From: blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Response to thought experiment post
Date: 9 Sep 1992 21:46:45 GMT
Organization: North Carolina State University, Project Eos
Distribution: world
Reply-To: blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

Diane Matthews writes:
> |> I guess I'd say that the above note is a sufficient response to this
> |> thought experience.  I've developed some sympathy for men's confusion
> |> with how to deal with women, and have retained much of women's
> |> confusion about how to deal with men.  Once upon a time I asked, on
> |> soc.women, whether any other women experienced this sort of
> |> gender-unidentity (which I find very healthy in the kind of thought
> |> that it provokes!).  The only responses were from a handful of men who
> |> either didn't understand and thought it was my own fault, or who
> |> thought I was pretty weird.  So this is my question to you - anyone
> |> else out there in a field still dominated by men? who rarely see, let
> |> alone speak with other women?

 I'm a Computer Science major here at NC State, and I also co-op at a
 company in the same field.  Yes, this field is still very male-dominated.
 However, even before I went into Computer Science, I very rarely had
 female friends.  Most of the women I knew irritated me.  They were
 prissy and prim and would "ooh" and "ah" over everything imaginable.
 Basically, they were the women "society expects them to be".
 Needless to say, I had extreme gender-unidentity at the time because
 I despise being prissy and sweet and lovely (and all those other
 sickening words -- give me jeans and a T-shirt and messed up hair
 any day).  

 Furthermore, most women I knew could only seem to talk about their very
 proper hair, and their very proper boyfriends, and their very proper
 fingernails and make-up, and all those other proper things.

 Well, they didn't like the way I was (am) either.  They complained about
 my hair and my clothes and the type of guys I liked.  (I wish I were a 
 lesbian.  I could have really given them something to complain about --
 heh heh heh).

 I was at the point where I really wished I were a male because it was
 those "male" activities that really interested me.  I liked to talk
 about guitars and bands (not just how cute this dude was), religion and 
 philosophy, astronomy -- hell, just about anything but damn make-up
 and fingernail polish.

 Somewhere, I knew there were women out there who are different, but heck
 if I knew where to find them.  So, I hung out with the guys and became
 "one of them".

 I didn't seem to identify with most women at all, except that I have
 a woman's body and am sexually attracted to males.  (I don't wish to
 insult any lesbians out there by this phrase.  I am just stating the
 "societal norm" here)

 Later, after I did more reading about "women's issues" and started
 getting involved with goddess-worship and neo-Paganism and such 
 when I realized that one did not have to be a male to be interested
 in more than TV hairstyles.  Women are all those "male" things too
 and it is only society that dictates to us that these should not be.
 Now, I am proud to be a woman and I am rediscovering my lost
 heritage, so to say.

 Yet, I still get the "Well, she's not a _real_ woman.  She acts
 like a man" from the guys, but at least now I can try to open their
 eyes a bit to the fact that there are many different kinds of
 women in the same sense that there are many different kinds of
 men.  And we all have many different *human* interests.

 Well, I don't know if I've said what I was going to say when I started
 out this post, but this transformation (so to speak) is still very 
 exiting to me even though it's been a couple years.

-- 

Bekki Lyn

************************************************************
"All's well at the midnight hour; you're ready to fly
 Don't think about the darkness, or the rumbling in the sky.
 Somewhere on the morning road just waiting for you
 Some things that just could never be are calling up a
   spell so you can see..
 Dream Evil, the dark that you find in the back of your mind
 Dream Evil Dream Evil -- DIO --
************************************************************


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