NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/sci/physics/20982

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-12 | 4.1 KB

Xref: sparky sci.physics:20982 sci.engr:2360 alt.psychology.personality:281
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.engr,alt.psychology.personality
Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!umn.edu!doug.cae.wisc.edu!wilsonp
From: [e-mail] (Paul Philip Hood Wilson)
Subject: Re: Richard P. Feynman
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering
Distribution: na
Date: 12 Dec 92 11:20:48 CST
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Lines: 64

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Edward Henigin) writes:

>There are reasons that people hold stereotypes.  Partially from a lack
>of experience with the stereotyped party, and partially because the
>experience people do have with the stereotyped party tend to reinforce
>the stereotype (or change it if it's wrong, but usually, at the surface,
>stereotypes are pretty close.  Gay men talk with feminine voices.  This
>is a stereotype.  This has never been proved wrong to me.)
>
    It is people such as yourself who perpetuate the stereotypes, not
the group that has been stereotyped.  If you only look for what you want to
see, then how do you expect to have your stereotype altered.  The bad
reputation of Engineering students at my Alma Mater is now simply that:
reputation.  The Engineering Faculty at the University of Toronto has made
great efforts where other groups have not to change the way it operates.
During the orientation festivities of the last two years, the Engineering
Faculty has made it a policy to discontinue the homophobic, sexist, and racist
cheers and chants of past years.  How has the rest of the campus responded?
They all continue to use the same "Engineers are queers!" chants of the past.

Which brings me to my next point.  Mr. Henigin, the self-proclaimed judge of
personality, is showing his hypocrisy with such comments as "Gay men talk with
feminine voices."  I suppose that is an easy to stereotype to perpetuate since
one must conclude that if they meet someone with a gruff bass voice, that they
must not be gay.  Well, we would all be surprised to find out which memebers
of our society are gay, and you would be equally surprised to find out how
normal and inconspicuous there voices are.

Stereotypes in today's society serve one purpose, and one purpose only: to
provide means to define a group for persecution and descrimination.  Why not
dwell on the similarities and celebrate the differences amongst us all?  If we
were all the same as each other, the world would be a boring place.  Further-
more, if all stereotypes fit, and all members of a particular group were the
same, the world would be only slightly more interesting.

>So we are to trust your judgement and throw away our standing beliefs.
>I don't think so.  Where it comes to personalities, I trust my judgement
>much better than I trust yours.  Besides, as you have demonstrated
>already in this post, you are biased.  You think that people who
>'pick on engineers' are wrong.  Well, the picking on the engineers might
>actually have something worthwhile to say, but you won't listen because
>you don't want to.
>

I, on the other hand, am open to criticism of engineers.  There are a lot of
things correctly associated with engineering in the past, but due to the
crticisms by our society, and equally, amongst our peers, we are becoming
an important group in some aspects of modern social change.  Where I come from,
the engineers of our society play an important role in ensuring the qaulity and
equality of education,  It is the engineers that try to educate with the facts
while other social organizations use fear and scare tactics to portray the
best solutions of the _present_ as the means to destroying our world.  (But I
digress...)

In any case, perhaps you should get out and meet a few other engineers.  Could
it be that the only ones you know are through your friends, which presumably
have similar beliefs to yourself, and hence, your description of engineers is
merely a self-revelation?  Just something to ponder.

        yours with conscience

            Orca