출처 : http://www.itcs.com/elawley/gender.html
Computers and the Communication of Gender
by
Elizabeth Lane Lawley
April 1993
Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political
construction, a world-changing fiction. The international women’s movements
have constructed `women’s experience’, as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object. This experience is a fiction and a fact of the most crucial, political kind. Liberation rests on the construction of the
consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression and so of
possibility. [. . .] [T]he boundary between science fiction and social reality
is an optical illusion.
–Donna Haraway on cyborgs (1991, p. 149)
We’ve narrowed the gap between fantasy world and reality. [. . .]. The border is no longer real.
–Richard Chuang on "morphing" (Quinn 1993, p. 106)
In her book Gender Trouble, Judith Butler (1990) tells us that gender
itself is "never fixed, always fluid." Working from that premise, it is
important for feminist scholars to look not only at categories of gender as
they have been historically defined, or as they are now constituted, but also
as they could be redefined and changed through the influence of increasingly
pervasive communication technologies. In this paper, I address the effect of
new electronic communication technologies on current construction of gender
categories. In particular, I focus on the effects of computer-mediated
communication (CMC), a medium that appears to hold promise for a reforming of
individual and societal conceptions of gender and identity.
Although other authors have taken up the challenge of examining gender and
identity in light of technology, they have not taken into account the current
and potential effects of these CMC technologies. In her book Feminism
Confronts Technology, Judy Wajcman (1991) sidesteps CMC in her
introduction, saying "I have not attempted to encompass here all forms of
technology. [. . .] Various aspects of information and communication
technologies have also been excluded." (p. xi) And Donna Haraway (1991),
whose intriguing "Cyborg Manifesto"(1) has been cited extensively in literature
on the future of gender construction, also focuses on technologies that provide
for the physical recreation of the body rather than the virtual creation that
text-based CMC technology addresses.
One collection of essays on women and technology, edited by Cheris Kramarae
(1988), does cover the issues of technology and communication, including
several essays on CMC. In her opening essay, Kramarae says: "Technological
processes have been studied from the (usually implicit) vantage point of men’s
experiences. When one puts women at the center of analysis, male biases and
masculist ideologies become clearer, and one discovers new questions as well as
fresh approaches to old questions." She challenges women to begin to "develop a
more inclusive understanding of the social relations and ideologies of
technological processes" (p. 7).
In this essay, I attempt not just to provide a "woman-centered" vantage point
for the examination of communication technologies, but also to examine the ways
in which our definitions of "woman" and "man" are shifting in this new
communication environment. This is not to say that the term "woman" will no
longer be meaningful or useful in discussion of gender and technology, or to
say that gender is not or cannot be considered as a factor in the study of
information technology uses and applications. Rather, it is an argument that we
cannot fix a single center from which the experiences of women with computer
and communication systems h1can be viewed, and that such fixity would only serve
to deepen inequities rather than exposing and removing them. It is possible to
use new theoretical perspectives on the shifting boundaries of gender
definitions to rethink a previously deterministic view of the effect of new
technologies on society, and particularly the effect of those technologies on
women.
Technological
Determinism
Writers in the fields of critical theory and poststructuralism have been
addressing the current and potential effects of science and technology on
societal institutions for many years. Most often, these scholars have viewed
technology as a tool of scientific rationalism; their concerns tend to focus on
the deterministic aspects of technology and its role in dehumanizing
interaction and individuals. Ben Agger, for example, in his essay "The
Dialectic of Deindustrialization" (1985) discusses the tendency of system
managers and computer experts to exert control over–and, as a result,
systematically distort–the content of discourse regarding technology.
Describing what he calls the "dominant technocratic response to
deindustrialization" (p. 8) he expresses a concern that sexual and
political violence will be systematically reproduced in a technocratically
controlled environment. This viewpoint draws heavily on Jürgen Habermas’
neo-Marxist views of technology and science as ideology. Agger describes
Habermas as contending that "the laissez-faire legitimation of earlier market
capitalism has been largely replaced by the scientific-technocratic
legitimation that cedes all system-steering authority to an elite of system
managers" (p. 7).(2). This vision is particularly worrisome from a
feminist perspective, since that elite of system managers is unlikely to
include any significant number of women in the foreseeable future.
