In response to Therese's post, I think that race is less fixed in cyberspace. As can be seen in the critique of the website ICERED, people are a lot more confident and outspoken in cyberspace . The anonymity that can be found online means that people are less likely to fear retribution for their opinions, and they can also shield and reveal whatever parts of their identity they wish to (age, gender, race, etc) because most communication is done with text.
I believe that abolition of race in cyberspace would have negative affects in regards to “real life” interaction between different races. Prejudices would still exist in face to face interaction, because the initial issue of racial assumptions would not have been dealt with. Of course, abolition would assist in the lessening of prejudice online on the surface but not the assumptions that individuals attach to the idea of race. This applies to issues such as sexism and homophobia as well (as can be seen in the discriminatory thread posted on ICERED entitled "Homosexual on ICERED"; which, as well as being homophobic, depicts the incorrect assumption that homosexuality is a "feature" of western countries and no where else) .
Stereotypes regarding women, men, homosexuals and different races have been present in media forms in the past, such as movies and television but can also be generated by cultural and religious beliefs. It’d be foolish to assume that there’s a “quick fix” for the problem of prejudice, but abolition would appear to be more problematic with regards to real life. If race were to be obscured, no presumably warped views would be changed. People would bring their own values to cyberspace and (as indicated in “Menu-Driven Identities: Making Race Happen Online”) it is often presumed that white is the “default race” of the internet.
Integration would also have its set backs; what about those people who are unwilling to interact with people of different races, sexualities, etc? This unwillingness could provide a barrier, stopping potential interactions between races. However, it does appear more favourable than abolition as it attempts to eradicate the problem rather than just ignore it. Eventual integration appears to be the best option in challenging and eradicating prejudice. If people are able to remove initial assumptions, they will be able to accept different races, sexualities, etc.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
A (very) belated workshop 4 response
Like many of you, I have had a Hotmail account for some years, but I went back to the Windows Live sign-up page to refresh my memory of the process. Most of the things I noticed were already brought up by Emily in her post - assumption of a Western middle-class background, for example, but I did notice that the default "Country/Region" box was set to United States, and the section for "account information" included State, Zip code and Time Zone - the states were American states, and the time zones were American time zones, as well as the fact that the "zip code" is a USA method. So, the site assumes that, as an Internet user and a subscriber to Windows Live, you are probably American with a middle-class and probably Western background. Also that you are either male or female, or identify as such. The site claims that these details can be used to reactivate your account should you forget your password...to me it seems slightly more intrusive than necessary, but I'm guessing most new users will fill out the required sections on the form without a second thought.
Yahoo! was slightly different, in that it detected that I was accessing the sign-up page from Australia and offered me the option to switch to the Australian version of Yahoo! to set up my account - the email address of which would end differently to one set up on the default US version. This could conceivably be an incentive for some Australian users to stick with the US version to avoid problems when giving others their new email address.
I switched to the Australian version, where the secret questions assumed that you were: in a stable relationship, grew up knowing your father, had been privileged enough to own a car, bike or pet, went to at least two schools, and that your high school had had a "mascot" - more of an American tradition, but still included in the Australian version...
The Marketing Preferences box was automatically ticked to be sent ads for special offers and the like, but this I think was more of a marketing ploy.
On to Second Life, where, yes, your gender was male or female, and you were also by default a young person with a slim physique. Possibly customisation options are available later in the game? Though both Caucasian and dark-skinned races were represented, it was difficult to tell whether avatars with Asian characteristics were represented in Second Life or not. There were options for avatars with dark hair and slightly darker skin tone, but their facial characteristics didn't seem any different to those of the Caucasian avatars. There was also nothing for Arabic, Indian, Polynesian, American Indian, Australian Aboriginal, Hispanic, or a myriad of other "races" - though this could be excused by the fact that it is the sign-up page, and giving the user a limited set of options to start with encourages them to customise more once they enter the game.
