More to the story...

[susandennis]

My newspaper this morning had more on the man date... This time it was some of the letters from guys who wrote in... I'm reading along - amused that the editor is so shocked at the response. She clearly did not give this whole thing much thought at all or she is way too naive to be in the newspaper biz...

But, anyway, I'm reading along and lo and behold, the last letter is from geordie! Way to go! And well done.

Comments

[kitashla.livejournal.com]

I read that article to Sean yesterday and he laughed. He thought it was the stupidest thing around.

Sean has male friends that he goes out with in apparently "non-male-approved" situations. Sure, he goes out and plays pool, goes to concerts and bars and stuff like that with his male friends. But sometimes they just go out one on one to a quiet restaurant where they can sit and talk about the stresses they have in life and basically have a guy "dish".

He never knew it was something that was supposed to make him uncomfortable.

Now, I'd say that's just because Sean's very comfortable with his sexuality. Except Sean's friends are not. They are the type of guys to be afraid they might be seen as gay. And going out and doing "non-guy" things has never bothered them.

Perhaps that is because there aren't defined activities for gay men and straight men. Perhaps it's because it really doesn't matter. Heck, going to the Biltmore together for a wine tasting (because your girlfriend doesn't like wine) and a tour of the gardens can be a lot of fun if that's the sort of stuff that interests you.

[fj.livejournal.com]

I talk engineering with women all the time.

[geordie.livejournal.com]

Erm, considering I work with a whole load of them and they are good at what they do it was sort of a dumb comment. It was more an aspect of where my head was at the time. Sexist actually. Fudge.

Anyway, I'm sure you've had the party experience of "what do you do then"? Having watched the eyes glaze over a few times I just say "software" these days. If they press me I say "wireless gear".

Hard to retract a foolish statement that got published.

[fj.livejournal.com]

Yup. Unretractable. We will now point and laugh at you for years to come.

I truthfully say "Nokia. We make cell-phones." I wish eyes glazed over; either I get a fanboy or a litany about how cell-phones are ruining everything.

[geordie.livejournal.com]

Welll... here's a quote about the company I worked at for about nine years "The co-ordinating design authority for all WE177 variants was Hunting Engineering, with the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment as design authority for the warhead element." I could look up a reference that would say Hunting managed the Atomic Weapons Establishment as well, so discussing details of my work wasn't really an option.

Nokia huh? I'll restrain myself ;-)

[geordie.livejournal.com]

They published that? Golly! All of it? Did I make sense? I was sort of pissed off.