Dear friends and readers,
We’ve gotten into a for once (well to me) enlightening thread on a Women’s
Studies list-serv (WMST-l). It began over in Wompo (women’s poets) and slid
across lists because Katha Pollitt is on both list-servs and got irritated
with a couple of contentious threads which had turned into quarrels (still
mild), at which one woman complained at the contention and said she would
get off or fall silent. Katha’s posting was (to me) a form of scolding: she
basically said men’s way of being in cyberspace is superior to women’s
because supposedly they don’t mind quarreling in public. She wrote in terms
that were insulting to women, but attention catching. By mistake she put this posting onto Women’s studies where the people are more reasonable — it’s a more academic style list with more women academics on it.
I’m very interested in the realities of women in cyberspace and how theirs differs from men’s behavior. Obviously, I spend enormous amounts of time on the Internet, and my experiences here have helped me to mature, become more socially active (go to conferences, meet with friends) I wrote a paper on this which the listowner of WMST-l put on line as part of a permanent set of papers. I’m so bad at nuts and bolts I can never reach my paper over there, so for those who want to see (or read it later) , here it is on my website: Women in Cyberspace.
I had the courage to counter Katha on Wompo and nothing reasoned in response to my posting was sent. Instead I got misspelled mild jeering (using CAPs). At the close of my last posting, I just said, “Come, go ahead, abuse me … ” And one woman did, but the thread died after that.
Katha had said to ignore the posting on WMST-l and two of her friends (women
with credentials like hers, Marge Piercy among them) backed her on this,
but what she wrote was significant. Here is the core:
Before the internet, I never believed the truism that women have trouble disagreeing openly because they place such a high value on harmony, fitting in, not standing out. Having been on numerous women’s lists I see how true this is. They ALL have the same dynamic: sugary mutual admiration, with occasional outbursts of snark that cause conniptions. Yerra makes a personal remark, Joyce slaps her down by appealing to ‘the spirit of the list,” Yerra takes her marbles and goes home. On a coed list, or a mostly male list, a slightly snarky remark would have just been one of those things that happen. A reprimand would be be read as impossibly stuffy, and a threat to leave would be a joke.
I’ve been on wom-po for ages, and let me tell you,with all the mutual flattery (complemented by back channeling of expostulations and eye rolls) and self congratulation for our female wonderfulness it’s pretty boring. I barely take part any more, This is a list so scared of open discussion that “political” posts have to be labelled so the frailer flowers can avert their petals and the illusion of harmonious sisterhood be preserved. Oh no, someone mentioned abortion rights! help!
Can we please put on our big girl panties and talk about things like grownups?
Katha
I want instead to cut to the quick, the sudden idea I saw. I often say that the content of a posting is only part of what’s happening the way the content of our words in physical space is only part of what’s happening. For the first time I was able to see how the posting itself functions differently (than say all the stuff that is added on in real space). It’s that we see the posting primarily as either by a man or either by a woman. That comes first. The way writing is primarily seen as either by a man or women (that’s why 90% of what is published in mainstream publications is by men).
Second, the reason men can quarrel openly and not get upset really is they
fundamentally respect one another as men. They can insult and jeer and yet
they are respected and respect one another. I put it that we women don’t
fundamentally respect one another as women. We are taught not to. We may
respect a credentialed woman but she is still a woman. A male homosexual is
respected as a man and identifies as a man first. Lesbians are at the
bottom of a heap of gender types because they are also women.
The books I cited in my first posting tell how much friendships mean to women growing up, how badly women feel betrayed when their friend goes off with boyfriends or drops the other woman for her new “family” or connections. How it hurts. The sense of betrayal.
So when women quarrel it’s not childish.
And the results of quarrels — as the results of rape or any complaint are differently for men than women. Women are punished when they complain and the results of quarrels they are taught will be bad. They will lose the respect of important connections. The punishment meted out will be denied; it will be presented as reasonable behavior. This is where masochism comes in. Women seem to be masochists and accept what happens because they find if they don’t things get worse for them.
My Women Writers Across the Ages, a Yahoo list-serv carries on discussing feminism calmly is we have so few men, the men here are a congenial bunch who agree with feminist values. And a woman list-owner. All of this is highly unusual.
Women quarreling in cyberspace are often quarreling because one or both feels her gender has been betrayed.
