From: kentd@FtCollins.NCR.com (Kent Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: NO MORE *&#*$(^*& FEMALE BIMBO ADS!!!!!!!!
Date: 11 Nov 92 16:47:01 GMT
Reply-To: Kent.Dalton@FtCollinsCO.NCR.com
Distribution: world
Organization: NCR Microelectronics, Ft. Collins, CO
In-reply-to: Paula_Lieberman@amicol.UUCP's message of 9 Nov 92 03:49:21 GMT

>>>>> Paula_Lieberman@amicol.UUCP (Paula Lieberman) said:

Paula> About my t7ypiung [I think I'll leave that typoing stand.....]

Paula> I grew up in a time and place where girls were given the career
Paula> directions of becoming nurses, secretaries, teachers, or
Paula> homemakers.  Those were NOT things I wanted to do -- I wanted to
Paula> design starship engines.....  Since it was pretty apparent that I
Paula> wasn't foi] going [line noise.... sigh] going to burn my brain
Paula> out the way a lot of my female classmates learned, it was decided
Paula> arbitrarily by my contemporaries in public school that I
Paula> obviously wasn't female.
Paula> <additional neurotic drivel mercifully deleted>

This thread is no longer a discussion, it's therapy. 

Paula, you have gotten to the point where it's pretty evident to even a
casual reader of the Amiga Usenet forums that you are hung up (to the
point of neurosis) on the inequities of the perceived roles of women in
American society. I personally find all of your bitching tiresome and
unproductive and suggest you take it elsewhere.

I mean really, "Why are all the custom chips female names!?", how do you
expect anyone to assume you have any intelligence at all and not
immediately label you as a hypersensitive-lesbian-feminist-commando with
such irrational whining.

Let's look at the original topic as an example, as well: exploitation of
women in the advertisement of computer products. 

I just went through the 12/92 issue of Amiga World. I saw two pages that
someone might be justified in calling exploitative (57 (ASDG, woman in
bathing suit, torso shot) and 89 (Centaur Development, nearly topless
sun bather (by far the more suggestive of the two).). The list of
advertisers lists approximately 90 advertisers in this issue, that's
~2.2% of the advertisers. Obviously, in the ideal case, this number
would be zero, but I think when you compare it to almost any other
industry where the target consumer for the advertising is male, it will
compare very favorably. (Actually, given the video (read visual)
oriented nature of many of the products available for the Amiga, I
expected the AW numbers to be worse.)

IMHO, bitching about the computer industry's use of women in advertising
is ridiculous because it's nothing but an incredibly tiny symptom of the
real problem.  To actually solve the problem, our fundamental view of
the relationship between gender and social roles must change, period.
And that starts and ends with: education, in the home and in the
schools. When these basic expectations that are formulated in childhood
have been changed, the "symptoms" will become irrelevant because they
will disappear.

Some advice:

When someone blows things completely out of proportion the way you do,
it does nothing to help further the interest that you're advocating. It
merely convinces your audience that you are mental. As a result, they
will not take your opinions regarding the serious problems into
consideration.

Think about the way Marc Barrett does with the Amiga. Almost no one
actually listens to him even when he occasionally has a point of merit
because he's blown so many trivial things out of proportion.

I suggest you stop and try to identify the root cause of the problems
that bother you so much and then try to identify some course of action
that you can take to begin correcting the problem which will not simply
make it worse. Doubtless, this plan will NOT include continually waging
flame wars on the net.

--
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/* Kent Dalton                   * EMail: Kent.Dalton@FtCollinsCO.NCR.COM */
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I fill MY industrial waste containers with old copies
 of the ``WATCHTOWER'' and then add HAWAIIAN PUNCH to
 the top..  They look NICE in the yard--