HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jenk@microsoft.com (Jen Kilmer)
Subject: Re: Dworkin and her positive contributions to feminism?
Date: 11 Sep 92 06:47:29 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Distribution: alt

In article <ZEN.92Sep10120207@death.corp.sun.com> zen@death.corp.sun.com (d) writes:
>
>she says.  I have never (physically) met anyone who agrees with her, or
>even one that thinks she's anything but a loon, if not a provocative
>loon at times.  I've seen one post on the net (just recently), in over
>ten years of net time (how long has dworkin been around/popular,
>anyway?), in which someone has actually defended her ideas as something
>to seriously consider.  
I too have never met over the net or physically anyone who agrees
with Dworkin (except for that one recent post).

I've tried to read some of Dworkin's articles about how Playboy
causes rapes and should be banned. I felt sick & disgusted that
I was wasting time on this, and that she's giving  the right-wing
a way to be "for women" in a way that IMHO does nothing for 
women. If anything, it makes it worse - if a man and a woman 
create 'pornography', he's solely responsible. EXCUSE ME? What
is SHE, a CHILD? Evidently....  

I quit reading.

Newsgroups: alt.feminism
From: awerling@nmsu.edu (WERLING)
Subject: Re: Grading papers
Organization: NMSU Computer Science
	<2457@tymix.Tymnet.COM>
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 05:54:40 GMT

In article <2457@tymix.Tymnet.COM> baba@Tymnet.com (Duane Hentrich) writes:

- This subject and this solution to a perceived need has been around for quite
- a while. I contend that if WE NEEDED a gender-neutral pronoun WE would have
- invented it already. After all, Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

Is your use of all caps indicative of a slight sense of peevishness?
Anyhoooo, it would appear that many people do perceive such a NEED.

-   And there is never a Father of Invention mentioned.

Take how many times you hear the term "mother of invention" and
compare it to the number of times you hear "he/his" as gender neutral.

--
Andrew Werling    awerling@nmsu.edu    yip@acca.nmsu.edu
"Jesus is coming, look busy."
          --from a button I bought in an Albuquerque bookstore.
From: elambert@qualcom.qualcomm.com (Eber Lambert)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Communism
Date: 14 Sep 92 23:30:05 GMT
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA

gazit@duke.cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit) writes:

>In article <gmxn44b.payner@netcom.com> payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne) writes:
>>Is not communism, or it's nearest equivalant, socialism, still alive
>>and well in China?

>Alive yes, well no.

.... this line is becoming more and more applicable to capitalism
     in the US as well.

>It has to use heavy repression, it has no chance to win in a 
>free election and it puts in more and more of capitalism into 
>its economic system in order to keep the production going.

... the US has periodically infused socialism into its economic
system to keep it humane. You'll also find that repression
is common in many US backed "Republics" in recent history.
One can also argue that authoritarian repression and free market
repression have the same net effect on the repressee. 

... Democratic Socialism is also alive and well in Western Europe. 
Primarily in those countries that are carrying big chunks
of the US debt.
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Dworkin...
From: moselecw@elec.canterbury.ac.nz (C.W. Moseley)
Date: 8 Sep 92 16:17:19 +1200
 <1992Aug31.015137.27277@NeoSoft.com> <5phn19=.payner@netcom.com>
Distribution: world
Organization: Electrical Engineering, University of Canterbury, New Zealand


payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne) writes:
> But were I to make the claims about -you- that [dworkin] makes about all men,
> would you take me seriously? Or would you think me sexist and deranged?

no, I'd think you didn't understand the difference between a generalisation
and a personal attack.

Statistics and generalisations _cannot_ be applied as predictors to individuals.
This is about as meaningful as imprisoning all US citizens for dropping atomic
bombs on Japan, or Germans for Nazi genocide attempts.


