After attending a brilliant seminar this evening on language and identity I’ve been stimulated to reflect on two negative experiences I’ve had over the past week in Second Life. These incidents both disturbed me and I feel that they were both violent and othering in their effect on me.
1. My visit to DarkRose Castle
My good friend Trasgo is an online DJ and he invited me to his live broadcast event which was streamed into Second Life. His shift was delayed somewhat while another guy was DJ-ing and so I arrived at the event early. What I didnt understand was that the location of the event varied according to the DJ, so I ended up in the wrong location: a Gothic horror private roleplaying sim. I dragged Kronos along with me, and we arrived in our normal avatar states: blonde, casual clothing, kind of Barbie and Ken avatars. It was obvious that we were guests because we stood out so markedly from the crowd of goths there. Yet all attempts at conversation were ignored - we were given a curt nod, a couple of hellos, and then when I asked a question of one guy, he just looked me up and down and then turned around and walked away. It was so like we were invisible that I really felt hurt. The hostility was so strong - I felt very uncomfortable. I tried to make a comment about it to the rude person who walked away to me but he pretty much told me to ********* chill out. There were other guests there but they were dressed appropriately and seemed to know “the Prince” so were accepted immediately. in fact, they were offered tours of the castle. Kronos thought we were being offered a tour and asked about it, but was ignored. The Othering I felt at this event was painful - the silence of the goths towards me was a violent experience and it literally took me over 10 minutes to start talking to Kronos again normally because I felt so hurt.
The seminar today focussed a lot on Derrida and the notion that identity always involves exclusion. Derrida talks about the boundaries of identity as painful and conflicted, and the violence - either actual or potential - played by the role of language in identity construction. At this goth site I felt these boundaries and I felt excluded. What pained me most was that I actually love the goth aesthetic and even have some goth clothes in my real life for special occasions. But I dont have a goth avatar and here I was marginalised by multiple semiotic means: I had the wrong image, I didn’t have access to the knowledge required to participate in conversation, I didn’t understand how to behave in this context.
Let me talk about my avatar for a moment as a segueway into experience 2. I have deliberately chosen a “Barbie” avatar for a number of reasons:
- because I wanted a human avatar to be more approachable for my students when they come on
- because I did not want to be marginalised by the general population for being different
- because I am fascinated with the aestheticisation of beauty and its effect on identity
- and because its fun to indulge in a certain set of feminine fantasies which will never be my reality
Because of this I have invested a lot of time and real money into my shape, skin, hair, makeup, clothes, gestures, animations and other bits and pieces. So I am heavily invested in the avatar I have right now and to be excluded or mocked or ignored because of my avatar is WORSE than a personal insult - because my avatar reflects so many things that are ME - my choices, my desires, my ideas, my aesthetics. So this leads me to talk about:
2. My changeling friend
I have a friend who will remain nameless who changes her avatar frequently. She likes tinkering with her identity and I get great amusement at the new personas she adopts. She knows I am fascinated with identity and that I write about it, so she often trials new looks and personae with me. One day recently she im-ed me that she had a great new look to show me. When she arrived, I laughed when I saw the look: it was like a fairy version of Ursula from The Little Mermaid. But my humour soon turned to shock when my friend started talking with an entirely new linguistic pattern, an entirely new voice, and in an extremely aggressive manner. I couldn’t believe it was my friend because she was just so… awful. She was condescending, mocking, and…. and here comes the painful blow…. she called me (very derisively): DOLLFACE! I was stunned because as I said, I had invested so much of my time and energy and self into making my avatar, and here she was mocking me!! It actually hurt my feelings even though I knew what she was doing and why she was doing it. I started wondering whether my friend secretly thought I was betraying my feminist ideals by choosing a beautiful avatar - she made me feel ashamed of myself for my decisions. It was really quite horrid, even though I laughed it off. I am sure people reading this will think it silly, but I was genuinely hurt by my friend’s comment.
And today when I listened to theorisations of language, identity and othering, and thought about the ways society and language can softly, discreetly but absolutely violently Other and Alienate, I began to wonder what it might it be like if I was forever caught in that Goth castle and silenced, or constantly spoken to with derision and contempt by so called friends. My two little instances of violence through language are fleeting - just minor moments in my usual joyous Second Life. But hearing about Derrida and learning more about his critique of the intellectual structures which are associated with violence, truly helped me to understand these moments.
