PERFORMING GENDER ON (THE)LINE: A CASE STUDY OF THE: PROCESS OF COMMUNITY MAKING AMONG MIEMBERS OF A WOMEN-ONLY ELECTRONIC MAILING LIST
Rhiannon Catherine Bury
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Cumculum, Teaching and Leamhg Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
Copyright by Rhiannon Cathe~eBury (2000) National Library Bibliothèque nationale I*I of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington ûttawaON KIAON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada
The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique.
The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. PERFORMING GENDER ON (THE) LINE: A CASE STUDY OF TEIE PROCESS OF COMMUNITY MAKII\J'G AMONG MEMBERS OF A WOMEN-ONLY ELECTRONIC MAILING LIST
Rhiannon Catherine Bury Doctor of Philosophy Department of Cumcdum, Teaching and Leaming, University of Toronto 2000
This thesis is an ethnographie study of the process of community making and gender identification that took place on a women-only electronic mailing list. The participants were female fans of the popular television series, The X-Files, who were members of the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigades (DDEBs), three "private" women- only electronic mailing lists ostensibly named after the Iead actor of the show.
In the context of an electronic mailing List that 1 set up with a group of DDEB rnembers, 1 examinai the ways in which white, middle class, heterosexual ferninine and ferninist identities were performed as part of the process of establishing and maintaining an on-line community for a one year period. The data revealed sets of gendered and classed practices that were regularly engaged in by a majority of members to mate a sense of unity and commonality. However, in every exchange, there were always members who were unwilling or unable to participate and chose to rernain silent or were " silenced " .
Based on my findings, 1 argue that the body, and the identities associated with it, do not "disappearn in the context of cornputer-mediatecl communication as has been claimed. Rather, gender is performed, albeit linguistically, and cyberspace continues to be inforneci by notions of the public and private that have gendered "real"space since as fa.back as the Greek city states. In cyberspaces of their own, female usea of information and communication technologies (ICTs) can "rernemberntheir bodies in ways that both take up and refuse normative discourses of femininity. Moreover, an on- iine community does not simply exist because people join a mailing list; it is created and maintaineci through the regular engagement in a specific set of practices, through which a substance of community is created. The status of an on-Iine community is provisional, a collection of identities whose arrangement shifts with the ebb and flow of interaction, and which always involves some form of exclusion, however unintentional. Dedication
To my mother, Nancy Whiteluw Buty. You bestowed upon me your unconditional love, a seme of dereminarion and survival in the face of adversity , and the greatest and most difJicult gzjt a parent can give- the freedom to let me find rny own way. Acknowledgements
This thesis has been seven years in the making, and there are many people to thank for their support dong the way. First, 1 am indebted to those rnembers of the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigades who agreed to participate in this project and offered me their time, their insights, their trust and the pleasure of their Company for a year: Beth, TC Carstensen, Lara Eakins, Katie Fritz, Inez Gowsell, Sue Johnston, Julia Kosatka, Melanie Lightbody, Juiianne Lee, Susan Lyseng, Keiiie Matthews, PoUy MoUer, Jennifer Roth, Nancy Simmons, Sarah Stegall, Vasna Zago, Elissa Teeple, and Melinda Young. 1 am most grateful to Bob Morgan, whose course opened my "high culture" eyes to the pleasures of popular television. As my supervisor, you shepherded me past the missteps and false starts and your close, careful readings of every draft taught me to iead in the dance with the data. Also instrumentai to rny reaching this point in my acadernic journey were the other memben of my thesis cornmittee: Monica Heller, whose ability to turn around work in no time at al1 and provide clear, constructive feedback despite a dizzying itinerary never ceases to amaze me; and Kari Dehli who introduced me to poststnicturalist feminism and ensured that 1 applied it consistently and avoided the pitf's of binary thinking. The three of you were a wonderful team! A special thanks also goes to Mary Bryson for mking the time to be my extemal examiner. Thank you Peter Trifonas for taking the time to sit on the examining cornmittee. 1 would also like to thank those staff members at OISE who were so helpful to me at critical moments: Hamiet Hori (CTL)for helping me manoeuvre through the bureaucracy, Avi Hyman (Ed. Commons) who set up the DDEBRP on the pemickety Majordomo and gave me my fist forum to present my work, and Jeanie Stewart (Ed. Comrnons) who worked her magic on this dissertation to meet the University's shingent guidelines. My heardelt gratitude goes to my dear fnends who were there for me every step of the way: Karina Kraenzie, Katie "dear beast" Almond, and, of course, Lee "Aritbtotle" Easton, whose offer of his copy of Foucault's Hisrory of Sexualiry after our first meeting in Bob Morgan's class was the start of a beautifid and lasting fkiendship. Many thanks as weli to Albert, ALison, Awad, Helen, Jack, James, JO Anne, Karen, Mireille, Nancy, Neil, Sharon and Tuula and for making me laugh and keeping me sane. I would also like to mention Pat Y., Janice, JO-Ann and Nadine of the Women' s Studies Programme at McMaster University. You have all made my experience teaching 2D03 a valuable and enjoyable one. Love to my brother Don and his partner Robert, who are in England bravely pursuhg their own dreams as artists. And then there are the "fumeswwho were rny constant cornpanions and great sources of cornfort whiie 1 toile. away in my office: those who are still with us, Queequeg and Cleo cats, and those who have passeci "beyond the nmn- Nat the cat, and gerbils Jesse, Theo, Hartley and Jeremy. You are very much missed. Last but certainly not least, I extend my love and gratitude to my partner, Luis Marmelo, who has put up with me and been there for me over the years. Without you, 1 never would have put Bob's theones of television into practice to becorne an X-Files fan. You may be the world's most unromantic man and stubborn as hell but your sharp mind, sense of humour and generosity of spirit are what count in the long haui. Thank you for everything, my "quince". Table of Contents .. AbstfaCt ...... u Dedication ...... iv Acknowledgements ...... v Chapterl ...... 1 Introduction ...... 1 How I Came to Stop Worrying and Love Television ...... 5 Theoretical Framework ...... 9 BodyMatters ...... 9 Performing Gender in Cyberspace ...... i6 Community as Prob16matique ...... 23 Community and Space ...... 26 Lines of Inquiry ...... 27 Chapter Outline ...... 28 Putting It Al1 Together ...... 31 Chapter2 ...... 33 Analytical Fictions and Virtual Geographies ...... 33 Ethnography as Responsiblt Knowledge Production ...... 34 StalQng My Claims ...... 39 Ethnography on (the) Line ...... 45 DataPresentation ...... 50 Supplernentary Data Collection and Analysis ...... 51 Chapter3 ...... 52 From a Roorn to a Cyberspace of Our Own ...... 52 The Birth of the hblic ...... 53 The Middle Ages ...... 54 The Not So Discrete Segregation of the Bourgeoisie ...... 58 Technology and the Power of Dirt ...... 64 Cyberspace: The Final Frontier? ...... 76 Conclusion ...... 88 Chapter4 ...... 90 Stones for Boys Girls: ...... 90 Making Ferninine Pleasures out of Masculine Television Texts ...... 90 Of Fans and Femininity ...... 91 Watching the Detectives: Spotlight on Scully ...... 95 BoysWillBdbysGirls ...... 101 Reading (in) the Romance ...... 103 Armchair Critics ...... 113 StarStones ...... 115 Conclusion ...... 120 Chapter5 ...... 122 The Gaze of the Cyborgs: ...... 122 Objecwg and Identifying with Celebrity Images On Line ...... 122 I'm Your Fan ...... 122 "Drooling"Over David ...... 125 Masculinities on Display ...... 128 When a Cyborg hks...... 132 TheClothesMakethe(New) Man ...... 136 Gillian's "Golden Globes" ...... 140 Conclusion ...... 150 Chapter6 ...... 152 An Electronic K@eeklorch ...... 152 Sharing and caring ...... 152 Living the Romance ...... 166 Bodies on (the) Line ...... 173 Conclusion ...... 178 Chapter7 ...... 181 GdMamers. Good Grarnmar and Silence: ...... 181 The "Golden Rules" of Community Making ...... 181 The Rules of the Garne 1 ....,...... 182 Poiiteness in Cyberspace ...... 185 Nice Girls Don't Flarne ...... 191 Staking A Claim (Sort Of) ...... 195 Speaking Her Mind ...... 199 Süikîng a Balance ...... 205 Rules of the Game II ...... 208 Upholding the Standard ...... 209 Slumming ...... 217 Raising the Stakes: Word Play and Repartee ...... 218 The Silence of the Lurkers ...... 221 Conclusion ...... 227 Chapter 8 ...... 230 Towards an Empirically-Grounded Cyberfeminism ...... 230 References ...... 242 Chapter 1
Introduction
As the 21Lcentury begins, a complex of what are often referred to as "Information and Communications Technologies" (ICTS)' is entering the homes of middle class North Americans en masse. According to ment statistics, the number of Internet users around the world Li estimaied at 259 nüllion %+th over 80 per cent concentrated in fifteen countries and 43 per cent in the United States (Campbell, 2000). Canada ranked fourth globaiiy, with the number of users at just over 13 million but second in terms of the percentage of the population at alrnost 43 per cent. Although surfkg the World Wide Web is hardly a global phenornenon, it is a cultural activity that is being woven into the fabric of everyday life of large numbers of people. Judging by the proliferation of "chat roomsfl, Multi-User Domains (MUDs), Graphical Multi-user Konversations (GMUKs), Usenet newsgroups and electronic mailing lists, what is taking place when Amenca and Company go on line is not only a search for information and/or entertain ment but interdon with other " usersn both synchronously (Le. in rd-time) via Inter Relay Chat (IRC) and non-synchronously via e-mail. What Stone (1995) calls "point-to-point" technologies have enabled electronically-mediated communication for over a hundred years in the form of the telephone. ICTs take a step further in enabling webs of relationships to form and be maîntained in the realm of "the vWnhown as cyberspace. According to Rheingold (1993a), the search for communify is at the heart of the social use of ICTs: What we are looking for, and fiding in some surprishg ways, is not just information but instant access to ongoing relationships with a large number of other people. Individualsi find friends, and groups find shared identities online
When 1 began this research in 1996, there was no standard term to denote these technologies: "interactive technologiesw,"new edge technologies*, "new media technologieswand "new information and co~lll~lunicationtechnologiesw (NICïs) were commoa. Today "informaiion and commrmications technologiesw(ICïs)has became the most prevdent in schoîarly publiations. Al1 these terms are problematic, for they proniote a functiooalist view of technology, a view haî ob~curesits imbrication with social relations and spatial practices. 1 therefore use the amnym "ICTs' advisediy. through the aggregated networks of relationships and commitrnents that make any community possible. (p. 59)
Rheingold (1993a) also implies that computer-mediated communication (CMC) is better suited for the job of community making than face-to-face communication, for the reason that we cannot "form prejudices about others before we read what they have to say.. .. In cyberspace, everyone is in the dark" (p. 66). In effect, he takes the inability to visually observe on-line interactants as evidence that the body, and the identities associaied wiih il, have bwn "Ieft behind". Rheingold is not the only cybertheorist who celebrates the supposed disappearance of the body. According to Rushkoff, when one enters cyberspace, "one forsakes both body and place and becomes a thing of words aione" (quoted in Jones, 1997, p. 15). Dery (1994) dresses the same claim in postmodern jargon: "The upside of incorporeal interaction is a technologically enabled, postmulticultural vision of identity disengaged from gender, ethnicity, and other problematic constructions", ailowing ICT users to " fioat free of biological and sociocultural determinantsn (pp. 3- 4). Further, this drearn of disembodiment is often linked to the dream of democracy. The supposed decoupling of the body from identity is thus seen as leading to a democratisation of the community-making process and the construction of an ideal public forum in the reaim of the virtual. According to Turkle (1995), who draws on McLuhan, "public meeting places are disappearing and the computer is playing a centrai role in ailowing us to 'retribalize'" (p. 178). In a sirnilar vein, Rheingold (1993b) claims that the explosive growth of on-line fora for social interaction is fuelled by the disappearance of "informal public spaces" (p. 6). Yet, if the public spaces in which on-line communities are forming are so democratic by vimie of their virtuaüty, why is it kat some female ICT users are voting with their hgers? This was the case with a group of female fans of the popular Amencan television series on the Fox network, The X- ile es. * Partially as a result of
nit X-Files was created by Cbris Carter and debuted on Fox in September 1993. Starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, the series is about two FBI Agents, Fox Muidet and Dana Scuiiy, who investigate cases which efude conventiod expIanation. Fox Muider, a Miever in the existence of extra-tenestrids since the age of 12 when he saw his sister king abducted, is on a quest to harassment from and denigration by male fans for expressing admiration for the lead actor of the series, David Duchovny, they opted to tum their backs on the public fan fora to create private cyberspaces, playfidly named the David Duchovny EFrrogen Brigades (DDEBS) in which their female bodies could play a central role in the on-line community-making process. This thesis is an ethnographie investigation, involving a group of DDEB memben, into the process of consrnicting an on-line gendered self, space and community. Informed oy postsmcturdist and feminist theories, this inquiry rejects the claims to disembodiment made by the theorists quoted above on the grounds that they adhere to a binary logic: "real" communities are constituted by "realtlbodies whereas "virtual" communities are marked by the absence of the body and the identities associated with it. These binaries of rdvirtual and presencelabsence, however, fail to account for the role of discourse and language in the production of the "real".If bodies are not simply material things that use language to communicate and form relationships among themselves, but are in fact products of discourse, produced at the moment of speaking, then computer-mediated communication, contra Rheingold, Rushkoff and Dery, exte& the body into cyberspace through the act of typing words ont0 the cornputer screen. On-line identification is not "free-stylet1but a linguistic perJormance (Butler, 1990) that is subject to regulatory noms which produce distinct subject positions for male and female bodies, albeit ones that can both taken up and resisted at different moments. Also rejected is the notion of cyberspace as a democratic forum. Such a notion fails to recognize that the key notion of such a social and political order, that of "the public", is founded on the exclusion of certain types of bodies, namely those of women and other minority groups. As Stone (1992) states unequivocaüy, "forgetting about the body is an old Cartesian trick, one that has unpl-t consequences for those bodies
prove that the U.S. govemment not oniy hows about the aiien visits and abductions but is actively involved in a top-secret colonizaîion project. Dana Scuily, a traiaed medical doctor, was originally assigned to 'the X-Files" to discredit Mulder's work but has since become a supportive, if not sceptical partner. In addition to "UFOs",they aiso investigate cases that seem to involve the aparanormalw,hme travel, brainwashing, witchcraft and past lives, Co name a few exampIls. At the time of writing, the saïes is in its seventh and nnai season. whose speech is silenced by the acts of our forgettingn @. 113). Wornen-only cyberspaces are not anachronisms in the so-caüed pst-mechanical, pst-identity age, but rather only the most ment variations of what Foucault calls the heteroropia-spaces in which alternatives to the dominant social order can be gleaned. The DDEBs are living proof that the dream of a space in which to form our own communities stiil resonates strongly with white, rniddle class, heterosexual North Amencan women who historically have been excluded from the public spaces of civil society and isolated within the domestic sphew of the home. To investigate the processes of on-line gender identification and community making, 1 set up an electronic mailing Iist with a number of DDEB rnembers. The data, primarily comprising the on-line discussions that took place over the next year, dernonstrate empirically that the desire to create and maintain a women-only on-line community has both desirable and undesirable effects on its members. At many moments, whether discussing the latest X-Files' episode, desire for Duchovny , Anderson's attire, a socio-political issue, or personal experience, the practices in which members engaged produced a sense of community through shared articulations of both normative and feminist fernininities. At others, though, those same communal practices served, however unintentionally , to exclude or marginalise members who could not or would not engage in the same types of gender performances. Like the dream of disembodiment, the drearn of community, even one born out of exclusion, is ultimately based on the containment of difference. This thesis is my contribution to the "genre of ~cholarship"~known as Cultural Studies (Sterne, 1999). Neither discipline nor method per se, it is rather a body of work that shares "a set of inteîiectual strategies: These include attention to the political character of howledge production, an orientation toward the analysis of context, a cornmitment to theory, and a theory of articulation" (p. 261). In this chapter and the next, 1 hop to demonstrate my investments in and deployment of these strategies.