Your first name was your choice, but your last name had to be selected from a list of available last names - probably to prevent avatars with the same first and last names, as well as reducing the incidence of "joke" names. The names ran the gamut of foreign backgrounds, but strangely there were very few Asian-sounding last names. Whether this was due to them all being used or because of a bias against identifiably Asian avatars is unclear.
Like the last two sites, Second Life also assumes a privileged background, with questions such as "What city were you born in?", "What street did you grow up on?" and "What is your favourite vacation spot?" Since users will be spending money on the site this is quite possibly a fair assumption - someone with enough spare cash to spend it on Second Life has a high probability of being at least middle-class.
Lastly, Lavalife. As suggested on the workshop sheet, the default search assumes you are a single, straight female, seeking a 25-34 year old male for casual dating - a reflection of the most common type of Lavalife user. It is interesting that, even on a dating site for people unable to otherwise find romantic relationships, the only genders available for selection are male and female - the site does not appear to cater for transgender, polygender, transvestites or others, though you do have the option of searching for the same gender as yourself.
In conclusion, most of the sites seemed as if they were catering to what they perceived to be the demographic most likely to use their services. It seemed to me to be more of a tool to maximise efficiency and make the site more user-friendly to the majority of users, thus attracting more traffic. The "menu-driven identities" seen in these high-traffic sites are thus less a product of Western society's ingrained expectations of the "normal" Internet user, and more a result of marketing strategy - making the sites easier to use for the type of user most likely to access them, increasing traffic and therefore increasing profit for the site's owners.
Yahoo! was slightly different, in that it detected that I was accessing the sign-up page from Australia and offered me the option to switch to the Australian version of Yahoo! to set up my account - the email address of which would end differently to one set up on the default US version. This could conceivably be an incentive for some Australian users to stick with the US version to avoid problems when giving others their new email address.
I switched to the Australian version, where the secret questions assumed that you were: in a stable relationship, grew up knowing your father, had been privileged enough to own a car, bike or pet, went to at least two schools, and that your high school had had a "mascot" - more of an American tradition, but still included in the Australian version...
The Marketing Preferences box was automatically ticked to be sent ads for special offers and the like, but this I think was more of a marketing ploy.
On to Second Life, where, yes, your gender was male or female, and you were also by default a young person with a slim physique. Possibly customisation options are available later in the game? Though both Caucasian and dark-skinned races were represented, it was difficult to tell whether avatars with Asian characteristics were represented in Second Life or not. There were options for avatars with dark hair and slightly darker skin tone, but their facial characteristics didn't seem any different to those of the Caucasian avatars. There was also nothing for Arabic, Indian, Polynesian, American Indian, Australian Aboriginal, Hispanic, or a myriad of other "races" - though this could be excused by the fact that it is the sign-up page, and giving the user a limited set of options to start with encourages them to customise more once they enter the game.
Your first name was your choice, but your last name had to be selected from a list of available last names - probably to prevent avatars with the same first and last names, as well as reducing the incidence of "joke" names. The names ran the gamut of foreign backgrounds, but strangely there were very few Asian-sounding last names. Whether this was due to them all being used or because of a bias against identifiably Asian avatars is unclear.
Like the last two sites, Second Life also assumes a privileged background, with questions such as "What city were you born in?", "What street did you grow up on?" and "What is your favourite vacation spot?" Since users will be spending money on the site this is quite possibly a fair assumption - someone with enough spare cash to spend it on Second Life has a high probability of being at least middle-class.
Lastly, Lavalife. As suggested on the workshop sheet, the default search assumes you are a single, straight female, seeking a 25-34 year old male for casual dating - a reflection of the most common type of Lavalife user. It is interesting that, even on a dating site for people unable to otherwise find romantic relationships, the only genders available for selection are male and female - the site does not appear to cater for transgender, polygender, transvestites or others, though you do have the option of searching for the same gender as yourself.