*love* & *hugs*
  ____MOZ___
 /\  _______\   (moselecw@elec.canterbury.ac.nz)
 \ \ \____  /             I've been stripped bare and nobody cares
  \ \ \/ / /     all the people I looked up to are no longer there
   \ \/ / /           I've been filled up with useless information
    \  / /                 spewed out by papers and radio stations
     \/_/            I've been waiting for tomorrow all of my life
  excerpted from the album `soulmining', by Matt Johnson (THE THE)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
From: jenk@microsoft.com (Jen Kilmer)
Subject: Re: Rita Mae Brown?
Date: 09 Sep 92 02:34:22 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <1992Sep7.043445.19992@news.acns.nwu.edu> Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu (Albert Lunde) writes:
>In article <Bu542y.JGD@acsu.buffalo.edu> ztsindi@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (The Independents - SUNY Buffalo) writes:
>>Howdy Y'all,
>>	Does anyone know what Rita Mae Brown is up to these days? I 
>>read a few of her books after a friend turned me on to her. I'm not
>
>Well, I think she is still writing, but the radical feminist or
>lesbian content of her works has deminished. I think her recent output
>has been novels.  This is a list of most of her books:
>
> The Hand That Cradles the Rock - 1971
> Songs to a Handsome Woman - lesbian poetry
> Plain Brown Rapper - 1977 - radical feminist/lesbian essays
> RubyFruit Jungle - 1973 - lesbian novel
> In Her Day - 1976 - lesbian novel
> Six of One - 1978 - novel with lesbian characters
> Sudden Death - ?? (I've read it but I forget the details.)
> Southen Discomfort - novel
>
Even more recent:

 Starting From Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer's Manual
           I picked this up when I was going to be a great
           writer. Advice about writing, novels vs short
           stories vs magazine work vs movies vs tv, and 
           life in general. 

 Bingo 	-  FUNNY novel about a smart woman who happens to be a 
           lesbian, I heartily recommend it

 Wish You Were Here - Rita Mae wrote this with her cat Sneaky Pie
           a funny murder mystery with a gay character

 Rest In Pieces - again Sneaky Pie gets co-author credit in another
           murder mystery with the same characters

Rita Mae also writes tv and movie scripts, but I don't know of
any in particular :-(

-jen
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Playing Games with Words
From: moselecw@elec.canterbury.ac.nz (C.W. Moseley)
Date: 6 Sep 92 10:43:52 +1200
Distribution: world
Organization: Electrical Engineering, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Francis.Gardner@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Francis Gardner) writes:
>   When I write up my masters thesis in about 6mths time I will want to make
>   statements like "he can do this and she can do that", but without using he
>   or she.  I personally don't like "s/he", I find it distracting to read.  I
>   do like using "they" as a singular but it is bad grammar and my supervisor
>   wont let me do it.  I could make a declaration stating that "he" should be
>   read as "he/she", but I think these are silly.

I reckon either declare that "she" should be read as "she/he" or "s/he"
or use "s/he/it", which abbreviates nicely to "shit".

serious:

have you thought of using "sie"

avoid personal pronouns. use names for subjects, and choose androgenous ones.

MOZ
(pronounced MOZ, gender: yes)
Xref: sparky alt.feminism:1083 soc.women:16535
From: pw@panix.com (Paul Wallich)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism,soc.women
Subject: Re: women in engineering ( help..)
Date: 13 Sep 92 16:48:17 GMT
Organization: Trivializers R Us

In article <1=xnlkb.sheaffer@netcom.com> sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer) writes:
>In article <1992Sep8.161054.16762@panix.com> pw@panix.com (Paul Wallich) writes:
>>
>>This sounds a lot like the practice of medicine in the old
>>pre-professional days, when women as healers were as common
>>as men, and when most births were handled by midwives. Then
>>academic medicine came in, the women were shut out (and a
>>fair amount of herbal knowledge lost) and, as a minor side
>>effect, deaths after childbirth soared, because the doctors
>>came to attend labor directly after treating other patients or
>>even after doing autopsies, without sanitary precautions. (No
>>analogy is implied, of course, to the performance of systems
>>specified by engineers rather than by people who know the task
>>the system is supposed to perform.)
>
>Yes, that's why the average lifespan is now 30 years, and it used
>to be 70+ years back in those wonderful days of "pre-professional"
>medicine. (NOT!) Yes, life sure used to be fine back when "women
>healers" took care of your broken bones, appendicitis, etc., but
>health care went into the pits when those nasty men invented
>"academic medicine."

