Gender and Technology

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Feminism and Gaming

In gaming, “A hardcore gamer is usually a male, between 14-34 years of age who has been gaming in their top priority list… a game addict… keeps up to date with the latest technological advancements… they usually keep a large number of games.” (Kubik, 138). The meaning of the term “hardcore” is often up for debate, but “The end result is a normative value to the masculine hardcore gamer, and devaluation for the feminine casual gamer.” (Kubik, 136). In Masters of Technology: Defining and Theorizing the Hardcore/Casual Dichotomy in Video Game Culture, she writes that the types of video games that men play often portray the sexual objectification of women, as well as mass violence towards women; especially video games like Grand Theft Auto and Saints’ Row. Feminism and Gaming is the struggle for equality in the portrayal of women in video games. Women who speak up and demand change in how women are portrayed are often struck with backlash from male gamers.

Gamer Gate

Gamer Gate started off as a trending hashtag on Twitter in August of 2014. Hathaway states that it is “…in response to this widespread repudiation of the term “gamer” and the scummy layer of misogyny it had picked up.” Gamer gate is so important because of its mission to remove gaming of bias. The trend, #gamergate turned into a way for women to freely share their views on games and their awful portrayals of women.  Gamer Gate started to criticize major gaming sites and networks, and called for a change in games and gaming culture. If anything, Gamer Gate has shown that the male community of gamers can easily exhibit their brutal treatment of women in their video games into real life, as many women who have spoken up through Gamer Gate have been threatened. Gamer Gate is probably just a stepping stone as gaming culture will change as gamers being to change the way they think, and reform the world of gaming.

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Description

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Keyword: Cybersexism

The word cybersexism can be broken up into two words; cyber and sexism. In today’s day and age, the word cyber can mean anything dealing with computers or cyber networks, which includes social networking sites, email and other informational websites. Sexism is prejudiced activities or beliefs from members of a privileged class towards a de-privileged or un-privileged class. So what is cybersexism? Cybersexism is trolling, cyber harassment/abuse, and cyber stalking; activities that are directed specifically at women only because they are women. These actions are primarily done by men against women. In a nutshell, cybersexism is the oppression of women on the internet through images, links and text. This concept of oppression manifests itself online in three main ways: gendered harassment, silencing and threats. Unfortunately, many people think that cybersexism is not a huge threat, however, there are serious consequences to cybersexism.

            Gendered harassment is seen very often in social media sites; probably more so on Twitter than on Facebook or Tumblr. Gendered harassment is often presented in the form of verbalizing stereotypes. For example, comments referencing how women are supposed to stay in the kitchen and serve men often come around on social media. Other men reference female genitals to offend and humiliate women. Like Laruie Penny says in Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet, “It turned out the internet wasn’t for everyone. Not really. Not yet. It was for boys, and if you weren’t one you had to pretend to be, or you’d be dismissed.” (Location 37) This is very true reality when it comes to gendered harassment. As women should find cyberspace a place where they can freely post pictures. However, social media has probably turned into a girl’s worst enemy, as cruel and debasing comments from men come flooding in, either telling women that they are too ugly, or throwing sexual remarks and harassments at them for “trying too hard” in their pictures.

            As women become more vocal online, they constantly face threats and silencing. For example, a woman got upset over something and posted it on her social media site, and immediately, she was told to “quit going psycho”.  A man telling a woman to go and shove something or the other up her vagina is also commonly seen on social media. It seems as though if a man does not agree with something a woman says; his immediate response is counter her opinion and then tell her to shove it, trying to silence her. The threats that women face online are even worse than the attempts to silence them. Men have said to women on Twitter to shut up or they were going to be killed. Other women have been told that a man would like to rip their face off in order to live the “perfect” life.

            Although many people might feel that cybersexism does not have serious consequences, the truth is that it has dire consequences. Cybersexism causes a lost ability to network online in women as cyberspace becomes an unsafe space for them. This eventually leads to limited personal and professional goals as women lower the expectations for themselves. Women begin to have reduced self-esteem from being shut down so often. Reduced self-esteem can lead to eating disorders, and sadly even suicide. Penny says, “The ultimate power that men feel they hold over women is to drag them from one category to the other, and the Internet, with its boundless recording and publishing capabilities, can make this infinitely easier.” (Location 160). These are the results of dragging women from category to category. 

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I Want to Introduce You to a Porn Star

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Cybersexism

What is cybersexism?