*************************
Conversation, Susan LaMonte
If anyone wants to read the more essay-like email versions:
1) I don’t think there’s anything wrong in the way women behave differently from men on lists — as I don’t think there is anything wrong with the women behave differently in life. To find the male model preferable is to prefer a whole host of values and norms that at least some of us have wanted to not to be the prevailing code. The classic and still important book on this is Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice; also about why women quarrel so bitterly, Lyn Mikel Brown, Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development;and Girl Fighting: Betrayal and Rejection
Women complain how we never seem to make any progress. Well there are these three books which analyze the phenonomena that Katha has castigated/scorned without looking to see why women behave like this except to imply “coward” or silly emotional creature who bores me. Cyberspace experience is obviously only analogous to real physical life, physical encounters where names and all sort of information are there right away to make the others accountable. Not only empathy and understanding is required to understand why women need moderators on lists, thrive better in some lists than others — it might be recalled that men simply refuse to get onto lists run by women often and get off certain kinds of list-servs that attract women. Does that mean those women’s lists don’t count or are inferior? Men simply disdain what is not consonant with how they are encouraged to behave in our society.
My study of women in cyberspace which is written in a way that looks to find ways to enable women to cope with the experiences they find on lists which are often analogous to what puts them at a disadvantage in life. It should also be remembered women don’t forget what happens in real life — like rape (frequent). I’m upbeat, constructive as that’s what’s wanted in social and public life:
I seek to present material to help us think about what are the obstacles to women using cyberspace effectively, and what can be done to construct cyberspace experience so as to make it more appealing, hospitable and usable for women.
Here though I will break code again and say that indeed the public encounters in front of a whole group of people, most unknown, with no way to manipulate the encounter to your set of values or norms (feminocentric) is analogous to rape (virtual) because it’s public and people looking on are in the position of voyeurs (the term lurkers is a telling one here).
Another aspect I don’t bring up in the paper is that women value friends, they value contacts; they don’t want to lose them, and given their real knowledge of other women’s psychology and their own plus experience of men, they retreat into silence as the really wisest way to cope given the present misogynistic environment. When will we ever stop celebrating the war mentality (which aggression, competition and the rest of what has been put before us as better and more fun)?
WMST-l itself is a list run by women, with women moderators, it has the typical list of rules one finds in women’s lists (not men’s) which are resorted to and I like it because of this and much else.
How are individual women to be heard is the question.
On Wompo I miss Annie Finch’s explicit point of view in how she saw this list as a place for women where women’s values and norms and experiences and knowledge would prevail.
2) The second email adding to original points:
I want to speak again to this one. Much as people still try to deny this, what happens in cyberspace matters — people might acknowledge various govt’s reactions to whistle-blowers, bloggers, privately-sent emails (one-to-one) emails. It also is increasingly central to local affairs. I had thought not to since Gail Dines reiterated what I was going to repeat with more details. That saying women have just got to accept aggression won’t do since many forums in cyberspace replicate the realities of physical space. Men are in charge. I was forced off a listserv (Inimitable-Boz @ Yahoo) last week, and I’m no melting flower on list-servs (or blogs or other venues in cyberspace). It did become impossible to stay because what was implied and not spoken about what I had been writing and what was explicitly said simply ignored everything I had said and the explicit talk became rawly insulting (the attempt was made to shame me), not just snide or a matter of innuendo. The terms of the aggression were misogynistic but if I dared use that word or any like it, I’d be laughed at as a foolish feminist.
Where men are not in charge but constitute the working majority of those who post (and in cyberspace when men become numerous on lists they have been shown to become the active members with only a couple of women maintaining a presence), the same sort of thing occurs, perhaps more muted if at least one of the list-owners is herself a woman. The gender matters. The woman can be very different politically but I’ve observed and experienced nonetheless she will understand and give crucial support to the women poster (sometimes, not
always). It’s like Republican women are mostly pro-choice, and they vote
for shelters for women and children.
We don’t accept the terms in which rape is discussed which (as we saw a
couple of summers ago) allowed in at least three high profile cases, the
case to be dismissed (the Muslim housekeeper in NYC who was raped) or
humiliated and lose her case (the young executive who was intoxicated and
made the mistake I’d call it of phoning the police) and the supreme court
fining parents whose daughter accused frat young men of raping her. We
don’t say we’ve just got to accept this. We try to alter the basic understanding of what’s happening.
