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world: midwives of an applied technology balanced on the brink of meaning. Proust’s paen of praise for the telephone operators of Paris is not, of course, a serious expression of respect. Yet it is literally true that women, the secret arbiters of cultural significance, by annexing for their own use this male instrument, transformed the concept of telecommunication. It was another socially marginalized male, a science fiction writer, who invented the term ‘cyberspace.’ Here on the threshold of the third millennium, can we doubt that a similar female agency, erased but necessary, will emerge in the new industry of telematics? Note how often, in popular mythology texts, the voice of the computer is female: the voice of the dominatrix, teacher, mother…”
    The other students gazed out of the window; or doodled or frowned in feigned concentration. The tutor, semi-recumbent behind his four-square, sixties desk of blonde and grainy pine, occasionally lifted his lizard lids a trifle and thought, it’s never the pretty ones. Ramone Holyrod had lost some puppy-fat over the course of the year, but the improvement was slight. It’s always the childish ones, he added. The adult-looking undergraduates are the monkey-do accomplished (we won’t say intelligent, that would be a premature judgment indeed); but the most childish, the most unfinished are the only ones with any kind of originality. He wondered if there were any scientific rationale to back this idle observation. One would have to include young Spence of course, whose face was as formless as an egg—an egg with a mop of Dylanesque ringlets on top of a stringy male child’s body—but whose sense of humor was surprisingly sharp. But that could be the accent. Quite possibly Spencerisms would not be in the least entertaining if expressed in graceless UKC1ese.
    Ramone had finished.
    “Very nice,” said their tutor. Very nice meant I wasn’t listening. Interesting!, which never came Ramone Holyrod’s or Andrea David’s way, meant Good. Lucy Freeman heard it often. She was the pretty one. “Comments, anybody?”
    Ramone gritted her teeth and glanced fearfully at Spence, who was a computer nut and probably knew what a modem did. But the American Exchange was preoccupied. Martin Judge, the other male member of the group, took issue, as usual. “I don’t understand why you have to bring sex into everything, Ramone.”
    Relieved, she turned on him, “What do you think I should bring to a discussion about Technology in Society? Jars of marmalade? Sex is in everything. I didn’t put it there. The most significant thing in your entire social and cultural life is your assigned gender. Everything else comes after that fact, including your relationship with technology. Don’t you accept that?”
    “Jars of marmalade would make more sense. Whoever invented the screw-top lid made more positive difference to women’s lives than political feminism, if you ask me—”
    “Okay, if sex doesn’t come into it, why did you say women’s lives—?”
    “Children, children…Telephones. The subject was telephones. Ramone’s essay. Could we return to our moutons? ”
    At the end of the session Ramone, bright color in her pasty cheeks, bundled up her belongings into her shoulder bag. She tried to take the essay with them; she was now ashamed of it and miserable. The tutor made her leave it on his desk. His resigned glance at the butter-stained first page cut her to the heart. She stomped out. Lucy and Andrea had departed to some girly lunch-date, but the appalling Martin was lying in wait pretending to talk to Spence. She had to walk down the corridor between the two of them, feeling hatefully small and untidy, a heaving maggoty mess.
    “Look, Ramone,” began Martin. “I’m sorry I upset you. It’s just that I don’t think our Technology and Society tutorials are the place for sexual politics. It’s not the subject of the course, and it’s not fair on the rest of us.