Re: [atlarge-discuss] FYI: New Pew Report on the digitaldivide in the U.S.

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>]

Sotiris and all fellow members,

  I agree that Judyth's earlier response was off topic to say the least.
But it was a good insight into her "Mode" of thinking in several
respects, so unfortunately I am glad she made that post.

  Men bashing or women bashing is a sexist and unproductive
activity or thought process.  I have two close relatives in my family
that engage frequently in this diatribe fairly often.  I abhor it, as
thankfully, do both of my daughters.

Sotiris Sotiropoulos wrote:

> I will be succint in my responses so pay attention:
>
> espresso@e-scape.net wrote:
>
> > <snip>
> > Begging your pardon, Sotiris, but data does exist showing that
> > women do indeed make more use of e-mail for personal correspondence
> > with friends and family, still write most of the e-mailed business
> > correspondence out there, spend proportionally more of their
> > online time looking for health information than men, etc. while
> > men *in general* spend more time in multi-player game and gambling
> > sites than women, and so on.
>
> First of all, I fail to see the relevance of your original posting to the
> matters of concern here on this list.
>
> Secondly, there are studies to prove just about anything you want to prove
> and if not, there soon will be.  Depending on the questions one asks, you
> can pretty much achieve whatever results you want.  Anyone with a shred of
> sense ought to disregard all attempts at relative or absolute statements of
> the kind you are making about humans and their online habits by gender
> differentiation.  What is the purpose of such studies anyway?
>
> Thirdly, the number of men online is probably double (if not more) than
> women, so your proportionality figure is bound to be skewed I'm afraid.
> Think about it.
>
> Fourthly, let us not forget that *men* invented the Internet.
>
> > Frankly, I don't know what "program" you mean and I worry about
> > the psychological health of any man who thinks it's "emasculating"
> > that women correspond more with relatives than men by e-mail
> > (just as they did when it all went by snail-mail) or spend more
> > time helping their kids with term papers, or generally don't
> > gamble as much. Good grief!
>
> I have not been committed yet, so thanks for your concern, but I think I've
> still got all my marbles.  In case you haven't noticed, there is an awful
> lot of man-bashing or MISANDRY going on in the media in general these
> days.  Here's an excerpt from an article at:
> http://www.popmatters.com/tv/features/030109-male-bashing.shtml for all of
> us to consider:
>
> "Perhaps a little comedy will make the work more  bearable, you think, so
> you turn on CBS's Monday   night comedies: King of Queens, Yes, Dear,
> Everybody Loves Raymond, and Still Standing.  Over the next two hours, you
> see four male leadcharacters who are nothing like you. These men are
> selfish and lazy, inconsiderate husbands and poor parents.
>
> And the commercials in between aren't any better.  Among them: A feminine
> hygiene ad: Two women   are traveling down a lovely country road,
> laughing   and having a great time. But wait. One of them needs  to check
> the freshness of her mini-pad, and,  apparently, the next rest area is six
> states away. A  woman's voice-over interjects, "It's obvious that the
> interstate system was designed by men."
>
> A digital camera ad: A young husband walks  through a grocery store, trying
> to match photos in  his hand with items on the shelves. Cut to his wife in
> the kitchen, snapping digital pictures of all the items in the pantry so
> that hubby won't  screw up the shopping.
>
> A family game ad: A dorky guy and beautiful woman are playing Trivial
> Pursuit. He asks  her, "How much does the average man's brain weigh?" Her
> answer: "Not much."
>
> A wine ad: A group of women are sitting around the patio of a beach house,
> drinking a  blush wine. Their boyfriends approach, but are denied
> refreshment until they have"earned" it by building a sand statue of David.
>
> Welcome to the new comic image of men on tv: incompetence at its worst.
> Where television used to feature wise and wonderful fathers and husbands,
> today's comedies and ads often feature bumbling husbands and inept,
> uninvolved fathers. On Still Standing, Bill (Mark Addy) embarrasses his
> wife Judy (Jamie Gertz) so badly in front of her reading group, that she is
> dropped from the group. On Everybody Loves Raymond, Raymond (Ray Romano)
> must choose between bathing the twin boys or helping his daughter with her
> homework. He begrudgingly agrees to assist hisdaughter, for whom he is no
> help whatsoever.
>