It is not a matter of putting “on our big girl pants and talking like grownups.” I talk like a grown-up all the time, even to my cats. The phrase was an irritant.
So I’ve come on this second time because I want also to counter it first
under the aegis of the idea that “older women” are to be assumed to behave
differently in this than younger ones necessarily which is dismissive or
that anyone was being childish. It assumes the problem is the deference of
older woman. I’m not deferent. Another aspect of this particular thread is
some of us come on with more credentials. Not quite the same thing as being
a man (nothing beats that — I’m sarcastic here) but part of power plays. I
speak to Katha the way I do to others — or Barbara Bergson or anyone with
more credentials. This fault-line of age versus youth divides and conquers
us again. In a way being older and who I am and am not frees me (like
Janice Joplin line, freedom’s just another word for nuthin’ left to lose”).
The paradigm of the second wave is implicitly brought in here, but it was
in the second wave people used the word “liberation” and talked about sex
openly. I got myself into trouble (get myself) because I’m not deferent to
men.
And second, women do squabble a certain way but it’s not because they are
childish. The understanding of quarrels and their meaning is different from
men’s. The way women treat one another as girls, what their friendships
mean to one another and how they disrespect one another on lists is different from men’s. I suggest at some level men respect one another as men fundamentally. And women often do not respect one another fundamentally as women. All of us are taught not to – by the society. Look at ads for a start. And they feel betrayed, angered really.
Third, women’s experience of the results of quarrels very different. Third
and fourth wavers (if there is a fourth wave), post-feminists experience
punitive results which teach women silence is the wise policy because of
self-interest works the same. The punitive nature of the result is
frustratingly denied the way rape is called a false accusation (as in you
consented). That’s one of the sources of so-called masochism.
I’ll cut off here as I’ve gone on far too long but I feel these points are
important and need to be dealt with, even if solutions are not easy to see.
*******************
Of course most of the replies either ignored my points or saw what I wrote in quite different terms, but one I did think useful for what I was saying.
I think history has given us TWO inadequate models for dealing with conflict, each model loosely associated with a gender role, but available to anyone. In life, we probably all “mix and match” elements of these two inadequate models. On the one hand, there is the “feminine” style of handling conflict (conflict avoidance; conforming to the “feminine” gender role by avoiding direct expression of aggression while channeling aggression into “mean girl” behaviors such as gossip, isolation, manipulation of alliances and social status, etc.). On the other hand, there is the “masculine” style (handling conflict in ways that deny the value of interdependency and rely on inequality/hierarchy; fighting verbally or physically to avoid shame and loss of status by shaming the opposing point of view).
Both of these ways of handling conflict are inadequate. They temporarily stifle conflict rather than truly resolving it, so the conflict usually resurfaces and becomes part of a cycle. There are other, more constructive ways to handle conflict that can lead to better resolutions. Conflict should be seen as a positive and inevitable product of equality. Conflict is inevitable; the only question is how we handle it. If a group can resolve conflict only by silencing it or by creating inequality (“I’m right, you’re wrong, so shut up; your point of view has no place here”), the group has failed. We are products of our culture and our culture has tried to teach us that conflict is threatening to us personally and to our social order. And it has tried to train us to turn to authority figures (ultimately the police or the state) to resolve our conflicts rather than teaching us the skills to resolve them in ways that strengthen us individually while also enhancing our ability to function collectively.
There are occasionally conflicts where logic alone can reveal a “right” and a “wrong”; a “winner and a “loser.” But deeper, more intractable conflicts are not just rational disagreements. They reflect some damage done to the communal bonds holding people together, and mending that damage often requires attention to things such as the quality of communication, and the creation of a group dynamic trusted by all. When Audre Lorde says that our culture has “misnamed difference as a threat to unity” and when she envisions “the creative function of difference in our lives,” I think she is talking about what feminism could potentially contribute to our understanding of conflict and conflict resolution (micro- and macro-) if we look for alternatives to the two inadequate, gender-coded models of conflict “management”/irresolution.
Leah Ulansey
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
This is from Bronwyn Winter’s — she did not think there is a gender fault-line;
On being nice-girl, passive-aggressive (or just plain aggressive, or just plain passive), ironic, elliptical, confrontational, personalising and many other things on email lists:
In my experience much email ‘flaming’ has to do with email being such a tricky medium (and for the record I’ve seen men get just as precious on email lists as women even if the forms of preciousness are clearly not only gendered but also culturally distinct, according to both national cultures and, often, subcultures, however these last are defined [by ethnicity and/or racialisation, sexual orientation, politics, regional location, etc……]).