If your prejudices did not impair your reading comprehension, you
would know I said none of those things. Prior to the development
of aseptic procedure and anesthesia, academic medicine did not have
a whole lot more to offer people than did traditional healers (except
perhaps such "facts" as the notion that educating women, by developing 
their brains, would cause their uteruses to shrivel). Similarly,
if the state of modern software development is any sign, "computer
scientists" do not necessarily have a whole lot more to offer the 
industry than do good programmers. Turning something into an academic
discipline is a step backward if the academic discard the practical
knowledge has has been accumulated by their predecessors.

>Paul, there are still many places in Africa and South America where
>medicine is still in its pristine, pre-professional state. Maybe
>you should visit those areas, and give us a first-hand acccount of
>the fantastic health care and lifespan those people enjoy.

You mean the health care that can be improved by convincing mothers
to give their infants modern, scientific formula instead of breast-
feeding them? Or perhaps you mean the childbirth whose pains can be
eased by doing away with the "doula," or birth attendant, who explains
to the mother what's coming next (having gone through the experience
herself) and comforts her during labor, or the postnatal infections
and hospital stays that can be avoided by routine epesiotomy (slicing
through the perineum to widen the birth canal)?  Or perhaps you
mean abandoning the superstitious practice of taking extract of willow
bark to ward off pain and fever and aid the circulation?

[Due to a failure of patience, this posting has not been close-captioned
for the irony-impaired.]
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
From: forda@gtephx.UUCP (Andrew Ford @ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona)
Subject: Re: Freshm*n
Organization: gte
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 21:25:53 GMT

In article <mcline.1d2a@terapin.com>, mcline@terapin.com (Matthew Cline) writes:
> In article <4SEP199215550439@lims02.lerc.nasa.gov>, spzkny@lims02.lerc.nasa.gov
> (JAMES ZAKANY) writes:
> >In article <mcline.1cgs@terapin.com>, mcline@terapin.com
> > (Matthew Cline) writes...
> >
> >[deleted test description]
> >>So it seems that language can have an affect on what people think, and
> >>it should thus be changed.
> >
> >Why?  So that everyone will think the way you wish them to?  By the way, 
> >agreeing with your conclusion above, do you really want language to be 
> >regulated by a specific political/social group?  I don't.
> >
> >                                                  James S. Zakany
> 
>         No, I think that it should be changed because its not doing what its
> supposed to.  For instance, the word "man" is supposed to be the generic for
> humans.  However, the test I talked about showed that when "man" is used as a
> generic, it isn't interpreted as a genric.  Thus, it isn't doing its job, and
> should be replaced by a word that will be interpreted the same way as it is
> used.
> 
"man" and "the man" will refer to the male gender.
"A man" may or may not.
"Mankind" does not.
"He" and "his" alone will, however in other contexts it is commonly understood
to be a pronoun without gender reference.

IE: "A man's home is his castle" denotes the male gender, 
But "A person's home is his castle" does not denote gender 
        (for the intellectually impaired: the term person is non-gender therfore
        the pronoun referring to "person" is also non-gender.)
and "A person's home is their castle" is incorrect grammar
    "A person's home is his/her castle" detracts from the meaning (is verbose)
    "A person's home is her castle" is sexists as "her" is a *solely* female
        pronoun.


-- 
"25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with
no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy.  However, 4 out of 5 US murders are 
committed in the other half of the country: so who is crazy?"   -  Andrew Ford
gtephx!forda@enuucp.eas.asu.edu  OR  !uunet!samsung!romed!enuucp!gtephx!forda
From: baba@Tymnet.com (Duane Hentrich)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Grading papers
Date: 8 Sep 92 23:40:48 GMT
Organization: BT North America, San Jose CA.

In article <AWERLING.92Sep8153601@dante.nmsu.edu>, awerling@nmsu.edu (WERLING) writes:
|> Males have "he."  We need a new gender-neutral pronoun.  I prefer
|> "it," but I figure that would never fly. ;-)

This subject and this solution to a perceived need has been around for quite
a while. I contend that if WE NEEDED a gender-neutral pronoun WE would have
invented it already. After all, Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

And there is never a Father of Invention mentioned.

-- 
d'baba Duane M. Hentrich	baba@Tymnet.Com

We have yet to learn that the thing uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or of oath can give it evidence. 
The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken. - R.W.Emerson
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
From: farthing@leland.Stanford.EDU (ljf)
Subject: Re: The word "sexist" (WAS: Sexist studies...) 
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 03:09:01 GMT

In article <nnvn6-=.payner@netcom.com> payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne) writes:
>In article <AWERLING.92Sep10230919@dante.nmsu.edu> awerling@nmsu.edu (WERLING) writes:
>>If you wanted to merely say that you find Women's Studies to be
>>exclusionary, you might have considered using less-loaded words than
>>"sexist."
>
>And you might have chosen other words than "dishonest" and "neglectful".
>But you did not.

