On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 01:32:19PM +1000, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> She also never let me program the VCR because she was afraid I'd get it
> wrong and annoy my father when he had to fix it up.
>
> But my father occasionally rings me up with a question that is prefaced
> by 'since you know so much about computers...'
Which reminds me of a theory about relationships, especially family
relationships.
The theory is that relationships involve trusting the other person with
certain areas of knowledge. Like, I knew more about cooking than my
boyfriend when we started living together, so I am the relationship's
cooking expert - 'Mary is this OK?', 'how long does it get cooked for'.
And I just guess, but I'm the one whose guesses are trusted.
However, I was thinking about the potential for conflict when you are
either just beginning something your partner is good at, or want to
learn something you've trusted them to take care of.
At least in my relationship, I have found it upsetting trying to learn
computing things from my boyfriend. When we started going out, I was
already a CS student, but knew nothing about sysadminning. He was
working as a sysadmin and was also acouple of years ahead of me as a
programmer (the gap is less now but still there, mainly because he still
has a lot more professional experience).
Anyway, the problem it is causing me is that its somewhat intimidating.
Because he more directly or indirectly taught me a lot of the stuff I
know about Linux, and a fair bit of programming, I find I
a) rely on him heavily to know stuff anytime I don't, and get very
intimidated when he doesn't know it ('but if *you* don't know it, how
can I learn it?') and
b) resent him for knowing stuff when I don't.
Does anyone think this concept extends to gender-realtions in general?
Do women rely on men to know certain things and vice versa? And what
happens when you get stereotype breakers together?
Mary.
--
Mary Gardiner
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