Gender and Technology Spring 2009

I came across an interesting article on sex change operations in India. With reputed hospitals not willing to conduct them, they’re usually done in underground clinics by quacks. However, the surprise isn’t that this surgery is rising in frequency, it is one of the reasons why it’s increasing.

India has a skewed sex ratio because of the preference for boys. The government has made sex determination illegal to prevent female foeticide, but if a female child is born, many families practice female infanticide. This isn’t restricted to the rural uneducated masses, it is prevalent in educated high class families living in the big cities. Now, parents have thought of another way out: they are forcing their daughters to undergo transgender surgeries.

I was disappointed that the article just stated the issue, gave a few examples of doctors being approached by parents, and then left it and went on to interview individuals who had undergone a sex change. It would have been interesting to read more about it.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20051212&fname=Sex+change+(F)&sid=1&pn=1

So the following are just some things that have been coming to mind during class over the past few weeks that I never really got the time to mention:

• if you get the time over spring break, may I suggest reading Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps, by Allan & Barbara Pease. I read it a while back but it provides some pretty interesting insights into more everyday dealings with gender. I vaguely remember there being a chapter about gendered careers that looked at the low percentage of women pilots and discussed women’s apparent inferior spacial and depth perception skills etc. Anyways, it’s an easy and fun read that offers up some ideas that may or may not be relevant to our class.
• I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about during a panel that made me think of linking to this but Rutu Modan is an Israeli graphic artist who blogs for the New York Times. Many of her columns revolve around her experiences of read more…

Friends and colleagues keep “feeding” me articles that they think will interest us in this class. Until I get around to signing up for a del.icio.us account, in order to feed the “articles of interest” sidebar, here are the two most recent suggestions:
Transgender Vets a Hidden Population (Arizona Daily Star, 2/22/09)
Putting a Bolder Face on Google (NYTimes, 2/28/09)

I found this awesome post about women in the most recent game in the Super Smash Bros. series. The fact that women are greivously under-represented in this game had not escaped me, but this definitely did a better job of talking about it than I could have. So, anyone else who plays video games: what do you think? Did Nintendo screw this one up, or were they just representing what’s already out there pretty accurately?

Intros left AH–>Alex M–>JS–>Hong–>AH

Story vs. theory or story as theory.

Geishas being created or manufactured–woman of art or woman of technology.

To what degree are your people people of art or people of technology.

Women body builders–using technology to sculpt their bodies, i.e. steroids, weightlifting. Might be more extreme than geishas.

Foot binders–manufacturing anti-technological women. Men find this beautiful. Considered an art. My question, what does this then prevent them from doing? Status symbol. Mythologically a cure for sleepwalking.  Me: in the same way as hysterectomies were used to cure disease, yes?

Contrast between body builders and foot binders: gaining agency vs. losing agency.  Technology as empowering or not–trying to not categorize it one way or another.  Things that are done to our bodies to gender our bodies.

read more…

Ah, so I feel like I’ve been away from the blog for awhile — and I have.  So here I am, back from the windy mountains of Boulder, CO, to arrive in windy snowflakes tossing around and stinging my cheeks.

Some thoughts about pro-feminist men based on my research, in relation to g&t…
First off, who are pro-feminist men?  The movement of pro-feminist men arose in the late ’60s and early ’70s in the US, UK, and Australia.  Pro-feminist men support feminism (some call themselves feminists — see Alankaar Sharma’s “Feminist. Man. Feminist man.” but some not wanting to infringe upon the empowerment of feminist women call themselves pro-feminist).  They believe in and promote gender equality and justice.  There are many concerns within the movement, and, as is the case for female feminists, different pro-feminist men focus on different issues.  A big one is male violence against women, but there’s also gender equality in school curricula, pornography, men’s health, masculinity, and many others.  In some ways these last two are bringing back the focus to men, but the idea is to rethink gender roles and how they are constricting to both men and women — more as a shared front for action and a motivating force for men rather than as detracting from a women’s movement (though there might be such repercussions too…). read more…

Just thought this post by Historiann was cute.

Oh my. So much to say, so very much to say.

