>From: Kathryn Aegis <k_aegis@mindspring.com>
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.com
>To: extropians@extropy.com
>Subject: Re: Women, fire, and dangerous things
>Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 19:34:50
>
>David Lubkin writes:
> >A gentleman is someone who is never *accidentally* rude. I hope all
> >of us on the list would strive to be gentle (at least when posting to the
>list).
>
>Well put, David.
>
> >I wonder how many of the comments that Kathryn says drove women away
> >were intended to be as offensive as they were apparently perceived.
>
>One way to tell--how angry the person gets once offense is mentioned.
>Persons who do not mean to give offense generally want to know how offense
>was taken and would usually want to try not to do so again. Within reason,
>of course. Sometimes offense is taken no matter what you do, but I think
>that most women that would be attracted to a list like this have some
>amount of experience in the world.
>
>Kathryn
>
One of the most certain signs of the impending death of a movement or
organization or ideology is when the focus shifts from what is true and
important re the goals and purposes of such to the need for warm bodies.
I'm not really certain whether this is a cause or just a predictor, or
probably some of both. This is what really killed the libertarian movement
- or pretty damn close. It all became politicized and whether one got 1.3%
of the vote in some district or a whopping 1.4% became the subject of
endless meetings that could easilly stand in for some of the intermediate
circles of hell.
When this happens, the better people either drop out or never drop in longer than to check it out and then do something less boring.
As I have not been shy to state in many different ways, percentagewise women are far, far, far more into every aspect of ENTROPY than men. Most of them see their primary life's purpose in promoting the survival of their particular DNA. Thus, the idea of reengineering DNA, uploading, etc., is morally abhorent in the extreme, and they are not shy to make this clear, either.
There are also some really dynamite EXTROPIANs out there who are female. I would hope that those people would not be offended at my or any other male or female pointing out the blatently obvious truth about the realpolitic of gender in our society. Only when we can look at the truth - or just the evidence - can we actually do anything about it.