Candidates and Websites: Gender Expression Online

            “It’s so…blue,” screamed Nicole. “It’s pretty too.” She clicked to the next page. “Ah! It’s screaming at me! I’m not voting for you honey.”  As I sat in the background of the computer monitor, watching the television, not the screen, I arrived at a series of conclusions in my cognizance that led me to what my sister was exclaiming about. She must have investigated Hillary Clinton’s website for campaign education and then subsequently was led to Barack Obama’s page that was presumably harsher by the fervent tone of her voice in the second statement. No?! It’s the other way around? Obama’s page was “pretty?” Well, that doesn’t sound right. I then went on to propagate my perplexity at the dinner table with my father who found it uncanny that he had come across an article in the New York Times that very same week entitled, “Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?” (Cohen 2008). I could not even pretend to know the difference between a Mac and a PC and I dismissed the article’s reference immediately at the time. Pondering now, I cannot help but think to connect the two: technology and gender stereotypes. In the realm of politics, a website can help or hinder a candidate’s status among voters, but at what cost? From a macroscopic perspective, did such a use of technology to persuade or dissuade voters reinforce gender conventions? Can computers even do such a “non-technological” thing? For the first time in my history I must rely on gender studies’ literature to answer my mechanics question. Who knew?

            Monica Schneider writes from her research how “voters react positively to candidate rhetoric when it is consistent with stereotypes” (Schneider, sec.1). Specifically when that rhetoric involves “web-etiquette” will voters still hold this consistent fact? I can now narrow my scope to Hillary Clinton’s website to promote her efforts in the campaign. Her main page is emblazoned with the word “CONTRIBUTE,” all in capitals with a red framework. The page is aggressive and “uses a more traditional color scheme of darker blue, has sharper lines dividing content…is way more hectic…like shouting” (Cohen, sec. 8). Such rigid templates for websites have been associated with emotionless causes and a “masculine” take on the “duty” one has an American citizen. It seems that Clinton’s strategy for the technological component of her campaign is to de-gender herself to become of the masculine level with her opponent, Barack Obama, showing no trace of a feminist’s touch to her postings. Or so it may seem.

            Perhaps I am wrong in this analysis. Is this website the work of a non-feminist or the greatest feminist of all?  Keith Grint and Rosalind Gill write of the problem with feminine sociology: “The aim is to identify the source of women’s oppression: to know one’s enemy in order to defeat him. However, this is a mistaken strategy because if feminism is concerned to identify a system of patriarchy as the determinant of power relations, then it will divert proper attention away from…places where we can analyse how instances of dominance by men are achieved” (43). Thus Clinton has gone beyond the identification of her oppression in achieving her goal of the presidency of being a solitary female in the race and has utilized those so-called “masculine” strategies of combativeness to gain leverage in the race. She has analyzed those methods by men for dominance and has flipped those tactics on their edges through her website. Mr. Santa Maria of Cohen’s article agrees stating that her internet campaign could be quite strategic, “If she shouts a bit more, typographically speaking, that may be the better to be heard” (Cohen, sec. 14).

            What of Obama’s site then? Does he in effect use his tech savvy managers to instill the “male normative?” Upon my arrival to the Barack Obama computer homebase, I could not help but notice such personal touches as his official signature to voters with a “thank you” signed by his own hand at the top of the page. Obama’s site was noted as “more harmonious, with plenty of white space and a soft blue palette…the features and elements seamlessly integrated… ha[ving] this welcoming quality” (Cohen, sec. 14). From traditional views of female vs. male characteristics, Mr. Obama’s page gravitates toward a “womanly” domain of softness and inclusion, words that were absent from descriptions of Mrs. Clinton’s technological contributions to her campaign. Using such jargon from Glint and Gill I must say that these websites have de-constructed the entities of gender and technology to open the “black boxes” that both authors “insist on opening…for investigation where the meaning and significance of ‘technology’ and ‘gendered identity’ are reconsidered in all their variations” (44). Thus technology in this political arena has halted the expansion of gender stereotypes by allowing the aforementioned antagonists to de-nature conceptions of “feminine” and “masculine” through expressions that can only be provided through the modern industrial world.

            I am sure there are websites that embody what the non-read public sees as “gender specific” with Paris Hilton’s blog coming to mind. Though another interesting topic to explore, to be consistent with the political microcosm I have investigated, is Sarah Palin’s campaign strategy. Clinton and Palin were both females running for political offices yet their campaigns represented the duality of gender with respect to females; to be more masculine or feminine? One woman came closer than the other to her respective seat. As to why, maybe the differences in their technological campaigns hold the answer. At this point in my gender technology career, I would say this hypothesis seems plausible.

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Cohen, Noam. “Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?” New York Times 4 Feb. 2008. late ed., sec. 1: 1+.

Gill, Rosalind, and Keith Grint. The Gender Technology Relation: Contemporary Theory and Research. London: Taylor & Francis, 1995.

 

Schneider, Monica. “Gender Reinforcing vs Gender Bending: The Effects of Gender-Based Communication” Paper presented the annual meeting of the ISSP 31^st  Annual Scientific Meeting, Sciences Po, Paris, France, Jul 09, 2008 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p243297_index.html>