Best Boys v. Doc Girls

Subject: Best Boys v. Doc Girls
From: Morgan Johnson <MORGAN -dot- JOHNSON -at- CHASE -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 15:22:37 -0500

(Embedded image moved to file: PIC07443.PCX)AJ & Morgan Harper Johnson

From: Morgan Johnson -at- CHASE on 08/11/98 03:22 PM CDT


To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
cc:
Subject: Best Boys v. Doc Girls

Very big difference. Best boy is a specific job-related term used only in
one industry and applied equally whether men or women perform the function.

To go to a restaurant, however, and find that entr?es are divided into
portions for CattleMEN and CowGIRLS is to once again find oneself
denigrated by language where the caste system in place between the
patriarchal leadership and the masses to be led is as devastatingly
dehumanizing as that between the Brahmin and the Untouchable.

To women who have spent years earning their stripes, paying for their own
advanced degrees and still find themselves working more to be paid less and
having their work and their viewpoints regarded less seriously than both
that of their male peers and their male colleagues with much less education
and experience, Girl is as pejorative as the N-word. Shirley Chisholm, a
black -- and the first woman to run for President, said she suffered much
worse from the sexism rampant among her brethren in the Black Caucus on the
Hill than she ever had from racism.

Explain to me why my college-educated 172+ IQ white-collar working mother
is forced to punch a time clock because she is "one of the girls," but the
pimply-faced 18 year old male kid who was hired as summer help does not
have to punch in because he is one of the men?

One would not give the job to a Documentation Boy who was 55 years old but
to a Word Processor who happened to be male. Why, then, would one consider
giving it to a 55-year old Doc Girl?

I echo and applaud Nancy Hickman's comments. I have personally been there
and suffered that. Prima facie cases of sex and age discrimination continue
to abound while the men around me continue to tell me how "much better
things are for women" these days.

I would very much like to "get a life," as Melissa enjoins me. It will be
difficult to do so, however, as long as the prerequisite (albeit covert one
now) for most scholarships and jobs is still "boy" or "young man" and the
clerk behind the counter at DMV says, "Your mother doesn't count as your
guardian to sign for you to get a drivers' license, only your FATHER is
your guardian." My daughters didn't believe me, either, until they put
themselves through university and entered the work force. They're ardent
feminists now, however! And I have gone from being an executive with an MBA
and the CEO of a nationwide construction company holding licenses in three
trades in five states to being tossed onto society's rubbish heap in the
downsizing frenzy because I was "a woman and over 40" to re-inventing
myself as a technical writer.

Anyone want to walk a mile in my moccasins?

Suite L-436, 2140 E. Southlake Boulevard, Southlake TX 76092-6516 h
817.856.5400 h 817.856.5218 fax

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