[Buddha-l] Re: An experiment (Gender on Buddha-l)

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 10:47 -0600, jkirk wrote:

> But this list is not run by women or "a" woman, and there are few women left 
> on it as well.

This list is not run by anyone. It has an administrator whose job is to
help people with little technical problems pertaining to their
subscriptions. It also has two moderators, whose main function is to set
a contributor's moderation flag to "no moderation needed." All the main
contributors can send messages directly to the list without moderation
or censorship of any kind. Some messages are automatically rejected if
they are over the size limit.

If people would rather go back to full moderation, that can be arranged
in an instant. If people feel one of the moderators should be a female,
then let a female step forward to volunteer her services. In the past I
have asked for volunteers, and so far not a single woman (or even a
married woman) has offered to serve as moderator. So if anyone is a
woman and feels an urgent need to "run" this list, let her step forward.

There is no way for anyone to know how many subscribers are female,
since the majority of the 515 subscribers are subscribed only by address
and have left their personal name field blank. Of the 515 subscribers,
only 47 have sent messages during the past two months, and there is no
way of determining how representative they are of the subscribership as
a whole. In one way they are obviously not representative at all, since
the vast majority of subscribers never send in any message at all. So
when you begin making statements about what kinds of people do and do
not subscribe to buddha-l, you are making guesses, perhaps even cooking
up evidence to fit your preconceptions. (Such things do happen.)

> Thus, the aspect of gender behavior you refer to is not relevant to my
> crit of this list's general tone nor to my call for civility as a more
> productive and peaceful Style.

This may be an example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. The
vast majority of the nearly fifty contributors to buddha-l are civil and
peaceful. So I think you may owe them an apology by implying that they
are uncivil and bellicose. That is painting with much too wide a brush.
It is characterizing many people negatively who do not deserve it. And
that is, in itself, neither civil nor peaceful.

-- 
Richard Hayes