an automatically forgiveable kind of a thing,
but whatever. We can all get to know one another as seems appropriate I
suppose.
I pipe in on this particular topic largely because of a predominantly
heterosexual sentiment.
Before I saw this thread or anything like it, I was looking in the
Computer Shopper (hardcopy) magazine, February 2000. An advertisement
for a company called Quantex is there. In ascii, I'll try to show what
it looked like.
--------begin facsimile of ad
[I Create. Therefore I Must Rock.]
------------------------
___ | I am the Internet.
/ \ | I work at the speed of light.
\ / | I create my own destiny.
| | |
| \ |
------------------------
--------end facsimile of ad
Obviously (but not at first glance) this woman is a professional model.
The details of her facial features are too good to be possible (unless
you live in Hollywood, I suppose). She has a frown on her face that is
just this side of a pout, and she has a sort of faraway look in her
eye. Notably, she has the stereotyped black-rimmed gender-neutral nerd
glasses. Furthermore, in those glasses is a conspicuous glare with a
somewhat hazy snippet-image of green characters in text mode (as in 80's
terminals). All the green characters are dots and decimal digits.
When I saw that, I thought I could see enough in those details that it
smacked of some very careful thought by some Madison Avenue style of
company. This was not just thrown together on a whim. I would even
venture to guess that the propaganda wizards did some focus group stuff
on this.
I say this as support for (unfortunately) a challenge to the prevailing
sentiments of this thread. I can tell you from a subjective point of
view that that "impossible paradigm" woman is just as fascinating as any
previous era paradigm, say, from the (now) laughable Chanel ads on TV.
Among grownups, there is nothing unsexy about a digitally competent
woman.
If you say that the folks partway there (i.e., adolescents) are glaring
exceptions to the rule, I certainly would not argue with you there.
But, then again, adolescents are like insane adults in a way. I think
in morally neutral matters, we would all be wise to give them some
reign. I think it unwise to try to be either "helpfully insidious" or
overbearingly influential in matters like these.
I think it's a good idea to inspire a spark and then let a slow burn of
curiosity take it from that point forward. Largely because poking keys
of a computer is largely private behavior anyway, issues of
embarrassment don't play much of a role.
Just a quick remark, "That's cool, Julie," (or whoever) with a genuine
smile about whatever computer thing young Julie (or whoever) is doing,
would go a long way, but too much conscious nudging winds up being too
obvious, and you know how teenagers are about matters of whose impetus
it was to do xyz.
----
The whole nerd thing is changing very rapidly all over.
Let me give you an example.
I was in an airplane, returning to the Midwest from California. As
"luck" would have it, a stereotypical drop-dead gorgeous blonde sat next
to me. Mind you, I don't think this 100% good luck. When someone that
pretty is that close, an involuntarily high level of self-consciousness
pervades every moment. For at least a couple of hours after simply
saying hi, I just ignored her and read Unix Review, System
Administrator, and Linux Journal magazines. I'm serious.
I made it through everything interesting in those magazines (i.e.,
interesting in an uninterrupted rush of text and pictures for my mind to
churn about, including some experimental stuff about clusters and the
wandering thoughts about the slightly "doomed" future of high end
Unix). The next thing you know, I just put it all aside and chilled.
Then I couldn't help but notice that the young lady was stuck in her
crossword puzzle with something that I knew. Politely, I offered to
help.
Then we discussed college and Minneapolis. She asked me if I was a CS
major, and I said not until I can come up with the tuition and so on,
but I was gearing up to do some consulting and perhaps to invent an
embedded system (and, with luck, perhaps land a job cranking out Solaris
and Linux device drivers for a southern California SCSI chipset company
with whom I had been "flirting"). I turned her attention to the cute
little Tux and explained just a little bit about Linux. She thought it
was neat, and she even asked a few questions when I gave a politely
quick overview of GPL'd code and "that student in Finland".