In conclusion, most of the sites seemed as if they were catering to what they perceived to be the demographic most likely to use their services. It seemed to me to be more of a tool to maximise efficiency and make the site more user-friendly to the majority of users, thus attracting more traffic. The "menu-driven identities" seen in these high-traffic sites are thus less a product of Western society's ingrained expectations of the "normal" Internet user, and more a result of marketing strategy - making the sites easier to use for the type of user most likely to access them, increasing traffic and therefore increasing profit for the site's owners.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Tutorial Presentation: The Ethics of Porn on the Net
I'm getting in early with my tutorial presentation. I've tacked on a few discussion questions at the end- more to come when I think of them.
The Ethics of Porn on the Net
It's a Woman's Prerogative to Change Her Mind, and I have changed my mind so many times when it comes to my stance on pornography; I’ve loathed it, loved it, and been everywhere in between. However, I was distinctly uncomfortable with some of Kath Albury’s arguments.
She structured her essay by first giving a poor summery of the Judeo-Christian view of the problematic aspects of pornography, then presented a slightly better take on the problems of pornography, from a Marxists view. Albury then puts forward the following question: “if pornography is immoral, does that make it unethical?” Her answer was at first a definite NO, however, she later qualifies this by saying ‘the answer depends on what definition of ‘ethics’ on chooses’.
Albury spends a large portion of her essay discussing amateur porn (I couldn’t help but think of Paris Hilton). But it got me thinking, there is such a big difference between making home videos (which I think is perfectly fine, and fun!) and putting those home videos up on the web. Albury cited that perhaps up to 70% of online porn is produced or modelled by non-professionals. I wonder how much of this percentage has been leaked/put on the net without the consent of all contributing parties.
Overall, Kath Albury gave me a lot to think about. I agree that amateur are a completely different kettle of fish when compared to commercial porn, but the issue confuses me. I find the idea that regular people want to pretend to be strippers/porn starts, i.e. people who are paid to imitate sexual arousal (I’d bet everything I own that at least 80% of the ‘supposed female orgasms you see in commercial porn are faked) problematic. Albury, on the other hand, views it as ‘’an ‘everyday experiment’, a form of new sexuality that is both a part of, and separate from, mundane domesticity”. Albury’s work, published in 2002, has become a little outdated, as she claimed that people viewed the attraction to women over 40 as ‘unusual’ and ‘kinky’, however, in this day and age, with a little help from popular culture (think American Pie), MILF has become normalised and mainstream.
Albury claims that “this proliferation of [unusual, deviant and kinky] sexual imagery is a perfect example of Internet porn’s ethical sensibility”. This is where I seriously differ from Albury. From my limited experience of internet porn, it seems to be full of (mostly) strangers having sex. Sure, some of them are from different ethnicities, some are larger/taller/hairier/more dwarf like than others, but the formula is the same; they all love rooting strangers (ok, and sometimes their teacher or boss). I find this the most problematic part of pornography. It rarely explores any of the mental, emotional, spiritual or psychological aspects of sex and instead presents a very simplistic, purely physical view of sexual desire.
Other questions to consider:
· Do you agree with Andrea Dworkin, that women who participate in porn are practicing prostitution?
· If porn is immoral, does that mean its unethical?
· Are ethical systems medium-specific? Should they be?
· If one of your close friends/ family members told you they had decided to become a porn star, would you be supportive of them? Would it make a difference to you if they were entering the commercial or amateur industry?
· Given that a digital culture is interconnecting via a global World Wide Web, is a global system of ethics required? How do the existing legal boundaries of nations complicate such a goal?
· Does digitisation challenge the ethical underpinnings of a capitalist culture? Do we need a new ethics of consumption in the era of mass and ‘illegal’ peer-to-peer movie downloading?
· Check out these statistics on pornography. Do they concern you? Shock you? Or are they exactly as you expected?
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