Les Meezerables
This is my avatar on the cheap. We are different in the following ways: he is well-dressed, deep-complextioned, square-jawed, has an apparently good cash flow, blond spiked frizzy hair; I am a female, pale, cash-strapped, formerly blonde. This was fun, though as another student noted, there seemed to be a dearth of age/shape diversity in Meez. Ahem.
I have to say I really enjoyed the Turkle chapter of Life on the Screen, "Tinysex and Gender Trouble." It would have never occurred to me that men would pose as women to try to suss out their own feelings about gender and roles. As Turkle points out, "Biological men have to construct male gender just as women have to construct female gender." (p. 215 Turkle) It was fascinating to me that Turkle's study subjects, Case and Garrett, came at the same problem with opposite conclusions. Case thought, erroneously in my opinion, that it was much easier to be an assertive woman than an assertive male online. Garrett, tired of male competition wanted to find ways to communicate cooperation and non-competitiveness, without being interpreted as manipulative. In the end, I think a lot of assumptions about gender come from the user. Garrett valued his mother's influence on his childhood, and wanted to strengthen the skills she fostered in him. Case seemed to think that his assertiveness taxed the patience of the women around him. I thnk the person who summed up the problem of posing and being seen as someone of the opposite gender was Ellen, who posed as a non-threatening male "looking for his socks" --"People are nice if they don't view you as a threat." Does that mean that assumptions about gender are really assumptions about power? I think so!
In my own on-line life I have seen hints of the male "helpfulness' to me and other 'women' when first on a messageboard. The material, as another student noticed last week was published in 1995--have attitudes changed? I read in Newsweek the week that this generation of children notice race far less than previous generations. Perhaps that will be true of gender and the Internet. That we are aware that the party to whom we are 'speaking' is very likely not who we think they are, or what they would like us to believe, COULD create eventually, a culture of care and neutrality.
In my experience, flaming is not gender specific, although I do agree with Gurak (p. 72) that the "operating standard" of attitudes and rhetorical style (read informed bluster) may have been the genesis of the flame. I see that even now with the e-mails my husband receives from his gaming buddies--there is a kind of jovial rudeness that can escalate when the subject allows. I sometimes peek at messageboards for television shows I like, and feel like the flaming is distributed evenly between men and women.
I liked what Gurak had to say about computer and software design for girls and boys. This is a prickly subject for parents of small children that I know. Many will tell you that their little girl will run to the princess outfit with no previous exposure or encouragement, they will embrace the pink or purple computer monitor. On the other hand, it was interesting to notice that the ad for the Purple Moon software Gurak believes was superior to the Mattell software of the same era, offered a free 'lipsmacker.' Isn't that kind of the same thing as a pink computer? Or is there a fine line where we are saying--it's OK to be a girl--here's a lipsmacker--let's talk about where our differences make us special. And here is a game where you don't have to kill a bunch of things to win. Where does the sale stop and the lesson begin?