From: wchenaul@cyclone.mitre.org (William W. Chenault)
Subject: Re: seeking higher ground
Organization: Mitre Corporation, McLean, VA
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 17:47:56 GMT

In article <2151@catfish.ocpt.ccur.com> luzenko@catfish.ocpt.ccur.com (Bill Luzenko) writes:
>
>[extra lines deleted, returns inserted]
>In soc.singles I find that men comments are six times the womens.
>And when a women is involved in three times out of five we have a battle of
>the sexes. Anyone can project this confidence in themselves that polarizes
>one against the other. I would use the bandwith to get down to details to
>find the infinitesimal common ground which would yield the faintest echo of
> cordial thaught as hard as it may seem.
>
>So if someone out there is trying to avoid the current pitfall or name
>dropping and the male beachmaster mentality/ female lack of a certain
>hormone lets talk!! 

Bill Luzenko,

	I am mildly surprised that you think every time a woman gets involved
in a soc.singles discussion it turns into a "battle of the sexes."  I thought
they had a decided tendency to turn into a series of flirting/ suck-up posts.
If you are not a regular reader of this group (or if you are a relatively new
reader to this group), you may not yet realize that the people who are posting
male-bashing quotes from radical pamplets are not engaged in a battle of the
sexes, but are instead doing it as a joke, as they (and most other readers in
this news group) finds taking these quotes seriously to be completely absurd.

	There is also a lot more common "cordial thought" ground that most
readers of this news group share than you seem to realize.  For example, not
long ago there was a frat bashing party in this newsgroup.  That, of course,
is not really "cordial thought" ground, with the frat member of the flame war
resorting to the kind of "dialog" frequently found on public restroom walls,
and other members posting articles bragging about how much they hated the
fraternity system.  If all members of fraternities were like that one, they
might have had good reason, but a couple other Greeks posted articles saying
that the system shouldn't be judged by that one member, and the positive 
things that could come out of the Greek systems, and the other net.readers
quit bashing the fraternities (choosing to ignore the vulgarities of the one
guy), and even posted a couple of conciliatory posts (thanks Dawn) of positive
Greek experiences that they knew of (even though they had never been Greek).

	Yes, I still have a couple of email letters calling me a knee-jerk
(and worse) frat boy for saying that some fraternities can provide beneficial
experiences for the members, campus, and the community (etc), while praising
their own closed mindedness (saying that when they were in college they never
ever even considered joining a Greek system or finding out about it in detail
- and maybe at the college they attended, this might actually be a good thing).
However, the point is most people who read the this news group are fair and
open minded, and Dawn (in particular, there may be others) was willing to
tell a positive story about fraternity members while another frat boy was
threatening to put "his member" down her throat.  You have expressed a belief
that we polarize everything, this example is one in which things started off
nasty, but most people were able to say "Gee, there is one jerk here, but 
we'll just kill him and quit labeling everyone else in the Greek system as
a jerk by association."  This is cordial thinking, in my opinion.  On the net,
as in real life, there are a few jerks, but most people are cordial (IMHO). 
There are lots of cases where there is a discussion that is cordial throughout.
I believe the recent condom/ pill discussion was such a case, though I didn't
read all of it.  There the participants eventually agreed to disagree, but
everyone retained their civility to the other participants.  

	I think part of the reason that you have detected polarized positions
and beachmaster mentality is because on the net, operating without face to
face communication, posters can't rely on facial expressions and tone of voice
to pick up the subtle nuances of the conversation, so people don't always
realize when another poster is being hurt, or perhaps making a jocular comment
(not to be taken seriously) when posting something that may other wise sound
JOCKular.  Fortunately, on this news-group, many of the established or frequent
posters have met or at least flirted with each other often enough in the past
so they may have a better sense of who at least some of their readers are, and
this can in some measure make up for the lack of face to face communication.
Unfortunately, you don't seem to value the flirting side of this news group,
so it is harder to start an in depth conversation with you.  You told us
nothing that you might want to talk about, and if we pick something, we are
likely to pick something that interests us, and the style that suits us.  If
the topic interests us, we are likely to have a reasonably strong opinion on
it, and if it doesn't match yours, you might say that we are too polarized
for not being willing to moderate it much.  If it doesn't interest you, you
won't join in the discussion at all, and you have already expressed dissatis-
faction with the "style" of this news group's discussions.  If the news group
isn't meeting your needs, you can unsubscribe, or try to start a discussion
on a topic that interests you (so we can pronounce your position as hopelessly
polarized and radical, by the above arguments :-) ).  Your choice.

	Has anyone bothered to read this far?  I feel that I have recently 
been a victim of common sense, and I promise not to post to the net again until
I am properly cured. Fortunately, it seems to be a very mild case. :-)

Wild Bill



Newsgroups: soc.singles