Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Communities for tech women

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:9/16/1999; 2:51:48 PM
Topic:Today's scriptingNews Outline
Msg #:11158 (In response to 11156)
Prev/Next:11157 / 11159

In the earlier days of the net, when the online women were few, just being female was cause for all kinds of odd and unwelcome contact from Horny Net Geeks.

I've had the opposite thing happen, not necessarily thru email, but sometimes. A woman comes on to me sexually. I express an interest but then it turns out she had a business objective. To me there's nothing colder than that. I hope you understand that women do make sexual approaches? How would you feel if I called them something as offensive as "Horny Net Geeks"? Would you feel I was being disrespectful towards women? BTW, men, I think, tend to really want sex when they ask for it. But women are more complex. (Which is another way of saying less honest.)

Now it'll be interesting to see if the women (and others) have problems with this. My theory is that people don't really want to hear the male point of view. I'm having several email exchanges right now over the "My Linux Brothers" rap, and I've encouraged them to bring their issues here in public.

When I look inside myself I see the Linux leaders as male. That could be my own subjective impression, but it's still valid. I look for confirmation in the world, and I get confirmation. The leaders of the Linux world *are* men. I couldn't be wrong, even if they were all women, because that's the way I see it.

I deleted one response to Dori's story that said she was wrong. I'll bring it back for a couple of minutes. This is where I think we get in trouble and why the enclaves appear necessary. None of us is wrong for our perceptions. There is no single true way to look at things. Everything is colored by our point of view. My contention is that for too long we've invalidated the male point of view.

My recent interest in this subject was sparked by a Newsweek cover story about the male point of view, written by a woman! Why do women meddle so much? Why should we hear from women about men before we hear from men about men? Would women tolerate that from men? No way.

(I'm not talking about things that happened before you or I were born.)

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