[UbuntuWomen] Gender and email [was: Free Ego :)

[Fred H Olson]

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008, Kadambari Devarajan wrote:

Hi Kadambari,

I was born and raised in the USA (as a male); it may be our 'culture' (or
lack / perversion thereof) but the question that *I* could not answer from
your simply reading your intro ** was, what is your gender.  The next
question was, does it matter? or  is there a legitimate reason I need to
know the gender of participants here?

In the US we can often tell the gender of people by their name and that
extends to email.  Come to think of it we probably guess wrong sometimes.
And there are cases of people intentionally misleading correspondents as
to their gender.

One of the things I appreciate about this list is that it has significant
participation by people from around the world (tho I only have a vague
impression of the distribution of participants). I also appreciate that
this list is open to men but implicitly expects men to keep their
participation egalitarian (or whatever).

So I ask the list

Is there a legitimate reason for participants to know the gender of people
who post here?


** Wikipedia, which has come to be nearly an extension of my brain
to the degree that I feel handicapped when I am away from the net and it,
was able to tell me:
 Kadambari is a detailed, exquisite novel in the Sanskrit language
 [in which] the king of a race of demigods had a daughter named Kadambari.
Your blog/userinfo mentions your gender.


Kadambari wrote:

> I've learnt a lot along the way and hope I can help give back at least a
> fraction of everything I've learnt.

Reminds me of the online book I found yesterday (that was written by
another Indian) in precisely this spirit:
_A Byte of Python_ by Swaroop, C H http://www.byteofpython.info
> This book will help you to learn the Python programming language,
> whether you are new to computers or are an experienced programmer.

> Check out my blog at
> http://kadambarid.livejournal.com

I did, a little. Aside: What do you think of those greatglam.com ads
alongside your blog?  I prefer to keep my net contibutions ad-free.

Fred,  my intro post:
 https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/2008-April/001490.html
 I plan to go to the Barcamp here on May 10th: http://barcamp.org/MinneBar

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
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