> CBS is not the only guilty party. ABC's My Wife and Kids and According to
> Jim, Fox's  The Bernie Mac Show, The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, and
> (the recently cancelled) Titus, and the WB's Reba also feature women who
> are better organized and  possess better relational skills than their male
> counterparts. While most television  dramas tend to avoid gender
> stereotypes, as these undermine "realism," comic  portrayals of men have
> become increasingly negative. The trend is so noticeable that it  has been
> criticized by men's rights groups and some television critics.
>
> It has also been studied by academicians Dr. Katherine Young and Paul
> Nathanson in their book, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for
> Men in Popular Culture. Young and Nathanson argue that in addition to being
> portrayed as generally unintelligent, men are ridiculed, rejected, and
> physically abused in the media. Such  behavior, they suggest, "would never
> be acceptable if directed at women." Evidence of this pattern is found in a
> 2001 survey of 1,000 adults conducted by the Advertising  Standards
> Association in Great Britain, which found that 2/3 of respondents thought
> that women featured in advertisements were "intelligent, assertive, and
> caring," while  the men were "pathetic and silly." The number of
> respondents who thought men were depicted as "intelligent" was a paltry
> 14%. (While these figures apply to the United Kingdom, comparable
> advertisements air in the U.S.)"
> ----------------------
>
> So, as you can see, it's not a secret anymore Judyth, plenty of people are
> waking up to the reality of misandry.  In case you'd like some more info:
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-keywords=misandry&search-type=ss&bq=1/002-2889815-1104851
>
> > Please, take it from a woman who's old enough to be your mother
> > if not quite your granny that these statistics are not some
> > vicious conspiracy to make men feel bad about their online
> > habits or make women feel good about theirs. People gather
> > empirical data on how different categories of people --
> > teenagers versus seniors, working people versus the unemployed,
> > men versus women -- use the Internet because they want to
> > understand human behaviour, because they want to encourage
> > e-commerce or Internet use in general, because they want to
> > know who likes what on Web sites, etc., not as part of a
> > plot against men.
>
> Once again, your "empirical data" is another's junk data.  Studies can be
> produced to prove anything one like these days.  Frankly, I think you ought
> to consider our little email list here as an indicative sampling of men and
> women online, rather than some anonymous study whose conditions and
> author(s) we know NOTHING about.  So thanks for the patronizing answer, but
> next time just know that this kind of junk will not go unremarked on this
> list.
>
> > Women were much less likely than men to be online ten years ago;
> > that has changed already in the developed world, and the women
> > have (naturally enough) still behaved somewhat differently from
> > men while online even as they still behave somewhat differently
> > from men in the real world. Where you may see some horrible
> > feminist conspiracy to castrate men, what most of us see is
> > the normal conduct of the social sciences in an effort to
> > determine what people do when, how and why.
>
> Let me offer a correction.  You so-called study is not about "people" and
> what they do online, it's about stereotyping a segment of the population
> because it happens to be what the test conditions for some anonymous study
> will bear.
>
> > Once again amazed,
>
> Speaking out against misandry is amazing, no doubt, especially in light of
> effeminate, sterilized, political correctness.  But don't be too amazed,
> more and more people (including women) are starting to see it for what it
> is.  You may be somewhat out of touch with the reality of the situation due
> to your age, but if you look a little more critically at the popular media
> you'll begin to see what I'm talking about.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Sotiris Sotiropoulos
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: atlarge-discuss-unsubscribe@lists.fitug.de
> For additional commands, e-mail: atlarge-discuss-help@lists.fitug.de

Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 129k members/stakeholders strong!)
================================================================
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
Contact Number: 214-244-4827 or 214-244-3801



---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: atlarge-discuss-unsubscribe@lists.fitug.de
For additional commands, e-mail: atlarge-discuss-help@lists.fitug.de