I wish I could have had a wireless laptop to live blog the conference because now that its over it feels rather odd doing a retrospective post. But as promised, here goes! Oh and a disclaimer: I was soo exhausted that I didn’t make as many sessions as I listed, and also, there was an unfortunate clash or two in the program which meant that I couldn’t listen to everybody I wanted to.
So, the first session I went to at the conference was Julia and Guy’s session about blogging:
Inside Out: academic blogging and new literacies, an autoethnography
Julia Davies and Guy Merchant
This was a fun session and I looooooved the aesthetics of the presentation, with gorgeous images and fun transitions. I was also cited, which was very flattering! I liked the way they moved quickly beyond the descriptive (how come so many conference presentations focussed on the descriptive only at the expense of theorisation and analysis???) and into the analysis of posts and comments, discussing theoretical issues and critiqueing notions of “affinity spaces” and “communities of practice” as far as they relate, and don’t relate, to the blogosphere. We had many casual conversations about blogs and identity and narrative after this presentation and I’ll be blogging more about those later! Anyway this was a great session and stimulated much discussion and thinking.
Next was our session:
Out of Bounds: Some social, psychological and pedagogical implications of new literacies for young people’s learning, lifeworlds and social futures.
Angela Thomas, Kevin Leander and Michele Knobel
I have already blogged about my talk, but the slides are here if you missed it.
Kevin Leander spoke about his study of girls in a girls school that had wireless technology. Essentially he critiqued the institutional use of technology and the low expectations of teachers when the students were able to work at a very sophisticated level.
Michele Knobel spoke about memes and ‘big L’ ‘little l’ L/literacies. It was a really fun talk too, but also stimulating as she spoke about counter-meming as a social critical literacy practice - and I liked the links to the work of Adbusters.com and the strategies for counter-meming outlined at memecentral.com/antidote.htm, and allyourbrand.org/why.htm - I need to look into these more at some time!
Our discussant was Cynthia Lewis:
Cynthia made some lovely remarks and raised questions about “what counts” as literacy as far as schooling is concerned. I thought Cynthis was very insightful!
Then we had Don Leu’s Presidential address:
New Literacies, Reading Research, and the Challenges of Change: a Deictic Perspective of our Research Worlds
Don Leu
I found Don Leu’s talk interesting but targetted to a) an audience who needed to be convinced about new literacies; and b) the American audience. So basically he said “new literacies are here to stay and we need to attend to them” and “Americans aren’t getting into new literacies as much as they should”. I thought he was very sweet and humble in acknowledging all of his colleagues and doctoral students in influencing his understandings about new literacies.
Wednesday evening was Julia’s birthday party as I already mentioned in my very quick post, and here is the birthday girl herself, looking gorgeous and glam:
Isn’t her necklace amazing!? Here’s a close-up:
and here’s some of her DIVINE birthday dessert:
I sat between Julia and Jennifer:
and across from the very animated Guy:
and Barbara:
Also at the table were:
Michele
Brian,
Margaret,
and several other people whose names I have embarrassingly forgotten (profuse apologies if you are one of them)!
Are we only up to Thursday!? On Thursday Julia and I snuck out at lunch time for a little shopping expedition, which she blogged about here.
Question: what is Julia doing here???
(Click here to find out!)
I also noticed Julia taking a photo of somebody taking a photo of somebody else so I thought I should take a photo of that and continue the chain:
Oh! And we also came across a guy that wrote our names on a single grain of rice! Now I didn’t really want one but purely because I’d seen one of the characters doing it from the digital fiction called The Strand, which I blogged about recently, I thought I had to have one! I think there is something to say there about feeling some sort of identification with a narrative or fictional character that you associate with it through its artefacts, but I am not sure what yet!
One of my favourite sessions was the afternoon session that followed our shopping expedition!
Social Constructions in New Literacy Environments
Chair(s) & Discussant(s): Charles K. Kinzer, Teachers College, Columbia University
With the rise of the concept of “new literacies,” literacy is increasingly acknowledged as including participation in broadly defined communities of practice. Concurrently, literacy has become influenced by new technologies, which incorporate their own social practices. The symposium examines the social literacies surrounding one of these electronic environments: video games.