First, I’ve decided to change my stance a bit. I’m interested in some of the technologies of the 1950’s, including cultural ones, and how those intersected gender. Though the middle class was definitely a large part of this, it is no longer the focus of my study.

I’m just going to touch a little on some of the interesting things about the 1950’s in terms of gender and technology here; I’ll have more to say at the panel, and I’ll flesh this out more later as well.

-After World War II, where women were filling the jobs that men had left, there was a displacement as men returned to take those jobs. Despite this, work in some areas such as clerical duties (thank you Wikipedia) was easier for women to get after the war.

-The nuclear family was at its peak – think Leave It to Beaver. Dad works, mom takes care of the kids, who in turn do the things that boys do or the things that girls do, based on their sex.

-The civil rights movement hit its stride. Critical events such as the death of Emmett Till and the Montgomery Bus Boycott sparked by Rosa Parks were widely publicized and made the movement difficult to ignore.

-The Communists and the atomic bomb had everyone scared to death – counter-measures were pursued.

-Rock and roll was popularized, and paved the way for all sorts of counter-culture – the ideas of conservative dress and behavior were pretty harshly affronted by The King’s gyrating hips.

Essentially, it was an era of transition, where people were trying to find out what it was like to be a superpower with severe internal dischord. I look forward to talking about this a bit more in, oh, fifteen minutes.

I only have a few minutes so this won’t be quite as thoughtful as I want it to be, but while at Northern Voice, I spontaneously gave a talk on the issue of Gender in Blogging, my main idea being that in certain blog realms, especially the tech realm, women are poorly represented, both in blogs and in comments on other blogs.  read more…

When I found out we would have to pick a group that represents “gendered” technology I immediately thought of scouting. I’ve been a Girl Scout for 14 years now and the differences between Boy Scouting and Girl Scouting have always bothered me.

Surprisingly, in my research I’ve found that these differences mostly came about as the Scouting movement got older, rather than when they first began. Scouting was created by Robert Baden-Powell. The Boy Scout movement officially started in 1908 and in 1909 a rally was held in London and B-P was shocked that a number of girls showed up to the event declaring themselves to be “girl scouts.” He decided that if they wanted to join in they should have their own movement and name. This took the form of ‘The Scheme for Girl Guides’ in the Nov 1909 issue of Boy Scout Headquarters’ Gazette. He felt the movement should be run by a woman, so he asked his older sister Agnes to take control. Then of course the scouting movement spread all over the world ( especially with the help of Juliet Low from Georgia, USA).

The reasons Victorian society decided to take up this scouting phenomenon are interesting. Leading researchers at the time like Granville Stanley Hall, a psychologist, educator, and president of Clark University, felt we had reached a “crisis of masculinity.” Even a limited experience in a tamed wilderness, he agrued, would allow adolescent boys a chance to recall the primitive traits of their prehistoric ancestors and thus “restore to an overcivilized and effete society the manly prowess it needed to survive.” Of course most of the research at this time was particular focused on young boys.

But what prompted society to send girls into the wilderness . . . clearly it wasn’t to encourage masculinity. Girls movements didn’t come up with an answer to this on their own. Interestingly, Americans had long had an understanding of the natural landscape around them as a middle ground characterized by a harmonious balance, between male and female, nature and culture, progressive and primitive, and childhood and adulthood. Victorian culture, while making men prissy, apparently caused excessive laziness and vainity in young women. Girls needed to join scouting so that they could learn that “her young body is to be used instead of decorated.”

It seems the movement for both boys and girls started off on the same footing. Everyone regardless of sex needed to be fixed through nature. Unfortunately, in the coming century the scouting movement would be redefined in suport of more unequal terms. For example, after the first world war American society decided that a woman’s primary duty to the state could only be defined in terms of motherhood. This ideal was extended into the Girl Scout movement, while boy scouting has to this day remained very similiar to its original roots.