I use the term 'genre' foiIowing Steme (1999), as opposed to 'discipline', for the latîer suggests an established field of study that to paraphrase Foucauit (1972), is unaware of the "witI to mth îhaî pervades it" (p. 219). How 1 Came to Sto~Worrvine and Love Television The story of this research project, which bnngs together my personal, intellectual and political interests in issues of language, identity, popular culture and technology, does not begin with my "discoverynof the DDEB websites while surfhg the Internet or even with my Ph.D. course work but with the purchase of my fist television set in 1991. From the late 1970s through the 1980s, 1 was one of those high culture snobs who took pride in declaring that 1 had never seen a single episode of the Amencan television series popuiar at the tirne, suc4 as DytiuvS>, Mimi Vice and aven the critically acclaimed HZ Street Blues. My objections to television were not theoretically sophisticated but in retrospect could be descnbed as a mix of Theodore Adorno and Neil Postman: like the former, 1 believed that the Hollywood "dream factory" chumed out mass culture that was responsible for turning thinking citizens into cultural dope^.^ Like the latter, 1 blamed the medium of television for the predorninance of "mindless entertainment" that would result in the demise of democratic society The fist significant challenge to these views came out of lived experience when the man who was to become my Life partner would amve at my place after work, flick on the TV and watch Star Trek: The Nat Generan'm. 1was at a loss to understand how an intelligent person could watch such "junk". 1 felt it my duty to take on the role of "critic", pointing out plot and character development weaknesses. Not surprisingly , this led to a number of arguments but my partner refused to tum off the television. As time passed, 1 found myself enjoying the show and looking fonvard to new episodes. Other shows crept into Our routines: Homicide: Life on the Street could be classified as "highbrow"fare since it was praised by the TV critics of the Globe and Mail. But what of Beverley HilLr: 902I0, the prime time "soapn produced by Aaron Spelling about rich, white teenagers with whom 1 felt I had little in common? ui discussing how
* Sm Poster (1994) pp 51-58 for a summary of the views of the Frankfurt school theorists on maSs culture.
For an elaboration of these views, see Postman (1985). television audiences are paedocratized, that is, imagined as having childWre qualities and attributes by the industry, Hartley (1992a) singles out Spelling as the one of the worst offenders @p. 109- 110). The course on television and education that 1 took at OISE provided some answers to this question. According to Lu11 (1988). television is not only a technological medium that transmits bits of information from impersonal sources to anonymous audiences, it is a social medium too- a means by which audience members communicate and construct strategies to achieve a wide range of personai and social objectiva. @. 258)
Watching television was thus a lowcost, low-energy activity that enabled my partner and me to spend time together. We discussed televisual events as they unfolded, making meaning out of them in ways that often went against the grain of the producers' intentions. In dismisskg the cornmonsensical notion that viewers passively accept the meaning offered by the text, Fiske (1988) notes: When 1 watch television, 1 precede any program the box can offer me: my sociai history which has constnicted me as the discursive and ideological melange that 1 am has ben working to form my moment of consciousness in front of the screen for far longe: and far more insistently than any "influence" the screen can exert over me. (p. 246)
Nonetheless, the "box'sn influence cannot be dismissed completely. According to Hartiey (l992b), television has developed into the social power to create and circulate discourse, to popularize particular paroles, to sufise the natural, social and personal worlds with meaning and to use the resources of visuai language to promote certain ways of acting in those worlds. (p. 4 1)
Thinking about the relationship between television and identity, I began to pay attention to the ways in which other people tUed about television, particularly rny English as a second language students at the university where 1 taught. After conducting smaii group interviews for a mini-ethnographie project, I was struck by the parallel between code switching from English to their "firstn language, and "charnel switching" from English-language American programming to programming in their fïrst languages and from their own cultures. Both were part of the negotiation of identity between being members of the dominant Canadian culture and being members of a minority culture. 1 decided to write up a thesis proposal based on these preliminary hdingS. In the meantirne, my partner and 1 had begun watching The X-Files regularly. Although 1 scoffed at the narratives of alien abduction and "the paranormal", 1 was drawn to the characters of FBI Agents Mulder and Scully, the cinematic quaiity of the production, as weU as the humour of the scripts, the use of which indicated that even the producers didn' t take the show's themes too seriousiy . By the middle of the second season, 1was a fan as aefined by Jenkins (1992): 1 never rnissed an episode and often viewed those 1 had taped several times. Mormver, 1 enjoyed discussing the show with both my partner and other fnends. Conversations with female friends sometirnes included "gossipn about David Duchovny ' s good looks and academic background (he had been a Ph.D. candidate at Yale). That said, images of obsessed teenaged girls immediately came to mind when 1came across the hyperlinks on an X-Files website to three electronic mailing lists named the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigades, known individually as the (original) DDEB,DDEB2 and DDEB3. 1 may have been a fan but 1 was most certainiy not a "fangirl"!When I visited one of the sites, however, 1 leamed fmm the FAQ (web pages answering "frequently asked questions" about a particular subject) that these amies of seemingly adoring fans also refuseci this categorization: We tak about our iives/work/SO [Signifiant Others]/kîds/iife in generai - not to mention other actors we find talented (and not just in the looks department and not just male ones either). .. .So, as you can see, we're not nuts. :-)' We just have lots to talk about.'
Intrigued, 1 suggested to another OISE student interested in issues of identity, popular culture and technology, Lee Easton, that we leam more about on-line female fandom. To this end, we conracted thirteen members whose email addresses were listed on websites and asked if they would be interested in completing a questionnaire aimed at exploring relations between gender, popular culture and ICTs. AU but two replied,
The 'sdey' is a standard E-mail 'emoticon' used to signai the miter's good intentions and humour. 1will be discushg the use of emoticons in Cbapter 2.
'This text was originilly found ai
A sizeable chu& of the Alternative (Ait.) section of the Usenet is dedicated to popular culture in general and telension in particular Acconling to Baym (1995), included in the groups that meive the highest voIm of messages daily are those that discuss television, movies and sports. On March 8, 1996, the DDEBRP became operational. Like the DDEBs, it was a closed but unmoderated list, which meant that nobody was able to join and participate without the approval of the List owner (myself), bur that posts were automatically sent to all List members without being "vetted" by a moderator. Life on the DDEBRP had began and would continue for a continuous period of 13 months. Within two weeks, 4 participants dropped out of the study, most claiming that the list "traffic" was too heavy, i.e. they could not keep up with the volume of messages being posted, about 80 a day for the first month. However, 2 0th DDEB mernbzrs joinzd the ktsaveral months into the study after hearing about it from participating members. Although 4 left before the data collection period ended, they consented to having their contributions included in the analysis, bringing the total of participating members to 20, 19 DDEB members and myself.9 The volume of messages posted to the list rernained high until the summer, when a number of participants took holidays. Sometimes more than a week would go by with no messages being posted. By September 1996, a pattern had been established in which "quiet periods" of less than ten messages a day would be punctuated by intense exchanges comprising 20 to 40 posts a day over a period of several days. By April 1997, 1 felt that 1 had collected a broad enough sample of list practices with which to start formulating hypotheses about the practices of community and performances of gender. Both the participants and 1 continued to post to the DDEBRP for another two months, when a collective decision was made by the remaining members to shut the list down permanently.
Theoretical Framework Bodv Matters Earlier I noted that popular as weil as some academic accounts of cyberspace and on-he cornmunity are predicated on the absence of the matenal body. Indeed, the term cyberspace was coined by science fiction/cyberpunk writer William Gibson (1984;
1will discuss my choice to hclude myself as a member of the DDEBRP community in Cbpter 2. 1986; 1988). In his fictional cyberspaces, characters can "jack in" to their cornputers, rende~gthe biological body obsolete, a worthless piece of "matn.In this section, 1 will draw upon a collection of poststructuralist and ferninist notions to argue that such a position is untenable, while at the same time assembling a framework with which to pursue research into identity and community in the realm of the virtual. To celebrate the body's supposed absence in cyberspace is to understand it as a form of vesse1 that "in real lifen (IRL, the commonly used acronym in computer- mediateci communicauonj necessariiy nouses yet restncts an essentid seif. The rnind/body binary, however, is far older than cyberpunk, dating back to the Greek philosophers. Plant (1997), for example, quotes Socrates as stating that it seems that so long as we are alive, we shall continue closest to knowledge if we avoid as much as we can ail contact with the body, except when they are absolutely necessary; and instead of allowing ourselves to becorne infected with its nature, purify ourselves from it until God himself gives us deliverance. (p. 178)
Socrates envisioned the purification process as an exclusively male preoccupation- women, it seemed, did not have souls and were nature incarnate. The desire for freedom fiom the body is thus a masculine quest that involves at some level a desire for freedom from the ferninine. It is also a quest that it is doomed to failure. Evan Gibson's cyberspaces are populated with both male and female characters who continue to act as if they had bodies, engaging in heteronormative sexual encounten that would not seem out of place in either a Playboy faniasy letter or a Jackie Collins novel.1° The 1999 summer blockbuster film, nie Mat&, also about disembodiment, is pervaded by similar gender noms. According to the character hown as "the Oracle", the destiny of the male hero, Neo, is to be "The Onen who saves humanity from the machinic creators of the enslaving Wtual world known as the Ma&, while that of Tnnity, the kickass heroine of the resistance who serves as Neo's guide and comrade in arms, is simply to faII in love with The One. As Butler (1990) puts it, "the ontological
'OBalçuno (1996) offers the example of the main character of Neummancer, Case, recalling sex with the main female character, Moiiy , in tenns of "their mutual gnint of unity when he'd entered her", as weii as the sensation of Molly tt3asingly fondling her breast wMe he was "jacked"into her body (p. 129). distinction between sou1 (consciousness, mind) and body invariably supports relations of political and psychic subordination and hierarchy " (p. 12). Foucault takes the mind/body division and turns it on its head, arguing that "the soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body" (p. 30). Thus, the reason that nature cmot successhilly be given the slip has to do with the "nature" of the body itself. According to Haraway, understanding the body as a "biological" entity is to fail to recognize that "biology is not the body itself but a aiscourse.. .a logos [which] is iiteraiiy the gathering into knowiedge" (quoted in Peniey & Ross, 199 1, p. 5). The key concept in this quotation is discourse, much used in poststnicturalist theory but not often defined. Fairclough, (1993), following Foucault, sees it as "a practice not just of representing the world, but of signifying the world, constituting and constructing the world in meaningn( p. 64). The relationship between materiality and discourse has been the source of grûat antagonism between Marxist theorists who give supremacy to the former and so-called pst-Manrists such as Laclau and Mouffe (1987) who speak of "discursive totalities" . 1 count myself as a rnember of the latter camp, not because 1 believe that the materiai world does not exist outside of language: one can of course pick up a stone and feel it in one's hand, for example, but making meaning out of the stone- a weapon to be thrown, an object of the "natural" world to be classified, or an object of beauty to be admired-is a discursive practice/process. In other words, the physical world exists but we have no means of making sense of it other than through systems of signification, including language. Drawing on a similar understanding of discourse, Caddick (1992) descnbes bodies as discursive or textual entities generaüy, the conventionai products of particular historical circumstances.. ..Once bodies corne to be seen as a matter of coding or as texts, the relative opacity they enjoyed under modernity is circumvented. (p. 118)
The effect of this theoretical move is to inexorably weld material bodies to systems of power and knowledge (Foucault, 1972; 1980b; 1983; 1990). Neither "subservient to power or raised up against it", discourse can be seen as both "an instrument and an effect of power" as weiî as "a hindrance or point of resistance" (1990, p. 102). When aligned with power, true discourse, liberated by the nature of its form from desire and power, is incapable of recognising the will to truth which pervades it; and the will to truth, having imposai itself upon us for so long, is such that the tmth it seeks to reveal cannot fail to mask it. (Foucault, 1972, p. 2 19)
These discourses are "true" in the sense that they are involved with the production of knowledge that has the effect of being tnie. Thus we have "biological tmthsn that men are more aggressive than women because of their "warrior" or "hunter" instincts, and that women are more nurtunng and supportive than men because of their child-bearing capacity. Furthemore these
"truths" have been organized according :O what Spender (1985 ) calls the plus male / minus male binary, whereby those practices associated with femininity are compared against those associated with masculinity and found to be lacking. Cixous (198 l), one of the French feminist theorists influenced by Lacan, has written extensively about the effects of phallogocentrism and the hierarchies it creates: rntere is she ?
Ac tivitylpassivity SunIMoon Culture/Nature DaylNight FatherIMother Head/Heart In telligibldsensitive Logos/Pat hos
Form, convex, step, advance, seed, progress. Matter, concave, ground-which supports the step, receptacle.
