gender, sex & biology

Subject: gender, sex & biology
From: Steve Owens <uso01 -at- EAGLE -dot- UNIDATA -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 1994 16:41:13 +0700

> By adopting the techie position, which seems to exclude women, in that
> women don't read computer magazines, and I'd venture to say, don't read
> manuals either, then we as applied herme/neuticians are presenting
> material which is too much from the techie point of view. If we maybe
> listened to users, then we could do a better transmutation.

You keep saying this, but the logic is flawed. I haven't seen
you reply to any posts which point out the problem, other than to flatly
disagree without demonstrating a supporting argument.

As I've said before, there is a correlation between percentage
of men in the readership and techiness of the documentation. So what?
This merely reflects a correlation between the fact that men in our
society are encouraged to go into techie jobs and women in our society
are discouraged.

There is NO causal relationship between the techiness of the
documentation and the number of women in the computing field
demonstrated here. The techiness of the writing is geared to the
techiness of the intended audience. If you want to change this, then
find a mailing list devoted to engineering education concerns, or a
mailing list devoted to feminist education, or start a topic thread
oriented towards technical writing in education and possible
approaches, or a similarly relevant-to-techwriting topic. The current
line of discourse is inappropriate for a technical writer's mailing
list.

Steven J. Owens
uso01 -at- unidata -dot- com


Previous by Author: SGML & The Technical Writer
Next by Author: Computer Based Training
Previous by Thread: Auto Reply from Watch_Mail for 12-APR-1994 00:00 to 25-APR-1994 00:00
Next by Thread: gender, sex & biology


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads