What a great FAQ!!! I think you described feminism really well. Sadly,
so many people get the completely wrong idea about what feminism really
is. That inspired me to write a long rant about what feminism seems to
mean today in the popular imagination, but I ran out of steam writing it.
So I'll write something else better, and more to do with geek girl stuff,
too. Hopefully it will spark a discsussion, maybe. I also have
comments about the two-geek household tips I might mention another
time. BTW, that MTU tip was really helpful. :)
I was the little girl that loved going to the science center--some of my
most fun memories are going to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, or
to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and playing with all the
buttons and knobs and staring in awe at the huge 747 they had inside the
museum. I'm glad my parents (and even my old-fashioned grandparents,
too) encouraged my intellect. I learned to read at age 3; my mother would
have me on her lap while she was reading so I could see the book
too. Nobody ever told me I shouldn't have been able to read
yet--surprisingly people seem to do this kind of thing with kids!
I got to have two microsopes and a telescope--they were my favorite
things to play with. I liked things that were basically real things that
worked--my mom bought me a kid-sized real typewriter, and I sure had lots
of fun with that, too. When I was 13, an older friend who used to visit
one of the University of Washington computer labs took me there and showed
me how to program old-fashioned paper cards with a keypunch and feed them
into the card reader to be processed by the big mainframe. The only other
computers I got my hands on as a teen were the TRS-80's we had at my high
school--I learned to program in BASIC on them. I never did get the
Commodore 64 I wanted--money was too tight then.
I got a lot of other sexist messages growing up as a girl, but luckily
I never got the message that I wasn't supposed to be interested in science
or technology, and I was always praised for wanting to learn
everything. Nobody ever told me I was too bookish, or that I should let
boys win at chess, etc. So, when I became an adult, it actually shocked
me to hear people say stuff like "chicks don't play video
games". I've actually never seen any evidence for that--lots of non-nerdy
women like to play electronic games, and I never thought it was unusual.
I'm pretty floored at the locker room mentality of some techie guys, and
puzzled when I get patronized at the computer store.
I guess I never thought it was strange for a woman to like computers; when
I was a kid in the 70's, gender roles were a big issue, and progressive
parents like mine, and even kind of old-fashioned parents were trying not
to raise their kids in strict roles. The moon landing was still a new
thing in people's conciousness, and astronauts were considered really cool
to kids, even if they were all portrayed as male. Little girls collected
Star Wars trading cards just as much as the boys, even if they did flutter
and coo over Luke Skywalker. They all wanted to be Princess
Leia. The next-door neighbor girl liked Battlestar Galactica a lot. I
loved the Bionic Man and the Bionic Woman; I had a Jamie Sommers doll who
had lots of cool stuff in her bag like secret documents, cameras, and
maps.
I did more often personally identify more with Steve Austin; he was
portrayed as somehow 'cooler'. Jamie Sommers was just a spin-off from him,
the usual second-string female character. I liked my doll, and even tried
briefly to like her better, since I thought I was supposed to, but she was
kind of boring and second rate. She also wasn't an former astronaut, like
Steve--I can't remember what job she had before or how she became the
Bionic Woman. I also now seem to see re-runs of his show, but not her
show--that goes to show how unmemorable she was. :(
As a kid, I often imitated and tried to pretend to be male characters,
because they did get to have more fun. Even with this, I somehow never
got the message I wasn't supposed to like the things I liked. Science and
intellectual stuff was also encouraged for kids in general, even though
there were plenty of male-oriented messages. I guess because of how my
parents encouraged me, I luckily skipped most of the 'women aren't
astronauts, scientists, archaeologists, etc' messages that were around in
the popular media. I looked up to my dad and got along with him more
than I did my mother, and he taught me how to do the things he knew how
to do, like play chess, carve sculptures. So I go the message that I
could do anything my dad could do--I was kind of treated by my dad more
like other dads treat their sons. Therefore, I *could* grow up to be
an astronaut or a scientist or a computer programmer, since of course in
my eyes, my dad could do anything, and I could do anything he could. So,
I find the exclusion I sometimes face now pretty hard to understand, I
guess. After all, I was going to grow up to be like my dad or Steve
Austin!
psyche
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