Man
Woman For her part, Butler (1990) focuses on the "institution of a compulsory and naturalized heterosexuality' as producing the rnasculule/feminine binary: "The act of differentiating the two oppositional moments. ..results in a consolidation of each term, the respective intemal coherence of sex, gender, and desire (p. 23). She argues Uiat this coherence is achieved through genderperfomnnce, "a repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeai over time" to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being" (p. 33). For Butler, "identifying with a gender under contemporary regimes of power involves identifj6ng with a set of norms" (p. 126). Like Althusser and Foucault, Butler has been criticked on the grounds that her notion of performance fds to accord agency to subjects (see Weir, 1996). To be fair, she does acknowizdge that ihere can be "a repztition of the law which is not its consolidationn (p. 30). She also argues that this "being a man" and this "being a woman" are intemally unstable flairs. They are aiways beset by ambivalence precisely because there is a cost in every identification, the loss of some other set of identifications, the forcible approximation of a norm one never chooses, a norm which chooses us, but which we occupy, reverse, resigniQ to the extent that the norm fds to determine us completely. @p. 126-7)
Given that Butler only talks about subversive or parodic performances in terms of "the replication of heterosexual constructs in non-heterosexual hunes", specifically hgand butch/femme performances, it is unlikely that she would see feminine or masculine performances within heterosexual mesas anything but normative. It is my contention, however, that the process of identification is Iess ngid and regulatory than Butler asserts. Rather than being the product of monolithic, singular "laws"of patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality, 1 see 'rnasculinity' and 'femininity' as categories prduced by multiple discourses clustered together which operate in tandem as regimes de savoir (Foucault, 1980a). As such, they offer up prescnbed ways of acting and speakmg for male and female bodies respectively. Yet their "wiü to truth" has been undennimi by an alternative set of ferninisr discourses that emerged out of the women's movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. The result is that the category of femininity is made up of discourses that both reproduce and challenge plus male/minur male norms. Weedon (1987) divides contemporary feminism into two main strands: liberal feminism, which "aims to achieve full equality of opportunity in all spheres of Life without radically transforrning the present social and political systemn, and radical feminim, which, as the mesuggests, obviously does (p. 4). In a simüar vein, Knsteva (1986) talks about three "generations" of feminisrns. The fust two parallel Weedon's categories. Davies (1990) describes the former as focussing on "access to the male symbolic ordern while the latter is concemed with the "celebration of femaleness and of difference, separation from the male symbolic order" (p. 502). The third generation constitutes "a move towards an imagined possibility of "woman as whole," not constituted in terms of the malelfemale dualisrn (p. 502). From the view of the poststructuralist feminisms of Weedon, Kristeva and Davies, liberal and radical are The fust, systernic nature of patnarchy and its role in the production of social subjects. The second, particularly the version outlined by Knsteva, cm be dangerous: tuming "minus male" into "plus femalen still relies, to some degree, on patriarchd notions of femininity andfor on an essentialist notion of femininity based on the fernale body. Yet, Kristeva and Davies both stress the importance of these two "generations" of feminisrns as necessary stepsfstrategies of resistance in the process of transformation of contemporary sociWspatial relations. The notion of art;iculation is useful to draw attention to the contradictions and intnnsic instability of performing identity in general and feminineffeminist identities in particular. It also highlights the linguistic component of the process. Butler's reference to gender as an effect rather than the cause of " words, actions and gestures" (p. 136) suggests that gender performance is not just about ways of walking (Le. physical actions) but ways of ralking. It is not only what I do that makes me recognizable as a woman but what 1 say and how 1 say it. Hall (1986) discusses articulation as follows: It carries that sense of language-ing, of expressing, etc. But we aiso speak of an "articulated" lorry (truck): a lorry where the front (cab) and back (trailer) can, but need not necessarily, be connecteci to one another. The two parts are comected to each other, but through a specific linkage, that can be broken. An articulation is thus the form of the comection that can make a unity of two different elements, under certain conditions.. . [A] theory of articulation is both a way of understanding how ideological elements corne, under certain conditions, to cohere together into a discourse, and a way of asking how they do or do not become articulated, at specific conjunctures, to certain political subjects. (p. 53) Hall's formulation is in efiect a retooling of Althusser's theory of inrerpellation (197 1), in which the subject is "hailedn by dominant ideologies: "Experience shows that the practical telecommunication of hailings is such that they hardly ever miss their man verbal call or whistle, the one hailed always recognizes that it is really him who is being hailed" (p. 163). As Eagleton (1991) puts it, this mode1 "is a good deal too monistic, passing over the discrepant, contradictory ways in which subjects may be ideologically accosted - partiaily, wholly, or hardly at al1 - by discourses which themselves form no obvious cohesive unity" (p. 145). Tnus, discourses, both normative and oppositional, can be thought of as offering subject positions, which may or may not be taken up or refuseci in what Frow (1986) calls "the very act of producing significations" (p. 75). Holloway suggests that the same positions are articulated differently among subjects or even within the same agent subjects because people have "investments, something between an emotional commitment and a vested interest, in the relative power (satisfaction, reward, payoff) which .. . [the offered] position promises (but does not necessarily fulfil)" (quoted in De Lauretis, 1987, p. 17). After all, notes Eagleton, "there are.. . many different ways in which we can be 'hailed', and some cheery cries, whoops and whistles may strike us as more appealing than some others" (p. 145). The social subjects that are produced through this process of identification are better thought of not as coherent, stable rational selves a là Descartes but as sites of interdiscursive collision. '* Foucault makes a similar case when he refers to the body as a heterogeneous ensemble (referenced in Rothfield, 1992). If those of us with female bodies were "unitary rational being[sIn, notes Davies (1990), then "the ferninist would undo the ferninine" (p. 501). But given the multiplicity of contradictory discourses offered to us, we must "live with multiple contradictions and the contradiction between femininity and feminism is one of thesen ( p. 501). As Weir (1996) asserts, doing so is not the equivaient of disorientation and fragmentation:
" Following Butisr (1990). 1 have placed the stPndard Latin abbreviation uxd to indicate rmr in the original passage, to indicate my rejection of the universality implied in 'man'.
'' 1 am grateful to Robert Morgna for this turn of phrase. I can quite consciously believe that 1am made, not bom a woman, and 1 can expenence my gendered self as subject to change and diffusion, as ambiguous and complex, layered and conflicted, restrictive and enabling , shaped through identifications with and desires for others of various genders, while still experiencing myself in a meaningful way as a woman. (p. 122)
The amount of room that one has to resist, subvert or refuse tme discourses, it should be noted, is not evenly distributed among social groups and individuals and is also contingent of the historical moment and location. Nor can gender identification be thought of taking piace in isolation from other identities. Butler (1990) ernphasizes gender and sexuality over other identities such as race, class and ethnicity "for the simple reason that 'persans' only become inteiligible through becoming gendered in conformity with recognizable standards of gender intelligibility" (p. 16). But as a result of what has become known as "identity politicsn, feminists have learned to recognize that the category of "woman" is not a universal one and involves different sets of intertHining oppressions, and that "the person wha is disabled through one set of oppressions rnay by the same posirioning be enabled through others" (Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1992, p. 253, emphasis in the original). Sedgwick gives the example of the educated middle class woman who is expected to defer to men of the same class but would expect to be deferred to by men and women of lower classes. The same analysis can be extended to race and sexuality. If femininity is devalued in relation to masculinity, whiteness and heterosexuality are on the vaiued side of their respective binaries, and what Frankenberg (1993) says about the former can certainly be extended to the latter: "First, whiteness is a location of structural advantage, of race privilege. Second, it is a 'standpoint', a place from which white people look at ourselves, at others, and at society. Third, 'whiteness' refers to a set of cultural practices that are usuaUy unmarked and unnarned" (p. 1).
Performine Gender in Cvbempace The body's seeming "invisibilitynin cyberspace should not be taken as a logical indicator that the body is no longer performing its gender; on the contrary, it continues to sigmfy gender intelligibility, albeit linguisticdly, when it goes on lhe. Certainly, the discourses that regulate the gender performances of the body seated at the keyboard have not vanished as if by magic. Language in this sense is the linchpin that connects bodies to their on-line identities. The question that researchers need to be asking is not how the process of on-line identification works once "fieed" from the body, but how body-based identities and communities are (re)produced and transformed in cyberspace. Similarly, instead of thinking in tems of disembodiment, one needs to think in terms of remote embodiment. As Haraway (1992) has asked, "why should our bodies end at the skin, or inciude at best other beings [or things] encapsuiated by the skin" (p. 178)? The power of ICTs, then, is to extend the body, albeit without what Plant (1997) calls its "formal organization", into a different form of social space. It is for this reason that Stone (1995) advocates the use of the term prosthetic communication instead of the standard 'computer-mediated communication', the latter implying that face-to-face communication is somehow unmediated and not aff~tedby apparatuses of power/knowledge. While 1 do not believe that the body ceases to matter in cyberspace, 1 do not wish to underestimate the power of what Pile and Thrift (1995) refer to as "visual practices" which "fix the subject into the authorized map of power and meaning" (p. 45). When one is unable to get a visual "lock"on other interactants' bodies during prosthetic communication, a certain slippage between body and subject does occur, rnaking gender, to a certain degree, akin to "real life" sexuality or class, identities not so easily "fixeci" by the tyranny of the gaze. My own on-line experience and that of the research participants suggests that gender mis-recognition is cornmonplace. For example, 1 was addressed as "sir" once in the context of a mailing List argument. Similarl y, the research participants' experiences of harassmen t were directl y Linked to whether or not they were identified as females by male ICT "users". I believe my name is unique enough that males [and fernales perhaps] are not sure whether it is masculine or feminine. (Bel)
1 think the hyphenation of my last name scares [potential harassers 3 off. :-) (Drucilla)
When 1 used to participate on IRC 1 got hit on a lot when guys figured out that 1 was a female. (&gaza) I've never had a proble~with any guys - of course, the fact that my name is fairly non-gender specific may have something to do with that. (Ashl
I consider the constant pestering by online Romeos to be harrassment. I swear 1 used to get talk requests once a day while 1 had a decidely [sic] ferninine name on my account. (Hollis) What is telling about these examples of mis-recognition is that they conform to gender noms: If a biological female is not identified as such by male ICT "users", she is simply assumed to be male and treated as "one of the guys", padicularly if she is thought to behave in a manner traditiondy associated with men. In my case, my speech style in the context of a particular discussion had been labelled "aggressive". In Drucilla's case, a moral discoune positioned her as "off lirnitsn as a mhed woman. In addition to minor gender confusion, the textual environment of most prosthetic communication also facilitates virtual " drag performances" or gender role play. In fact, Multi-User Domains (MUDs) were designed specifically for this purpose, the first ones being modelled on the popular 1970's role playing game, Dungeons and Dragons (Turkle, 1995). Turkle describes MUDs as providing spaces "for anonymous social interaction in which you can play a role as close to or as far away frorn your real self as you choose" (p. 183). The foilowing quote provides an example of how interaction proceeds on a MUD: If 1log onto LambdaMOO (popular MUD) as a male character named Turk and strike up a conversation with a character named Dimitri, the setting for our conversation will be a MUD room in which a variety of other characters might be present. If I type, "Say hi, " my screen will flash, "You say hi," and the screens of the other player in the room (including Dimitri) will flash, "Turk
says 'hi. ln If 1 type "Emote whistles happily," all the players' screens will flash, "Turk whistles happily. " Or 1 cm address Dimitri alone by typing, "Whisper to Dimitri Glad to see you," and only Dimitri's screen will show, "Turk whispers 'Glad to see you.'" People's impressions of Turk will be formed by the description I will have written for him (this description will be available to ali players on comrnand), as weii as by the nature of his conversation. (p. 183)
Turkle suggests that gender-swapping aliows MUD participants to experience postmodern theones of multiple, fragmenteci identity. For example, one male MüDer who logged on as a female claimed he was able to put aside the cornpetitive masculine aspect of his personality and be more helpful and caring. Another claimed he was able to be more assertive, for "if you are assertive as a man, it is coded as 'being a bastard'. If are you assertive as a woman, it is coded as 'modem and together ' " (p. 2 19). Turklers data, however, points more to the reinforcement of gender noms than it does to their transgression: the first participant quoted has made sense of his experience through a modernist notion of a whole human being made up of two symmetrical masculine and feminine sides, one of which has become dominant through socializaîion. That men would adopt what they thought of as "feminine" behaviours when trying to pass as wornen on iine should not be surprising given that even "rai lifen transsexuds "are judged solely on their atility to sirnulate an already caricatured conception of what it is to be a proper human being. To be a proper human being is to have a proper sexn(Plant, 1997, p. 21 1). To equate "playing with a different sex"13 with perforrning a gender identity that produces an intelligible gender core is to misunderstand the project of postmodemity: For if 1were to argue that genders are performative, that would mean that 1 thought that one woke in the morning, penised the closet or some more open space [cyberspace?] for the gender of choice, donned that gender for the day, and then restored the garment to its place at night. Such a willfiti und imtrumenral subjecr, one who decides ifsgender, is clearly not its gender from the sran and fois tu realize thits existence is alreody decided & gender. Certainly, such a theory would restore a figure of a choosing subject- humanist-at the center of a project whose emphasis on construction seerns to be quite opposed to such a notion. (Buder, 1993, p. x, my italics, underline in the original)
Roleplaying aside, a number of feminist theorists who embrace discursive notions of the body have argued that ICTs do rewrite boundaries, pariicularly those that distinguish technology from nature, human fiom animai, and human from machine: It is not clear who makes and who is made in the relation between human and machine.. .. In so far as we how ourselves in both formal discourse (for example, biology) and in daily practice (for exarnple, the homework economy in the integrated circuit), we find ourselves to be cyborgs, hybrids, mosaics, chimeras. Biological organisms have becorne biotic systems, cornmunications devices like others. There is no fundamental, ontologicai separation in our
l3 1 have borrowed this phrasing hmthe titk of a mord by an EngIkh band cded the Au Pairs. forma1 knowledge of machine and organism, of technical and organic. (Haraway, 1992, p. 177-178)
If Neuromancer is the point of ongin for cybenpace, "The Cyborg Manifestot' , from which the above quotation is taken, is the contingentfounduhofl of cyberfminism. With specific reference to both ICTs and biotechnologies, Haraway claims that both "are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies. These tools embody and enforce new social relations for women world-widen (p. 164). The image of the cyborg suggests "a way out of the maze of aualisms in which we have explaineci our bociies and our roois ro ourselves. This is the drearn not of a common language, but of a powefil infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist speaiung in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the supersavers of the new right" (p. 181). While 1 find the concept of the cyborg intriguing, like the drearn of common language, this "strong formt' of cyberferninism, to paraphrase the Nimana song, smells like utopic drearning, which Haraway openly admits.I5 In other words, it seems to ascribe some type of magical power or agency to technology which allows gender noms to be ovemdden. Stone (1995) has also embraced the cyborg and its disruptive potential: The cyborg, the multiple personality , the technosocial subject, [novelist] Gibson's cyberspace cowboy aU suggest a radical rewriting, in the technosocial space.. . of the bounded individual as the standard social unit and validated social actant .(p. 43)
Stone differs from Haraway and Gibson in that she is interested in rewriting heteronormative boundaries, clairning that "in cyberspace, the transgendered body is the natural body" (p. 181). 1 was unable to fmd any empirical evidence of such radical rewritings in her work, however. The one deiailed case study she discusses is of a male psychiatrist, Sanford Lewin, who "masqueraded" as a disabled wornan for years untii he was "outedn. In 1982, according to Stone, Lewin opened up a Cornpuserve account under the name of "Julie Graham". JuLie introduced herself on the newsgroups as a
l4 I have borrowed îhis term hmthe title of an article by Judith Butler (1992) to leinforce Haraway's argument against the desire for origins.