1. Digital Literacies and Massively Multiplayer Online Games
Constance A. Steinkuehler, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2. Agency and Authority: Social Practices in Interactive Storytelling
Jessica Hammer, Teachers College, Columbia University
3. Playing the Digital Divide: Video-game-related literacy practices and SES
Gillian Andrews, Teachers College, Columbia University
Constance talked about her study of World of Warcraft. I enjoyed seeing the range of literacy practices involved and I liked the analysis of gaming practices as scientific habits of mind. I hadn’t actually heard the term “persistent virtual worlds” before to describe MMORPGs either, so that was interesting.
Jessica talked about agency in role-playing games. I thought Jessica’s talk was wonderfully theorised and enjoyed being taken in a different direction as far as role-playing and narrative construction is concerned. I think she focussed more on adult role-playing and more sophisticated narrative constructions, as the stuff I am looking at is much less pre-planned, so it’s given me lots of ideas! I liked the points she made about interactivity as giving the illusion of free will. It reminded me of when I was a teacher and used to trick kids into doing what I wanted by offering them choices and making the ideal choice so attractive that they had to select it!! (Ummm… I still do that with my undergrad students, but that is another story!)
Gillian (Gus) spoke about the types of games selected by different types of readers - she made some really useful links to Gee’s work and talked about self-as-avatar, which I would have loved to hear more about! (Who made these sessions limited to 20 minutes? Never enough time to take in everything!!)
I also went to Brian Street’s session:
Literacy Across Cultural Contexts: Implications for Pedagogy and Curriculum
Brian Street
Brian covered a lot of ground in this session (too much to remember!) but something he spoke about that was totally new to me was lowrider art as a literacy practice. He showed how this doodle-like art by young non-English speakers was used as a communicative literacy practice, and I’d like to find out more about this.
Thursday evening I collapsed in my room with exhaustion and tried to write some discussant comments for a session I was involved with the next day. It was very unfortunate for me as I missed out on a fun evening with Julia, Guy, Michele, Sarah, Dana, Rebecca and a heap of others *sniffle*.
So Friday morning was the session by Marion Fey:
Gender Issues in Post-Typographical Texts and Talk: Past, Present and Future
Marion Fey
Chair: Barbara Guzzetti
Discussants: Donna Alvermann, Suzanne Wade and Angela Thomas
Marion traced her extensive research into issues about gender and technology. Suzanne made some wonderful theoretical links between her work and Marions, and mentioned Susan Herring’s work. I also mentioned Susan Herring, Lois Scheidt, and colleagues in my response. I talked about: debates about language and gender, performativity of gender in online spaces and collaboration and social software.
Next was another FABULOUS session by the team from Teacher’s College:
Conceptions of Narrative in Non-Traditional Environments
New environments are redefining literacy and literacy practices. However, while non-traditional environments incorporate visual elements in traditional print materials, they still may be categorised as either narrative or expository. This symposium looks at various non-traditional environments to explore the question of narrative construction and definition.
1. Considering Narrative in New Environments
Charles K Kinzer
2. Examining Narrative as Sequential “Sense” in Comics
Jonathon Bresman
3. Narrative Strategies in Improvisational Storytelling
Jessica Hammer
Charles Kinzer spoke about Second Life - like most of the sessions I saw, I was left wanting more and with more questions than answers.
Jonathon spoke a lot about the role of transitions or break points in the narratives of comics (great stuff!),
and Jessica spoke about issues of narration, improvisation and collaboration in role-playing in general, as well as issues of continuity, consistency and coherence in narrative in particular.
Again, this team of researchers are really doing wonderful and innovative studies - I would loooove to work with them!!!
In fact, on Saturday morning I had a lovely meeting with Charles (Chuck) Kinzer:
and we talked about the possibility of some fun projects we can collaborate on!!
There were other lunches and dinners and coffees and drinks and the “New Literacies Bash” - in fact some of the most interesting and stimulating discussions were those that took place outside of the conference! I had a lovely talk with Guy over dinner on my last evening and we wondered “Are we like our blogs?” - which led to all sorts of fascinating thoughts about literacy, identity, narrative, projection, virtuality/reality and so on!
And, on my final day I had a minor crisis which I won’t go into here but I want to say a huge THANK YOU to Katina Zammit (my fellow Australian traveller) for being such an angel and rescuing me from a difficult situation!!
So, that was my overview of NRC - an interesting conference made fabulous because of the wonderful company - especially Julia, Guy and Michele!
