Re: Welcome Christine! And the "woman" issue. WAS: lunatic survey

On Monday 28 February 2005 18:29, David J. Peterson wrote:
> I think I'll chime in on this topic, but I'm not sure what to quote...
> Here's
> a start:
>
> Sally wrote:
> <<
> Once I opined, and I may have been wrong, that women on average are
> trained
> in American (and perhaps European) society to be practical minded, and
> that
> there is something inherently "uncool" in exposing excessive
> enthusiasm, or
> involving themselves in pursuits that don't immediately yield some kind
> of
> profitable endeavor--such as competing to get into college, graduate
> school,
> or at the very least, being "taken seriously as a professional."  These
> are
> potent concerns for women these days.
>
>
> Umm...these days?  I thought the whole trend since the late 80's was
> that
> in high school, women dominated honors and AP classes (that was
> certainly
> the case in my school), and it's certainly the case that women outnumber
> men in at least some universities (e.g., the entire UC system--the
> statistics
> came out just last month).  In linguistics classes up at Berkeley, women
> outnumbered men by far, and I've noticed the same trend here at UCSD.
> But of those people, you'd be more likely to find a closet conlanger or
> conlang sympathizer amongst men than women.  In fact, of the people
> up at Berkeley that knew about me conlanging, it was always the women
> who'd say things like, "Why would you waste your time doing something
> so stupid?"
>
Which is funny considering what happened to me the other day. I was in the
beauty salon getting a pedicure (it's the foot massage they give - I love it,
and funky colors on my toes make me smile). This is of course a highly female
environment. My neighbor Michelle happens to work there, and since she was
between clients, she came over to talk with me and with the woman doing my
toes (Laura). Laura is asking me about the magazine I'm leafing through (Make
magazine, new from O'Reilly, full of geekiness), and Michelle says to Laura
"Oh, she's so smart she even has her own language. Isn't that just so cool!"
Me, I'm a bit flushed as I'd forgotten I'd ever mentioned the subject to
Michelle, and Laura is mostly okay with it and agrees with Michelle that that
is a bit cool and asks me how long I've been working on it and then changes
the subject. So, all in all, a guardedly positive response, but then I guess
she couldn't have called me stupid/weird/whatever in front of my neighbor and
her colleague.

As for any parental advice I had growing up, the only thing that stuck was
"Don't brag". So I tend to be self-deprecating and self-effacing and downplay
my successes. Which may or may not be connected to my tendency to lurk in
various online forums.

--
Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com
kelen@ix.netcom.com

Kélen language info can be found at:
http://www.terjemar.net/kelen.php

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