In short, cybersexism is the oppression of women on cyber networks through images, texts, and or links. Existing sexist frameworks that present themselves as obstacles for women in the "real world" extend onto cyberspace and internet social networks. Laurie Penny says in Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet, "There was a time, not so long ago, when nerds, theorists and hackers, the first real colonisers of cyberspace, believed that the Internet would liberate us from gender." (Location 12) However, she herself later on says that it mattered a great deal whether you were a boy or a girl on the Internet (Location 25). "It turned out that the Internet wasn't for everyone. Not really. Not yet. It was for boys, and if you weren't one you had to pretend to be, or you'd be dismissed." (Location 37). The internet was supposed to be a place where women would be able to speak to one another without limits (Location 78). According to Penny, "The ultimate power that men feel they hold over women is to drag them from one category to the other, and the Internet, with its boundless recording and publishing capabilities, can make this infinitely easier." (Location 160). Women are constantly being watched and observed, and for some reason or the other; they are dragged from whatever category they were in before into the "slut" category if anything risky is found online regarding them.

Where have I seen it?

I see cybersexism online on a daily basis. Being South Indian, I see it more culturally than others might. Right now, most South Indian parents are on Facebook, or are using their spouse's Facebook account to see what the "youngsters" are up to. Somehow or the other, even though almost everyone is trying to block every uncle and aunty (culturally, we call anyone who is around our parents' age uncle or aunty) with a Facebook account, they see a picture of the younger generation out at parties, drinking, girls standing with boys, etc.; all of which is very scandalous in our culture. However, when these uncles and aunties decide to publicly scold their nieces or nephews, they make it a point to say awful and degrading things about the girls in the pictures, but never say a thing about the boys in the pictures. Regardless of what a male posts or shares on his social media site, unless it's completely vulgar or obscene, he most likely won't be chastised for it. However, if a girl posts something with just the tiniest bit of cleavage showing, or something with views that are a little too strong; they're immediately shot down. This is a small preview of cybersexism in the online South Indian community.

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Digitizing Race

In Digitizing Race, Nakamura says that digitizing race is “the ways that race is formed online using visual images as part of the currency of communication and dialogue between users.” Every day, internet users send out links, images, text and different forms of media back and forth to each other, and knowingly or unknowingly, these links and images are seen in the context of gender identity formation and use this in their views of their own identity and gender. Nakamura gives these three examples to explain:

Her first example is that of the Jennifer Lopez video titled, “If You Had My Love”. In her video, users pick which lenses they which to look at her through, different menu options allowing Lopez to be viewing in different styles in which the user might identify with demographically. Female users viewing the profile would either idolize her or judge her. Male users viewing the profile would sexualize her, as Lopez intentionally makes herself an “object” to be desired in the video.

The second example she gives is AIM, and how it can shape gender and racial identities through its buddy icons. With the icons, users determine how they want to show themselves racially online, or they can be part of a “raceless” world with a little yellow running man. These little avatars are normally digital versions of the user, built on how the individual views his or her self.

The third example that Nakamura gives is that of the website, www.alllooksame.com, a website the shows the user a photograph of a person, and asks the user to identify what race the person in the picture is of. The user is scored based on how well they can identify people based on race. People of Asian descent are often generalized to all be Chinese, but the website makes people determine if the person in the photo is Chinese, Japanese or Korean. There are essentially two ways this site can go, it can be really racist and continue poke fun at generalizing Asians to all be of the same race, or it can make people stop generalizing and actually look at people.

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Cyberfeminism

What is cyberfeminism?

Cyberfeminism is the establishing of feminism in technological areas. Kira Hall's paper, "Cyberfeminism" discusses two different perspectives on cyberfeminism, liberal and radical cyberfeminism. A liberal cyberfeminist's goal is sexual liberation. They feel that this is absolutely necessary in order for gender equality for gender equality to ever exist; a view based on Haraway's cyborg feminism. Radical feminists have a pro-women attitude; and are almost anti-men, which makes sense considering that radical feminism is based on the realities of male harassment on the internet through social media and public forums.

Cyberfeminism..."rethought"

Cyberfeminism as a term is being rethought. Before, "cyber" meant all forms of technology, in today's society, it only means internet based. In Paasonen's article, she redefines cyberfeminism.She says that cyberfeminism represents "analyses of the gendered user cultures of information and communication technologies and digital media, their emanipatory uses, as well as the social hierarchies and divisions in their production and ubiquitous presence." Cyberfeminism will continue to redefine itself as media and technology change, and cyberfeminists use the changes to their advantage by making them "pulpits" from which they "preach" their message of gender equality.

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Intel's Inspiring!

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Growing Up Online

The technology that is used today has a huge impact on how one identifies with his or her gender. While watching the PBS documentary, “Growing Up Online” I could not help but relate with almost each and every one of the students in the documentary. In 2007, the year the documentary was filmed, I was the girl whose parents did not want her to be on social media, Myspace and Facebook were the devil in my household, and my dad had every kind of block up to keep me from getting on social media, but my goal was to get around every block he put up, and come 2009, I finally got on social media with my Facebook account. Why? For me, not having a social media account meant that I was not on the same level as the less of my peers. Once I finally got on Facebook, the question was, what was I going to portray myself as?