The critical theorists are not the only scholars to have approached the topic
of dehumanization through technology. In a collection of essays on the
relationship between the fields of literature and literary criticism and those
of science and technology, F. Garvin Davenport (1990) poses the question "Does
mechanization affect human values, and if so, how? To what extent and under
what conditions should we allow technology to shape our definition of ourselves
as a civilization or as a species?" (p. 227) Again, the assumption of
technological determinism is clear. Rather than seeing technology and
mechanization as a tool for change, he sees it as the change agent. This
scenario fails even to acknowledgethe role of the system designers, let alone
the users.
Discussions of mass media and electronic communication also often assume a
deterministic role for technology, even as they exhort users to employ the
technologies for their own needs, be they personal or political. A new magazine
on the social effects of digital and electronic technology, Wired, uses
this quotation from Marshall McLuhan’s (1967) classic The Medium is the
Massage as its epigraph:
The medium, or process, of our time–electric technology–is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Your education, your government, your family, your neighborhood, your job, your
relation to "the others." And they’re changing dramatically.(3) (McLuhan 1967/1993, pp. 6-10)
This McLuhan quote, which defines the role of the end-user of technology less
as active subject than as passive/reflective object, appears just before the
magazine’s statement of purpose. Although this statement is far less
deterministic than the McLuhan statement cited above, it still provides grounds
for concern:
There are a lot of magazines about technology. Wired is not one of them.
Wired is about the most powerful people on the planet today–the Digital
Generation. These are the people who not only foresaw how the merger of
computers, telecommunications and the media is transforming life at the cusp of
the new millennium, they are making it happen. (Rossetto 1993, p. 10)
This enthusiastic charge raises another question: who constitutes this Digital
Generation? A quick review of Wired‘s masthead (p. 14) shows that
of the thirty-one contributing authors, four appear to be female.The executive
and managing editors are men. Two of the three contributing editors are men.
And only one of the six members of the art department is a woman. (Little
solace is gained from the fact that women’s names do appear in slightly greater
numbers under the heading "Tea and sympathy.")(4) If the critical theorists
are right, these are the elite system managers we need to be most concerned
about.
Some authors, however, have begun to reject this deterministic view of a
computer ideology imposed from above. They see a larger role for the users of
technology–particularly technology that involves the creation of a mediated or
virtual environment–in shaping that environment. This scenario is supported by
Anthony Giddens’ (1984) idea of a reflexive nature of social life, in which the
structure of activity is created and recreated by the very activities
constituting it. This image has particular applicability in the context of CMC.
We cannot study the effects of CMC upon the participants without at the same
time studying the role of the participants in shaping and reshaping the
context. Because the actors in this process are self-aware, theories developed
and disseminated through the study of the medium can result in the use of that
theory by the participants to further modify their communicative environment.
As Giddens says, "Reflections on social processes (theories, and observations
about them) continually enter into, become disentangled with and re-enter the
universe of events they describe." (p. xxxiii)
Joshua Meyrowitz (1985), in his book on the effects of television on American
society, addresses the issue of technological determinism head-on, and provides
a technological context for the ideas of reflexivity raised by Giddens:
Individuals behaving in physical or mediated environments still have a wide range of behavioral choices within the overall constraints. . . . On a group level, the situation is even less deterministic. For we design and use our rooms, buildings, media, rituals, and other social environments. We can redesign them, abandon them, or alter their use. Ultimately, then, the most
deterministic perspective may be unwittingly embraced by those who refuse to apply our greatest freedom–human reason and analysis– to the social factors that influence behavior. We do not retain free-choice simply because we refuse to see and study those things that constrain our actions. Indeed, we often give up the potential of additional freedom to control our lives by choosing not to
see how the environments we shape can, in turn, work to reshape us. (329)
This non-deterministic perspective has been particularly attractive to feminist
authors addressing the issue of the social effects of technology. The appeal is
clear: if we reshape our view of the process to see the user of technology as a
subject, rather than an object, we provide an avenue for women to act as agents
of change in this digital revolution, rather than ineffective objects. Ruth
Hubbard (1983), in her introduction to the collection of essays Machina Ex
Dea: Feminist Perspectives on Technology, begins with this paragraph:
Technology is part of our culture; and, of course, our culture, which is male
dominated, has developed technologies that reinforce male supremacy. Can this be changed by women becoming more involved with technology–not only as its users, but as its inventors, makers, and repairers? [. . .] Only to the extent that we gain control of the design and fruits of our labor. But that is a revolutionary agenda, for today very few people–women or men–control our tools or our work.
