NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/feminism/6413

Text File | 1992-12-22 | 7.0 KB | 171 lines

Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Path: sparky!uunet!haven.umd.edu!wam.umd.edu!rsrodger
From: [e-mail] (Yamanari)
Subject: Re: Language
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (USENET News system)
Nntp-Posting-Host: rac1.wam.umd.edu
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 19:55:50 GMT
Lines: 157

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>An illustration of something I was talking about awhile ago
>-- evidence of a hostile cultural attitude toward sex, and
>possibly a hostile individual attitude, as evidenced by the
>use of terms referring to gentalia as derogatory.  To wit:

    First,apologies for the lack of " "'s, my spacebar
    seems to be broken, and I don't notice if they don't
    get typed.

    The post in question had nothing to do with the
    cultural hostility towards sex (as in, sexual activity)
    but rather (what the author imagined was) the difference
    in number of insults against men or women that paralled
    the sex of the opposite column.


>[e-mail] writes:
>|             ... And no, I dont call women pussies,
>| i call men that act like women, pussies.

    In fact, to me, calling a woman a pussy (as in,
    "don't be such a pussy, you wimp!") is utterly
    wrong.  It makes no sense semantically.
    To me, it means "holding back" "unwillingness to
    commit"  "fear of doing something that might hurt
    a little" or whatever.

>To thrash around the unfamiliar territory: why are men who
>"act like women" bad?  What does "acting like a woman" mean?
>And why is a slang term for the female genitals an insult?


    And this is the focus, isn't it?

    See below for my response.


>(After all, one could as well use such a reference to mean
>"voluptuous" or "creative" which is how I experience them.)


    Come on, don't be rediculous.  Those aren't
    "acting".. "Creative"?  Frankly, I've noticed
    little or no difference between men and women when it
    comes to creative capacity.

>Or am I taking this wrong, and does evahramian admire men who
>"act like women" and wish to compliment them?  It would not
>seem so, for both male and female sexual organs were given as


    It has nothing to do with the genetals themselves.  What
    it has to do with is the cultural viewpoint assigned to
    each sex.  (right or wrong, stereotypes)


>insults immediately above.  Why?  These are not rhetorical
>questions.  In some cultures, ikons of female and male
>genitals are venerated as religious objects.   What are _we_

    Irrelavent.


    1.  "What does 'acting like a woman mean'?"
    2.  "What is wrong with a man who acts like a woman?"

    Let me try to get my viewpoint across here.  I'll wrap
    up in my asbestos blanket, but I would like to ask that
    flames like, "YOU SEXIST PIG!" simply be withheld to save
    bandwidth.

    You might call me a bit of a misogynist.  When I'm working with
    a man, I expect the man to reach answers using the same approach
    thatI do.  I cannot *stand* when a man pulls the womanly
    "hurry up to the answer and then sit and whine about it for
    several hours because it isn't (fair, equitable, whatever)."

    When I have to work with women,I always find myself counting
    to ten at least three times an hour, because while I
    accept that there are a vast number of women who are equally
    competent/qualified as I, as well as a bunch who are smarter,
    quicker, slicker, brighter--whatever--than I am--I cannot
    *stand* the way most women approach a problem.  It always seems
    to me that women are crippled in some way, since they seem
    unable to get straight through the problem solving process--
    heck, they often seem unable to even properly target the problem.

    So when I work with a man, I expect (and 99% of the time get)
    a mind that works in the same fashion as mine--that is,
    a mind I consider rational.  I prefer working with men
    because it is very difficult to get good results when working
    with a woman--if you're working on a theory on a joint project,
    and you're working with a man, he will often work rather hard
    to invalidate or rip up your reasoning--which is very important
    when that's *precisely* what the teacher is going to be doing.
    When you work with a woman it almost seems that, while they
    are *able* to do so, they choose not to--even if that is the
    express reason to work together.  Even when they *do* find flaws
    they will withhold mention until they've figured out a way to
    patch the theory to solve them, sometimes holding them back
    forever.

    Needless to say, this makes the work a lot less effective.  I
    *personally* can't work that way on purely technical goals,
    and try to avoid working with women that act this way (not
    all do--just most in my experiance).  OTOH, when the objective
    is a convincing argument or paper, I generally like to work
    with a woman--once I've *already solved the problem* because they
    give good feedback.

    To give a parallel, imagine that you have a friend who's
    learning sign language and you two are supposed to write a paper, and
    throughout the session this friend insists on trying to talk
    to you in sign language.  It will not only irritate you,
    it will quickly make you angry ("Quit acting like a damn idiot
    and get to work on the PROBLEM") because you are expecting them
    to deal with you as you deal with them. For me, this is what
    it is like (often) to work with a woman--or a man who acts like
    one.

    The other thing is, women will never shut up and get to work.
    They're so busy giving greetings and catching up with you
    that they can't just put that aside until later.  It's even
    worse if you're in a library--christ, it seems like they can't
    just nod or wave or wink and _have_ to get an entire conversation
    out of the way with every friend, teacher or even acquaintance
    that walks by.

     I prefer to be around women socially, because I get a little
    tired of the constant conflict (or implied conflict involved
    in any disagreement) that is omnipresent in a group of men.


    I would like to end this by pointing out that I am aware that
    the woman's approach to problem solving *works*.  I am also
    aware that women have no problem solving problems, writing
    papers orwhipping my pants off grad-wise.  I am merely trying
    to explain why I find men-who-reason-like-women frustrating
    to work with.  I've heard many of the complaints I've given above
    voiced by other men, and I've *also* heard a large number of
    similiar-but-opposite complaints given by women ("men are
    too conflictive"  "men can't work together, they're always
    trying to tear each other's work apart"  "men always try
    to dominate a discussion).

    <getting out the armor>
>--
> )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    [e-mail]    )*(
>( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )


--
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