From: dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer)
Subject: Re: Castro Street (Re: Two threads:  women posting and "cures" and its spinoffs)
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 01:42:24 GMT

In article <168BAA428.TMCCART3@ua1vm.ua.edu> TMCCART3@ua1vm.ua.edu writes:
>As I see it, the problem that has come clear after all my badgering about
>female invisibility on soc.motss is that (some of) the men here see things
>in terms of two simple equations:
>Visibility/attention = leering
>Lesbian/women's issues = how women manage to have sex without dicks
 
And I think you're out of line here.

>On the first issue:
>I have never been to Castro Street and cannot pretend to know what it's
>like to be a woman there. I got the impression from my reading of the
>original Castro Street post that the original poster did not mean all
>this as literally as the men have subsequently taken it.
 
I dunno.  We haven't heard back from her.  I figure if she says she
feels invisible on Castro Street, she's talking about Castro Street.

>I'm not imagining this. One of my dear brothers on soc.motss, once he
>got up the nerve to ask a question, could come up with nothing more
>insightful than "What do lesbians do in sex clubs?" Perhaps I'm being
>too hard on him, but I hear questions like that enough from *straight*
>guys. I expect better here.
 
Listen, Greg Parkinson doesn't have to get his nerve up to ask anyone
a question.  You think he's getting his rocks off asking you that?
Fuck you too.  Why don't _you_ get a clue, sister, and realize where
_you're_ saying this?

What's your point?  It's insulting to women to ask them about the
newly popular lesbian sex clubs?  That REAL lesbians are somehow above
this?  Where's Tsilke when we need her?

>The point is that to many men "gay" means "gay male." They seem to neither
>realize nor care that there are lesbians out there fighting the same kind
>of fights. Okay, the AIDS crisis has not hit the lesbian community to any-
>where near the degree it hit gay men, but lesbians are right there in the
>trenches with PWAs, demonstrating, nursing male friends, crying and mourn-
>ing. But I digress.

You sure do.  It was a terribly original thought 5 years ago, though.

>Gay culture is not restricted to raves, and show tunes, and Harvey Fierstein
>(sp?) and any number of othher gay male icons/activities. Those cultural
>references dominate soc.motss, understandably so because men dominate soc.
>motss by sheer numbers.

I think you're being deliberately selective and painting a manifestly
false picture of what goes on here in soc.motss.

I have no interest in raves, show tunes, much about Harvey Fierstein
(wow, his commencement speech seems to have made a BIG impression on
you, huh?  Of course, it had nothing to say to _you_ as a lesbian,
did it?) or very likely, just about anything that you might imagine is
a "gay male activity", or at least what passes for same in Tuscaloosa.

>But it's not just a numbers game. Men here seem to
>be aggressively uninterested in gay culture that's *not* male -- witness the
>quickness (I know, I know, I've said it before) with which references to
>lesbian culture and icons are sidetracked into something the men find
>more interesting.

Hey, whatja think of Phranc's latest album?

>We lesbians know a lot about your culture; we have little
>choice. How much do you know about ours? How much do you care?
 
Have you met Donald Agarrat?

>I can't make you care. I can ask politely that you refrain from doing
>everything in your power to wrest a thread away from lesbian/women's
>issues and steer it back into yet another gay male topic;

So when are you going to start?

>failing that,
>I can ask again that you change the Subject: line to acknowledge that
>you *have* sidetracked the topic.
 
That'll be the day.  Don't hold your breath.

>I can also ask that you be more conscious of the presence of women
>in the struggle of gayfolk -- men and women -- for equality and accep-
>tance.

Right.  Mea culpa, mea culpa <beating breast>.  You're going to have to
come up with more cogent stuff than this.  You sound like you just walked
out of your women's studies class.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
Newsgroups: soc.motss