From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: the openness of USENET
Date: 26 Aug 92 15:26:31 GMT
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


In article <1992Aug26.130900.29938@cis.ohio-state.edu>
amz@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arnold M Zwicky) writes:

>this is one of the things that makes
>soc.motss not a bad place to start the coming-out process.  you get
>the relief of saying "i'm gay" in public; you get some support from
>other people who've been through similar experiences; and you probably
>are not informing everybody you know, yet, but if you eventually do so
>through posting to soc.motss the news comes to them in an indirect and
>nonconfrontational way.

Very good points, I think.  A case in point:

Nowadays I post almost exclusively to soc.motss.  But when I
first got going on Usenet (1986), I posed to all sorts of
groups, and for quite some time I was very active in
rec.music.classical.  I had been doing a fair amount of
posting to soc.motss as well, but music CDs were still a
relatively new thing back then.  The newspaper I write for
as classical music critic and newshawk assigned me to write
a large feature on classical CDs, including brief reviews of
about 100 discs.  Upon finishing the task, I asked if the
r.m.c bunch were interested in seeing them, and indeed they
were.  I think by the time I got through, there were closer
to 200 short disc reviews posted.

As a result, I showed up for the first time on the top-25 by
Kbytes list published every two weeks in news.lists, where
it mentioned something like 60% soc.motss, 35%
rec.music.classical (it was probably net.motss back then).

As it happened, the offices on either side of me were
occupied by two extraordinarily smart-ass, homophobic
asshole straight-boyz, both of whom very quickly appeared at
my door that morning to let me know they'd seen the
news.lists mention.

I suppose this was one time when I was glad for a power
structure, as I was quite senior to them, which effectively
blocked their saying anything at all out of line.  I just
smiled sweetly.

But it was a kind of coming out for me, because it reminded
me of the very thing Arnold mentions: likely somebody will
at some point see what you've posted to soc.motss (or, as in
this case, a pointer to it).  It was kind of a minicloset
door opening, because these two jerks were great gossips,
which meant it would get around very quickly to anyone who
didn't know already.  I realized at once that would be a
very good thing for all concerned.  Since then (or maybe
even before) I came to know of several colleagues (or
various persuasions) who read soc.motss and are therefore
bound to see my stuff now and then.  It quickly becomes
something you take for granted and have no further concern
about.

Apart from people who are LGB-friendly already, nothing at
all untoward has ever come of it.

<> C makes it easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot.  C++
<> makes that harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole
<> leg. -- Bjarne Stroustrup
-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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