She was not haughty or irritated or anything like that. Perhaps because
of both a stereotype and a false "mind reading" stereotype, what could
have been a much more pleasant plane trip was just a notch or two above
tolerable.
In retrospect, I realize that being a computer geek is not an
unattractive thing anymore. It is certainly true after a dose of
reality gets us away from the jock worship of high school.
I think this "no-longer-outcasts" circumstance transcends gender.
Furthermore, I think that intimidated women who see the fake dumb
behavior of other women attracting some men ought to take a closer look
at what is really going on. For a quick example of what I am about to
explain, consider the language chosen by Playboy magazine: "Playmate of
the month". Playmate of the month is almost a redundant expression, and
the gratuitous attention to almost everything but cognition explains
something in itself (if only in its porportions).
I've seen scientific studies that show it is borderline ubiquitous in
heterosexual females to desire an intelligent man who will "stick
around". In the same research, it was found that when a man wants to
"stick around" he is also looking for intelligence. In other words, for
what "you really want", the arguably instinctual "cravings" are not
antagonistic to smart women who act like smart women.
To bring us back to the plane trip, I got over the intimidation about
this fabulous looking young lady fairly quickly simply by averting my
attention. However, when I learned that she was a graduate student, the
self-consciousness index (and probably blood pressure) rose once again,
even though it was clear that she was not haughty. In other words, I
was attracted all the more to a woman with scholarly ambitions and a
demonstrated capacity to carry them out.
This is not unique to me, an individual.
Furthermore, I think young girls who grow up seeing the CEO of Hewlett
Packard look with a tasteful, confident, but not arrogant look into the
TV screen with the implicit challenge, "Watch," those young girls will
head themselves toward a future where there is no significant issue of
assimilation with technology and women.
For what it's worth, those "garage" ads on TV impress me. I take it to
heart. Yeah. I'll watch HP invent. I'll keep my ear to the ground
when I hear some rumblings from that company. It would be nice to see
it do well under female leadership. I don't want to put any pundits out
of work before their time, but the whole situation could very easily
wind up with only minor taste-oriented issues surrounding gender in
information technology.
By the way, I advise you to take a closer look at the "HP lady" next
time on TV. She's pretty. People will realize that. It just might be
that even you the presumably more "aesthetically oriented" gender missed
that point possibly because the "HP lady" did not bother to mention that
she is the CEO, possibly because she is a Baby Boomer with a laugh line
or two.
***
For all the troubles of installations and broken "dot ess ohs" and the
steep up-front learning curve of C and the culture shock of a Unix
command line, a person cannot find her way or his way through it all
unless there is something inside, an intrinsic motivation, to pull a
person through the succession of tiny nightmares. If we concern
ourselves too much from without about matters that ultimately wind up
being personal, then I fear that we might get caught in the act of
social engineering.
Mind you, I am fairly likely to get a job as a social worker to put
computers into the hands of school kids, and I spent more text in the
cover letter, while applying for that position, hyping Linux than
myself. If anyone is probably a social engineer for Linux expertise in
school girls, it would probably be me.
Even so, I think the most important impetus has to come from inside
after the inspiration has been implanted.
***
Now, at risk of being gratuitous, I think I can say with reasonable
confidence that I am experiencing an emotion or two very much like those
on the airplane. Don't kid yourself; linuxchix are inherently
attractive.
***
Add it all up, and I think the worrywarts among you will wind up like
Alan Greenspan of late. After the American stock indeces tried to
correct for their arguably misplaced optimism, they bounced right back
up, presumably because of the "background issues" of pathetic returns on
(most flavors of) debt instruments when the federal level of U.S.
governance has decided to run in black ink. Greenspan now has to admit
that his own pessimism was misplaced.
In logic, I contradict you, but the aim is similar to the "reality
check" of finance kicking Alan Greenspan into a less gloomy outlook.
Lighten up, chix. You're too cute to resist.
Nice meetin' ya.
Doug
:)
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