I love the idea of this book, though the more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I think we need a book full of stories for adolescent girls to read. Perhaps this will have a wide girl audience - I hope so. I am tempted to write a chapter myself! Anything that says geek=cool is cool :>
She’s Such a Geek
An Anthology by and for Women Obsessed with Computers, Science, Comic Books, Gaming, Spaceships, and Revolution
Slated for Fall 2006
Geeks are taking over the world. They make the most popular movies and games, pioneer new ways to communicate using technology, and create new ideas that will change the future. But the stereotype is
that only men can be geeks. So when are we going to hear from the triumphant female nerds whose stories of outer space battles will inspire generations, and whose inventions will change the future?
Right now.
Female geeks are busting out of the labs and into the spotlight. They have the skills and knowledge that can inspire social progress, scientific breakthroughs,and change the world for the better, and
they’re making their voices heard, some for the first time, in Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders’book She’s Such a Geek. This anthology will celebrate women who haveflourished in the male-dominated realms of technical and cultural arcana. We’re looking for a wide range of personal essays about the meaning of female nerdhood by women who are in love with genomics, obsessed with blogging,
learned about sex from Dungeons and Dragons, and aren’t afraid to match wits with men or computers. The essays in She’s Such a Geek will explain what it means to be passionately engaged with
technical or obscure topics ˜ and how to deal with it when people tell you that your interests are weird, especially for a girl. This book aims to bust stereotypes of what it means to be a geek, as well
as what it means to be female.
More than anything, She’s Such a Geek is a celebration and call to arms:it’s a hopeful book which looks forward to a day when women will pilot spaceships, invent molecular motors, design the next ultra-tinysupercomputer, write epics, and run the government.
We want introspective essays that explain what being a geek has meant to you. Describe how you’ve fought stereotypes to be accepted among nerds. Explore why you are obsessed with topics and ideas that are supposed to be “for boys only.” Tell us how you felt the day you realized that you would be devoting the rest of your life to discovering algorithms or collecting comicbooks. We want strong,
personal writing that is also smart and critical. We don’t mind if you use the word “fuck,” and we don’t mind if you use the word “telomerase.” Be celebratory,polemical, wistful, angry, and just plain dorky.
Possible topics include:
· what turned you into a geek
· your career in science, technology, or engineering
· growing up geeky
· being a geek in high school today
·battling geek stereotypes (i.e racial stereotypes and geekdom, cultural analysis of geek chic and the truth about nerds, the idea that women have tochoose between being sexually desirable and smart, stereotypes about geekprofessions such as computer programmers)
· sex and dating among geeks
· science fiction fandom
· role-playing game or comic-book subcultures
· the joys of math
· blogging or videogames
· female geek bonding
· geek role models for women
· feminist commentary on geek culture
· women’s involvement in DiY science and technology groups
· Stories from women involved in geek pop and underground cultures. These might include comic book writers, science fiction writers, electronic music musicians, and women interested in the gaming world.
· women’s web networks and web zine grrrl culture
· Issues of sexism in any or all of the above themes
Editors: Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders are geeky women writers.
Annaleeis a contributing editor at Wired magazine and writes the syndicated columnTechsploitation. Charlie is the author of Choir Boy (Soft Skull Press) andpublisher of other magazine.
Publisher: Seal Press, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, publishes groundbreaking books by and for women in a variety of topics.
Deadline: January 15, 2006
Length: 3,000-6,000 words
Format: Essays must be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. Please include your address, phone number, email address, and a short bio on the last page.Essays will not be returned.
Submitting: Send essay electronically as a Document or Rich Text Format fileto Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders at sheissuchageek@gmail.com.
Payment: $100 plus two books
Reply: Please allow until February 15 for a response. If you haven’treceived a response by then, please assume your essay has not been selected. It is not possible to reply to every submission personally.
Almost 8 years ago now I started working on projects about the girl’s gaming market and issues related to the construction of females in games. It seems the same arguments raised so long ago (in technology terms 8 years is forever!) are still raging today, but that finally people are taking notice. Via GTA I noticed this report from Newsweek International claims that video game designers are searching for what women and girls want in their games!
What do you think about this quote (from Ankarino Lara, director of GameSpot.com):
“Female gaming is the last frontier; 2006 is going to be a milestone year.”
