skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Patricia Roberts) (12/07/88)
Someone has recently suggested that if the net does not provide equal
access to women and minorities it does not deserve to exist. Let's ignore
the arrogance of that remark (I'm constitutionally suspicious of people who
seem to think that they can deem what does and does not deserve to exist--
perhaps I have read too much about Nazis) and just deal with the issue of
whether or not the net does provide equal opportunity to women and minori-
ties.
It just so happens that my entire academic career is based on the idea
of finding ways of enabling everyone to participate as equals in
communities of discourse, so this is an important issue to me. And, as a
result, I have spent the last few days trying to think of some way to talk
about this in a posting on the net. I have the feeling that I should be able
to reflect on it in some kind of useful way, but every time I have tried to
write an article which would do so, it has gotten too complicated.
I decided that I'm just going to relate three personal incidents which reflect
on this in different ways.
Before doing that, a couple of working assumptions: there are two ways that
some group might not provide equal opportunity: through legal or legislative
proscriptions; through some more or less explicit form of intimidation.
Clearly, there is no sense in which the net does the former. But the question
remains whether or not it does the latter.
The first incident is this: when I first started using the net, I was
teaching argumentation at Berkeley. Many of my students also used the
computer and some read news. Since I tried very hard to keep my personal
political views out of the classroom and not let students know about them,
I didn't want students to know it was I posting. So I didn't sign my
name; I just used my login id (skyler--named after my cat, named after
a character in an obscure movie.) I noticed two things--I was treated
worse in soc.women and better in news.admin if people thought I was male.
Second incident. I proposed a group. Every once in a while, I run for
naivety awards and this was one of those times. I thought it would be a
simple affair--people would vote for it or against it and that would be
that. Oh well. I received more or less hostile mail, which was less than
fun, but what really upset me was what was posted to the net. I was
accused of all sorts of underhanded things (still am from time to time)
and, basically, had my name dragged to hell and back. At times, the
postings were so hostile I was reduced to tears.
In retrospect, the postings were no more hostile than are directed at
anyone who has proposed a similarly controversial group, but I was less
capable of dealing with that degree of hostility than most men. I would
argue that many people inferred more sneakiness on my part than they
would have had I been male or had the group had a different purpose, but
one form of sexism is to think that all women are sneaky.
Third incident. A little feller down in Texas acts like a jerk. I point
that out. He gets mad. He tries to get my goat by putting "honey" and
"luv" in his posting as often as possible. It doesn't (I haven't owned a
goat in years--my sister did have a lovely one named "Infy" though.) But
after that, I noticed that is a common tactic when dealing with a woman.
There are, I would argue, three forms of sexism. One is thinking that
women are inherently inferior blah blah blah. There are people like that
on the net, but they are few. Another is refusing to acknowledge the
ways that women are and have been oppressed, thinking that getting rid
of the legal proscriptions is enough. There are many like that on the
net. The third is thinking that women are so weak and helpless that
we cannot use the net unless there are far more safeguards for women
than for men, that the net should be arranged so big, strong, nice men
protect us from big, strong, mean men, that every criticism against a
woman is against Women. Staying between those last two is a trick, one
that I think I don't always manage to pull off. (Perhaps this posting
is itself an example of the second, I don't know.)
Somehow, this didn't get me to the point I really wanted to make. Well,
I'l just say it and leave it at that.
Women are easily intimidated. It is much harder for a woman to stand up
to real, implied, or symbolic intimidation than it is for a man. This
is especially true when talking about physical intimidation. And there
is implied and symbolic intimidation of women on the net--maybe more
or less than there is of men, I don't know--but there is no real physical
intimidation. I'll leave out some of the linking terms, but what I'm
trying to say is that the net is not perfect--it is not the ideal speech
situation--but it is the best I've seen for women.
So, to relate it back to the initial issue, the net probably does not
provide equal opportunity to all people, but it provides a greater opportunity
than anything else I have ever seen.
(Maybe some day I'll talk about stance players versus humanists, but that's
a different posting.)
--
-Trish "...Turning off onto a dirt road
(919)230-0809 from the raw cuts bulldozed through a quiet village
for the tourist run to Canada..."
skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu -A. Rich