Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!agate!sri-unix!maslak@decwrl.dec.com
From: sri-unix!maslak@decwrl.dec.com (Valerie Maslak)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Women Wizards?
Message-ID: <12007@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 11 Jul 88 23:06:37 GMT
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[I've put together three of Valerie's separate postings on the same
subject.  TR]

=======================================================================
Peter,

Anti-social career-obsessed...
Come on down to Silicon Valley. We created the archetype.
Or at least perfected it.

Never in one place has there been concentrated such a
mass of Johnny-One-Notes. Almost no community service,
charitible contribution (H&P aside), participation in the arts...
politics...just the glow of the scopes and the terminal screens....

Homo entrepreneurus.

================================================================

First of all, we're all starting to talk about too many things
under the banner "WIZARDS." Do we mean visibility, managerial rank,
authority, do we mean the hackers, the underground, or what?
I mean the almost-mythical figures that we all talk about, the
inheritors of the lore, the code...the inner sanctum.
The ones who talk mostly to each other.:-)

But secondly, I want to talk about perceptions, because Elaine's
response to my posting about wizards was a classic in "woman-think."

She describes attending the Second Hackers Conference...

and being awed
being aware she needed to be nonthreatening
thinking that being androgynous was helpful...

And she talks about how all the male wizzes are glad to give her pep
talks.

But Elaine, what if you gave them information. What if you took
a budding young male wiz aside and showed him the error of his ways?
How would that go over? Would you be sought out next time or
avoided? Would you have to be careful not to bruise his ego?
More careful than if the sexes were reversed?
Would he be more comfortable getting advice about his bug from a
man? Would YOU be more comfortable getting advice than giving it?

And what about those of us who are...um...zoftig, not androgynous.
Are we out of luck? Condemned to forever be cuddly not taken
seriously because we don't look male enough, are too out of place?
And do we constantly have to have our radar out
as to whether we are nonthreatening? Do you think the males at the
SHC were constantly doing checks on how they were being perceived,
or were they spending the energy on other things?

And yes, support in computers pays more than support in other areas;
that's why I'm here, too. But support is support, and it's not
where the action is. Just because we are technical support doesn't
mean we're still not at the bottom of the hierarchy...plus ca
change, etc.

See, it's what I mean by woman-think. We accept everything we have
to do to fit in, to survive in a male-oriented environment,
as a given, as no big deal, the way the world is. We don't hear what
we're saying half the time. The whole thing is internally very subtle.

Valerie Maslak

========================================================================

Joe Buck uses the words "member of the group that..."

I think that's one way that female wizards get lost...they allow
themselves to be perceived primarily as contributors, team members,
rather than unique individuals. The reasons for this are many...
but it's often been my experience that I can say something at a
meeting that is virtually ignored, and then hear it being
attributed as the brilliant idea of someone else who was at the meeting..
not deliberate thievery, just someone not registering the
source because it came from a woman. Like background noise...

Valerie Maslak