" Hv~wny&tes that her 'cyborg mnnifr?htomis 'an effort to contribute to wiaiist-feminist culhire and theory in a poshodernist non-naturalist mode mJ in the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender" (p. 150). neuropsychologist who had been severely disabled and disfigured as a result of a car accident caused by a dm& driver. Within months she had developed a legion of Net fnends, even starting up a support/discussion group for women. Suspicions began to fom once Julie claimed to have met a police officer named John at a campaign against drinking and driving and married him &ter a whirlwind courtship. Stone writes: It was the other disabled women on-line who pegged her first. They knew the real difficulties- personal and interpersonal- of being disabled.. .. In particular, they knew the exquisite problems of negotiating fnendships, not to mention love reationships in close quarters with ihe "normally" ablzd. in Lhat coniext, Julie's relationship with the unfailing caring John was sirnply impossible. John was a Stepford husband. (p. 75)
Lewin was familiar with a powerful discourse associated with femininity that Davies (1992) calis the romantic story line, but he was unable to imagine its articulation at the intersection of lived femininity and ability. In other words, he deployed the romantic story line but had no Liveû experience as a disabled women of its "rd" effects. This case is an example of what Britzman (1995) refers to as "slips that show and tellt'. That the Julie garment took so long to unravel is attributable the extraordinary lengths the Lewin went to persuade his Net friends that he was the "rd" item. For example, he sent postcards ffom Julie when he went on vacation and was able to provide detailed medical and psychological advice to her fnends. Of equal significance was the investment in Julie by those who had befriended her. Like Agent Fox Mulder, they wanted to believe? In Qing to explain the relationship between Julie and Lewin, Stone suggests that "Julie" was a persona who had broken away from the latter's control: His responses had long since ceased to be a masquerade; with the help of the on-line mode and a certain amount of textual prosthetics, he was in the process of becorning Julie. She no longer simply cankd out his wishes at the keyboard, she had her own emergent personality, her own ideas, her own directions. (p. 76)
Aside from being purely speculative, claiming that Julie was a "persona" of a heterosexual male is not the same as saying that she was a cyborg or that she radically
" Muider has a poster on his office wdi which has the words '1 want to believe" mdrr an image of a WO. rewrote genderfheteronormative boundaries. If anything, the story lines that Julie took up were highly normative. In light of the above discussion, 1 accept cyberfeminist claims that the body and the machine are combined in novel ways in the context of prosthetic communication, and this boundary transgression has the potential to change existing normative social relations. As Sofia (1995) argues, "the ability to represent oneself- if only virtually- as another End of body may be liberatory for those who have been traditionaüy defined only as ferninine and natd bodies" (p. 1%). She gives the example of the Ausualian cyberfeminist art collective VNS Matrix who, as arnorphous viruses, invade and infiltrate "Big Daddy Mainfiame". Yet, their work aiso acknowledges the centrality of the feminine body to the feminist cyborg project with their slogan, "the clitoris is the direct fine to the matrixn (quoted in Plant, 1997, p. 59). Similarly, Sofia would seem to want to hang onto the ferninine body, as indicated by her remark, "If 'technology' can go over to the side of the body, it can also go over to the feminine side" (p. 158). 1 therefore use the term 'cyborg' advisedly to signal an dignment with a weak version of cyberfeminism which challenges gender noms through the desire for a space of Our own, in all its variations and permeations, depending on race, class and sexual orientation. As Probyn (1993) argues, "being Whwomen is not natural, is not a given; in fact, in our culture, it is ideologicalIy produced as strange, as lacking something @ke a male referent) " (p. 33, emphasis in the original). When Lee and 1 suggested in our joint conference paper that the DDEB members were cyborgs, they rejected the label out of hand, making it abundantly clear that, contra Haraway (1992),they would rather be goddesses than cyborgs. " Given the representations of cyborgs in popular culture as muscle-bound, robotic men-Arnold Schwarzeneggar in neTeminaïor films and the "Borgn of the television senes Star Trek: The Nert ~ener~rion"to name but two examples- they felt that the term stripped away not only their humanity but their fernininity as weii. To suggest that an endunng
" The nnal heof "The Cyborg Manifestomis "I'd rather be a cyborg than a goddrss", p. 18 1.
'' The Borg, an alien humdmachinic race, were never explicitiy identifid as male but aU the actors who pIayed these "villiansmwere male. However, in the most recent Star Trek series, Vquger* has a main character who is a sexy, shapely blonde woman. attachment to the female body is somehow anachronistic in cyberspace is to discount the historical stmggle that women have waged against being positioned as "minus malen. As 1 have suggested earlier, there is no "universal" experience of being female or of patriarchal deference and subordination. The research participants shared attachments to a particular set of white, middle class, heterosexual fernininities. Positioned as they were, they were enabled more than they were disabled in the contemporary sociai order. Nonetheless, they stiii expenenced the "shock of recognition of being gendered in and amongst wornen" (Probyn, 1993, p. 55) when the announcement of the formation of the DDEBs flashed up ont0 their screens. As female X-Files fans, they knew only too weil the denigration that could be expected for expressing admiration for an actor in a public fan forum. They dso recognized the pleusures that can go dong with being gendered among women. If the DDEBs were safe havens from the pain engendered by performing, or having to perform, a particular femininity, they were also spaces in which to collectively enjoy the same performances.
Communitv as Pmbl~matiaue Not surprisingly, conceptualiung the process of gender identification as a perfomance/articulation has implications for the formation of community, "virtuaiwor "real". If there is no coherent, unified self, then what can be made of collective categories such as "women", "the worbg class" and "nation"? Again, the "substance" of these categories is imagined (Anderson, 1983). To quote Laclau (1983,) , "no sociai linkage cm be constituted except as an overdetermination of differences" (p. 44). Yet the yeaming for membership and belonging is extremely powerfil one: Community is an understandable dream, expressing a desire for selves that are transparent to one another, relationships of mutual identification, social closeness and cornfort. The dream is understandable, but politically problematic .. . because those motivated by it wiU tend to suppress differences among themselves or implicitly to exclude from the politicai groups persons with whom they do not idenûfy. (Young, 1990, p. 300)
Rheingold (1993b) links on-iine communities to this dream when he defines them as "social aggregations that emerge hmthe Net when enough people carry on those public [and privatelL9discussions long enough, with sufficient feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in [email protected]). What he neglects to mention are the politics of exclusion and containment of difference that are, as Young suggests, an inevitable by-product of such a dream. Indeed, Singer (1991) argues that the function of communal formations "has largely been that of managing, consolidating, or ovemding the dissembhg effects of a mnregulated interplay of ciifferences" (p. 124). In other words, creating a goup that uses the pronouns "weluslourlours", whether it be residents of a condominium complex or cititens of a nation, means establishing sets of practices that set out to create conformity and contain difference. In the case of the former, it may involve des ranging fiorn the colour of drapes permitted to prohibitions of children and pets. Nation building involves a complex of legal and mord requirements and obligations. Hence, new immigrants to this country are encowged to leam not only English or French but "Canadian"or "Qu6becoisn ways of doing things. In the context of my case study, the name David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade overtly signals that membership involves an adherencdaiiegiance to a ferninine heterosexual identity. While naming the iists as such was intended to exclude male fans and celebrate female desire, it also had the effect of excluding female fans of the series who may have wanted to join a womensnly List but identified as 1e~bia.n.~~ To reduce community to mere regdation acd assimilation, though, is to discount both the "shock" and "pleasure"of recognition that produce the etof being part of a coherent whole. Willis (1990) gesnires towards a non-essentialist but more positive notion of community. He describes protu-cornuniries as "emergent and fissiparous" formations beginning fiorn contingency, fkom fun, from shared desires, from decentred overlaps, from accidents. They form fiom and out of the unplanned and unorganized precipitations and spontaneous patterns of shared symbolic work and creativity. (p. 141)
I9 1 wili discuis the public/pnvate binary when looking at the spaciai practices of the Intemet in Chapter 2.
After the fonnation of the DDEBs, the Gillian And- Estrogen Brigade (GAEB) was set up as a safe space exclusively for Iesbian and bisedwomen. Their website is
Communitv and S~ace The process of creating and maintaining provisional communities is not only a social practice but a spatial practice as well. AU social relations, according to Massey (1994) exist necessarily Ni space (Le. in a locational relation to other social phenornena) and across space. And it is the vast complexity of the interlocking and articulating nets of social relations which is social space. Given that conceptualization of space, a 'place' is formed out of the particular set of social relations which interact at a particular location. And the singularity of an individual place is formed in part out of the specificity of the interactions which occur at that location (nowhere else does this precise mixture occur) and in part out of the fact that the meeting of those social relations at that particular location.. . will in tum produce new social effects. (p. 12)
Space, like the body, needs to be understood as being discursively produced through interaction and not just as a location in which interaction takes place. Moreover, we need to recognize that "the social is spatially constituted.. .. Al1 social (and indeed physicai phenomena/activities/relations have a spatial form and a relative spatial position" ( p. 265), even when that "spatial position" is virtuai. nie interstice of the social and the spatial is illustrated by the historicd demarcation between public space, which is supposed to be for dl but in fact has traditionally been the space of men, and the private space of women. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the publicfprivate binary is not a fixed single line, and that these categories are neither homogeneous nor mutuaily exclusive. As Valverde and Weir (1988) put it, "the publiclprivate distinction operates as a complex regdatory strategy organizing multiple 'realms' which in practice do not remain separate" (p. 32). But, like ail binaries produced by true discourses, that of the publiclpnvate has had and continues to have "real" effects on those relegated to the realm of the private. Lies of Inauiry Foilowing Gillespie (1995), my dissertation is an ethnographie investigation, intended to "greet cultural theory with empirical questions" (p. 1). The questions that "greet"the theory outlined in the previous sections are as follows. Firstiy, under what conditions have women dreamed of creating comrnunities of their own and under what conditions have they created and maintained such communities? What role has technology in general and ICTs in pareicular played in realizing this hm?How is the dream of a women-oniy on-fine community aniculated by members of the research list? What types of communal practices are regularly engaged in by the majority of DDEBRP members, and in what ways do they create the effect of achieving a coherent whole? In perforrning femininities in a women-only space, which discourses are drawn on? To what extent are (heter0)normative discourses of femininity articulated? To what extent are those of feminisrn which challenge gender noms articulated? Are there any contradictions? In what ways are these communal practices exclusionary or lead to the containment of difference? Based on research conducted over several years, 1 advance the following claims. Since the Middle Ages, despite women's containment and isolation in the household and domestic sphere, Northern European and North American women have always found ways in which to gather and form communities of their own, usually surrepti tiously . The spaces produced cm be understood as heterotopic spaces (Foucault, 1986) which blur the division between public and private. Moreover, technologies ranging from the industrial loom to the Intemet have enabled the formation of such spaces, of which the DDEBs and the DDEBRP are examples. To create a fan community, members of the latter produced "femininen readings of X-Files episodes as weii as detailed critiques. They also directeci their gazes at the bodies of male and femaie celebrities, positioning the former as objects of desire and identifying with the latter as objects of the male gaze. To create and mzintain a community based on friendship, DDEBRP members shared personai experiences as well as sought and offered advice, solidanty and support in deahg with a variety of personal problems and pleasures. Finally, they engaged in a range of posting practices that emphasized politeness and a "superiorncommand of English. AU these practices involved the performances of a range of white, rniddle class, heterosexual fernininities, both normative and feminist. Yet the same practices that produced such a powemil sense of commonality among the members also served to lave out some members at different times. While a few admitted as much to me in "pnvaten email communications, generaiiy they remained silent. Silence was thus another overarching practice integral to the process of creating and maintainhg the DDEBRP cornmunity.
Cha~terOutline 1 wiil present the study that led to these conclusion in the following sequence: Cha~ter2: Analvtical Fictions and Virtud Geoeraphies This chapter will describe my approach, relationship to the participants and the issues raised in conducting ethnographie research in a virtual "field".
Cha~ter3: From a Room to a Cvbermace of Our Own To make sense of the use of ICTs by women to create their own on-line communities, I begin my investigation by providing a geneaiogy of the gendering of social space, a spafial pracfice (Lefebvre, 199 1; Massey , 1994) that dates back to the Greek city States. Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has mainly served to reinforce the established division between public and private space, the shift away from the household to the factory as the centre of production reconstituting the home as the space of women. Yet technology is dso a "dirtyn power (Hartley, 1992b), punching holes in this same division by enabling women to create spaces of their own within the "public" spaces of the factory, the office and, most recently, cyberspace. These spaces, whether "realwor "virtual" , are what Foucault (1986) would cal1 heterotopia. That is, they are "counter-sites... in which the real sites ...are simultaneously represented, contested, and invertedn (p. 24, first set of eilipsis mine). 1 then focus on the social construction of cyberspace, the formation of the DDEBs, and the ways in which they function as heterotopic sites to disturb the publidprivate binary .
Cha~ter4: Stories for Girls This chapter is the first of two chapters whirh attempt to analyse the practices of the DDEBRP rnembers which involved creating and maintaining an exclusively female X-Files fan community. As the DDEBs were originally fomed for this purpose, it shouid not corne as a surprise that a sizeabie portion of DDEBRP interaction involved the series. Here 1 focus on the performance of femininities, both normative and feminist, in the context of making meaning out of The X- Files, both in the primary texts (the individuai episodes) and secondary texts (those which emerge about the show and its lead actors). Drawing upon Ienkins (1993), 1 argue that DDEBRP mernbers deployed paradigmafic reading strategies to gain shared pleasures from texts produced predominantly by men for men, although passed off as "gender neutral". Of these strategies, the data revealed two frequentiy used by the DDEBRP members-"identification" with the characters and the reading of romantic story lines into the existing texts. 1 also consider the communal practice of reading the primary texts critically and the collective narratives produced as a result.
Chaoter 5: The Gaze of the Cvbor~s In this chapter 1 focus on the communal fan practices involved in the consumption of images of celebrities in general and the lead actors of nie X- Files in particular. Reworking the notion of the gaze from psychoanalytic feminist film theory, 1 argue that the act of looking at images is a social pracfice in which normative discourses of masculinity and fernininity can be both taken up and resisted. I then discuss the processes at work when the DDEBRP memben directed theîr cyborg gaze at the bodies on display on television, in magazines, and on the Internet. Specifically, 1 discuss the ways in which images of the "new menn who covet the gaze get constructed as objects of desire and I look at how this heterosexual female desire is encoded. Discussions on the appearance and desirability of female actresses, on the other hand, involved identification by drawing upon regulatory discourses of fernininity and fashion to "judge" whether the actress being scmtinized measured up to those norms.
Cha~ter6: An Electronic K@eekhtsc~ This chapier çhifts the focus hmthe communal practices apific io building an exclusively femaie fan community to the those involved in the creation and maintenance of a space in which members could share life expenences in order to establish personal connections and fnendships. In articulating a normative ferninine discourse of "sharing and caring " , members sought and offered advice on a range of topics and supported one another through positive reinforcement, whether to celebrate good news such as getting a new job or to commiserate in times of stress or distress. Not surprisingly, the romantic story line and the norms of fernale beauty, discourses articulateci in the context of discussion of the X-Files and its stars, resurfaced in the context of discussing personal pain and pleasures, with members both taking up and refusing them.
Cha~ter7: Good Mamers. GdGrammar. and Silence In this final chapter analysing list interaction , I focus on three sets of practices that cut across the other practices describeci in the previous chapters. Drawing on feminist sociolinguistic literature on politeness, 1 examine the ways in which members avoided imposing on others and tried to make others feel validated and liked, by drawing on discourses imbricated with class and gender. 1 aiso examine the ways in which members displayed their linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1977) through not only using language accurately and effectively but also playing with language. Finaüy 1 try to make sense of the silences on the list , both momentary and extended in the case of the "lurkersn, Net jargon for those who rarely post messages. Although their meaning cannot be fixed, the practices of silence often involved marpinalization and exclusion that arose when some members either were not able to or refused to engage in the practices valued by the majority .