Currently, there is, in my opinion, an even greater gender divide in scouting. Enrollment in the high school years has dropped off causing the national Girl Scout council to “redesign” the entire program. Apparently, girls just don’t like to camp or get dirty or learn first aid. All we really like to do is wear charm braclets and have sleepovers in nice warm houses (yes they seriously thought about replacing badges and vests with charm braclets). Lucky for me, my high school troop decided to stick to the old ways and so have many others, but this new idea of what girls are “supposed” to like is very troubling to me and it is why I choose to further explore scouting as a means of promoting gendered technology.

Hi guys and gals… I haven’t posted in like, soooooooo long. Apologies for messing up the boards with an influx of my name everywhere.

So I was wondering… we’re talking about engendering technology and the genders in technology… but although we call things “technology” is there a more “serious” technology? Something that makes technology more “real”? (Ok… I know these terms are hella nebulous, but bear with me.) I know that most times “serious” is often associated with “male”. I can’t back this up with cold, hard data, but it seems the traits of “seriousness” ie “show no emotion”, “view the stats”, “logic it out”, “paternal”, “technological” all tend to resonate with what our western, American culture would call “male”. This is not to say we’re all unenlightened blockheads or anything; rather, I would like to address the general public’s thinking. Whether this be right or wrong is another matter entirely.

I know that I am often thought of as being “soft” science because I participate in the <i>social</i> science of anthropology. So… I guess those “hard” sciences of biology, Physics and Chemistry are because people who participate in them most often have penises? Why was I not taken seriously when I told people I was an anthropology major, but when I added that I was also a computer science major it was automatically assumed that I knew how to program their computer and fix everything wrong with it (even though I was a woman)?

Also… as a “helpless” woman I also find myself getting help with “technological” stuff. In a scenario that could have turned ugly fast, I was alone at a gas station (not very promising) at about age 17, just having learned how to fill my gas tank myself. One of my tires was out of air. Ok… I could fix that. I drove five feet to the air pump and suddenly was surrounded by a hell’s angels biker gang twenty strong and none below the age of fifty. Um… uh-oh? Not so, because I was a “helpless little girl” they took the air pump and told me I was going to explode my tires if I filled them that much. They showed me how to fill my tires (not that I remember much beyond, “holy hell! these are BIKERS in LEATHER and I am DEAD!!!!!1one!”) and then rode off leaving me to suss out what the hell had just happened. I mean… I don’t think I look that helpless and I have a glare that kills from fifty paces off, or at least I like to think I do. Still… do any other women here get stopped by little old ladies to ask the time or directions?

Also, on the technological help scale, does anyone else get the “well now little lady, what seems to be the problem” when calling tech support lines? The guy I got on the phone was condescending and asked if the computer were plugged in or if I had tried restarting the computer. I had explicitly stated that I had just tried to dual boot my computer with Ubuntu and Windows Vista (which is a pain in the buttocks) and that the boot window (the window where you choose which Operating System AKA OS to load) was showing up blank on the restart. We went through the valley of “well you sure you restarted the computer” and climbed the mountain of “and you pressed the power button and everything” at least thrice before he called his manager who was ten times more helpful and not condescending. Even so… do any other women here have this problem? Or men who have the opposite problem (of being asked if they can program or fix things they can’t)?

My name is Hong Lin and I’m a sophomore math major, as yet undeclared.  I figured I really needed get this little bit of information out there seeing as I’m going to be introduced today.  And I really do apologize for this uber-late intro.

I’ve had a sort of interesting relationship with both gender and technology in my life, and in order to explain it, I need to go into a bit of my childhood.

Ever since I could remember, there’s been a divide between me and others my age, and I’ve felt socially alienated.  That’s something that’s persisted throughout my life thus far.  As a child, I was both exceptionally tall and exceptionally clumsy.  I had a bad stutter and very fragmented speech, looked somewhat boyish and was often teased by other children.  When I was five, my parents came to the United States in pursuit of political freedom and new opportunities.  They wanted to make a steady living before bringing me here, but at the time,  I didn’t understand.  So, for awhile there, I was a pretty lonely kid.

