Wired_Women

[eredien]

So, I'm reading this book, Wired_Women. My boss loaned it to me. I said I'd give her a review, as she hadn't read it. I'm currently intimidated by this prospect, and overjoyed by it.

It has essays on internet fandoms.
It has the best article I've ever read on why people get treated the way they do on Usenet.
It has an article about collaborative online writing (reminded me of Nexus).
It's got an article that talks about "the virtual body" that I haven't got around to reading yet.

It's got MUDder? I Hardly Know 'Er!: Adventures of a Feminist MUDder, which talks about several things dear to my heart:

- the internet, and why women are generally treated differently on it than men.
- MUDs and MUCKs.
- Furries, as relates to the above (an incredibly well-balanced perspective, for the subject).

A brilliant little article, overall. I wrote to the woman and effusively thanked her. I only hope the email goes through--I suspect it's an older address.

The rest of the book is similarly fascinating, and not just to rabid feminists (I'm not one, God knows!) or women.

A few people I know who ought to read this, and various specific reasons why they should:
Raki--you use the internet, and you're a woman. You think a lot about the rules behind the workings of the world, and why they sometimes don't work right.
Sei, Greenowl, and Rabidfangurl--for the discussions of cons and fandoms.
Joudama--for the fandom stuff and the fact that it will provide food for the Contextual Poaching blender.
Arc--that article I linked to above contains a lot of stuff you'd be interested in for building the new MUCK, and gives reasons for some of the stuff you went through earlier with Azzy.

Please, please go out and read this book, or at least that essay, which was important to me.
I can't tell quite yet, but this may end up being one of those books that subtly but fundamentally shape the way I think. Thought. Whatever.

Comments

[raki.livejournal.com]

The book looks very interesting, and I took a look at the article too. I'm not a MU*-er, so I don't know much about what Lori Kendall is talking about first-hand but it does make sense from a sociological point of view. I studied online communities a bit last year in sociology and we looked at gender only briefly, so I'm glad to have had this opportunity to read more closely about it. That the article reflects my own beliefs about gender and online interaction just makes me like it more.

Personally, I've not thought of the internet as a gendered medium much. I've tried thinking about it like that, as a space defined by male understandings of the world, but the people I mostly interact with online don't really present interactions conducive to that kind of thinking. People who I know who talk about gender online themselves play with gender and the kinds of stereotypes and expectations Kendall was talking about...
I think waywind and postvixen would find this an interesting read.

In my own interactions, mostly foruming and IM chat, I haven't found this to be an issue. Maybe it's the nature of the communities I'm involved in, or the kind of conversation that goes on, or the age groups involved, though.
But there are other issues to do with gender and power in online interaction than characterisation and behaviour, I think. I'm still trying to sort those out.

Thank you for posting the link.

[arcturax.livejournal.com]

I gave up on the new muck. There just isn't room for another dragon muck and no one cared so I quit as well.

You might want to read this. It's about how the "glass ceiling" and gender bias exists for women in online gaming as well, at least in virtual worlds like Everquest.

[copperwolf.livejournal.com]

I read the Kendall article. My exposure to the type of treatment described has been limited. Some disorganized thoughts in response:

I remember poking my nose into a newbie channel on IRC and seeing (and getting) many "age/sex/location" queries. #afd, the only channel where I spent any amount of time worth noticing, wasn't like that. Nobody paid me unwanted attention -- or very much attention at all, really. Perhaps because I wasn't a regular. Also, I was on for a while as just "Firesong," and Daze told me later she thought for a long time that I was male!

My first muck experience was on FM, where I occasionally wandered around and read location & character descriptions. Too many of the character descs for my taste were overtly sexual. Alf wasn't like that at first, perhaps because the first people on there all kind of knew each other and had more-or-less compatible standards of behavior. But the most important factor on either muck was choosing my company. On a couple of occasions, I was hit on in the Clearing or other public muck area in a way which I would hope would never happen in person, but maybe it might if I went bar-hopping or clubbing or something like that? My mate was once treated similarly by a female character in the Clearing.

I think what happens is people who do not wish to participate in hooking up form small, hard to find areas where they can hang out and feel comfortable. This is what happened to me, really: I stuck with a pretty small group of people and did not really meet the wider muck population.

Also: I've never heard of these "objokes" Kendall describes! They must be specific to the mucks she frequented.