From: rdonahue@spdcc.com (Bob Donahue)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Bear Crap
Date: 16 Nov 92 16:38:52 GMT
Article-I.D.: spdcc.1992Nov16.163852.19134
Organization: insert anything here

michaelh@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Mike Hennahane) writes:
>shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes:

>>nelson@reed.edu (Nelson Minar) writes:
>>> Furr@cup.portal.com (George Dalton Madison) writes: [...]

>>>Could someone provide me with a recent example of this, like say a
>>>direct quote or a reference to an article I'm likely to remember? 

	I sent Nelson some examples.

>>I can't think of anybody complaining about bear crap, but
>>there have certainly been cries of "Oh no, all that Furr
>>crap again!"  Not the same thing at all, although it may
>>appear that way to George.

	I can - but because I'm one of the more vocal ones, I
suppse that invalidates it auto-magically.  I can think of
two examples specifically that involve me: whenever
ANYone posts the NBCS to the net, I get hate mail from people
(and I mean pretty nasty stuff).  When I was working on
the motss survey II, I had the gall to include NBCS as
a thing to fill in - this started a flame war on why this was
inappropriate for a "motss" thing since it made speicific refererence
to "the bears".


	(BTW, this is why I halted work on the new database.  I 
have no desire to do something that is going to end up being a 
vehicle for choosing sides... I might re-do it in 1993 post-thesis,
but I'm tired of getting hate mail because someone isn't interested
in the same things I am... the individual who raised the initial
complaint can blame himself for spoiling it for anyone else who was
interested in the final product...)
	It does happen... not very vocally, I suppose because most
of the bears traffic has already been ghettoized to the BML.  When I first
started posting here there was a LOT more "Bear oriented" traffic on
this group, even after the creation of the BML.  In fact had someone
made the comment "'there's an awfully large bears presence here"
I would have agreed.  But over time that has changed, and whlie some 
people tend to overstate that point, it would be an error to say that
said presence has not decreased dramatically in the last 50+ months.

	That doesn't bother me as much as one would think because
1) the BML *is* there, and 2) I look to motss for other things
than just "seeing bears on the net".  

	Soc.motss is still the most heterogeneous GBLO*_group I have
ever seen, but it's becoming more homogeneous over time.  I don't 
think it's in any danger of losing it, andI'm certinaly
not predicting the "death of the net" or "death of the group",
but before Mike et alia start patting themselves on the back for
"showing that this is the work of a few deranged people", there
is sufficient evidence to show that yes, indeed soc.motss has had
its share of "anti-bear" postings/threads.


	Now is it a BIG THING?  No, there are inclusivity issues
that greatly exceed the need to be more bear-sensitive.  Certainly
seeing more womyn is one, minorities another.  When was the last time
we heard anything aboutthe radical faeries here?  Girth and Mirth?
Womyn's music fstivals?  I'm especially concerned about the presence
of motss.womyn because the intial data from the aborted sample 
above indicated that the %age of womyn DECREASED over the last 2.5 years
almost by 50%!  To me that's alarming...

>thanks, melinda.  you have crystalized my thoughts exactly.

	Are you sure you want to use that word?  I'm tempted to
agree but not gfor the same reasons you want.

	(the word in question could be "crystalized" or"thoughts".
Take your pick.....)

BBC
aka Galileo-bear