Hubbard’s vision reflects the critical theorists’ view that technological
systems and their effects are a form of ideology, shaped by the designers and
managers of technology. She assumes that only through the process of design and
creation can women "gain control" of the tools of technology. Her view is
shared by Jan Zimmerman (1982), who tells us that without political and
financial control over new technologies, "women will find themselves replaying
a familiar scenario in which new technologies serve to reinforce old values"
(p. 355). Given how few women are currently involved in the development
and implementation of computer and communication systems, this direction does
not provide any immediate solutions. It also serves to discredit any power that
women may have found in their roles as users of technology, and fails to
acknowledge the effectiveness of grass-roots movements (often organized and
populated by women) in affecting the mass media.(5) The goal of including more
women in the economic and political control of technological change is a worthy
one, but should not be seen as the only path for feminist action vis-a-vis that
technology.
Another option may be to rethink the role of the user in shaping and
reshaping the environmental space created in CMC systems. Where we face
barriers in moving women into positions of authority at computer companies, we
can shift our focus to helping more women become comfortable users of
communication technology. This can be accomplished through training and
educational programs, with a minimal need for significant economic or political
capital. Once women are better represented in the user community, it will be
possible for them to exert substantially greater influence in the larger
spheres of design and implementation.
Gender
as a Social Construction
What may be most useful for feminists in this process of re-examining the
agency of the end-user is the potential for reshaping current conceptions of
gender and sex roles through the manipulation of a virtual communication world
(or worlds). In order to understand the potential of CMC in this undertaking,
however, it is first necessary to understand the fluidity inherent in our
current categories of gender.
How do we currently define the gender categories of "men" and "women"? How can
a reconsideration and reevaluation of this institution take place in the
electronic/virtual world, and how will it affect our own senses of self, the
interactions among individuals, and the society in which we interact? It is
these questions that inform a feminist perspective on the changing shape of
gender as constituted in a CMC environment. Butler (1990) provides us with a
starting point for questioning the current and historical set of cultural
meanings and behaviors associated with the biological female body. She asks us
"Is the construction of the category of women as a coherent and stable subject
an unwitting regulation and reification of gender relations?" (p. 5).
Unfortunately, the concept of coherent and stable gender roles pervades much of
computing culture, and is often the focus of writings on gender and computers.
Even feminist writers critiquing the interaction between women and technology
fall into a pattern of describing women as the users and necessarily only the
objects of information technologies. Through these descriptions, which seem to
turn essentialism into technological determinism, authors who intend to expose
and thereby end the marginalization of women in technology may well be reifying
the very gender relations they criticize.
One application of Butler’s ideas to the practical issues of discrimination
against and marginalization of women comes in an essay by Vicki Schultz (1992),
which addresses employment discrimination in a legal context. Opening with a
quote from Judith Butler on how the category of "women" is "produced and
restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is
sought" (p. 297), Schultz emphatically rejects the idea that the dominant
ideology of patriarchy has so socialized women that they are unable to
construct their own ideas about work aspirations and identities. While
acknowledging the power of that socialization, she tells us that "this view
suppresses the dynamism and complexity that characterizes the development of
female subjectivity" (p. 313) Perhaps more importantly, she recognizes the
power contained in Butler’s argument for the non-fixable character of the
category of women, saying "If female identities remain in flux, then the work
world is no mere passive reflector of preexisting properties of gender, but
rather a central site where the category of `woman’ is contested and created"
(p. 314). In the same light, the world of (and the worlds created by)
technology need not only reflect current gender categories; instead they can
become another arena for the reshaping of those categories.
