Doug Vogt wrote:
>
> 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.
ehhh... never really perceived disdain from anyone. <shrug> for how i
looked,
sometimes, for my attitude often, for my political beliefs, sex life,
religious beliefs, tastes in editors, yeah. for being good at computers?
not really. most people are just impressed, occasionally weirded out (i
do tend
to find coding fun and have left my house in the middle of the night to
drive to work so i could code on a project that had been bugging me in a
decent environment... er, hi amanda. :). but aside from the "wow, you're
REALLY otaku about this!" reaction (which i get from GEEKS, even), i
don't think there's disdain for being good with computers THEMSELVES.
it's the fact that to BECOME competant you often have to spend lots of
time not having a social life, and often neglecting such things as
friends, clothes, makeup, proms, classes... er... anyway, just generally
being somewhat isolated and obsessive, which is not as acceptable for
girls as it is for guys. but that's not disdain for being competant,
itself, imho.
> 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.
don't think that's jealousy: that's good, healthy hatred and
anger. <shrug> 'perfect body' females, at least the ones who have to put
EFFORT into it, are almost all vapid, immature, shallow and selfish
people.
> 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.
'normal female mind'?
these things EXIST? heh.
look, not to flame you, but there's no such thing as a female mind,
damnit. (a female BRAIN, yes. mind, no).
>
> The connotation between the desireable woman and the technologically
> competent woman will probably pervade propaganda in the future.
psuedo-competant woman. or, well: it's becoming easier and easier to be
"technologically competant" these days, with less time and dedication
required, as the ease-of-use curve starts to take off. i think the true
hackers/code geeks/otaku/whatever of /either/ gender will still be
'undesireable' or 'nerdy' or 'antisocial' or what have you; it's just a
matter of /what/ we consider to be 'competant'.
sure, a woman with an mcse carrying a laptop (for example) might be seen
to have 'cool girl' points; the obsessive OS-writing nutjobs who spend
over half their waking life attached to a terminal of some sort will
probably still get weird looks. (i include myself in this category. :)
> 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.
if they /are/ intelligent. <grin>
> 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.
but is this image an /attainable/ one? i agree with your thought on
marketing, but there's a /big/ difference between knowing how to use a
windows box and, say, being able to set up a network or administrate one
or write a driver or
do /really/ geeky things. there's a difference between the 'aura' of
competance and /real/ competance.
> 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.
teenagers are a bit too old, honestly. and while 'let them geek out on
their own' is a pretty good idea, i'm still very resentful that my dad
waited until i was about 8 or 9 to get me a box and encourage me to
learn BASIC. the earlier you get used to computers, the better; i still
feel like i'm 'behind'.
considering the degree to which teenagers are 'nudged' towards sports,
etc, it's probably not TOO bad.
--
---
Susannah D. Rosenberg / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / gravity.dyn.dhs.org
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