People use email a bit like the telephone: it’s a written form but in its immediacy is unlike other forms of writing we do …
The problem then is that although we include irony and ellipses and ‘misspeaking’ in our email communications, we often read email communications very literally, and in a way that is decontexualised – and react immediately (the writing- before-thinking phenomenon). And yes, I’ve done it too. Which I have observed (whether from me or others) leading to many, many tempests in teacups….. including, frequently, overinterpretation leading to righteous anger over ironic quips, even quips that have a barb to them such as katha’s big girl panties comment. I can clearly imagine the context that pushed her to express that exasperation! what I find extraordinary is the lengthy discussion that quip generated when it was not at all intended for this list and katha quickly retracted it in relation to this list. Few women on the list would know the context in which katha made the comment, and without the context, the comment is not particularly meaningful to us on WMST-L, as context changes everything.
To which I can here meditate autobiographically: I had had had three bad experiences that week on the Net: the one on Inimitable-Boz, one on Wompo — and one on Austen-l where I played the aggressive part, and felt bad later (there I felt this gender betrayal I talked of above) and did not know that I could mend it. Sometimes least said, soonest mended, or by falling silent nothing worse is said. I probably had a personal need to respond to the idea I was inadequate and should have been able to cope.
This final email is how I put it to a friend still on Inimitable-Boz. This is part of what he said:
and my reply included these thoughts:
I am at a loss how to deal with such aggression but to be plain (which does not stop the person after the first non-plus), I would be harassed and a target for insults again. I am grateful to you for putting this on Inimitable-Boz as it defends me from false perceptions of what happened.
I should tell you that a number of weeks ago Lapides emailed me off list to complain that you and I together were “ruining the list.” “Ruining” was his word. He went after you, insulting you, characterizing what you wrote as “preposterous,” but either you are better at deflecting this kind of thing or he didn’t care carry it on, or at the time one of the moderators said something (probably because the content was ultimately about sex which if a moderator is going to come in usually does bring this about), but however it stopped the threads ceased. Since then he has said after something I wrote that if anyone felt that way about Dickens they should not be reading him or on this list. I did speak to that and he said I misunderstood him. I did not. Then he picked up again. I’m forgetting whatever it was. And now this. This last one was getting in the way of my day, my relationships at home, my other work. Even now I can’t get it off my mind. It will take time to calm down from this and forget.
I’m wondering how to help myself forget quicker this morning. What I ought to do more to help myself find peace. What would be best? I won’t get off the list for now. I’m troubled what to do about my own two lists where Lapides is a member. I don’t want to be bothered by him. This kind of ruthless aggression is like being raped in front of other people; a strong statement but the analogy in feeling is what I’m getting at. It’s the publicity of it, a sense of enacting something which is attracting voyeurism.
I found it very distressing; it preyed on my mind and got in the way of other things — not just my work but my life at home — I didn’t respond adequately to my younger daughter tonight. I regret not carrying on and had hoped to read A Tale of Two Cities with the group. But I must have peace of mind and have now been driven away.
E.M.
A young woman scholar wrote to me offblog and I include just part of what she wrote in order to reply in public too:
My reply:
I don’t know Deborah Tannen and Cheryl Glenn’s work. Could you cite which books you mean?
Other sources? Well in the paper I have a bibliography:
http://www.jimandellen.org/ConferencePapers.WomenCyberspace.html
Scroll down. A number of the essays and books cited there are on women in cyberspace. I no longer remember which is the best.
At the core of this — speaking in the mode of Freudianism, going to the central unconscious or deeper motivation — is many women fear violence. They may feel fear of male violence directly or become anxious lest they lose friends and thus find they have no no protection from it. I’ve written on rape several times and put on line a paper I wrote on a central original older text on rape, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa. I wrote my dissertation on it.