Cha~ter8: Towards an Em~iricaIlv-GroundedCyberfeminism After pulling together the issues mised by my investigation, 1 look at the implications of my research in extending the physical space of the university classrwm with the use of elecwnic mailing iists. I ais0 look at the possibilities for a grounded cyberferninism that emerge out of my research. That is, 1 advocate conducting empirical research on prosthetic communication grounded in a cyberferninism that challenges binary logic but stiil recognizes the effects of such a logic.
Putthg It AU Together What kinds of larger claims can be made about cyberspace, and the processes of gender identification and community making based on my local knowledge production? First of aU, cyberspace is not the "wild west" or utopic cluster of disernbodied zones free of gender and class that it is di too ofien made out to be. The normative discourses that produce public fan fora are for the most part masculine discourses that put female fans in the position of either taking up those discourses, which many undoubtedly do, at least some of the time, or risk being ridiculed or harasseci for producing "ferninine" readings of television texts and objectimg the body of the male celebrity. In forming their own private cyberspaces, female fans in particular and female ICT users in general are acknowledging that gender does matter in cyberspace and are looking for a "safen space in which they can perform both the pleasures and pain of a range of white, middle class, heterosexual femininities. The DDEBRP data detaiis the various ways in which normative and feminist discourses of femininity are pedormed. The consistency of these on-line performances demonstrates that just as most gendered bodies have a corporeal style an intelligible gender cor- most technosocial subjects or cyborgs have a -al style that over time wiii reproduce that same core, despite efforts made to obscure it or play with it. My study of the gender performances on the DDEBRP reveals strong investments in "proper" language use and clarity and clevemess of expression. In fact, 1 would argue that given the textual context of contemporary cyberspace, class becomes simüar to "red life" gender in that one's linguistic resources are readily exposed to visual scrutiny. The data also enables me to make claims about on-line community. The formation of the DDEBs was motivated by the same desire that Western women have had to create and mainiain different forms of womm-only communities since at iras&as far back as the Middle Ages: not only to resist exclusion and marginalization in public space but to develop Fnendships and support networks. ICTs enable such women-only communities to fom among women who would not necessarily have the oppomuiity to meet "in reai life". The efforts to establish commonalities, offer and seek advice and support, positions the DDEBRP as a community based on the values of "sharing and caring". In identifying a number of practices engaged in on the DDEBRP by a majority of members on a regular bais, 1 argue that on-line communities do not just "happenn because someone sets up a list or subscnbes to an existing list. That the space in which the comrnunity members "rneet" is virtual Merhighlights the process of community making, one whicb may not initially be as obvious in a "rdnspace. That the data also reveals silences and the occasional voices of exclusion serves as a reminder that on-line community must not be posed as an alternative to "rd" community. Nor can the women-only on-line community be the solution to the problem of mixeci on-line community. The "insider/outsidermbinary is what makes for the problématique of community, for all communities, for a range of reasons, put bounda,ries around themselves, excluding those on the outside as weli as those on the inside. Cùapter 2 AnaIytical Fictions and Virtual Geographies
Cultural studies.. .has always been rather od hoc in its approach to method: a linle historiography here, a Little ethnography there, a dose of hermeneutics, and a twist of some flavour of theory. (Steme, 1999, p. 264)
In acknowledging that the above quoted statement is " flipn, Steme also makes it clear that his statement is not intended as a cnticism. On the contfary, he sees cultural studies' "experirnentai" and eclectic approach as one of its strongest suits (p. 264). " Rigidified and formaiized methodn, he argues, " lirnits the possible configurations of context and the range of possible theoretical and political moves a writer can make. (p. 265). Minus the hermeneutics, the opening quotation is not an inaccurate description of my project: In Chapter 3, 1 rely on a method similar to historiograph y, narnel y genealogy , which Foucault (1980b) describes as "the union of erudite knowledge and local memones which allows us to establish a historical knowledge of struggles and to make use of this knowledge tactically todayn (p. 83). Thus 1 look through historical sources for glimrners of the spaces that women created in between the public and the private in order to rnake sense of women-only on-line communities like the DDEBs. The findings presented in Chapters 4 to 7 are the product of data collection from the DDEBRP, supplemented with data from the preliminary survey. My choice to primarily use ethnographie methods, however, was not as much an act of bricolage, as favoured by Steme, as it was in keeping with a 20-year-old "traditionn of cultural studies research on television audiences (see Ang , 1989; Buckingham, 1993a; Gillespie, 1995). Afler ail, it was a shared interest in a television text that brought the DDEB members together and drew me to this project. In this chapter, 1 will first review the advantages of this approach for engaging in "responsible" knowledge production and then take an in-depth look at the ways in which I have tried to take account of my own knowledge production. In the final section, 1 will turn to the implications of doing ethnography in a virtual context. Ethnom~hvas Rmonsible Knowledge Production A history of television research, one which began alrnost at the sarne time as its object of study became commonplace in middle class Amrrican homes, reveals how different approaches to television produced different results. Most assume objectivity and that the resulting knowledge is "discoveredn as opposed to produced. According to Haraway (1988), "knowledge from the point of view of the unmarked is tmly fantastic, distorted, and irrationaln (p. 587). Sucn "irrationality " pervades the dominant "direct effects" television research paradigm, primarily used by cognitive psychologists, who "have attempted to identify the vanous ways in which a violent stimulus would produce an aggressive response" (Buckingham, 1993a, p. 1 1). As early as 1956, responses to two popular cartoons of the day, Woody Woodpecker and Little Red Hen, were compared, the conclusion being that the children who watched the former behaved more aggressively that those who had watched the latter (Lacey, 1993, Cl). Bandera's 1963 and 1965 "Bobo doil" studies were some of the fust of this kind, "show[ing] that children would imitate aggressive acts they saw on simulated television programs (Culiingford, 1984, p. 76). Similar types of research resulted in what is known in the field as the theory of patterning and the closely related theory of triggering, in which individuals "exposed to media violence are thereby influence- to act violently" but not in an imitative manner (Berkowitz, 1974, II, p. 3). A variation, quantitative rather than cognitive, is content analysis, in which violent televisual acts are talied up and the show is given a violence rating. According to Lacey (1993), over three thousand studies in both veins have been &ed out to date, the majority linking the viewing of violence to aggressive behaviour (p. Cl). The reasons for hypothesizing a link between viewing and violence in the fkt place, however, had less to do with the content of television programrning @y today's standards, early television shows could hardly be thought of as violent), or the behaviour of chiidren who watched these shows, and more to do than what Drotner (1992) refers to as "media panicsn. She argues that public fears around the proliferations of various forms of media have existed since the 1870s, when the "penny press" was singled out as a source of moral degeneration of "urban adolescents beyond adult educational authority" (p. 47). Indeed, the collection Snrdies in Moral Regularion (Valverde, 1994) has a front cover illustration dating from 1922, although assumed to be Victorian in origin, entitled "The Two Paths: What wiU the Girl Becorne?"On the left ( i.e. wrong) side is the drawing of flapper girl with the caption "At 13, Bad Literature. " On the right side we see a modestly dresseci 13-year-old, head bowed reading the bible with the caption "study and obedience." Later, cinerna berne the pylic de jour, and behavhxai scientists begm looking into its possible effects on "public morals": "Therefore Nms touching peoples' sex life were specifically in focus. Films criticizing the church, royal families and other authorities were examined in this respect too" (Berkowitz, 1974, II, p. 1). Although the 1925 report put out by the National Council of Public Morals in Bntain concluded that "the growing levels of youth crimes could not be blamed on the cinema" (Drotner, 1992), public outcnes against the "decadence" and "subversiveness" of film did not abate and research continuai to be funded. "Direct effectsn research, then, cannot be understood in isolation from the public crusade against television violence, a "media panic" of our times .*' The "objectivity" of the dominant television research paradigms is further underinineci when one looks at researchers' "logic of discoveryw, in which violence and aggressive behaviour are understood to be "codes.. .waiting only to be read" by the "master decoden" (Haraway, 1988, p. 593). In fact, the categones of 'violence', 'viewer' and 'child' are produced in the course of the research. For example, the first is constituted as a homogeneous category comprising acts of physical aggression, and ofien no distinction is made between cartoon violence of, for example, Coyote and Roud Runner and the graphic "real"violence of a film like Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. I remember the "panic" that emerged in the 1970s about violence in the Hanna Barbara-produced cartoons that 1 had grown up watching every Saturday rnoming on CBS: Shauun. Aquaman and my favourite show about space heroes who
?' The Intemet has recently bacome the latest fonn of media to invohe panic, not kause of violence but because of its ded"addictive" nature. 1even heard mention on the radio that a study had been conductexi which "proved"that "Intemet addiction" was a rdphenornenon. had a girl character who "kicked ass" with the best of the boys long before the creators of the video queen Laura Croff were even bom, were duly replaced by the likes of The Cure Bears! What also gets excluded are the motivations and circumstances surrounding such acts as weli as other types of violence that could be classifiai as " institutional" or " psychological" (Buckingham, 1993a, p. 12). Similarly, the viewers are positioned as passive victims, who sit, eyes glued to the tube, critically accepting everything offered to them at face value. Such viewers are not unlike the working class "dupesn of bourgeois ideology, favoured by certain schools of hfaism. Finally, wh research assumes certain Victonan beliefs about the "punty" and innocence of children, who require adult protection from temptation and corruption (Buckingham, l993a). Drotner sees this ideology of childhood as tied into that of culture wherein television is placed in opposition to "high" cultural forms and thus is positioned as having the potential to "impede" children's proper cultural and by extension mental development. What is being sought, then, is not an answer as to whether television affects children but "proof" of its negative effects (Buckingham, p. 10). In the 1970s, the "uses and gratifications" paradigm emerged out of sociology, which, as Katz described it, "asks not what the media do to people, but what people do with the media" (quoted in LuU, 1990, p. 29). This type of research recognizes viewing as a heterogenous activity which may be planned or spontaneous. At times it may involve a high level of attention and at others, it may serve simply as a background for another activity. Furthemore, viewing does not necessarily indicate interest or desire. Morley (1988) quotes Bausinger as saying that in certain cases, "pushing the button doesn' t signiQ '1 would like to watch this' but rather '1 would like to see and hear nothing' " (p. 29). Nonetheless, the viewer is assumed to be a willful, rational individual, whose choices are based on psychological desires and needs. For example, in one of Lull' s early studies, he reports that " television cm provoke a vicarious, evanescent fantasy world which serves for some, the psychological purpose of an alternate reality" (p. 39). To assume that viewers equate televisual and social expenence is to say the least patronizing, especiaiîy since Luil's examples ali concem female viewers. Moreover, the data produced by the favoured method of participant observation tends to be merely descriptive and, to quote Buckingham (1993b) "incapable of explaining the phenornena it seeks to identify " (p. 278). Around the same time, theorists from the Centre for Conternporary Cultural Studies, heavily influenced by Nm theory, reconceptualized the television show as a "texttlwhichmobilizes sets of discourses which offer subject positions to its viewers. What they mostly ended up producing, however, were textual analyses in which the 'subject' produced by the text and the 'viewer' were one and the same. Their audiences were what Hartiq caiis Nivisible~ciiwzs,in that "thtxe is no 'actuai' audience that Iies beyond its production as a category" (Hartley, 1992a p. 105). Indeed, any analysis that focuses on the television text and ignores "the concrete, contextualized practices at the intersection between socially produced images and socially positioned people" (Fiske, 1987, p. 62) is unlikely to recognize the "WUto truth" that pervades it. Recent academic articles on The X-Files are a case in point. For example, Kingwell (1996) contends that the themes of govemment conspiracy and generalized social paranoia have a particular resonance for the predominantly "Generation xWnaudience: "The X-Files" has crystallized a particular form of end-tirne anxiety. It provides a focus for aimiess expectation of visitation and dismist of govemment- standard features of miUenniaI un-ven as it draws an audience from a young and weU-educated rninority who feel themselves generally out of step with rnainstream culture.. .. The uncertainty, even paranoia, many of them feel is exactiy mirrored in the subtie contours of "The X-Files." In short: X mets X. (p. 258)
Similady, Lavery et a1.(1996) inform their readers that many fans identity with Mulder's edict that "the tnith is out there" (the words that appear in the last frame of the opening credits for the majority of episodes), linking themes of alien abduction to "the Zeitgeist": Tales of &en abduction are u~vaüedin conternporary Amenca for their ability to combine the most temfjmg aspects of paranormal experience with various cultural elements: science fiction; New Ag€ obsessions with channeling , reincarnation, n&eath experiences, and spintual advancement; Byzantine
A trrm coined by Canacüan author Douglas Coupland (1991). It =fers to the demographic grouping of people in their 20s, whose outlook and empIoyment prospects are in contrast to those of the so-called " Baby Boomers" who preceded them. As "GenX'ers" turn 30, the tenn "GenerationY" is koming more cornmon to describe the up and coming lot of young adults. govemment conspiracy stories, which include secret medical experiments upon unsuspecting citizens; and concems with sexual abuse and genetic engineering. In the past fifteen years, public interest in UFOs has transformed itself into a fascination with alien abduction, a shift in focus that intensely penonaiizes extraterrestrial encounter, bringing them down from the skies right into the bedroom. @p. 7-8)
Even Kellner (1999) , an established media scholar, begins his article on the postmodem aesthetics of the series noting that "its excursions into the occult, paranormai. and supernaturd have touched a responsive chord in an era when belief in the fantastic, aliens, and government conspiracies is accelerating" (p. 16 1). Thus, dl three quotations consmct a variation of a youngish, cynical, New Age, paranoid viewer with a penchant for alien abduction, the paranormal and government conspiracy- in other words, a mirror image of Fox Mulder (although probably not as good looking). However, as the following comment by this DDEBRP member suggests, the viewers of the series are a heterogenous group who, to some degree, consmct Fox Mulder in their own image: From Erin: Itmalways amazed at how many very conservative (politically speaking) people like the X-Files. Maybe it's another case of assuming 'we like the same things, perhaps we are alike,' but 1 never would have thought the show would attract that kind of audience in droves. There has been a thread on usenet where poster after poster has declared that Fox Mulder must be a Republican. 1 just sit there, read the posts, scratch my head and wonder if I'm watching the sarne TV show as everyone else..,. My argument here is that the meaning of The X-Files, or any other television show, cannot be found in the framework of its own narrative alone. Beginning with David Morley's 1980 study of television audiences in Btitain, cultural studies television research shifted away from textuai analysis alone to ethnography to get at the process of making meaning out of the text. Fiske (1987) describes viewing as "typicaiIy a process of negotiation between the text and its socialiy situated readersW(p. 64). The text is thought of as "a structurai polysemyn which has "a potential of unequal meanings, sorne of which are preferreâ over, or proffered more strongly than, othersn (p. 64). By actively takhg up the meanings that work for them viz a viz their social locations, viewers get pleasure from such texts. It is aIso important to keep in mind that viewers make meaning "under conditions which are not of their own choosing " (Buckingham, 1993b, p 14). Following Foucault (l97Z), those discourses aligned with power, in this case, that of the television producer, "exercise a sort of pressure, a power of constraint upon other forms of discourses" even if they are unable to banish them completely (p. 219). It is also important to note that viewers do not exclusively make meaning of televisions texts at the moment of viewing but also du~gthe process of talking about their viewing experiences with others. Indeed, Buckingham argues that "it is primarily through talk that the meanings and pleasures of television are defined, negoaated and circutated" (1993a, p. 266). The object of study in this type of resrarch is the oral and, of late, on-line culture " which surrounds and defines television" (p. 266). One of the reasons that 1 elected to conduct an ethnographic study following this approach is that it avoids the pitfalls of producing universal, fixed and hornogeneous categories of viewers, viewing and text. The cultural studies approach demonstrates that the alternative to "totahtion and single visionn does not have to be relativism but "partial, locatable, cnticd howledges sustainhg the possibility of webs of connections called soiidarity in politics and shared conversations in epistemology" (Haraway, 1988, p. 584).
