Aak!
In my email box I only got so far as to read one email. Someone asked
for clarification.
Um. That would be good.
It helps to clarify after I write something with sparse and seemingly
accidental coherence.
To make matters worse, and put a hugemongous lump in my throat, that
posting I sent to all of you gave exactly the wrong connotations.
Implicit in the text--but not in my noggin--was the notion that a woman
or adolescent girl derives her worth from her capacity to attract.
My points pertained (however loosely) to psychology. What we ponder is
the various forms of impetus or frustration when we wonder what causes
Jane to compute. My babbling entry into the answer to the question was
basically this:
I think that too often women assume that there will be an automatic
disdain for all of the forseeable future for females who know a lot
about computers. I think that the opinion is fractionally true today.
The word, geek, or the phrase, computer geek, is still only part way
from its disdain-laden connotations to its achievement-oriented
connotations.
My fear is that temporal myopia (the propensity not to see trends from
the past to extrapolate into the future) would combine with
intimidations now. I think that women who are competent with computers
perceive disdain from others and also see in others the high levels of
esteem given to women primarily on the basis of physical attributes.
I suppose this might be an appropriate time to draw a very bright
distinction between envy and jealousy. I've read that the rage against
"perfect body" southern California females felt by normal females is
pervasive. The point of rage touches on simple issues of what a
formally educated person might call "Feminist Ethics 101". The
"perfect body" women get all the glory, but they do not
necessarily manifest the highest, contemporarily considered virtues that
should merit admiration. Thus, I think that the animosity among normal
southern California women against the "perfect body" southern
California women is jealousy but not envy.
This is about more than some isolated instance of antagonistic feeling.
I chose southern California because it is a convenient and extreme
example. It is an example of a sense of frustration that i perceive to
be present in women in general to significant but etherial and varying
degrees.
The issues of body-versus-mind in the "esteem-determining" formulation
are most acutely felt during the time in life when self-consciousness
is most acutely felt. That would be during the time of sexual
maturation.
That is a background.
I hope not to dive too deeply into controversy here, but I think I have
identified an element of sentiment that would evoke a nod of agreement
from many readers. Thus, since subsequent arguments are about the
facts of existent opinions, we can carry on the discussion as if we are
discussing facts simply because the logic is conditioned on the
pervasive FACT of those opinions' presence in the sentiment of a normal
female mind.
(This brings up the issue of normalcy. I know that the U.S.A. is not
the world, but it is perhaps 60% of the computational world and probably
more yet of the Internet's traffic and eyeball-hours.)
Ok. Now we have established that.
Now I offer what I had hoped to be complex but still soothing remaks.
I explained an intentional advertisement. I said that it seemed as if
a Madison Avenue thinking process had created that advertisment. That
opens up a can of worms, American worms. The advertisement seemed
cleverly targeted (perhaps with the use of a focus group, which is like
an opinion poll but with a smaller sampling of people and a much more
acute attention in topic and a much more dialogue-oriented means to
assertain the sentiments of the sampled population).
Since it seemed so careful and so "schemingly" propagandistic in that
advertisement, I reasoned that there was already enough built-in esteem
for a computer-competent woman that the Madison Avenue advertising firm
simply added on the already tried and tested "prefect looking woman"
motif with modifications in the propaganda to appeal to the sense of a
digitally competent woman.
I sense and predict that such couplings will become more frequent as
time marches on.
The connotation between the desireable woman and the technologically
competent woman will probably pervade propaganda in the future.
This sort of thing has a powerful effect on the population, and it
will, in my opinion, have a more powerful effect on younger women and
teens.
That was an example to support my point.
I also used an example of anectodal experience. The epistemic
difficultiy that I "naturally suffer" as an obvious non-female I had
attempted to counterbalance by explaining something that my gender and
sex can reveal that would otherwise not be known by "mere guesswork"
among females. I learned that it is not to be disdained to be a
computer geek, and I learned it by means of social interaction with a
stereotypically gorgeous southern California blonde.
This was logically weaker in support of my point, but I rerouted the
presumed flow of argumentation. (I reassert here that I did a very bad
job of writing about it.)
My subjective view (perhaps gratuitously) I explained in combination
with some other analysis.
I am sorry that I cannot accurately cite the source, but if you snoop
around and find the supporting studies for the Desmond Morris film
series, "The Human Animal", you will find notions and data to support a
theory of evolutionary psychology. I did not expound on that theory,
but it points out with laudible rigor that females, in the constrained
issues of attraction, wish most of all for a "man who will stick
around".
I said something like "Playboy's Playmate of the Month is almost a
redundant expression." This was my attempt at a quick summary of the
theory I learned from the Desmond Morris film series. Men are not just
attracted to the females from Baywatch. We are attracted to them at a
visceral level, but we know that it is just a visceral level. When we
think most clearly about settling down, the criteria of selection
weight cognitive capability much higher. That is very difficult to
perceive.
Consider at this point the stuff above about those irritating
California beach babes. I mean, just consider it as an example of your
own emotions.
You can certainly be irritated by the attention that Playboy's Playmate
of the Month steals. However, if you focus too closely on that, you
would run the risk of neglecting something more optimistic about us
drooling pathetic lecherous males. ;-)
The seldomly considered notion is that there is a quiet but still
arguably instinctual desire among heterosexual males to find an
intelligent partner of the opposite sex.
In this writing, I left the former sentence in its own paragraph to
show that it is a key proposition in this flow of logic. When you
consider how methodical the advertising people are while peddling
computers and services, more and more (in my opinion) you will see an
appeal in advertisements that makes the paradigm desireable woman.
Given the predominance of heterosexual sentiments, the appeal is
convertible. Men find themselves drawn by quiet instinct, and women
find themselves drawn by an implicit 'I ought to be like her,"
sentiment.
Teen girls and young women, in my opinion, over time will find that the
"perfect paradigm" is a computer geek more and more.
--------
Now another area of clarification that I owe you all:
I interspersed my opinion in the former posting that we ought to be
careful in the way that we encourage teens to pursue computational
goals. Central to this whole group of opinions is the opinion that
there ought to be an internal spark ignited that inspires curiosity and
intrinsic motivation to carry the motivations further. Exterior
"nudges" and encouragements seem legitimate in my opinion, but if we
push too hard and too opaquely for a socially engineered goal,
teenagers will react, and it would sadly equate computer ignorance with
assertion of independent thought and feeling.
I could say more, but I have written enough muddled points already!
------
I know you are a very nice group of people, but I still cringe as I
face the music to see what kind of responses I might have brought about
by my bad writing. If this were a different crowd with a different
attitude, then I would be buried in flames.
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