Again the bibliography is in the notes. Look at 2, 4, 7, 12, 14. I’m remembering how good was Michelle Fine’s work, especially Disruptive Voices:
Also from another review I wrote: J.P. Martin (ed. Violence and the Family [New York: John Wiley, 1978), Lenore Walker and Elizabeth Waites (“Battered Women and Learned Helplessness” and “Female Masochism and the Enforced Restriction of Choice,” Victimology, 2 [1977-78]:525-44)
I hope all these help,
Ellen
Cheryl Glenn’s book is Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence, in which she examines silence as a rhetorical strategy and how it can work against women. Deborah Tannen is a linguist who has done a lot of work on the differing linguistic styles of men and women. My favorite book of hers was Talking from 9 to 5: Men and Women at Work; it truly came as a revelation to me. She explores the way women’s discourse puts them at a disadvantage in the (male-centered) workplace.
My reply:
I’ve met Spanish women who refuse to admit they can speak English. They really think it’s a strength to be silent. To me, it prevented them from even voicing what they wanted and was a false protection. Autistic people try to use silence too. The _9 to 5_ reminds me of the movie since WMST-l has been discussing it …
E.M.
I’ve had an offblog posting to suggest that men suffer if not equally almost as equally and that you can have a man who is decent and women who are not in equal or almost equal numbers. I dispute that.
All our experience is anecdotal and such anecdotcal experiences count, but we must try to get outside ourselves too. The research I did for my paper (lots of books and articles) and those sources I’ve seen quoted elsewhere, the sense of what the women and men (we have some men who post on WMST-l) wrote was gender matters most overtly.
In general men are more openly aggressive than women, not just when they are angry (and direct) but when simply firm. They praise each other much much less. A typical woman’s posting with open with a thank you (I do it all the time) or praising someone else’s posting. Not a man’s. There are statistics on this.
The way conflicts emerge is different and it’s common for women to be forced off lists where men are in charge or dominate and the reality is they are in charge or dominate on most. Of my three list-servs, the other two are predominantly male in active posters — though I grant sometimes it does not seem so because I’m there and what I post attracts women. I also get feminists posting (male feminists too).
My anecdote about the Republic of Pemberley is telling — you are safe here.Safe. Safety.
The way women fight and how they take it has also been researched — their
psychology as presently developed, inculcated is different. Women feel betrayed by other women. Now it’s been shown that women also do not respect other women fundamentally and that’s part of the hurt, and they are so vulnerable out there even if their bodies are not seen. They feel them.
I did make a new point I had not thought of – an analogy from non-cyberspace writing and watching the 3 conflicts I experienced last week. We see postings as by men or by women before we see them as by “a credentialed prestigous person.” The New Yorker cartoon no one knows you’re a dog on the Net cannot be more wrong. People who use pseudonyms are seen as male or female sometimes despite themselves. People explain how someone behaves as a result of their being a male or female.
And there’s reason for this because in life the woman is raped, it is her personal appearance that counts (as in Diane’s stories) I grant that on Austen-l two men got off. One from the persistent obnoxious jeering of another man, really hurtful. I did not know the Brazil man only that off list he got quite a following, one no woman would have ever gotten. Austen again has a strongly female following; you won’t see this on George Eliot lists though you do on Virginia Woolf ones. For a long time on Austen-l we had another very bad guy — Scottie Bowman was his name and like the present AP he was able to be singularly disruptive because he was a rare male there.
I’ve been very active in cyberspace since 1995 and my experience comes in here. Only after about 5 or more years here did I start to see influence of cyberspace directly on non-cyberspace; that’s true for my life too — when I got my first commission or invitation to write in a conventional venue.
It is true one is freer in cyberspace. There is no direct accountability and people will be thuggish in ways you find them only on political TV. I account for that as a class thing too. In publications the second fault-line after gender that is so important kicks in immediately. The diction and behavior of people is forced into a more middle class socially courteous way. Some men defend the breaking of this code because it allows you to say more. I like being able not to write in the mandarin style which cuts off a lot of readers. I write so much more easily in cyberspace because I don’t feel intimidated by these class and social demands, some of which I have no feel for.
Taking the point of connection once again: women are (rightly) terrified that the connection could be the man finds her out, comes to her house and beats, rapes, kills her. Men in cyberspace use this a lot against feminist blogs.
E.M.
I did forget about what happened on the Poldark literary society/facebook pages. Someone who has control of the place (a moderator) who is a woman but uses a pseudonym made it impossible for me to post any more. One of the postings put on WMST-l that I didn’t include because it was on another aspect of cyberspace difficulties was simply that bullies who work outright quick-to-shut-up-others not uncommon. So that was four.