Stakine Mv Clairns In producing my local and partial knowledge of the DDEBRP community making processes, 1 am aware that the list interaction that 1 count as my "data" is nor "unmediated" evidence of viewing and social experiences but "representations" of those experiences, constructed first by the participants' themselves when sharing hem with the other members and then by me in the analysis of the data. Indeed, Britzman (1995) refers to ethnographic texts as being "overinvested in secondhand mernories" (p. 153). It is dso inevitable that as researchers we "bring our biographies and Our subjectivities to every stage of the research process" (Cameron, Frazer, Harvey, Rampton, & Richardson, 1992, p. 5). This does not mean that we should use our participants to teli our own life story, creating what Moms (1988) calis a "narcissistically enclosed revenen (p. 208). It is imperative, however, that we find ways to avoid lapsing into the position of "the silent [observing] Other who is present in, while apparently absent from, the text" (Walkerdine, 1990, p. 173). Part of being "present" within the hme of my research was to acknowledge my desire to be a member of the community, and keeping in mind Buckingham's words about belonging to a social group as an act rather than a state, I chose to participate actively in the community making process. Consequently 1 joined and initiated discussion topics (often referred to as "threads") and did not simply "lurkn in the background, silently downloading "datan. My desire to be part of the cornmuni&-m&ng process was not just an intellectual strategy but also based on my desire to get to know a group of women with whom 1 felt 1 had something in common. As an X-Files fan, 1 was familiar with the overarching plot lines and details about the main and minor reoccumng characters. Moreover, while 1 enjoyed the show, 1 liked to tak about it critically in terrns of gaps in the plot and character development; as 1 will discuss hirther in Chapter 4, fan criticism was a key feature of list interaction. In addition, the fact that I shared a number of what Fiske (1988) calls "social alIegiancesn with the participants. Of the 19, ali self-identified in the questionnaire as white, either by using this racial category or using categories like " European-Amencan" or " Anglo- American" (two included "non- Hispanie"). Although 1 did not ask about sexual orientation, 1 thought it safe to assume that we were all heterosexual; it is unlikely that fernale X-File fans who identified as lesbian would join a list whose name, however playfully or ironicaLly, foregrounded heterosexual desire. Furthemore, as far as education can be used as a broad indicator, the participants would have to be considered middle class, having completed a minimum of two years of university. Seven had began and five completed a Master's degree. We also shared some basic socio-political views. Considenng how politically and socially conservative most North Americans tend to be, judging by the types of govemments they elect and results of opinion poils (Ontario voters being no exception), 1 was surpriseci by the questionnaire results when 1 saw that most had indicated that they were interested in politics and concerne. with environmental and social justice issues. Also, 12 identifid themselves as feminists, and three others noted that while they did not use the term, they held a number of femlliist beliefs. Here is a sample of responses to the question "Would you cali yourself a feminist? Why or why not?" : Yes, because 1 believe women should be treated as equals of men especially in terms of equal pay for jobs, equal charges for services (in most places, women have to pay more for dry cleaning, haircuts, etc), and equal protection by the law. Maybe 1 should explain the last point. 1 feel it is blatantly unfair how sexual assault and rape are treated by the courts. 1 do not believe that defense [sic] lawyers should be allowed to bring the details of a victim8s past sex life and what brand of underwear she buys into the court. It is unfair to excuse a criminal's action just because his victim wasnft a saint. 1 also feel the courts should have more Frwe= t= =zfrr=e settlclents fvz alixüny acc! ehild süssert. Ts that enough feminist rant? :) (Genava)
Yes. Rebecca West once said something to the effect of: 1 donlt know what feminism is but people cal1 me a feminist whenever 1 exhibit anything that differentiates me from a doormat or a prostitute. (tiz)
Yes. Why? It pisses people off. No, really 1 just think the only way to change things for my daughter is to speak out now. (Dani}
Absolutely. 1 am a patriarchy-despising, Goddess and God-worshipping, mass-media critiquing, occasionally moved to sobs by injustice feminist. (Mari) The legai and literary references in the first two quotations suggest an informeci liberal feminist position, whereas the latter two, although somewhat tongue in cheek with its string of adjectives, suggests a more radical eco-feminist view. Only one member overtly stated that the term 'feminist' had a negative connotation, "bringing to rnind buming bras and giving speeches". This was the response 1 had anticipated that most would give, once again my assumptions about "fangirls" getting in the way. Taken together, these "commonalities" and aiiegiances made me an "insider", conducting research in a context in which I had "some practice other than that of analyst" (Morris, 1988, p. 207), making it easier for me to initially establish a rapport with the participants. However, in other ways 1 was an "outsidern, particularly at the beginning of the project. Seveml participants told me later that they had joined the List because they wanted to keep tabs on me and the work 1 produced. They had felt betrayed by journalists who had inte~ewedthem and then produced stones that denigrated the DDEBs. At the time, 1 was also a "newbie", a term used to describe new ICT users unfamiliar with the established conventions of prosthetic communication. For example, the participants place. the word "spoilers" in the subject Iine and added enough blank Illies to fill a computer screen at the start of any message that "gave awayn plot details of an episode, since some members might not yet have seen it. 1 did not recognize this as a normative practice specific to on-line fan communities, and so deleted the blank lines when responding to posts containhg "spoilersn.It was only when it was politely pointed out that 1 had failed io abide by this convention, which was then explained, that 1 recognUed it for what it was? krowing from Bntzman (1995), it was through the pmess of mahg sense of my own practices on the DDEBRP that I was able to interpret those of the participants. In this sense, being an "outsidern had its advantages, for it is often through violations that rules become obvious. Had 1 already been proficient in the practice, I might not have so easily recognized its fùnction in creating and maintaining community . In another attempt to address power relatioiis between myself and the participants, 1 chose to include my own pmctices of community and gender performances in the analysis. Thus, some of my contributions appear in the DDEBRP data samples presented in the following chapters. Rather than refer to "the participants" or use the pronoun "theyn or "themn,1 refer instead to the "DDEBRP members," a category which includes both participants and myself. However, 1 struggled with the use of 'we', considering my views on the impossibiiity of forming a coherent whole. It also raised the issue of speaking for others in a very personai way. Numerous times, 1 caught myself "slipping upn and writing "theyn instead of "wen. When 1 went to "correctn the pronoun. I sometimes found myself reluctant to associate myself with my clairns. In other words, it was much easier to produce knowledge about the others than myself. Rather than assign pseudonyms to ensure confidentiality, 1 asked the participants to choose their own, for 1 beiieve that maintaining ownership over one's name is a discursive strategy that is linked to autonomy of "voicen. Their choices were interesting: one participant chose a great gxandmother's narne, several chose narnes of
My 'fnux pas' and the reoction to it is di- in terms of politmess behaviours in Chapter 7. 42 favourite fictional characters. "Mrs Hale", for example, was a tongue and cheek nod to the X-Files episode "Little Green Menn from the second season in which Mulder uses the name of the astronomer George E. Hale as an alias. Her choice is also ironic, for this member self-identifiai as a feminist and in a discussion about changing one's "maiden" name, emphatically stated that she had never used her husband's name in her ten years of mamiage. In addition to participating in list interaction, 1 also shared with the participants some of my interpretations of tnis interaction, by offerhg copies of conference papers and publications to anyone interested. Feedback, particularly at the beginning of the project, was not particularly positive. For example, I posted to the list the paper wntten jointly with Lee in which we connected talk that constnicted David Duchovny as an "object of desire" to a narrative of rornantic love which positions women as powerless objects of the male gaze. As Chapter 5 explains in more detail, the rnajority of the participants sco ffed at this interpretation, seeing thzmselves as the empowered spectators. My subsequent efforts to explaiddefend Our position resulted in some interesting exchanges but not in consensus. W%en I went over them a year and a half later, 1realized how far 1 had moved from Our onginai claim, which 1 now saw as premature and facile. That my views were at this point more in line with those of the participants is not to suggest that their interpretations were a "transparent" representation of experience. However, contending with them had, to paraphrase Haraway (1988, p. 583), allowed me to become answerable for what 1 had Iearned how to see, creating space for the investigation of alternative interpretations. It is "the push and pull of contradictory versions," according to Bntzrnan, which "allows one to consider the architectonics of answerability " (1995, p. 137). By the end of our year together, it seemed that the participants saw me as a responsible producer of knowledge. When 1 periodically offered members copies of my publications after the DDEBRP had been closed down, only a few participants were interested. Others, though, replied to my message by wishing me luck with " my researchn. 1 was particularly pleased when one member, who had adrnitted to being suspicious of me at the start, told me that she tnisted that my representation of the DDEB members would be fair. Sirnilarly, no one objected to having their real names included in the thesis acknowledgements. By putting my practices "on the he" in the ways described above, 1 was in the end able to develop relationships with the participants based on trust and respect. Although steps cm be taken to (re)negotiate the reseif~cherlresearchedbinary, it is important to acknowledge that it cm never be erdsed. It is the researcher who includes, excludes, mgesand manipulates the "second hand" mernories in order to cunstnict a coherent narrative in which she has material and symbolic invesrrnerits. I have paid over $25,000 in tuition fees, lived on savings for two years and accumulated debt in order to produce knowledge that I hope wili be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the academy. Furthermore, producing this narrative has required intellectual t-igour and tenacity. Meeting the challenge of such an endeavour is of particular significance for those of us who have always been on the penphery of the academy and have struggled for recognition and legitimation by the centre. I worked as an ESL contract instructor for almost ten years at the same university, where the need for English language support was great but no department wanted to allot the material resources necessary to meet the needs of those students whose first language was not English. In the Women's Studies Programme where 1 have been teaching, the buk of the course offerings are delivered by female contract instmctors like myself who until recently, earned les than some of the university's Teaching Assistants. In short, although this thesis is an "analytic fiction", the product of false starts, changes in direction and the discards of many other stories sitting untold on my hard drive, it is a story that I believe is worth telling, for it off'ers a local, partial, feminist view into the workings of normative discourses that regulate the identities of many women today and the ways in which they are or are not taken up in the process of community making. McRobbie (1991) suggests that feminist " intellectuals" are often compared unfavourably to "activistsn: "Women whose work involves periods of intense privatisai labour, like writing, painting or reading, are seen as less cornmitteci [to ferninism] than those who spend the entire working day, and often more, working with other women- battered women, delinquent girls, schoolgirls or isolated housewives" (p. 68). Cenainly, choosing to undertake research, particularly with white, middle class, heterosexual women, is not the same as being a fiont heworker in the community. Nonetheless, if 1 am able to secure a place within the academy on the buis of its production, the result, 1 hope, will not sirnply be personal economic gain and security, but an opportunity to help other women critically engage with feminist theory and research, that may in turn enable them to think critically about their own expenences and those of other women who are located differently than they are.
Ethno~ra~hvon (the) Line As has been suggested above,"the ground on which ethnography is built.. .is a contestai and fictive geography" (Britzman, 1995, p. 134). When this geography is "vimial",neat distinctions between speech and text as well as data collection and analysis collapse, which has implications not only for the ways in which knowledge is produced but the types of knowledges produced. Jones (1999) aptiy describes prosthetic communication as creating "artifactual textual traces of interaction.. . instantaneously at the moment of utterance" (p. 13). Turkle (1995) makes a similar point, suggesting that "this new writing is a kind of hybrid: speech.. .frozen into artifact" (p. 183). So while one refers to "messages" being "postedmor "sent" to a list, one also refers to "discussionsnor "conversations. " While this bluning of the boundary between written and spoken foms of communication is most obvious with synchronous foms of prosthetic communication, in which words scroll up on the participants' screens as "conversations" are being typed out, electronic mailing îists can approximate IRC if a number of members are on line at the same time and the semer is fast enough to distribute the "messagesn within minutes of their being sent. Beyond the mechanics of distribution, participants of both IRC and electronic mailing lists try to approximate face-to-face interaction by using a variety of conventions, both borrowed fiom novels and scripts as weil as invented specifically for this medium of communication. The DDEBRP exchanges are replete with these "conventionst', including othographical representations of coUoquiaVinformal language ("wow", "yeahn, "yep", "1 dunno", "nah", "cornin' atcha") as weil as sounds used to express emotions ("grmr" for annoyance, "augh" for dismay, "hehehehe" and "BWWHAHAHA" for iaughter). Raising the voice was represented by CAPITALIZATION and putting *aster&* around a word or phrase. Members also attempted orthographic representations of paralinguistic cues; thus, facial expressions were represented by what are known as "glyphs" or "emoticons", the most common being "the smiley " , variations of which include :-) , :), and :D. Other common emoticons include the wink ;) and the sad face :(. Similarly, gestures and actions were written out, sometimes in the style of stage directions and usuaiiy set apart from the text by asterisks or the < > symbols (e.g. < Here's Mrs Hale zwming off to the DD photo gallery >). Moreover, members reproduced the structure of an exchange within the body of a "message", intercutting their words with those frorn previous messages in the thread. Many email programs facilitate this practice by including a 'reply' function in which the original "text" is included in the response and the name or email address of the sender of the original message added: From: Mrs Hale .... X-Files occupies an inordinate place in my life..., but surprisingly 1 donlt think about David much. ...
From: Daphne [Mrs Hale] lies!: > but surprisingly 1 dongt think about David much.