Social media gave me the chance to show everyone the best of me, what I could not show on a daily basis. I was not the only one growing up with this dilemma of having to show my best, or at times someone who was not even me; from watching this documentary, it looks like every girl growing up online had the same problem. Unfortunately, as it has been made so clear in the documentary, females, more than males have a huge dilemma with, as one of the girls in the video said, finding a balance between being “sexy” enough but not enough that one would get called a whore or be deemed slutty. This dilemma is not just something we see online though; it is out there in the real world, right when we walk the streets. There is a double standard that is present, and the thing is, men are just as susceptible to date rape or stalkers as women are.

This documentary portrayed the idea of safe internet use, a concept that has been drilled into our heads since we were in the third grade. The point one woman made, that we need to stop looking at kids as victims, but look at them as participants struck a chord with me. Myspace, Facebook, Yik Yak accounts; they all only portray what the account holder chooses to put up. The account holder holds the control. The pictures and video that the account holder chooses to put up influences what kind of people are going to message them and to respond to them. Am I implying that people should control what they put up on their social media websites in fear of the kind of people they might attract? No, I am saying that no person is caught in a web that they did not fly into themselves first.

Two of the scariest and most heartbreaking stories from the documentary were the stories of Ryan and Sara. Ryan was a thirteen year old buy who took his own life after being cyber bullied because he was “gay”. Ryan was bullied online for begin gay, not that anyone actually knows whether or not Ryan was gay, but the thing is, the internet was used to tear apart his sexuality and upset him so much that he felt that he needed to take his life. Sara, a girl with an eating disorder, found herself torn between two different personalities while battling her illness; her online persona who completely supported her anorexia, and then her actual self who was disgusted with herself.

Technology, especially social media and today’s media portray women who are to be objects who should be the perfect balance between sexy and conservative. Girls need to be thin and perfect, and that is what technology tells people. We’ve got the being to change our thinking. Gender is so much more than what technology says it is.

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Changing How We Think (Reading Response One)

So we want to change how we perceive things, right? Well how do we go about doing that? What's our logic? First of all, what is logic?

As our brain processes, it takes shortcuts, it confirms what we're thinking, and allows for past experiences and former opinions to trick us, and these biases can mislead us. That's where logic steps in. Logic lets us combine ideas which in turn helps us establish ideas. Logic has structure, it starts with premises (ideas) which are then put together. These ideas, however, they need to go in order and they cannot be changed, if they don't; the ideas we are trying to establish become logical fallacies, they no longer work. So not only do our ideas and arguments need to be strong; but they cannot be straw men; they cannot be exaggerated, oversimplified or weak, they need to be built and toned on facts and evidence.

We allow our brain to trick us and mislead us. This happens especially when we look at the personal. We let our opinions of people, our past experiences with them decide how we feel about what they're saying. It's not who saying what that we look it, it's about what they're saying. "Play the game, not the player." Now, just like our brain tricks us into looking at people and not substance, it also tricks us into seeing patterns that don't exist, the gambler's fallacy. We see patterns that don't exist based on past results. We make up patterns for things that are based completely on probability. So what do we need to do? We need to test the patterns, test the circumstances again and again, and determine if they really work or not. However in reality, we will always question, we'll always wonder, Is it really 100% okay? We want to wait for 100% certainty, but we can't, we have to take risks. Waiting for more information is great, but if it keeps us from going where we want to, it's hurting us more that it's helping. 

So how do we change how we perceive things? We look at the facts, the statistics. We don't allow our minds to be hindered by past experiences and former opinions; we go to the experts and we look at the cold hard facts. Then in the end, instead of looking for patterns that don't exist, we go with the facts and jump in, without being 100% certain about how anything is going to turn out.

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Hello!

Hello there!

My name is Rachel, and I am a sophomore biology major at TCNJ! 

Being South Indian, I grew up in a culture in which your gender determined your worth. If you were born a male, you were the pride and joy of your household. If you were born a female, you were to be seen and not heard; kept locked away until you were old enough to get married and become someone else's burden. However, even in our culture things began to change for women as the human race made leaps in technology. 

As technology has advanced and everyone is now on Facebook, Twitter, or the newest and brightest thing on social media; women are heard so much more; and they have a voice! If you go to the big technology centers in my state in India; you'll see handfuls of women working in tech and IT centers that are overflowing in males. Come to think of it; it's the same way in the United States, women are simply not as present as males are on the technology scene. Even though there are more websites and networks geared toward women; they are all mostly run by men. Why? Why is it that women can't break out and take over the tech world? Is it because we're not as talented or not as able? No, not at all. We're simply not perceived that way. 

Well, it's about time that things started to change about how people perceive things...