Norm's "mere" woman sentence.

[NormanDunbar]

From the Knoware.no topic.

I posted, amongst other stuff that assembly is easy yada yada yada and added that "Tony Tebby wrote an OS in assembler and Jan Jones, a "mere" woman, wrote the SuperBASIC interpreter in assembly." (My added emphasis.)

I also posted that "Mere" is in quotes for the obvious reason!)

Sadly, it seems that I was wrong in that the obvious reason, that she wasn't "mere" in any way shape or form, has been missed by "everyone".

I'm well aware of the numbers of women responsible for advances in computing, technology and so on. I've worked with and for numerous women in my IT career. My wife, a "mere" woman" is also a highly skilled and qualified IT specialist.

I am not apologising for "mere", but I'm disappointed that what I write has been misconstrued as an attack on women (at least in computing). I shall explain for those who missed my "obvious reason" note.

The fact that "mere" is in quotes was, hopefully, to bring your attention to it, and to show that it was silly/stupid/incorrect/whatever to refer to women as anything other than equals. It seems some people missed this. I can't help that. Perhaps they didn't read all the way through and got "triggered" at "mere"? I've done that myself a few times, until I learned to read before commenting. It's embarrassing (or was for me!) to have my error pointed out.

So, if you were triggered, that's not my problem, but sorry. Next time, perhaps, read on. I'm not sexist, ageist, appearanceist, racist or any other "ists" that you can think of, not even Commodore C64 owners or cyclists, in any way. I'm proud to be woke, even though the media these days would have you believe it's being woke that's a problem. I even know what it means and where it originates!

Dare I try another attempt at humour? I hate everyone equally!

If you still have problems with "mere", then I can't help you. Sorry.


Cheers,
Norm.

[pjw]

Thats exactly how I understood your remark, Norm, and thus I have no problem with it. Normally Im only intolerant of the intolerant, though I, no doubt, unintentionally misstep occasionally.

[mk79]

Sadly, it seems that I was wrong in that the obvious reason, that she wasn't "mere" in any way shape or form, has been missed by "everyone".

I understood it exactly as meant and it thus simply didn't warrant any reply. But for the record, I wish the PC police would at least leave this forum alone, because as everybody here knows, PCs are bad. Anybody who is triggered by this should untwist their knickers and get back to the topics at hand.

[NormanDunbar]

Thanks gents.

[Pr0f]

I saw it was in quotes so assumed it was meant to be taken tongue in cheek.

I do have a problem with the over censoring that now seems to be creeping into IT - The product I work with - NetBackup - has the concept of a Master server - but now it seems our documents need rewriting to call these "Primary servers", also gone are blacklist and whitelist - but at this point I am struggling to see why this is racist - the colour terms used are simply chosen as polar opposites in the colour spectrum - but someone has taken it to be a negative view of ethnicaly melanin rich humans - I never saw that connection, nor any need to make lists based on that either.

I will probably get into trouble if I rant futher - so I will stop now.

[NormanDunbar]

My friend and colleague, Mohammed, is a Somalian, Muslim and black. He calls himself black. He hates the term "person of colour" and "coloured". He doesn't have problems with blackboard or blacklists -- only when it was renamed "chalkboard" and he pointed out that we still have whiteboards! He's alao an avid collector of Robinsons Jam golliwogs, and calls them that.

What does wind him up are, quote, white people who think they know what affects or affronts non-whites but who never ask before spouting off".

He's basically a PC's worst nightmare. And a kick-boxing champion!

As for Pr0f's observations, I'm sure we still have black/white hat hackers, black sheep (of the family) and so on. I get the master/slave references though. But then again, I apparently am my dog's master, which doesn't make him my slave -- just as well, too. So "master" can still be used without ny slavery connatations.

Cheers,
Norm.

[Tinyfpga]

Oh dear! you are a serious lot. Norm posts a pointedly comic reference to Jan Jones and "me thinks" that it deserves a carefully worded comic reply. At least I thought it was moderately comic. Clearly my attempts at parody and a spot of satire has been seriously misunderstood.