Sherry Turkle (1984), in her fascinating study of the cultural and
psychological world of computers and computer science, also takes some
tentative steps toward redefining what constitutes the category of "woman."
Although she notes differing attitudes toward computers from many of the women
and girls she interviews, she also acknowledges that those attitudes are not
necessarily an inextricable part of biological sex, but rather of gendered
construction. On the one hand, she describes the tendency for science and
scientific activity to be described in what she calls masculine terms: as a
"place for the abstract, the domain for a clear and distinct separation between
the subject and the object. [. . .] A microcosm of the male
genderization of science" (p. 118). On the other hand, she notes that the
different methods brought to bear on computer science by girls and women reform
our ideas of what constitutes science. In particular, she believes that the
computer has "a special role," in this process, because it "provides an entry
to formal systems that is more accessible to women. It can be negotiated with,
it can be responded to, it can be psychologized" (p. 118). The differences
here are utilized to redefine computer science and the gender categories
associated with many scientific fields, rather than to reify them.
The most challenging feminist view of the role of technology in redefining the
relationship between biological sex and gender comes from Donna Haraway (1991).
In her "Cyborg Manifesto" she discusses the potential of cyborg technology as a
tool for both confusing and reconstructing the boundaries of gender. At the
beginning of this essay, she explains what she means by "cyborg": "A cyborg is
a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social
reality as well as a creature of fiction" (p. 149). She goes on to say that
"[t]he cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality,
the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical
transformation. [. . .] The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world" (p.
150). This vision encourages us to take advantage of the instabilities in
boundaries that new technologies expose, and provides us with a conceptual
framework for shedding the essentialist linking of biological body and gendered
expectations. What remains is a movement from Haraway’s physical cyborg body to
the virtual self created in through communication technology.
Where
Does the Future of Gender in a Virtual World Lie?
One great allure of computerized communication systems is their ability to
allow participants to effortlessly reshape their selves and their "appearance"
through manipulation of words and images–representations–rather than through
modification of the physical body ( a process requiring access to advanced
biomedical technologies beyond the reach of most individuals). These
communication systems allow women to escape boundaries and categories that have
in the past constrained their activities and their identities. By providing
women with an opportunity to express their ideas in a way that transcends the
biological body, this technology gives them the power to redefine themselves
outside of the historical categories of "woman," "other," or "object."
Much writing (by men) about the participation of women on CMC systems has
focused on the expression of stereotypical gender characteristics in a virtual
world. Sex and sexuality are treated as interchangeable. An example of this is
Gerard Van Der Leuen’s article entitled "This is a Naked Lady" in the premiere
issue of Wired. The article discusses the "online sex" activities
occurring on many multiple-user CMC systems,(6) saying that:
Sex, as we know it, is a heat-seeking missile that forever seeks out the newest
medium for its transmission. . . . [It is] a virus that is always on the hunt for a new host–a virus that almost always infects new technology first. Different genders and psyches have different tastes, but the overall desire seems about as persistent over the centuries as the lust for bread and salvation.
