technoculture314-09

With relation to some of the information that was presented in lectures and tutorials on gender; it got me thinking. Some elements of communication are lost and gained by in the online world and and some elements are also gained. This is also apparent in texting. An element which could be lost (maybe others would disagree) is that of conveying tone in digital communication. One finds it increasingly harder to express tone of voice and ofcourse body language in texts. A simple exclaimation mark does not have the same effect as stressing a point or yelling at a person during a face-to-face conversation. It is through this that a sense of ambiguity is created partially due to the fact that the persons facial expressions or voice is not present to be studied by the receiver. This leads to sometimes people not fully understanding what the sender truely meant in their texts. Such as 'You're funny' is almost impossible to differenciate in text communication yet in a face-to-face conversation it is much easier to understand the context based on the senders supposed 'truth-value' in the voice or the sarcasm. This is also relevant to things such as email or online chat amongst others.
Now to Gender, i havent done extensive research in this area obviously but i would like to mention some things which i have noticed amongst the texting and online interaction of my friends. With many of my male friends, the texts or online chats (very rare) seem to be directed at instructions or information texts. Such as what time i can meet them, If they are coming to class etc. So the texts and responses are very short and informative, much like the new craze of 'Tweets'. However with many of my female friends the texts received are often much longer almost reaching the 160 character limit and tend to include information and as well as 'culture' or 'well-being' texts to ask how i am, When i am able to see them etc. The texts from the female friends seem to be more open ended and question like. However whilst writing this i have just realised that there is only a one-way overlapping in that i respond to my female friends texts often as i would to my male friends with one word responses and information (Intrestingly this often angers them) However i do not respond to my male friends in the way my female friends text me. So even though there is two genders texting me, the response is always solo gendered and not catered for both genders.

A few Saturdays ago, I found my mother cooking dainty French macarons. With her laptop sprawled across the kitchen counter, and every surface covered with a fine dusting of icing sugar and almond flour, I wondered where this newfound panache had come from. A quick scan of her computer confirmed my suspicions: it was a blog.

The blog in question was called Tongue in Cheek, following the travels and life of an American female living in the south of France. I queried my mother as to what she found appealing about the website, and it seems that the vicarious nature of being able to live the French dream, albeit electronically, means that the geographic isolation in New Zealand is no longer remedied by a 20 hour flight to Europe.

On closer inspection of the blog, a pattern emerged that relayed a set of gender norms. The blogger consistently reasserts traditional values of what it means to be a wife and female, with the inclusion of tips on cooking, decorating and fashion. Her glorification of the domestic sphere seems to illustrate that new media, such as blogs are not gender neutral – it also seems that gender expectations and stereotypes can be transferred to the digital.

I was quite interested in one of her posts, entitled ‘The Depth of Feeling while Washing the Dinner Dishes’. It describes how she started crying over the evening dishes, not out of sadness, but out of the joy of domestic servitude. I’m quite astounded that women are willing to be placed into certain gender roles, and that the fixed notions of the women as home-maker and the man as bread-winner are still a facet of modern (perhaps digital?) society. I guess we can thank Sex in the City for the legions of faux-cyberfeminists, which seem content in gaining empowerment through baking and high-heels. It seems that the structure of a patriarchal society is easily transferable from the real world, to the online. As cliché as it sounds, the comments that followed the post also carried a sense of Desperate Housewives isolation, a collective forum whereby others can express their gratitude for being placed into domestic servitude.

What do people think?

- Matt