I left what I thought were verbal clues as to my views on the divisive philosophy of the "modern woke". (Not the original 1930s vernacular, of course). Wasn't "wake the woke in me " or my mere-women and mere-men absurd enough.

How about "In the interest of equality Wikipedia wisely omitted to mention Jan Jones"

Still not enough, then how about:- having declared that my wokeness has been awakened, I then express the seriously unwoke view that Sophie Wilson should not be included in the divisive Wikipedia "Timeline of women in computing" entry, or my opinion that Noble and Buolamwini are in reality "mere" digital Post-Modern philosophers.

The reason why I felt Norm's comment deserved a reply is because, the thinking he alludes to is, in my view, important.
I do not subscribe to Post-Modernism. I think it is a destructive philosophy and so I tried to express this strongly held view in a way I thought would appeal to Norm's sense of humor.

The perception that there has been some sort of triggering, accusation or over sensitivity or that there is a PC police lurking on this forum is just a manifestation of paranoia. It is also entirely possible that Derek was just teasing.
One thing I really do not want to use,is emoticons, even though they might be helpful in my case. (I could have used one after "manifestation of paranoia", for example, but I am not going to)

I am clearly no Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain and I should probably refrain from trying to be witty but, Norm, please, just ignore the Police, they can't arrest you. (Yet)

Some good came from the unfortunate "Norm vs the PC police" saga. "Triggered" by his outrageous assertion that Jan Jones was merely mere, I discovered something useful, namely the origins of assembler.

One last thing:- Posts have a habit of rapidly going off-topic. It's probably a weakness of forums. I was well aware that the discussion was going AWOL but had no idea what to do about it. I had a stab at keeping it on track by mentioning Kathleen Booth and her work on assembler but instead and in the blink of an eye, all hell broke loose. Sadly Kathleen has been lost in the ensuing chaos

[ajb]

I've not read the relevant exchanges and am just picking up on a sentiment written above. I completely agree, emoticons are the slippery slope to typing 'LOL'.

They're completely unnecessary if a reader starts from the basis that people are generally nice and have been known to make jokes. You can always ask whether someone is being serious after all. If anyone's going to take offence at a sentence then putting a smiley face at the end of it surely compounds the sin and will wind them up even more. Emoticons themselves could be regarded as being insulting - readers are being told they're too stupid to recognise humour. For those with a propensity to rush to offence, emoticon-less postings provide a valuable resource for practising the recognition of jokes.

Alan

[Ruptor]

Typed messages are often misunderstood especially by people like me that are rubbish at English and don't understand punctuation.

Anybody who is triggered by this should untwist their knickers and get back to the topics at hand.

Is this a joke or a sexist comment since men don't wear knickers?

[NormanDunbar]

Clearly my attempts at parody and a spot of satire has been seriously misunderstood.

No, not really. I read your response twice to be sure it was humour or not. I wasn't sure given the amount of info on women in computing. (Thanks for Kathleen Boothe by the way, she's new to me too!) Sadly, I came down on the wrong side. My apologies.


(Responding to otherposts now too.)

Smileys, emoticons etc exist for a purpose. They are there to ensure that the reader of the text understands that something written should be read as threat/humour/whatever to avoid a potential lack of understanding.

I was taught this in college back in the 1980s, so its not new. The spoken work cimes with inflection, body language and other visual clues to add to the meaning. The written word does not. The emoticons are your visual clues. Use them.

Using an emoticon doesn't mean that the writer thinks you are stupid or similar, the writer knows that the written word can be misconstrued.

My boss, back when I was employed as a developer, wrote an email which completely alienated the entire workforce. Complaints were made. A complete apology was oersonally issued and he met everyone to explain that what he meant was not what we all understood from his email. He apologised again in a futher email to everyone and bought everyone lunch by way of apology.

Cheers,
Norm.