The author blurs the boundaries between sex as a biological category and sex as sexual interaction, and retains the assumption that genders themselves remain unchanged in a virtual world–that biological females remain "women" and biological males are still "men." The article focuses on the transformations he sees take place in a female friend and user of such a CMC system ("The Naked Lady" was the name this person used in her online interactions):
"At the start [of her participation in online sex discussions], The Naked Lady was a rather mousy person–the type who favored gray clothing of a conservative cut–and was the paragon of shy and retiring womanhood. Seeing her on the street, you’d never think that her online persona was one that excited the libidos of dozens of men every night. (p. 74)
This is followed immediately by a description of how the woman became more like
her online "naughty" persona: "Her clothing tastes went from Peck and Peck to
tight skirts slit up the thigh. [. . .] Her speech became bawdier, her jokes
naughtier. In short, she was becoming her online personality–lewd, bawdy,
sexy, a man-eater." (p. 74). Aside from the obvious threat he perceives in
this transformation, as evidenced by the term "man-eater" to describe a woman
who is no longer "mousy" but instead revels in her own sexuality, Van Der Leuen
fails to discuss the much broader implications of this form of sexual
activity.
Most regular participants in these CMC systems–whether or not they involve
sexually explicit interaction–have at least once found themselves surprised by
the revelation of another participant’s biological sex. Apocryphal stories
describing the shock of one participant in online sex upon the discovery of
another’s biological–as opposed to their virtually constructed–sex abound in
computing circles. In some cases the original image is a result of intentional
presentations by the participant in question; in other cases, it comes from
assumptions about a name or conversational style. In the recent movie The
Crying Game, the audience sees an example of a situation that often occurs
in online interaction: the taking on of one set of gendered characteristics by
someone whose biological body is associated with a different gender category.
But while the character in The Crying Game, is eventually "unmasked"
(though not without disrupting the audience’s conception of gender),
interaction in a virtual environment does not allow for the same revelation of
contradictory physical evidence: without a physical body to require conformance
with the cultural constructions of gender, an individual is free to take on or
shed any set of behaviors.
The science fiction writer Pat Cadigan, in a talk given at the American Library
Association conference in July of 1991, warned the audience about "the danger
of predicting the future in a straight line." This caution is important: by
restricting ourselves to a linear progression, we greatly limit the range of
options available to individuals and coalitions currently in marginalized or
objectified positions. Cadigan herself is one of the few female authors in the
field of cyberpunk science fiction–the genre that concerns itself with visions
of the future as shaped by computer and communication technology. Her book,
Synners (1991) includes a character who attempts to free himself from
bodily constraints ("the meat," as he calls it) through an escape into the
virtual world of the network. He eventually succeeds, becoming a consciousness
manifested on the network, separate from and independent of his physical
body.
Cadigan’s future of a self existing independently of the (sexed) body is only
one of several envisioned by science fiction writers. Also intriguing are the
worlds in Octavia Butler’s books. In Wild Seed(1980), Butler describes a
conflict between a shape-changing protagonist, Anyanwu, and her body-inhabiting
opponent, Doro. Although the former is referred to as a "she," and the latter a
"he," neither is tied to a biologically sexed body. Anyanwu can take on the
shape of man, or of another species, as easily as that of a woman (although she
notes that as a man she can father only female children; an interesting
re/vision of parthenogenesis); Doro kills and then inhabits the bodies of both
men and women. The characters’ personas exhibit characteristics we associate
with traditional gender roles–Anyanwu as a nurturing and protective being,
Doro as calculating and pragmatic. But by placing these characteristics outside
of a fixed physical body, Butler separates them from gender as currently
constructed.
But while science fiction writers have been pushing the boundaries of our ideas
about gender, scholarly writing by feminists on the participation of women in
CMC systems has remained tied to our current conceptions of gender. Few authors
have chosen to share Haraway’s vision of a re-gendered world based on the
merging (or blurring) of biology and technology. Judy Smith and Ellen Balka
(1988) discuss the use of CMC by feminists, but only in the context of the
medium as an organizing tool for those already linked by their membership in
the category of "women." While this use of the technology has great value and
validity, the discussion of it evades the larger issue of how technology can be
used beyond the support of current activities to encourage a radical shift in
the identities of the participants.