There are several reasons I object to that quote, not the least of which is the use of the “frontier” metaphor YET AGAIN to describe the great white male explorer into unknown territory (cyberspace) making it all very female-unfriendly (I thought that metaphor went out in the 90s!) but anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens in 2006 to supposedly tap into the women’s market. Interestingly, the SIMS is one of the key games identified in the report as being attractive to women and girls. I don’t doubt this, but I have a number of friends and colleagues who are playing online interactive MMORPGs and that seems to be the real place that women are congregating. I have been tempted to play WoW myself because that is where some friends are playing, but right now I promised myself nothing else til my book is all done! Anyway here’s an excerpt from the article:
The key to that change lies in both evolutionary and revolutionary technology. As broadband Internet access becomes commonplace and portable games link up wirelessly, players are interacting with each other and with their machines as never before. At the same time, experimental games using artificial intelligence raise the possibility that characters on the screen will take on a virtual life of their own. “We’re talking about relationships illuminated through conflict,” says Chris Crawford, whose career as a design guru goes back to Atari, in the Precambrian era of video recreations.
Indeed, “relationship” is the word that best defines the differing interests of men and women as they enter an on-screen adventure. “Women gamers are very social, very strategic—they like to work together to solve problems,” says Charlotte Stuyvenberg, director of global communications for Xbox. “Most designers stereotype a gamer as a guy who sits in a dorm room or office or basement and plays by himself, so a lot of games are designed with that player in mind. But as design and development mature, there are a lot more opportunities to make games more social.”
Girl gamers were largely hidden from view until The Sims brought them out in the 1990s. Created by legendary designer Will Wright for Electronic Arts, The Sims had a success with this hitherto untapped female market segment that came as a surprise to game-company executives. “We actually did not realize that women would gravitate to Sims as they did,” says Virginia McArthur, a Sims producer. In focus groups, more than 50 percent of the Sims audience are teenage girls. The games have become a laboratory for studying gender roles in what might be called the relationship market.
The Sims games allow players to develop their own worlds from the ground up. “It’s a gigantic sandbox,” says McArthur. Instead of shooting enemies, you create characters and the environment in which they live from an array of options. The characters have needs—food, shelter, money, utilities—that must be met. “You order a pizza, you’re going to have to go to the bathroom,” McArthur says. Characters also want and need each other, especially in The Sims 2 and its variants like Nightlife. “They have ‘woohoo’,” she says. “That’s our term for playing in bed.”
I like the analogy of a sandbox. It’s so symbolic of play. I saw the title of a paper once that said “Foucault in the Sandbox” which was about the regulatory practices of children at play. I think there’s a paper to be written called “Foucault in the MMORPGs”!
In the past couple of days there has been a push by some of the liberal backbenchers (namely Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Panopoulos) to outlaw the wearing of hijabs in schools. John Howard has disagreed with this view, but here’s some of the Sydney Morning Herald’s report:
Mr Howard said he opposed Mrs Bishop’s push to ban Muslim girls from wearing headscarves at public schools because it would be impractical. But he defended Ms Bishop’s “right to express a view”.
Mrs Bishop has called the headscarf “a sort of iconic item of defiance”, and echoed the call of the Victorian Liberal MP Sophie Panopoulos for a ban. Mrs Bishop’s remark prompted much criticism, including a rebuke from the NSW Minister for Education, Carmel Tebbutt, who yesterday ruled out any change to the uniform policy, which allows schools to develop a dress code in consultation with the community. She said she supported the right of students to wear the headscarf as long as it was within the school code.
Mr Howard said: “I don’t think it’s practical to bring in such a prohibition. If you ban a headscarf you might for consistency’s sake have to ban a yarmulke or a turban.
However, Labor’s education spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, said Mr Howard had not gone far enough in opposing the MPs. “John Howard must show leadership and pull [them] into line over their calls. We need national leadership … not extremist knee-jerk reactions.”
The federal Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, John Cobb, said Mrs Bishop’s comments were ignorant and an insult to many Australians. In a statement he said: “The government does not seek to impose cultural sameness on Australians … Do we ban nuns from wearing a habit?”
I am really shocked that two women politicians are behind the push to ban the hijabs. They’re using a feminist platform and claiming that the hijabs are an affront to women’s freedom (well, Sophie was, I couldn’t work out Bronwyn’s stance). Ummm what about religious freedom in a society that is multicultural and tolerant of difference in lifestyles? (I could write an essay on this but I don’t think the blog is the right place for it)
