Combining what you're saying with the blanket statements being responded to, you're saying that you believe that most feminists are man-hating sexists, to the point that it is fair to say that all of them are. I disagree with that statement quite vehemently. I suspect that you would object if I claimed that the majority of men are misogynists who just want women to do traditional feminine things like child-rearing and cooking. I also respectfully disagree with your statement that feminism views things from the perspective of a single gender. In general, the ones that associate with are concerned with examining multiple perspectives.

As one of those rare female posters here on slashdot, thank you for this post. People on one of the feminist geek sites I go to (www.girl-wonder.org) like to point out that people are different even when they claim a particular group name. People disagree. We see this all the time with people on the fringes of political parties and religion, so why not feminism?

I recommend Dreamships by Melissa Scott for a SF book on that subject that feels pretty believable to me, though it's not a Twenty Minutes in the Future kind of book - the AI in question is one designed to guide ships through the other space used for FTL.

Despite having approval on the novels (at least, that's what I've heard), Lucas let a lot of things go into the novels that he later contradicted with the prequels. I feel tremendous sympathy for these novelists scrambling to reconcile what has been written and things that are now, for good or ill, considered canon.

Re: GP's comments about the MMO, I got the impression that Bioware and the Old Republic era works have a much better odor among fans. I know that my husband, who is a much bigger fan than I am, is chomping at the bit for TOR to come out. (And I assure you, he is definitely anti-prequel. He's currently running a D6 WEG Star Wars tabletop game in which he has repeatedly hammered home to the players that the events of the prequels are NOT what happened in his game.)

Because of the cultural perception that romance Isn't Manly, we've developed such low expectations that one to four days (throw in anniversary and birthday) seems great. I will say that the geeky males I've dated seem to be better at it than the average, though. :)

(And I'm from Michigan and I've heard of Sweetest Day.)

Dragon Age: Origins is one of the few CRPGs I've played that seems to cater to female gamers. It's great. :) (Although you may get tired of hearing about Alistair, the main female love interest... ;))

Anyway, I think it's great to hear about all of these customized gifts - they really are the heart of romance.

I do all of my news (followed by webcomics) first thing, so all I had open was my email program and Firefox. Just for kicks, I opened up my development environment* and that bumped me to 18 - I didn't have a ton of files open before the holidays.

* Rational Apex - I do Ada work. Please, no expressions of pity.

I admit, my data is a little stale - I graduated HS/College in 95/99.

I work at a defense contractor. There's a little bit of sexism that seems to be primarily from older former military types, where I think it's less that I'm a female programmer than I'm a female programmer working on artillery software. And the one time that I overheard a co-worker who got passed over for promotion in favor of me comment that to get his promotion he would have to change his gender.

In college, I was in the first class of women that they admitted. (It was an all engineering and science university.) To placate people, they accepted additional students equal to the number of women so that no one would whine that they could have gotten in, if it weren't for those girls. The most sexism I had to put up with was actually from my Psych prof, of all people. Other than that, I think the divide was more between the merely-geeky-enough-to-go-there and the ubergeek types. Anyway, they opened up their pool of applicants and the average GPA went up quite a bit.

I was very lucky; we had conversations about this in college, given our environment. I knew someone who's own father didn't want her to go to college because "you'll just get married and waste all that learning". We all had to deal with teasing in high school, etc, but it's difficult to tell if it's the same as what other geeks went through, or worse for women. Personal experiences are difficult to compare.