Comments, Posts, and an easy-to-find “hello world”
I was reading through the intro posts today, and I realized that comments we post don’t show up as being attached to our name. I posted my intro in the comments of a post on the 21st (http://gandt.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2009/01/21/introductions/#comments) , since part of it was responding to the post above. Today, reading through, I thought that I should probably post on the main blog, in part because I can then more easily find this post at the end of the semester.
Hi everyone. I’m Rebecca Church, a sophmore at Haverford and an intended Psychology Major with a French Minor.
Julia, I’m also really interested in the ambiguity of gender, both in real life and online. I didn’t fully understand how I was gendered until talking about gender with my transgender friend. It fascinates me that the internet may give us the potential to move beyond gender, to exist in a gender-ambiguous state. Also, when does deception become dangerous? To me, your example of the teenage girl being a middle-aged man sounds less like subverting gender roles and more like assuming a completely different identity. (And, this identity would probably be seen as predatory.)
I wonder if this potential for gender ambiguity and subversion will ever be realized. Your post discussed many of these obstacles– the constant binary, the gendering of everything. Right now, in many corners of the internet, masculinity is assumed and women are reduced to sex objects. Will this change? Can we move beyond gender labels, both online and in real life? It’s a lot easier to do so online, and if it happens, it will probably happen online first. I know in some areas on the internet, the subverting of gender has already taken place, but it’s been my experience that assuming masculinity is a lot more common.
I’ve been thinking about assuming masculinity interacts with women’s groups. I recently installed Ubuntu (a Linux distribution) on my main computer here at school. It’s been a big adjustment, getting used to the terminal and the DIY attitude, and I’ve been spending a lot of time on the Ubuntu forums. I noticed that there was a mailing list called Ubuntu-Women. There was no list for Ubuntu-Men. In a similar vein, there’s a Women in Science club and lounge at Haverford, but there isn’t a Men in Science club.
Does distinguishing Ubuntu-Women and Women in Science from their respective fields reinforce the notion that these fields are male-dominated? Do these groups assume that everyone else is male? I understand that the aim of such groups is to provide support for minorities, but in our naming, do we reinforce the status of these minorities as groups that need support, that need special attention? And, do they need special attention? Are we giving them (us) the right sort of support?
I also have some questions from a biological perspective. Technology allows us to change our bodies, and one day it may even allow us to change our genetic code. Does biology have any bearing how we interact with technology? Can we escape our biology, our sex, and exist solely according to our gender? I’m thinking more about the physical world than the virtual here. I’ve never taken a gender and sexuality course, so maybe this is a basic question, but it’s one that’s been bothering me for a while.
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I’ve been re-reading posts in search of ideas that relate to paper 2 and was surprised to see such well-developed ideas in an introductory post. I was struck by your thoughts on online and real life labels: “Can we move beyond gender labels, both online and in real life? It’s a lot easier to do so online, and if it happens, it will probably happen online first.” I agree that if it happens, it will definitely start on the internet and gradually move into the physical world. I’m not sure, however, how realistic it is that we could actually move completely beyond gender labels, even online. I think most of the ways we interact online are still very rooted in the gender binary system (or at least in some gender system). On social networking sites, blogs, multiplayer games, etc. users are often asked to identify their gender. Whatever they identify as, there is still a gender system in place that is being reinforced. I think moving beyond gender labels online would involve a complete eradication of gender that isn’t possible now or in the near future because our virtual world is still very much a mirror of our physical world and our ‘real’ world societies.
I’m currently starting my paper on Survivor contestants’ use (and lack of use) of technology. Each season of Survivor takes 16-20 people and watches them relate to one another in a new world where they don’t have their usual technology, a world in which they have to gauge each other based on their identities and personalities alone. Gender comes into play pretty often, especially in terms of physical strength, which is often the most valued commodity on Survivor since it, in a sense, makes up for the lack of technological advances. I think it’s interesting to consider how much less important and prominent gender becomes as more technology is introduced into our society (i.e. the internet) whereas as soon as almost all technology is removed from a group of people, gender and other identity factors become hugely important.
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