Not surprisingly, men writing about these boundary-challenging effects of
communication technologies are often less enthusiastic than women like Haraway
and Butler. Van Der Leuen’s article, cited above, is a particularly blatant
example of the negativity elicited by a technology that allows–and even
encourages–women to become sexually assertive in a way that does not put them
physically at risk. On a more intellectual level is the writing of Jean
Baudrillard (1983), who criticizes communication technology because it does
away with "the Other" and the alienation accompanying that construction, and
"explodes the scene formerly preserved by the minimal separation of public and
private, the scene that was played out in a restricted space, according to a
secret ritual known only to the actors" (p. 130). Baudrillard sees this
dissolving of boundaries, particularly between the subject and the object, as a
desperate threat, a slide into the ecstasy of obscenity. "No more hysteria," he
complains (an interesting choice of words). "No more projective paranoia,
properly speaking, but this state of terror proper to the schizophrenic." What
causes this state of terror? "[T]oo great a proximity of everything, the
unclean promiscuity of everything which touches, invests and penetrates without
resistance, with no halo of private protection, not only his own body, to
protect him anymore" (p. 132). These concerns seem very much the domain of the
male subject: few women in our current society believe that their own body
serves to protect them at all; fewer still have the power to "invest and
penetrate without resistance." Baudrillard’s fears expose exactly the power
these technologies have for women: through the destabilization of current
boundaries, we may be creating a society that no longer allows for
discrimination based on biological characteristics.
Perhaps this is why many men involved in the development of technology
facilitating this process of destabilization are quick to deny its power. In
her interview with Carl Rosendahl, the president of the company that has
developed and promoted "morph" effects for broadcasting and personal
computers(7), Michelle Quinn includes this passage:
But the question that rankles Rosendahl the most, the one that makes him stand on chairs and uncharacteristically interrupt others, is whether the new technology obscures people’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction. "No, no, no," is Rosendahl’s answer. But others at PDI disagree. "We’ve narrowed the gap between fantasy world and reality," said Richard Chuang, PDI’s vice-president
and co-founder who wrote much of PDI’s original software. "You can no longer believe what you see on TV. The border is no longer real." (p. 106)
It is not surprising that the (male) president of this high-tech company is
"rankled" by this question about the blurring of boundaries. Contained in that
concept is the seed of a true revolution in computers and communication: the
possibility that it may no longer be possible to make judgments based on the
physical and biological images before our eyes, that instead we may be forced
to deal with shattered categories and shifting identities. And it is, without a
doubt, those currently in categories that are accorded political and economic
power–populated primarily by "men"–who stand to lose the most.
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Notes
(1)The version of Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto used here is the final version as
it appeared in her book Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The reinvention of
women. However, an earlier version of this essay, which appeared in
Socialist Review in 1985, is often cited. Both the article and the
monograph are included in the reference list for this paper.
(2)Unfortunately, the Habermas work cited by Agger, Toward a Rational
Society, is not available at the University of Alabama library. Future
revisions of this paper will include a direct cite to the original work.
(3)As cited in the premiere issue of Wired.
(4)Of course, these numbers are assumptions drawn from the typically "male" or
"female" names on the masthead and may not be accurate.
(5)This power is often exercised by conservative groups. Examples are most
evident in the realm of television, where writing campaigns to advertisers have
been shown to be potent tools in changing programming, or in the music
business, where Tipper Gore’s campaign for music labelling generated
considerable interest and action. In the area of CMC, a grass-roots coalition
of network users (primarily male, reflecting the user base of the technology)
gathered sufficient support through electronic mail messages to force Lotus
Development Corporation to cancel plans for a mass-marketed CD-ROM disc that
would include financial information on individual households.
(6)The best known of these systems, CompuServe’s "CB Simulator," allows
individuals to participate in private conversations that are often sexually
explicit, bearing a strong resemblance to 900-number telephone sex but with the
charges being paid to the system operator by all participants.
(7)"Morphing" is the special effects process that produces an image of one item
or characters metamorphosing into another. This effect is used in the Michael
Jackson video "Black or White," as well as in the portrayal of the
shape-shifting character Odo on the television show "Deep Space Nine."
2004-02-21
