Yes, folks, it’s true–I have ovaries, not testicles. Please don’t yell at me. Three weeks of riding in a car, with nothing else to do but stare out the window and think, has convinced me that honesty is the best policy, and I should come clean with my friends at the Straight Dope, not only on the subject of formerly being known as Notthemama but also on which set of gonads I was born with.
I had some bad experiences in the past with unwanted flirtation on other MBs. You’d post something like, “I just spent 2 hours boning a chicken for a party”, and somebody would post, “Hey, I’ll bone YOUR chicken any time, sweetheart, heh heh.” This would get tedious.
I do notice that there’s quite a bit of flirtation here, but I also began to notice that it’s only towards the posters who seem to enjoy it. If the guy tries it, and you feed him, he’s much more likely to try it again. Conversely, if he offers to bone your chicken and you don’t appreciate the offer, all you have to do is say nothing and he’ll take the hint. Maybe the SDMB just has a classier class of guys than other MBs.
Also, my impression on other MBs was that obviously female posters who jumped into Serious Discussions of Life, The Universe, and Everything were not taken seriously. There was frequently an undertone of impatience when male posters were responding to a female who had dropped her two bits’ worth into a Serious Discussion. And it wasn’t just about Eternal Issues, either. Computer tech talk was guys-only. However, I find TechChick’s massive board presence here to be reassuring. Nobody trash-talks HER when it comes to computers.
However, sadly, I am still going to draw the line, privacy-wise, at e-mail address and pic on the People Page. There are a lot of weirdos out there, and I just feel better being nothing more than an idea carried on a stream of electrons, emanating from somewhere in Illinois.
But all the rest of it is true, personal info, etc. I’m still a long-married forty-something with 3 kids, sidelined with a foot/ankle injury, which actually seems to be getting better. I think 3 weeks sitting in a car, not even going up and down stairs, must have helped.
And as for the Notthemama thing, well, if you were here, you know what was going on, and why it seemed like a good idea to lay low for a while and then come back under a different name. If you weren’t here, you didn’t miss a thing, just the MB equivalent of one of those tacky “beach read” novels (and not one of the good ones, either), so don’t worry about it.
Things do seem to have quieted down a lot. Shall we credit the 7/2 software upgrade? Or did something else change while I was on vacation?
