RACE AND GENDER ONLINE

IMAGES

VIDEOS

DISCUSSIONS

ONLINE RESOURCES

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• GENDER ISSUES:

In Uses of Blogs, Melissa Gregg's Posting with Passion, discusses issues that women face today in the online world. There has been the misconception that women do not participate in blogs. For instance, it has been assumed that men are far more interested in current news and politics, while women sit at home and clean up the house. Wrong! There are more and more blogs out there specifically created by women.

Moreover, the great thing about online is that more women are getting involved in a variety of blogs, instead of just maintaining the title "stay at home mom." The "stay at home mom" today is creating blogs, web pages, etc. Women are given much more freedom when given internet accessibility, because your identity completely changes online and areas to get involved in are limitless.

However, Kristine Blair and Pamela Takayoshi are concerned that "as web sites for and about women develop, feminists must consider the extent to which images of women online are both different from or similar to images of women in traditional media" (Navigating the Image of Women Online 1). In other words, although women are gaining freedoms that they never had before online, our society must equally be careful that women do not just transfer over the same stereotypes that are already present.

In many cases, men are exploiting these stereotypes to get the benefits from them. For example, in the online game World of Warcraft, a poll was recently taken and showed that "1 out of every 2 female characters was a male." Furthermore, the website's poll states that "the two primary reasons why players gender-bend are to be able to be more stylish and to optimize their characters through gifts" (The Daedalus Project 1).

          "But in a medium where one can construct or discard identities at whim, why are people bringing a gender identity online? 

The drawbacks have been meticulously documented in popular media: people harass women in certain forums, others list women in a "Babes of the Web"-style pages. But what benefits are there to being a woman, part of a visible minority, online?

 

The visibility is part of the attraction: the most active woman-centered sites online center around building a community and promoting women as socially and professionally equal to men. Contributor Mindy McAdams writes "The drawback to any attempt to remain un-gendered is the inability to declare oneself. As soon as you announce that you are a woman, you are one. So long as we have bodies back here in real life, we will want to speak up for them online."

 

 

Forging an visible gender identity online can also be a means of reinforcing total identity--a cultural feedback loop. In examining the nrrdgrrl phenomenon, Amelia DeLoach explains why women have created aggressively female, uniquely tailored identities online: "the Web fills a need for self expression, self empowerment, and creative pleasure" (CMC Magazine 1).

 

  I found something interesting on how there is still a gender bias on the web in the way of web design on an misbehaving.net entry:

 

 

The British researchers described in the CNN story had looked at design characteristics that made web sites overall more appealing to men vs women:

 

Women seemed to like pages with more color in the background and typeface. Women also favored informal rather than posed pictures.

 

Men responded better to dark colors and straight, horizontal lines across a page. They also were more pleased by a three-dimensional look and that's interesting information, and useful for designers. But what followed was particularly striking to me:

With those standards in mind, the researchers checked out the Web sites for 32 British universities and determined that 94 percent had a "masculine orientation." Two percent showed a female-favored arrangement.

I agree with her that it is more fascinating as opposed to surprising. Moreover, there is a link from there to another entry on molly.com, which gets more in depth. The responses are interesting and are worth taking a look at as well. Though there may be a bias towards straight lines and such in web design as some respondents mentioned sometimes its a matter of context. Sometimes it can be easier to read and navigate that way.

• RACIAL ISSUES:

Similar problems are faced with race online. Lisa Nakamura's Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction addresses how cybertyping is a new term for the online world where racial stereotypes are not forgotten, but transferred over to the internet. People assume that they gain new freedoms where they won't be critisized behind a hidden avatar. However, that is not the case.

Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet, Lisa Nakamura states: "Identity tourism in cyberspaces like LambdaMOO functions as a fascinating example of the promise of high technology to enhance travel opportunities by redefining what constitutes travel logging on to a phantasmatic space where one can appropriate exotic identities means that one need never cross a physical border or even leave one's armchair to go on vacation. This "promise" of "ultimate mobility and perfect exchange" is not, however, fulfilled for everyone in LambdaMOO"(1).

There are still many people that are left out of events online because of their ethnic background.  How we interact with people might have improved online, but as soon as someone finds out who is really  behind the mask, then we are back at step one. The people who will judge in real life will definitely not change online. Keith Wood's article on Poynter Online said, "I went online looking for the new frontier of race relations. It made sense to me: Mix a volatile but irresistible subject with the promise of uncensored anonymity, and you get authentic discourse"(1). Many people fear losing these freedoms and might cover up their "real" ethnic background.

However, we need to address more how people interact online, but we need to step back and deal with these problems in the real world first. If not, I fear things will not change and the internet will not gain its highest potential. Plus, people will continue to fear losing there freedoms, which should not be the case-period.

For more of my thoughts on race and gender and other issues go check out my computer mediated communication blog. Thanks!

• Anna=]