<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8"> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.12.1"> </HEAD> <BODY> On Tue, 2007-22-05 at 16:32 -0400, Eric Dunbar wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE> <PRE> > If you put a hand-full of men into a chat-room full of a diverse > selection of single women he'll be bombarded with suggestive comments > just as women are in a chat-room (or mailing list) full of a diverse > selection of single men. If the chat room is explicitly set up for male-female sexual/courtship interactions, perhaps! </PRE> </BLOCKQUOTE> I roomed with a (male) trainee bank teller for a year.  (Back in the days when they actually trained bank tellers for extended periods of time.)  He was one male in a sea of females, bank tellers being a predominantly female occupation back then.  (Even nowadays this appears to be the case.)  At work there was, as is usual for a smoothly-functioning workplace, a lot of playful banter.  The playful banter of this predominantly female workplace was (just as in the predominantly male engineering workplaces I inhabited) very often sexual.  And my roomie, the only male in the group, was frequently bombarded by suggestive comments (and even one or two propositions) in that year we roomed together. I find this whole notion that women are so different from men that they're intrinsically unknowable (and somehow "better" than men in social environments and "above" certain classes of behaviour) to be one of the most perniciously sexist ideas around.  It is obviously damaging to male/female relations but, more importantly, subtly damaging to the women themselves. <TABLE CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0" WIDTH="100%"> <TR> <TD> -- Michael T. Richter <<A HREF="mailto:ttmrichter@gmail.com">ttmrichter@gmail.com</A>> (GoogleTalk: ttmrichter@gmail.com) In his errors a man is true to type. Observe the errors and you will know the man. (孔夫子) </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </BODY> </HTML>