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last.updated 6.05.06

 

Gender & Technology


Purpose

To examine how gender constructions get reified by the technologies we use, especially computer technologies, and to consider strategies for using these technologies to fulfill our own agendas.


Questions

  • Are the arguments that Hawisher & Sullivan make equally appicilble today for the electronic sites, such as blogs and myspace?
  • We descibed Alex, the online psychiatrist, as a virus. Does this label hold true for Mr. Bungle, especially consider his real identity?
  • Reilly makes a solid argument about androcentricty of vibrating technologies and does well at applying it to computer games-a gateway into the field of computer technologies. What other ways do you see these computer technologies perpetuating male-centered, heteronormative practices, especially in the academy and the workplace.
  • Over the last two weeks we have talk about barriers to technology for individuals of color and non-androcentric identities. If computer technologies are rhetorical, what solutions are there to these barriers?


Hawisher & Sullivan

  • Are men depicted similarly online? How do they represent themselves? Are they victims of homogenized images as well? Do they feel the need/should they break the rhetorical status quo?
  • The authors talk about the “reduced social context cues model.” Where as the “content of the message is of primary importance.” (P. 270) I wonder what difficulties the instructor would face when assessing students’ work and if the instructor needs to know the gender, race, nationality, and level of writing expertise, etc. of the student in order to assess (their writing) appropriately?
  • I am a little unclear as to how Hawisher and Sullivan depict university's online representations as repressing females self-representation? Also, what might they say about Facebook?
  • Is using women to sell commodities to other women exploitative? And if so who are the exploiters? I would argue that some exploitative issues are self-imposed and sometimes serve the exploited. Hence, I think feminist should not allow their own agenda to cloud the definition of exploitation.
  • Although Hawisher and Sullivan's address of women's "visually writing" the web addresses both websites and images designed for entertainment, consumption, women of color are excluded from this discussion. What visual rhetoric issues might women of color, within the United States and abroad, have to face in choosing images and designing websites?
  • I agree with Hawisher and Sullivan that, “We have come to think of the new technology as replicating and then extending the old,” to what extent is backlash against feminism driven by technology? Is the presence of more “cyborgian” images a start at mitigating or is it the same level of resistance that has always been there?
  • What message is sent by professors, especially female professors, who choose not to engage with the online space provided for them by a university department? is this an act of refusal or fear or both sometimes?

Dibbell

  • Are MOOs and MUDs a means to release violent/deviant tendencies? Should they be used for the treatment of potentially violent offenders? Or do they exacerbate the problem?
  • I love the style of Dibbel's writing. It has the air of a Victorian psychological thriller, as if A.C Doyle were a contemporary technojournalist. I find the final revelation about the character of Bungle most interesting. He was not a person, but a mob. Does it change the nature of the offense that the perpetrators of the crime were a group, rather than an individual? To me it implies that there is another dynamic at work--There is the social dynamic from the perspective of the MOOers, which assumed that the Bungle character represented a single individual who was participating in the MOO in the same manner as themselves. But there is also the dynamic of the group in the room. The NYU students seemed to believe that they were more real than the characters in the MOO, who were objects that could be blamelessly abused. The group gathered around the computer successfully dehumanized the characters in the MOO by assigning it the characteristics of a video game (or a duck pond, or a petri dish, etc...), rather than of a real social environment.
  • Digital and electronic technology seems to often encompass a world of their own. What precautions or actions should be taken when this electronic world happens to infringe upon the real world?
  • Is there a sense of morality in the world of virtual reality and if so who dictates the morals of a group of users who function and complete anonymity? Under our currently legal system one can only be charged with a crime if there is a volitional act and an appropriate mental state; thus because the act volitional act is missing in virtual reality it allows social deviants to function with impunity.
  • Dibbell's creatively written account of the electronic Bungle debacle explores the psychological journey of an online community to form cogent self governance policies and deal with less-than-desirable online communication. Although she is unable to access Mr. Bungle/ Dr. Jest for comment, her conclusion is startling-- she learns more about herself through the indecent acts perpetrated in the online community. What does this conclusion reveal about her participation and growth in the online community? Is it only through realtime punctures in online space that agency and organization can come to a MUDD community such as LambdaMOO?
  • Does the author ultimately think LambdaMOO has adequately dealt with the “virtual” dangers that exist? Does the return of the wizardry indicate that humans are incapable of relating successfully in a space without rules?
  • How the group think mentality play into the "cyber rape"? can one person be held accountable for this? and what does held accountable really mean in this context if a member of the group or the whole group can establish a new account and re-enter the site even after being toaded?

Reilly

  • Is the use of denigrating images of women in computer and video
    games an intentional move by men to retain a hold on the industry? Is it their way of saying women are not welcome in this career field? Are they trying to salvage their masculinity in an era where there are few jobs that remain exclusive to men?
  • Reilly talks about the projection of "transcendence" into online spaces. In other words, she claims that historically the male gender has been characterized as more capable of transcending the physical and inhabiting the detached realm of the rational, while women have been yoked to their bodies. She argues that men perpetuate this notion in contemporary online settings, where the attitude predominates that harassment in a virtual space is essentially non-threatening because the space is virtual, detached from the physical.

    I'm confused here. One way to read this is to say that Reilly is saying that this historical notion is correct--that women are inherently unable to "transcend" the physical and that men need to respect this. Is this what she means? "the assertion of transcendence is used to put the onus on the victims, mainly women, to disguise themselves, log out, or avoid spaces where harassment may occur." Incidentally, I found it interesting that on the same page she also points out (as I did in an earlier discussion) the near impossibility of maintaining gender neutrality even in a disembodied online space: "Research shows, however, that in online spaces, neutral characters are often identified as female by default or are badgered to reveal their identities, because participants in online communities often have an intense desire to know the sociosexual identities of others online in order 'to connect self with (normative) physical images of body and to establish (normative) relationships among the participants' online identities."
  • How might one make such discussions appropriate for younger students?
  • There is no surprise that modern technology is embedded with misogynic characteristics besides the vibrator other there sexually defiant activities including voyeurism, interactive web-cams, and others. Furthermore, because of the privacy, anonymity, and intimacy associated with home computer use, there is also no surprise that the reality of society and virtual reality meshes when the human interfaces with technology and this interaction allows the fantasy of sex to fester.
  • According to Reilly, an understanding of how technologies are gendered is imperative to students forming informed and critical perspectives of technology use. How might one apply Reilly's course discussion of the gendering of technologies to Banks's discussion of the Digital Divide? Are these communities and the technologies they have/do not have access to being effectively gendered by their socioeconomic status?
  • I’m curious why it was a discussion of the vibrator that allowed her
    students to see androcentricity in the world around them, as opposed to other examples? What other hidden “pasts” of technology is the average person unaware of?
  • one interesting question as a follow-up to her work would have been to have the students examine thier own self representations on the web (i.e. in social networking spaces) and see if their reading of thier original representations had changed