BWWWAHW!Get on t-rith you, girl! You'd drink the man for lunch every day if you could! :-1 In the first exchange to take place on the DDEBRP, Daphne modified the standard "Mrs Hale writes" included by the email program in her reply and deleted al1 but the text relevant to her retort. As a result, other members did not have to "thread"the individual messages to follow the exchange. At the same time, the messages approximated informai letters or notes. Unlike IRC, headers were automatidy included with every message, giving it the look of an office memo with "Ton, "From", "Daten and "Subject"lines. Also, members almost always included opening salutations such as "Hi theren and 'signed" their messages with their fmt name, sometimes with a closing convention such as "take care" or "talk latern. Some rnembers added what 1 cal1 "tag lines" foUowing their names. So if I made an inquiry during a "quiet" time on the Iist, 1 rnight close my message as follows: Rhiannon wondering where you' ve al1 gone. :) Some members included what are known as "signature Nes" which ranged from a formal listing of one's full name, "snail mail" address and phone number to a quotation or joke. One member, for example, used to include a quotation from W.C. Fields: " hey, who took the cork out of my lunch! ". Finally, a high "standardn of language use was adhered to, in that memben were careful to wnte in full, correct sentences, use a level of language suitable to formai written texts and use paragraph breaks appropriately.24 The hybridity of prosthetic communication means that the researcher is simultaneously engaging in participant "observation" of "remotely embodiedn subjects and a discourse analysis of their written texts, making for what Jones (1999) calls a "seductive data set" (p. 12). Certainly , it is far easier to be a " fly on the wall" in a chat room than in someone's living room. With the textual traces of utterances immediately avaiiable whenever the researcher logs into her Internet or email account, she no longer has to be "present" at the time that interaction took place or requires a large budget and chunk of time for travel to "the field". Instead the data is "collected" through downloading from an ernail account to a home computer at the push of a few buttons on a keyboard. Moreover, the tirne consuming and potentially expensive intermediary step of transcription can be eliminated. Having "instant data" is not just about convenience but effects knowledge production. On the one hand, 1 was able to collect a very large sample of interaction without an army of research assistants. There is, after all, only so much field work and transcription that one cm feasibly undertake as a doctoral student or junior scholar. One positive result was that 1 ended up with an excellent representation of the DDEBRP practices of community. 1 found, however, that it was impossible to go through the sample in its entirety with a fine toothed comb, an opportunity that the process of transcription affords the researcher (H. Moore, personal communication, October, 1998). To even access my data necessitateci the use of a qualitative software program, Q.S.R. NUDIST. As per the program's design, 1
1 will discuss language use in terms of a cornrnd "standard" in Chapter 7. 47 created a "tree" made up of three main "nodes":Once 1 had coilected a month's worth of data, 1 entered it as a sub-node of the "Time Line" node. 1 then searched these documents for all the postings by individual participants and indexed the findhgs in a correspondhg sub-node under the "Subjectn node. 1 also searched the documents for topics of discussion, using key words and subject headers from the messages to create a variety of "Topic" sub nodes. The prograrn allowed me to change the tree structure, merging, deleting and adding nodes as my ideas about the data changed. That said, while I have scrolled through the data producd by genenting nude "reports"on the cornputer screen, some of these reports were over 200 pages, and thus it is likely that a number of interesting and important sarnples remain "buried" in the database. ûver the course of the witing, 1 came across several key pieces that 1 had never seen before, which made me rethink a few of my arguments. While the researcher may have "instantn data, it is important to keep in mind that one is usually without the benefit of visual scrutiny when "coilectingnit. Kendall (1999), who had access to her participants both on line and in person, noted that "the ability to access off Line environments provides particularly useful information about the connections between on-fine and off-line interaction, but such access may not always be possible" (p. 71). The latter was the case in my study; none of the participants iived in Toronto and ody two fived in Canada, one in another city in Ontario and the other in the Maritimes. 1 did end up meeting two of the participants sociaily over the course of the project, and 1 found myself reading their DDEBRP contributions differently aftenvards, using thek corporeal performances to make sense of their vimial ones. But then 1 had to ask myself whether 1 really had a better understanding of their contributions as a result, or had 1 not just fden back on the binary logic of "real/virtuaInwhich privileges the former over the latter, or even worse, an essentialist view of identity wherein the sum of the parts quais a "whole" self. Certainly, this desire to fiii the wedge that XTs drive between the body and its remote "presence" was a powerf'ui one for the DDEB members themselves. Like many ICT "users"committed to king part of a on-line commuaity, many of the participants were interested in extending their relationships beyond the screen and so had met at least one other DDEB member whom they did not know prior to joining the Est. Some have even used their vacations to visit those that they considered to be DDEB "sisters". Developing a "rdlifen relationship is also a way to veriv if the person is who they claim to be and not another Sanford Lewin, putting on an elaborate masquerade. Deception is of course part of "rd life", but very rarely to the point of creating gender illegibility. Towards the end of our year on line together, I asked the participants how diey wouid feel if they discovered a male in the midst of their respective DDEBs: Fxom: Daphne Well, considering welve been together for years now, yes, it would sure as hell bother me if someone piped up with the fact that they're male. Not so much BECAUSE he's male, but because he kept it a secret for so long. That would be totally against what the list is for. We're based on honest communication, Daphne's reaction is not surprising, given the DDEB members' commitment to creating and maintaining a community based on honesty and trust. Drucilla felt the same way but also made it clear that on-line gender confusion was acceptable if it parailelled a "rdiife" confusion: We have a transgendered member on a list 1 am part of the "application conmittee" for. When she applied she told the "application cornmittee" that she was male, but identifies fernale. We debated for some time whether or not to tell the whole list, and for a while we didnlt, but we finally decided that even though it might freak out some people and would make the transgendered person a little uneasy, it was better to be honest about it and so with her permission ne did tell the full list.
Interestingly there were no objections, and no one got upset at having been "fooled". 1 think this may have been a special case, though, because there were legitimate reasons for her wanting privacy about her gender, and everyone understood that.
If a guy were just doing it to invade a womanspace area, or as a joke or something, then it would be reprehensible.
Given the length of the data collection pend, the "checks and balances" provided by a number of the participants' long term relationships on and off line, as well as the commitment and surequired to produce a convincing gender masquerade, it is highly improbable that there were any men masqueradhg as women on the DDEBRP. Had 1 discovered one, I would have discarded that person's contributions because the object of my study is not gender role play by a "willful, instrumental subject" (a fascinating project in itself), but performances by those who have openly put their material investments in a particu1a.r set of femininities on the line in the process of constructing a cyberspace of their own.
Data Presentation Since list interaction was produced through the exchange of email messages, 1 have chosen to represent it as such in the data sarnples that 1 present. However, I have made some modifications to savz space and avoid repztition. First, I have inchded the "From: " line from the message headers but deleted the "To: ", "Datenand "Subject" Lines. In instances where 1 have identified the interlocutor by name in the sentence leading into a data sample the Frorn: line is also deleted. I also have eliminated any text from previous posts in messages that are replies, in cases where the original post is included as part of the sample. To preserve confidentiaiity and save space, 1 have not oniy removed the "names" from the end of the message but also any "signature files", which cmcontain personal information, favourite quotations, etc. Sornetirnes, mernbers added a "tag linen to their "signaturematthe end of the message ("Rhiannon, wondering why it's so quiet"), which 1 have included with the pseudonym if relevant to my discussion. In aii other instances when text has been removed ftom the bodies of the messages, I use the standard ellipsis marks. Similarly, I have "threaded" the messages so that they read as a coherent discussion. I have placed three asterisks ( ***) between messages only if 1 have deleted entire messages from the same thread, and not other messages related to other discussions that were posted to the List simultaneously. To preserve the hybridity of this form of communication, 1 have left the emoticons and other orthographie representations, the acronyms and other Internet jargon as is, but have added explanations in parenthesis or in footnotes where necessary. 1 have chosen not to "clean upn the texts by removing typographicd, speliing andior grammatical errors as they a vital aspect of prosthetic communication and are vital to understanding certain communal practices discussed at length in Chapter 7. Suo~lementawData Collection and Analvsis To supplement the DDEBRP data set, 1 used the questionnaire responses from the earlier joint project. For example, Lee and 1 had asked the respondents a number of questions related to cornputer and hternet access, and the responses were particularly useful in quantimg some of the practices of community in terms of active participation on the DDEBRP. The questionnaire responses also allowed me to hypothesize about practices 1 might expect to find evidence of (or not) over the course of the research. To illustrate, almost ail Uie respondents daimed they did no&"flamz", that is, send insulting, confrontational posts, but p~ferredto resolve conflict and defuse situations that could lead to a flue up of hostilities, claims which were borne out by DDEBRP interaction. When presenting data from the questionnaires, 1 have placed the narnes of the participants at the end of the quotation. 1also supplemented the list data with follow up email "interviews" with a number of the participants. For instance, over the course of the project, I had corne to realize that relations between the three DDEBs were best chmcterized as uneasy. Once the data collection period was over, 1 asked each participant if she felt that her participation in the community making process had been affected by "inter-DDEB politicsn, which had most openly manifested itself on the DDEBRP when a member of one "brigade" abruptly quit the project as a result. Taken together, their comments revealed a aderlying lack of trust among the members of the different "brigades", partidly explaining the ftiendly though not particularly intimate interaction that characte~edthe DDEBRP. Not surprisingly, 1 have not attached pseudonyms to these "private" email exchanges to preserve confidentiality. For the sarne reason, 1 have not provided a precise breakdown of the DDEBRP membership by individual "brigades", or identifiai members with one. 1 will say that over the half the participants were members of the same list, and their "overrepresentationn probably contributed to some degree to some of the underlying tensions and lack of intirnacy. Havbg outlined my approach to research, 1 will, in the chapters that follow , present my responsibly produced "analytic fiction" of community making on the DDEBRP. Chapter 3 From a Room to a Cyberspace of Our Own The Living Room. It is very bright, open and airy here, with large plate-glass windows lwkhg southward over the pool to the gardens beyond. On the north wall, there is a rough stonework fireplace, complete with roaring fie. The east and West walls are almost completel-y covered with large, well stocked bookcases. An exit in the northwest corner lads to the kitchen and, in a more northerly direction, to the enmce hail. The door into the coat closet is at the north end of the east wall, and at the south end is a sliding glas door leading out onto a wooden deck. There are two sets of couches, one clustered around the fieplace and one with a view out the windows.(Quoted in Turkle, 1995, p. 182)
The above quotation is the text that appears on the screen der one logs ont0 LambdaMoo, a popular Multi-User Domain description. It is an example of how the space of interaction is imagined on the Intemet. While newsgroups and mailing lists like the DDEBs and, by extension the DDEBRP, do not corne with "prefabncated" locations, they are nonetheless imagined in spatial terms. Rheingold (1993a)talks about the neighbourhood pubs, coffee shops and salons he "frequents" in reference to his experiences as a participant of the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), a San Francisco-based bulletin board service (BBS), which is now part of the Intemet. Sirnilarly, one DDEBRP member, Liz, described interaction on closed, women-only lists as "sitting around someone's kitchen shooting the breeze about whatever cornes to mind." Yet it is no coincidence that Rheingold (1993b) enjoyed being part of the "global bull session" (p. 3) that he envisioned taking place in informa1 public spaces of interaction, whereas Liz and the other participants preferred the intimacy of a private female space imagined in terms of a kitchen. Gender, as Massey points out, is "deeply irnplicated in the ways in which we inhabit and experience space and place, and the ways in which we are located in the new relations of time-space relations" (p. 9). In this chapter, 1 set out to explore the corinection between the formation of women-only communities and the division of social space dong the fault line of the gendered body. The notions of public and private space in Western cultures are centunes old and in order to understand how they are operationalized in cyberspace, it is imperative to uncover and piece together a history of their operation. In the pages that folIow, 1 argue that although women have been historically relegated to the realm of the "privaten,they have been able to mate spaces that disturb the publiclprivate binary. Bor~owingfrom Foucault, I call these sites heterotopias and suggest that since the so- called Industrial Revolution, a variety of technologies have both reinforced this binary and increased the potential for its transgression. As noted by LeFebvre (1991) We rnay be sure the forces of production (nature; labour and the organization of labour; technology and knowledge) and, naturally, the relations of production play a part-though wc have not yet defined it-in the production of space. (p. 46)
After providing a genealogy of the heterotopia from the Middle Ages to the present, 1 tum to the DDEBs and discuss the ways in which they function as heterotopic sites.
