Leslie Regan Shade’s article begs a few questions.
If the Internet has the potential to “erase race and class,” then how too can
it “erase” gender divisions? If commercial sites view women and minorities as “primarily
potential markets,” then how does it view men? Is gender performed even in
virtual space where the potential for gender resistance is at its potential
greatest?
I found the progression of Women.com from activism
and idea exchange site to an online version as commonplace as a form of Home & Garden to be fascinating and
a little discouraging. However, it also highlighted the division inherent in
the language surrounding the discourse of gender. Marlene McDaniel’s statement
of intent on developing “a place” for women to go where they “can find a whole
variety of things that appeal to their interests” is the type of
separate-spheres rhetoric that creates further division. “Feminine interests”
stages a dichotomy that is separate and rhetorically “different” from masculine
interests. The added-on shopping portals that came after reduced “feminine
interests” further into rampant feminine consumerism, to include, the marketing
of the feminine image with links to star-exercise and celeb diets (Shade 228).
The direct message is buy this in order to look like that. That gURL.com
focuses more on production is a step in the right direction but the content of
contribution highlighted in Shade’s article focuses on a virtual, feminine
performance of “gURLS” interests—in this case, sex, fashion, and pop culture. I
wonder if gender division is always reductive, if feminization always equals
devaluation. I also wonder if an online site less obviously gendered, such as
an online fantasy football league, faces the same gender challenges when it
comes to creating and hosting content to both genders.
I too wonder if other sites provide the same 'women's world' of products and advertisements. For instance, what about parenting sites geared toward men? Do they have the same kinds of links, ads and gendered discourses as women's sites on parenting do?
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that a fantasy football league would less gendered. I think it would be a different focus still gendered.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to be a problem with so many popular sites and spaces. Once they get popular for being new, edgy, and different they are immediately purchased by google or something and it becomes a product.
ReplyDeleteAnd these ideas about technology erasing class, gender, and race are not new. In the 1990s there was lots of this sort of "utopian" scholarship on the web and we found that most of it didn't pan out. It seems these spaces are more mirrors of our culture than spaces to escape the culture.