Thoughts on Gender and the Internet By Heide Brown

Studying the technology of the internet and exploring gender-related items on-line have brought up several interesting issues for me. The technology of hypertext is providing a complex set of inter-related characteristics of communication, differing fundamentally from those of the technology of the printed book, characteristics that could be said to be gender related. Also, interactions on the internet are raising some user's awareness of modes of gender interaction. And finally, the internet is providing a stage for practising different behaviors, for trying on different identities and genders.

For the purposes of this article, I am avoiding the terms "masculine" and "feminine", as they are too much of a generalization. I am using "traditionally masculine" for the characteristics attached historically to the patriarchal male. This leaves the unqualified term "masculine" free to represent the emerging, and growing, list of masculine traits that the "new paradigm male" is in the process of developing.

As the changes proceed, for many males, from "traditionally masculine" towards some new model, the same is true for the "traditionally feminine." Many women are working towards a new model of what is feminine. The old definitions of masculine and feminine no longer work, no longer fit the reality of the rapid changes in gender descriptions in process today. However, the old definitions are still useful, so long as we keep them in historical context, and don't let them confine us in our growth.

Keeping these definitions in mind, I have a hypothesis. I suggest that the shift in focus from the technology of the "classic text" (1) to the technology of the electronic text (hypertext), from product to process, is a shift from the traditionally masculine to the traditionally feminine. Landow's book Hypertext: The Convergence of Critical Theory and Technology (1992), (2) contains many references to classic text and hypertext, and to their contrasts. Landow refers to classic text as centered, hierarchical, rigid, controlled, autocratic, linear, and product oriented. I see it as also essentially analytical and competitive. These are all characteristics that are frequently used to describe traditionally masculine behavior. Hypertext, on the other hand, is described in Landow's book as being decentered, networked, accommodating, constantly changing, anarchistic, multi-linear, and process oriented. It is analogy-making and collaborative as well. These are all characteristics that are frequently used to describe traditionally feminine behavior.

A second issue of interest to me is how traditionally masculine patterns of behavior and traditionally feminine patterns of behavior are becoming apparent in research on how each gender uses the internet. Susan Herring's research is turning up interesting gender-specific patterns on internet usage, particularly in regards to modes of participation in various computer-mediated discussion lists. She claims that:

...women and men have recognizably different styles in posting to the Internet, contrary to the claim that CMC neutralizes distinctions of gender; and second, that women and men have different communicative ethics -- that is, they value different kinds of online interactions as appropriate and desirable.

By characteristic styles, I do not mean that all or even the majority of users of each sex exhibit the behaviors of each style, but rather that the styles are recognizably -- even stereotypically -- gendered. The male style is characterized by adversariality: put-downs, strong, often contentions assertions, lengthy and/or frequent postings, self-promotion, and sarcasm.

The female-gendered style, in contrast, has two aspects which typically co-occur: supportiveness and attentuation. "Supportiveness" is characterized by expressions of appreciation, thanking, and community-building activities that make other participants feel accepted and welcome. "Attenuation" includes hedging and expressing doubt, apologizing, asking questions, and contributing ideas in the form of suggestions. (3)

Becoming aware of these patterns can be the first step in helping internet users to change, if they wish, to break from traditional gender roles and begin to practice new behavior. And they can practice new styles of behavior on the internet and carry them into real life.

As Sherry Turkle argues: "[I]n the private flicker of the computer screen, many people are slipping further out of their conventional roles, thereby creating new personae with radically different attitudes or genders."(4) The general anonymity of on-line communication is allowing both genders to practice playing, at least on a verbal level, the part of the opposite gender. This practice is helping people become more aware of the characteristic behaviors of the traditional roles. "When you present yourself as a person of another gender, you quickly realize things about 'being' that gender in social interactions that might have been invisible to you before." (5) This practice is also allowing people to try on, in a non-threatening environment, new behavior patterns which are different from their traditional gender roles. Turkle, in "Who Am We" (1995) (6), claims that: "Some women who play male characters desire invisibility or permission to be more outspoken or aggressive." One of the women Turkle interviewed states that she "'realized that as a man I could be firm and people would think I was a great wizard. As a woman, drawing the line and standing firm has always made me feel like a bitch and, actually, I feel that people saw me as one, too. As a man I was liberated from all that. I learned from my mistakes. I got better at being firm but not rigid. I practised, safe from criticism.'" (7) As a final thought on gender and the internet, I agree with Tom Abate's quote from Turkle: "'The Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life....'". (8)

REFERENCES

1. Roland Barthes. S/Z. 1970. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974. In George P. Landow's "Roland Barthes and the Writerly Text," Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. 1992. (19 Feb. 1997)

2. George P. Landow. "Hypertext and Critical Theory", Chapter One on-line of Hypertext: The Convergence of Critical Theory and Technology. 1992. http://calliope.jhu.edu/press/books/landow/contents.html (19 Feb. 1997)

3. Susan Herring. "Gender Differences in Computer-Mediated Communication: Bringing Familiar Baggage to the New Frontier." Keynote talk at panel entitled "Making the Net*Work*: Is there a Z39.50 in gender communication?" American Library Association annual convention, Miami. June 27, 1994.

4. Tom Abate. "Exploring the World of Cyber-Psychology." Examiner Technology Writer. Sun, Dec. 3, 1995.

5. Sherry Turkle. Reingold and Turkle Interview. Howard Reingold Presents.

6. Sherry Turkle. "Who Am We?" HotWired Magazine, HotWired Network. 1995.

7. Turkle, "Who Am We?"

8. Abate. "Exploring the World of Cyber-Psychology."

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