Re: debian and women? from DWN #10
On 2004-03-25, Kent West penned:
> Monique Y. Herman wrote:
>
>>Outside of the dating scene and maybe someone who is visibly pregnant,
>>why would you treat women any differently than men?
>>
>>
>>
> Because women _are_ different than men, regardless of the populist
> notion in the 70's and 80's to the contrary.
Sure, there are some quantifiable differences (and many that we could
argue about till the cows come home); what I should have asked, and
meant to ask, is, *how* would you treat women any differently than men?
Especially when your only medium is the keyboard. I have trouble
imagining a non-dating, non-pregnancy-related situation in which I would
consider being treated differently than a man appropriate. And the only
reason I'm considering the dating situation is because I believe you're
hetero, and therefore you would certainly treat a woman differently than
a man in that situation -- simply because you wouldn't be on a date with
a man.
> I think I committed a faux paus; I think I've confused you with Emma
> Jane concerning the indications of being married, and maybe with the
> "your first post/my first response" thing.
Could be. To be honest, I can't be sure; I remember a "neat; you're a
girl!" response to my first post on d-u, but don't recall who said it.
> It's not so much that I _think_ first of you as a woman; it's more
> that I _notice_ first that you're a woman, and that awareness of your
> being a woman doesn't ever quite fade out of the picture.
Ah; that's a different matter. Kind of like I might notice a very
non-English sounding name; I will usually give more slack to probable
non-native-English speakers. Not only are they probably going to
considerable effort to post, but their cultural expectations may also be
different than mine.
This helps me formulate a question that has been brewing in the back of
my mind. The "hacker" community has long prided itself on its blindness
to typically divisive issues like race, but I wonder if this has more to
do with the inability to see the person than it does with any actual
merit. You can't tell someone's ethnicity from their username, but you
can often tell their gender.
> I bet it's not as conceptually weird to you as you think; for example
> -- I often call my male co-workers by their last names; I almost never
> (if ever) call my female co-workers by their last names. It's no big
> deal; but it does demonstrate that I'm (subconsciously) aware of the
> difference between men and women and that awareness affects my
> behavior.
I never understood that last name thing, but last names in general are a
sore point for me at the moment. I'm pretty sure I'll be changing my
name to make him happy, but it weirds me out. I never fantasized about
marriage, so losing my last name is arguably a bigger deal to me than it
is to some women.
(Our hockey team calls my fiance "Mud", an abbreviation of his last
name. Whereas I'm known as Mo'. Now, when, er, if I take his last
name, am I suddenly a second-class Mud? He's the original and I'm a
cheap knockoff?
Yes, I already know that I overanalyze these things.)
--
monique
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