CRJ #3

Judy Wajcman’s, Technology as Masculine Culture, argues that the link between technology and masculinity is in the male bias of the definition of technology. People think of male dominated technologies, such as industrial machinery and cars, when they hear the word technology. They do not think about the significance of women’s technologies which include; cooking, horticulture, childcare, and many more. Our culture has made us think this way. The symbolic representation of technology is the idea of masculinity having an intimate bond with technology.
Today’s present technical culture conveys technology being associated with men. Ultimately, this plays a role in continuing the exclusion of women. This culture comes from a historical construction of gender. Everyone has learned to associate technology with men and it would be very hard to change everyone's view.
Wajcman stated that cognitive styles are often times a product of how you were taught in primary school to use the computer. The computer is usually associated with boys, so girls may not be as confident when they are using computers. This probably turns off a lot of girls from continuing to practice in the computer field. I know that I usually think of computer programmers and people with computer-related jobs as men. However, I think that things have changed a lot. I am a business management major and my schooling requires a lot of work with computers. There are a lot of women these days that work with computers even though men still outnumber women in this field.
It is very interesting to know that the first computer programmers were women because of war. I think that it is very surprising that we relate computers to men so much when women were actually the first computer programmers. I agree with the statement that computers are usually associated with men but, I do not agree that only men can do the creative, intellectual, and demanding work of programming.
Joan Roughgarden believes that hetero and homo distinction is a purely cultural creation because there are over 450 different vertebrate species that are documented as being homosexual. This tells us that same-sex sexuality is normal and probably necessary. Therefore, this same-sex partnering throughout the animal kingdom must be an adaptive trait preserved by natural selection.
I think that Roughgarden makes a very significant point. If there are so many other species of animals that are same-sex partners it must be a normal part of sexual selection. It makes sense that homosexuality is just a normal fact of life and that we are the ones responsible for making heterosexual and homosexual distinctions. If we did not make such a big deal about the distinctions, no one would think anything of someone being homosexual. Everyone would just look at sexuality as a preference and homosexuals would be considered ordinary.