I'm curious, Payne.  Do you consider African-American studies racist?
Jewish studies anti-Gentile?
From: Joe.Francis@dartmouth.edu (Joe Francis)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Watch Those Attribution Lines, Please (Was: flame naming 
 (ataylor's inconsistency))
Date: 9 Sep 92 18:05:53 GMT
 <ZEN.92Sep8160337@death.corp.sun.com>  
 <ATAYLOR.92Sep9085748@gauss.nmsu.edu>
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
X-Posted-From: InterNews1.0a4@newshost.dartmouth.edu

In article <ATAYLOR.92Sep9085748@gauss.nmsu.edu>
ataylor@nmsu.edu (Nosy) writes:

> 	Since I did not write the text that zen attributes to me,
> 	this flame is pointless.
> 
> 	Please watch the attribution lines.

Hmmm.  I know that *I'm* watching the attribution lines.  The original
article in question has the following in the header:

From: ataylor@nmsu.edu (Alan Taylor)

Is that you or not?

If someone posted a forgery, or if someone posted from your account
posing as you, I can understand why you would say that you did not
write it.  But I don't understand how you can ask people to "watch the
attributions".  The attributions are correct, assuming the article is
not a forgery (which one has to assume when attributing text).

Perhaps, if it's a forgery, you simply haven't seen the article, and
saw the reply and assumed someone had messed up the attributions.  If
that's the case, let me know and I'll send you the original article,
which appears to be authored by yourself, and which registers quite
high on the official USENET Flam-O-Meter.
From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Choice for men
Date: 11 Sep 92 11:01:37
Organization: Natural Language Incorporated
	<716222634@lear.cs.duke.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: gazit@duke.cs.duke.edu's message of 11 Sep 92 14:43:55 GMT

In article <716222634@lear.cs.duke.edu> gazit@duke.cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit) writes:
>>zen@death.corp.sun.com (d) writes:

>>>Why not an implant for both men *and* women?  

>1) *Most* of the people who keep having babies they can't support, 
>and get an increase in welfare for them, are women.  Actually, 
>I don't know about any man in that category.

When did these women learn how to produce babies without the aid of a
man?  In each case that a woman had a baby she could not support, there
was a man whose baby it was who could not or would not support that same
baby.

A friend of mine works counselling pregnant teenagers.  Most of them
have boyfriends who tell them "you can't kill my baby."  Not that they
want to *support* it, of course.

>2) There is nothing similar to Norplant or IUD for men.

Big surprise.  Most people seem to think that it's the woman's sole 
responsibility to take care of birth control, so why bother inventing
anything beyond condoms for men?

I really don't see why men don't just always wear condoms (except those
with latex allergies), given that many of them do seem to be terribly
afraid of being tricked by women.  I know that some people claim that
they are not comfortable, but I know many men who like them very much,
and they are also good for preventing the spread of disease.

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy | muffy@mica.berkeley.edu | wi.4636@wizvax.methuen.ma.us
~Little round planet/in a big universe/sometimes it looks blessed/
 sometimes it looks cursed/Depends on what you look at, obviously/
 But even more it depends on the way that you see~ - Bruce Cockburn
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
From: england@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (julie england)
Subject: Re: girl/woman = guy/man? (WAS: Sexist Incidents)
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 21:53:48 GMT

In article <buescher.716084703@betwixt> buescher@betwixt.ugcs.caltech.edu (Brent Joseph Buescher) writes:
>[Lots of the old girl/woman argument deleted]
>
>In many ways I see this as a corallary to the use in German (for example)
>of "du" and "Sie"; "du" being the familiar term and "Sie" the polite
>honorific for strangers.  I usually do refer to young women (my
>contemporaries) that I am well acquuainted with as "girls."  If someone
>takes exception with this I switch my usage for their benefit, just
>like I would switch to "Sie" if I ever made the mistake of using "du"
>in an inappropriate situation.  Recently I did make the error of
>referring to the "girls on the third floor" and was deservedly corrected-
>not only are some of the "girls" in question over 40 (!), but I really
>only know a handful of the women who reside on the top floor of the
>residence hall where I live (which is incidentally a 21 and over hall
>w/ kitchenettes that attracts a number of grad students and non-traditional
>students).  Maybe someday I will be politicized or merely well enough
>trained so that I too chafe at female adults being called "girls." :)
>
>Brent Buescher
>
>buescher@phys.uidaho.edu
>

Interesting analogy to German.  As an aside, in the german language
they refer to young girls with the pronoun "it".  Something to
think about.

