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Liesbet van Zoonen
Erasmus University Rotter
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To cite this article: Liesbet Van Zoonen (2001) Feminist Internet Studies, Feminist
Media Studies, 1:1, 67-72, DOI: 10.1080/14680770120042864
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680770120042864
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van Zoonen
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to be called real life , come complete with a welter of inhibitions, barriers and
obstacles sidestepped by the packet-switching systems of the Net. (Plant 1998:
144)
Other authors have compared the experience of the net, the immersion of its user
in its textual, visual and virtual realities, to that of the foetus in the womb. The
Internet experience is considered in analogue with the secure and unconstrained
experience of the maternal matrix that offers an escape from the constraints of
the body (Thomas H. Ogden 1986; Claudia Springer 1991, as discussed in Kevin
Robins 1995).
Side-stepping for a moment the gender essentialism contained in such views
and looking at the pragmatic effects of such arguments, we can see how authors
like Spender, Turkle and Plant are working towards a rede nition of the Internet
from the exclusively masculine domain born out of the American military
industrial academic complex towards its feminine antithesis of peaceful communication and experimentation. Thinking back on the history of the telephone,
for instance, and the way women had to ght their way into its acceptable use
(Michele Martin 1991), thinking of the masculine culture that still encapsulates
the computer, thinking more generally of the way technology has been made
masculine throughout its history (Ruth Oldenziel 1999), one can recognize the
importance of such a project of rede nition. Nevertheless, one needs to ignore
some widespread and well-known Internet practices that I indicated earlier both
to be able to put forward such theories and to go along with them. In addition,
such perspectives ignore the political new economy of the Internet that primarily
tends to construct women as online consumers.
Feminist authors who claim the Internet to be a womans medium nd
themselves in an unexpected and unsolicited alliance with Internet marketing
researchers. They too, claim the Internet to be a womans world (VODW 1999)
and female users of the WWW are thought to be distinct in their goals and
online behaviour. Several marketing studies claim to show women are more
interested than men in personal interaction and support (e.g. e-mail, chat groups
and forums). They seek to build a personal relation with a site and feel strongly
connected to online communities. In a trend report conducted for the German
womens magazine Freundin (translation: Girl Friend), it is argued that womanhood offers many opportunities nowadays and very few disadvantages, new
technologies like the Internet make life easier, enhance the possibilities for
communication and offer new possibilities for consumption: The new media
enlarge womens horizons and scope of action. Women will shape the nature of
the Net economy . At present, marketing research constructs women as communicative consumers for whom the Internet provides opportunities never had
before. This picture is so convincing that many e-commerce strategies are built
on it: the American portal women.com, for instance, offers not only an enormous
amount of online content (over 90,000 pages) on traditional womens concerns,
as well as forums and chatline possibilities on a variety of traditionally gendered
topics.
Deconstructing the femininity of the Internet
Feminist theories and market research thus offer us a framework for thinking
about the Internet that highlights the feminine and feminist qualities of the net.
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van Zoonen
It is, however, a very speci c notion of femininity which claims that women,
femininity, communication and community are undissolvably linked. Such a
notion borders on essentialism and has caused many an irritation among
women, as this exclamation of an online grrl gamer shows:
Community and collaboration are what women bring to the table? God, that is
so 1950s, so retro, so family and heart and Donna Reed. Were good little
community makers and collaborators. We dont ever do anything ground
breaking, just create nice little places to live and work and raise our babies.
Thats what women are good at! If we work together, we can all be friends! I
want to be King! Thats right, King! Hail to the King, baby! I want all the best
stuff and I want it all for me and I will knock the hell out of anyone who tries
to take a piece of my action. Not very community driven and collaborative, am
I? (N. Douglas 1999: 332 333)
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nation), is bound to miss the rich diversity of gender articulations on and with
the net. In that respect, there is still much to learn from feminist research on the
old media which also stresses the contextual nature of meaning construction and
its feminist relevance (or lack thereof). Nancy Bayms (2000) study on
rec.arts.tv.soaps, the usernet group which is devoted to American daytime soap
operas, is a study that explicitly builds on this tradition in feminist media
research. Baym shows very convincingly how the topic of the discussion group
(soaps), the nature of soap fandom, the gender of the groups participants
(primarily women) and the role of important individuals in the group, together
construct particular mores and codes for this virtual community which are
characterized by cooperation, consensus seeking and friendliness. It would be
too easy to couple these features to a supposed speci c communicative style of
women (as the marketing researchers and some feminist theories discussed
earlier tend to do). It is the great merit of Bayms work that she shows the virtual
feminine culture of the soap discussion group to be constructed out of more
factors than only the gender of most participants. Her work indicates in more
general terms that gender is performative and contextual, on the Internet as
much as in the old media.
Notes
1. This essay is based on various public lectures: my inaugural lecture as Professor of
Gender and Multimedia at the University of Maastricht (van Zoonen 2000), a keynote
address prepared for the British Media, Cultural Studies and Communication Association but not held due to illness and an address prepared for the Europe Mundi
meeting of Unesco, November 2000.
2. Figures about Internet use tend to change very rapidly. I base these gures on a search
in June 2000 in the following statistical portals: www.nua.com, www.cyberatlas.com,
both operating in the context of marketing research.
3. The author himself went through some trouble to nd more women in Internet history
but could not nd them. E-mail conversation, 1999. www.briefhistory.com.
References
Ang, Ien. 1991. Desperately Seeking the Audience. London: Routledge.
Balka, Ellen. 1999. Where Have all the Feminist Technology Critics Gone? Loka Alert 6:6.
Online. Available: http://www.loka.org (24 November 1999).
Baym, Nancy K. 2000. Tune in, Log on. Soaps, Fandom and Online Community. London: Sage.
Douglas, N. 1999. Grrls & Gaming on ABC News, in J. Cassels and H. Jenkins (eds.)
From Barbie to Mortal Kombat. Gender and Computer Games, pp. 331 334. Cambridge: MIT
Press.
Jenkins, H. 1999. Voices from the Combat Zone: Game Grrlz Talk Back, in J. Cassels and
H. Jenkins (eds.) From Barbie to Mortal Kombat. Gender and Computer Games, pp. 328 341.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
Martin, Michele. 1991. Hello Central? Gender, Technology and Culture in the Formation of
Telephone Systems. Montreal: McGill Queens University Press.
Naughton, John. 1999. A Brief History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet. London:
Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Nua. 1998. Its an Image Thing. Nua Internet Surveys. Online. Available: http://
www.nua.ie/surveys/?f 5 VS&art id 5 886595295&rel 5 true (28 April 2000).
Nua. 1999. Six Types of Women Who Use the Net. Nua Internet Surveys. Online.
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van Zoonen
Liesbet van Zoonen (1959) is Professor of Gender and Multimedia at the University of
Maastricht in the Netherlands. She is published in various international journals on
gender and media, is the author of Feminist Media Studies (Sage, 1994) and the
co-editor of Gender, Politics and Communication (Hampton, 2000). She is currently
also working on the articulation of politics and popular culture.