And then I discovered the wonders of the cassette player, and my life was quickly filled with strange and catchy eighties music.  I’d bring my headphones and cassette player wherever I went.  Whenever I was taken to a new place, that became my first thing to do: find an outlet, plug the cassette player in, and listen to the crooning voice of Mao A Min in quiet rapture.

And ever since then, I’ve always seemed to live in my own little technological world.  Even after I came to the US and reunited with my parents, I’ve never seemed to connect in a social setting.  And when I found the internet at age eleven, the computer became a sanctuary of sorts.  I distanced myself from society through technological means, but ironically enough, it was also through technology that I became a more social person.  When I discovered chatrooms and RPG communities, I made friends, expressed myself, and found a rare joy in human (albeit online) interaction.  It was with these friends that I explored (and partially bridged) the cultural differences within my own family.  It was also through online resources that I discovered and came to terms with my sexuality.

So, as you can see, technology was a critical part of my personal development and “gendering”.  Whether it’s music playing in my ear to keep me company or strange and new information I’ve discovered in online communities, technology has always been a part of my life – and even a part of me.  Just as bones and organs are physical elements of my body, I feel that technology is an element of my spirit, my humanity… maybe even my perception of gender.  And I guess I’ve always wondered how, why, and to what extent this takes place in society at large.

Because there was some complaining, as we ended the last section, about “crowding @ the board” to do your evaluations, we’re asking you, before you leave for break, to provide a mid-semester evaluation on-line (in the form of a “comment” to this post), letting us all know
1) how you now understand the process of “engendering technology”
2) what you know (=what you’ve gotten)
3) what you do not know/want to know (=what questions do you have?)
4) also any relevant feedback re: what’s working/ what’s not working in the class as a whole.

Thanks!
Anne and Laura

The link, in case the embed doesn’t work.

Foot-binding is an Ancient Chinese tradition that started sometime in the 10th century Tang Dynasty and wasn’t abolished until a full millennium later, in 1949.  Traditionally, having very small feet was considered a symbol of class and beauty for women, so it was a social necessity for young girls of all different classes to go through this process.  Many poems have been written lauding the beauty of such “lotus feet”, the most famous of which comparing the precarious, unbalanced walk of a woman with bound feet to an exotic dance.  The was called the “lotus gait”.

I’ve done some research on what exactly this practice entails, and the information that I’ve found was eye-opening… to say the least.  At the age of six or seven, when the bones of the girls foot have fully developed, the girl’s family – if it was rich enough – would hire a professional foot-binder, who would break the arch of each foot and fold it in half at an angle, length-wise.  The big toe would be kept intact, while all the little toes would be broken and folded toward the sole.  A stiff bandage would then be wrapped as tightly as possible around the entire foot to permanently alter its shape.  In the process, this creates a deep slit where the sole of the foot used to be that men found exceptionally desirable.  So, essentially the women had to literally walk on their toes.  If you find this hard to imagine, I have found a picture (and sensitive stomachs REALLY need not look): http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_D8VwTKAphks/RwLRAJyjrjI/AAAAAAAAGfY/_WZ6Qwe-bEI/s400/untitled.jpg

The was also a scale of gauging the beauty of a woman’s feet: if they were 12 centimeters long, it was said that she had “iron lily feet”.  This, believe it or not, was actually bad.  It was 8 centimeters long for “silver lily feet”, and 6 centimeters long for the coveted “gold lily feet”.  Needless to say, the real “beauties” of China after the Tang Dynasty could barely walk.

If you think about it, this is an example of the engendering of technology at an extreme.  If we look more deeply at this twisted sense of beauty, we can see some very interesting social connotations.  In the Tang Dynasty, foot-binding was a fashion trend started by the elite classes.  As a man, what it meant to have wives that could barely walk and were utterly dependent on him was this: he was rich and powerful enough to keep them care of completely by his own means, and was probably wealthy enough to keep servants.  For him, this extreme dependency was an affirmation of his power and masculinity, and his admiration of “lotus feet” could be seen as stemming from a desire to monopolize power in his household.  And for his wives, being confined to the house meant that they didn’t have nearly the amount of access to politics or technological resources as he did… therefore making political participation and technological advancements nearly exclusively masculine.