Julie
-- 
*-------------------------------------**-------------------------------------*
| Julie England, Database Coordinator || Workshop in Political Theory and    |
| england@silver.ucs.indiana.edu      || Policy Analysis, Indiana University |
*-------------------------------------**-------------------------------------*
From: awerling@nmsu.edu (WERLING)
Subject: "One" as a pronoun
Organization: NMSU Computer Science
	<Bu29y4.AEK@comp.vuw.ac.nz> <1992Sep8.062558.24485@news.columbia.edu>
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 22:50:10 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.062558.24485@news.columbia.edu> mig@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Meir I Green) writes:

-   In article <Bu29y4.AEK@comp.vuw.ac.nz> Francis.Gardner@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Francis Gardner) writes:
 
- >  This is a bit of an aside......but is still relevant-ish
- >  In the English language there is no sexless singular third person personal
- >  pronoun (except maybe "it" :-).

- "one"

So:

	"One should watch what one says about one's teacher, for one's
	teacher might give one a bad grade."

vs.
	"He should watch what he says about his teacher, for his 
	teacher might give him a bad grade."

The first seems awkward, but I guess it would be so with any new
pronoun.
--
Andrew Werling   awerling@nmsu.edu   yip@rever.nmsu.edu
"Jesus is coming, look busy."
          --from a button I bought in an Albuquerque bookstore.
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
From: farthing@leland.Stanford.EDU (ljf)
Subject: Re: Pro-LIFE feminists???
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 21:56:53 GMT

In article <7484@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>You mean it wasn't obvious that he was using it in the older
>sense?

Of course it was.  It was just something else for Gazit to bitch
about.  I'm waiting for his spelling and grammar flames next...
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: women & math/sci/tech/engineering
From: RGINZBERG@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Ruth Ginzberg)
Date: 8 Sep 92 12:03:14 EDT
Distribution: world
Organization: Philosophy Dept., Wesleyan University
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.20Lines: 36

There's actually quite a feminist literature on women & [various skills,
careers, interests, etc. associated with math/science/technology].

Too busy to post complete bibliography, but if you have on-line access to
library catalogue search, try searching w keywords like: feminis*, math,
technology, gender, science, epistemology (theories of knowledge), etc.

recommend:
	Tuana (ed.) FEMINISM & SCIENCE
	Keller,	REFLECTIONS ON GENDER & SCIENCE
	Bleier, SCIENCE & GENDER
	Merchant, THE DEATH OF NATURE: WOMEN, ECOLOGY & THE SCIENTIFIC
		REVOLUTION (but w. some reservations)
	Harding, THE SCIENCE QUESTION IN FEMINISM (earlier work)
	---	 WHOSE SCIENCE? WHOSE KNOWLEDGE? (more recent)
	Haraway, "Manifesto for Cyborgs" in SIMIANS, CYBORGS & WOMEN	

also try looking under headings: Social Studies of Science & Technology, or,
more generally, "STS" - Science & Technology Studies.

-also Andrea Nye just published a book on gender & logic
-something on feminism & math recently (c. 1990); don't remember auth or title

-Lewis & Clark U. held an "electronic salon" last spring in conjunction with a
conference on Gender & Technology.  i think transcripts are still available via
anonymous ftp from lclark.edu    Or try gender@lclark.edu.  Or as a last
resort, heath@lclark.edu (deborah heath).

there's lots of fascinating stuff that's been written in this general area; the
so-called "Nature/Nurture" debate is only the tip of the iceberg.



------------------------
Ruth Ginzberg <rginzberg@eagle.wesleyan.edu>
Philosophy Department;Wesleyan University;USA
Xref: sparky alt.feminism:915 soc.women:16370