The Birth of the Public The categorks of "publicn and "pnvaten date back to the Greek city state. Habermas (1989) summarizes their relationship as follows: the sphere of the polis, which was common (bine) to the Free citizens, was stnctîy separated from the sphere of the oikos; in the sphere of the oikos, each individual is in his own realm (idia). The public life, bios politikos, went on in the market place (agora), but of course this did not mean that it occurred necessarily only in this specific locale. The public sphere was constituted in discussion (lexis).. . . The political order, as is weii known, rested on a patrimonial slave economy. The citizens were thus set free from productive labor; it was, however, their private autonomy as masters of households on which their participation in public life depended.. ..Status in the polis was therefore based upon status as the unlirnited master of an oikos. (p. 3)
The next passage confirms women's place in the order of things: The reproduction of iife, the labor of slaves, and the service of the women went on under the aegis of the master's domination; birth and death took place in its shadow; and the realm of necessity and transitoriness remained immersed in the obscurity of the private sphere.. ..Just as the wants of life and the procurement of its necessities were sharnefully hidden inside the oikos, so the polis provided an open field for honorable distinction.. ..The virtues, whose catalogue was codined by Aristotle, were ones whose test Lies in the public sphere and there alone receive recognition. @p. 3-4)
Thus began women's association with the private sphere. However, the history of the hierarchical opposition of public and private cannot be seen an unbroken he. As Eco (1986) notes, while we might have acquired certain concepts hmclassical antiquity, it was "fiorn the Middle Ages we lmed how to use themn (p. 65). Thus it is to this period we must turn to witness the "birth" of the publidprivate binary even if, as Habermas argues, the Roman legal categories of publias and privms subsequently found in the legal codes of continental Europe could not really be applied to "the feudal system of domination based on fiefs and manorial authority": There were lower and higher " sovereignties," eminent and less eminent prerogatives: but there was no statu that in tems of private law defined in some fashion the capacity in which pnvate people [Le. men] could step forward into a public sphere. (p. 5)
The Middle Aae What constituted the public in medieval times, then, was the representation of power, organized into a hierarchy, the highest level of which was that of the sovereign in the absolute monarchies of Europe and Parliament in ~ngland.~~Boxer and Quataert (1987) argue that this lack of distinction between public and private meant that a noble woman enjoyed a certain amount of power through the administration of her husband's estate, duties which included overseeing serfs, colkcting rents, etc.. While this rnay have been me, she was always subjected to the authority of her husband and, like the peasants under her control, she had no access to higher levels of authority. No universality was ever intended by the Magna Carta of 12 15, which specified that "no freeman shaU be arrested, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way ruineci, except by lawful judgement of his pers or by the law of the landn (Comgan & Sayer, 1985, p. 35, my emphasis). Comgan and Sayer quote Bloch who noted that 'on the one hand, there were the true subjects of the King, to whom was extended, at all times, the protection of his courts; on the other, there was the mass of the peasantry [and married noble women, one must add], largely abandoned to the jurisdiction of the lord of the manorn @. 36). Yet, having no "rights" in the eyes of the law did not mean the law did not regulate her and what was hers. This was
zs Corrigan md Sayer (1985) dethe case that England fimctioned as a constitutional monarchy by the 1530s. accomplished, not surprisingly, through marriage. From the 11" century, marriage barns were rad, the ceremony took place in "public" and only those certified by a bishop were considered legal. In 1538, further legislation required that all mamages be recordeci in the registers of the parish (p. 22). The effects, as one can imagine, were far
Under common law ail her property passed to the husband on mamage: her chattels @ersonal property) for his absolute use and disposal; her real property for his use (including aüenating its fnllts) for the duration of the marriage, or, if childwn were bom, his lifetime....A iiiife could not sue or be sied at îommon law in her own name alone, she could not sue her husband.. ..Murder of a husband was petty treason (as was the murder of a master b y his servant), not simple homicide, until 1828. Peny treason ched the penalty of death by burning ... (p. 36)
Even the most powefil women in Medieval England, those married to Kings, were subject to the whim of His Majesty: Eleanor of Aquitaine, for example, was banished whenever Henry II had a new mistress and everyone knows the fate of the unfortunate wives who did not please Henry VIII. There existed, however, a few spaces in which women could congregate together outside the boundaries of the court, manor and the autonomous household that emerged during the late Middle Ages in England and northem Europe. For the daughters of the landed gentry and wealthy merchants, joining a religious order was the oniy means of access to a space not dominated by a father, husband or master crafisman. Being a member of what Hufton and TaUett (1987) refer to as a "spinster cluster", at first simply involved a life of contemplation, but after the Reformation, one could join an order with a weIl-defined social function such as teaching, tending the sick or "rehabilitating" prostitutes. For women from the lower echelons of society, the growing urban centres provided alternatives to normative social relations. For instance, it was possible in the 12~and 13" centuries to join the predorninately male guilds and train as an apprentice, and in certain northern European cities, women were able to becorne master craftsmen and operate their own workshops. The local markets of many English and northern European cities were also spaces in which women, the predominant buyers and sellers of produce, fish, mat, dairy, bread and household items, could gather, exchange information and discuss cunent events (Wiesner, 1987). In addition to small shops, inns and tavems, women also ran smaller hospitals and pest- houses with the assistance of other women hired to do the cooking, nursing and laundry @. 71). AU of these spaces can be thought of as heterotopias: There are also, probably in every culture, in every civiluation, real places.. .which are something Like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopias in which the rdsites.. .are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.. .(Foucauit, 1986, p. 24)
Foucault stresses that the heterotopia is always marked by difference and deviation from the nom. The sites he identifies as being heterotopic range from the older " sacred" andlor " forbidden" sites "reserved for inaividuals who are, in relation to society ...in a state of crisis: adolescents, menstruating women, pregnant women, the elderly, etc." to the prisons and psychiatrie hospitals of modem societies (pp 24-25). However, defining such spaces in tenns of discipline and punishment alone fails to accord agency to those thought of as "deviant", and therefore 1 believe it is important to think of the heterotopia as not only a site of deviation but one of resistance, inversion, subversion or perhaps simply a space in which active consent to normative prac tices is suspended. Like Genocchio, Hetherington ( 1997) takes issue with Foucault's naming and "fixing" of heterotopic space, and suggests that the heterotopia be thought of "as a practice that challenges the functional ordering of space while refusing to become part of that ordern (p. 46). Foucault (1986) also stresses the relational aspect of the heterotopia to socalleci "reai" spaces, for it is "capable of juxtaposing in a single real place severai spaces, several sites that are themselves incompatible" (p. 25). Thus, what is potentiaily heterotopic about the convent or the market is the oppominity afforded the women who enter those spaces, ostensibly under the patriarchd authority of the church and the household economy, to fon their own communities, producing sets of social relations that go against the grain of the intended ordering of the spaces. The mere existence of the convent or market did not guarantee the formation of community or resistance to social noms, but the collective presence of women outside the boundaries of the sites of patriarchal order was always potentially disruptive. As Hetherington (1997) puts it, heterotopia organize a bit of the mial world in a way different to that which surrounds them. That alternative ordering marks them out as Other and allows them to be seen as an example of an altemate way of doing things. (p. viii)
As examples of such, the potentially heterotopic sites of women were increasingly subject to regulation, particularly by the nascent English state: From bllardy26, if not before, the state is involved in regulating into silence, eccentricity, marginality or crime al1 doctrines and practices withing the realm of cultural life that provides glimpses of an alternative set of social relations. (Comgan & Sayer, 1985, p. 41)
A senes of laws were passed, in both England and on the continent against vagrancy in an attempt to restrict the movements of those persons considered "masterless", that is, not living in a household, whether that of a lord, master craftsman, or peasant fmer. Those were found to be in non-cornpliance were subject to various forms of torture, including having their ears cut off, branding and piercing (p. 65). Some laws were aimed specifically at women. By the 16~century, the guilds began to place strict limitations of women's participation in any capacity, even as widows of master claftsmen (Wiesner, 1987). As well, domestic servants, who, among other things, were forbidden to lave one household for another more than once a year or stay in public inns between positions, places where they could come in contact with the women who ran those inns or other women like themselves looking for a better life. A number of German cities tried to exclude unmarrieci women from selling in the markets. Yet such laws, argues Wiesner, were not particularly effective because of the nascent economic order based on merchant capitalism. The demand for cloth required the larger households and workshops in the cloth centres of Augsb~rg,Ulm, or Strasbourg to hire young wornen as &y labourers to card and spin wool for the male weavers. Thus, it became possible for single women to eke out a living despite the poor wages, and in the
" The Loflards were foliowers of the 1Pcenntry religious leader John Wycliffe, who, interesting enough, encouraged women to rdand interpret the bibIe. (Boxer & Quataert, 1987). process, "to congregate with others of their own age, to discuss religion and politics, to compare employers and experiencesw(Wiesner, 1987, p. 68). The wornen who had joined religious ordea faced similar attempts to b~g them into the patriarchal fold. Hufton and Tallett (1987) note that the church hierarchy "had a long tradition of hostility toward the uncontrolled presence of large numbers of women.. . circulating freely in the community, immune from control" @. 78). The resutt was to impose "enclosuren and a code of discipline on orders such as the ürsuiines. Finaiiy, no discussion on the regulation of the "deviant* would be cornpiete without mention of the witch hunts of the mid to late Middle Ages. Four-fifths of those accused and found guilty of witchcraft were women and of those, the majority were older, single or widowed women (Boxer & Quataert, 1987, who usually lived outside patriarchal spaces on their own or collectively with other women. The prevailing attitude is summed up by Comgan and Sayer (1985): "Daughters of Eve were dangerous; women not under patnarchal authority were particularly dangerous" (p. 65).
The Not So Discrete Senregation of the Bouweoisie Comgan and Sayer (1985) argue that the decades of the 1640s and 50s signalled the end of the medieval era in England. Feudal tenures were abolished and land becarne a commodity to be bought and sold, effectively giving "landlords absolute, modem, property rights" (p. 82). Religion was also partiaily displaced "as a dominant legitimating code for and within the state" in favour of "solid bourgeois values of law, property , 'liberty' and civility " (p. 8O), values which were not intended to be universal. Modes of production were also in flux, the household economy gradually shifting to a market econorny. According to Habermas (1989)' it was at this historical moment that "the sphere of the conjugal family becarne differentiated from the sphere of social reproduction.. ..The status of the private man combined the role of owner of cornmodities with that of head of the farnily, that of property owner with that of 'human being' per sen (p. 28). The householdo in effect, becarne a home and over the course of the next two centunes, a woman's place in this new private sphere of domesticity was Myestablished. This emerging division of space went hand in hand with the formation of the modem capitalist state: Because women were successfblly claimed (documented, enumerated, legitimated) to belong within the household, to have a domestic identity- such weil ordered families, of course, reflecting and upholding a well-ordered society-they could not be thought of as having a public existence. (Comgan & Sayer, 1985, p. 133)
To have a "public existence" in England at the beginning of the 18' century was to Irquent the coffe houw ihat were rapidiy beoming fuctures of the iarger urban centres. By 1710 there was 3,000 in London alone, with narnes such as Wili's, Button's and the Cocoa Tree made famous by the likes of Dryden, Addison and Pope (Habermas, 1989, p. 32). There literature, art as weii as political and economic afTairs were discussed by an expanding bourgeoisie that included landowners and merchants, doctors and lawyers as well as more successfûl craftsmen and shopkeepers. Hetherington (1997) identifies such spaces as "performing a utopics of bourgeois interests in commerce and politics, promoting both the ideas of freedom and ordern (p. 15) These emergent "public" spaces were of course off limits to women. Indeed, Habermas points out that "the women of London society, abandoned every evening, waged a vigorous but vain struggle against [this] new institutionn (p. 33). As a new set of social and spatial relations came into existence, so did the term 'public' as we know it today, both as a noun ('the public') an adjective ('public opinion'). That 'the public' was a reference to the bourgeoisie in the 12cenniry and then the middle class in the 19' is made explicit in the following statement made in 1824: The seat of public opinion is in the middle ranks of lifein that numerous class, removed hmthe wants of labour and the craving of ambition, enjoying the advantages of leisure, and possessing intelligence sufficient for the formation of sound judgement. (Graham, quoted in Comgan, p. 130)
What is not mentioned is that this seat of public opinion was exclusively male.
Hetheringtoa considers the coffee houses to be heterotopic spaces because he defines the hetemtopia not as a utopia per se but as king "an expression of the utopics of modernity" (p. 18), which offer glMpses of an altemative social order. The coffee house phenornenon is primarily associateci with London, but Hetherington (1997) makes a case that, although slower to take root with only 600 in 1716, the Paris cafes were more radical politically and were key sites in the production of revolutionary discourse. This is not surprishg given the continuai existence of the feudal system and the absolute monarchy centred at the court of Versailles. He also States that women were adrnitted to the cafes of the Palais Royale. Their presence in French cafes could be explained by the fact that many of the European salons not only inciuded were run oy women. Origindly, rhey were an extension of court life where the aristocracy, old and new, mingled with the intellectuds, but by the eve of the French Revolution, they had ben adapted and were attended by the bourgeoisie (Habermas, 1989). Boxer (1987) argues that women were "the real light of salon life". Madame de Bouffier, a society woman who ran a mid-eighteenth century salon, was described as "at once jaunty and imposing, her epigrams, the originality of her judgments, her authority on conduct, and the talent of her taste" (quoted in Boxer, p. 46). Nonetheless, women's participation in the French Revolution was problematized by the central notion of venu (vhe). According to Outram (1987), the legitimacy of the French Revolution depended on representing the will of "the people" and so a new discourse was required with which to distinguish its aims to form a democratic state from those of the Old Regime. One of the key planks of this new discourse became that of vertu. This worked off two rneanings: the "personal virtue" (Le. chastity) of wornen and the "political virtue" of men. The latter drew on Roman history, the figure of Brutus sewing as a "personifid abstractionn of male virtue for his decision to execute his sons for their attempted betrayal of the Republic, thereby placing the State ahead of personai (Le. family) interests @p. 125, 127). The legitimacy of the revolution thus depended on the heterosexual containment of women in the domestic sphere, for women's use of sexuality to exercise power was seen as one of the main sources of the vice that pervaded the Old Regime. While women did make public uttemces and join women's organizations such as the Société des républicaines révolutionnaires, "the way was open for all sorts of attacks on a consequent loss of virtue" (p. 126). Moreover, in drawing upon the discourse of venu mole, she ultimately advocated the destruction of the very sphere upon which her own virtue depended. Thus, she was left with "neither a secure sphere of discourse for herself, nor an easy access to that of menn (p. 128). As a result, argues Outram, women ended up playing a far more important and Iong- lasting role in the Counter-Revolution, precisely because the discourses of the Church, as did those of the Old Regime, at least valued mariage and family (p. 129). In other words, these discourses, while hardly emancipatory, offered women an identity as well as a phce of her ~wn.~Qnestrategy Uiat women cornmitteci to the Revolu tion did employ to get around this dilemma was to provide fora in the tradition of the salon for men to speak while remaining silent themselves. One prominent fernaie figure to do so was Madame Roland, the wife of one of the most prominent ministers in the Revolu tionary govemment. In light of the above. the following passage from Virginia Woolf's (1992) novel, Orlando, although obviously not a historical record, is suggestive of the role of women in salon life and the attitudes towards hem: 'Lord, ' [Orlando] thought, as she raised the sugar tongs, 'how women in ages to corne will envy me! And yet-'she paused; for Mr Pope needed her attention. And yet-let us finish her thought for her-when anyone says 'How future ages wiU envy me', it is safe to say that they are extremely uneasy at the present moment. .. .There is a littîe secret which men share among hem; Lord Chesterfield whispered it to his son with strict injunctions to secrecy, 'Women are but children of a larger growth.. ..A man of sense only tarifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them', which, since children always hear what they are not meant to, and sometimes, even, grow up, may have somehow leaked out, so that the whole ceremony of pouring out tea is a curious one. A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her poems, praises her judgement, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run her through the body with his Pen. All this, we say, whisper it as low as we can, may have leaked out by now; so that even with the cream jug suspended and the sugar tongs distended the ladies may fidget a Me,look out of the window a iittle, yawn a Me, and so let the sugar
" It is aiso signifiant to note chat the establishment of the Republic quite Literaily destroyed one particular kind of women's space by taking over the social sentices that the religious orders had provided under the Old Regime, and many nuns fled across the chamel to escape perseeution (Hufton & Tdett, 1987, p. 84). fd with a great plop as Orlando did now-into Mr Pope's tea. (p. 205, fvst ellipsis mine)
Women, although a large part of salon life, were likely valued most for their role as hostesses. Moreover, that they were in a public sphere contained Winthe privote home would certainly have given them more legitirnacy than any coffee house could afford . The coffee house was just the first site that marked a chic culture that emerged in the latter haif of the 18" century and was to dominate the 19* century . in termingiad with the informal spaces of interaction such as the clubs and various societies that eventually replaced the coffee houses (Wolff, 1990) were public buildings such as town halls, museums, art galleries, libraries as well as the public squares and parks. The growing power of the market had also resulted in a diffusion of Company haidquarters and charnbers of commerce (Comgan & Sayer, 1985). This new urban landscape became what Poster (1995) calls "a locus of freedom", for "its density of population is an obscu~gmask behind which the atomized individual may secure independent thoughtn (p. 65). FoUowing Benjamin, this "private" individual who stepped out into the public has corne to be thought of as theflaneur, the man in the crowd, who moves about freely "consuming the sights through a controllhg but rarely acknowledging gaze" (Pollock, 1988, p. 67). In contrast, a middle class woman's experience of going out in public (for of course she did go out) was "not only fiightening because it was increasingly unfarniliar, but because it was morally dangerous.. .going out in public and the idea of disgrace were closely allied" (p. 69). me following quotations from a nineteenth century writer and an artist describe the problem that the public presented for women: How many irritations for the single woman! She can hardly ever go out in the evening; she would be taken for a prostitute.. ..For example, should she find herself delayed at the other end of Paris and hungry, she will not dare to enter into a restaurant. Quliet Michelet, quoted in Pollock, p. 69)
What 1 long for is the freedom of going out alone, of coming and going, of sitting in the seats of the Tuileries, and especially in the Luxembourg, of stopping and looking at the artistic shops, of entering churches and museums, of waiking about the old streets at night.. .DOyou imagine that 1 get much good from what 1 see, chaperoned as 1 am, and when, in order to go to the Louvre, I must wait for my carriage, my lady cornpanion, my family? (Marie Bashkirtseff, quoted in Pollock, p. 70)
In light of the above, it is not surpriskg that some women, including George Sand in the 1830s (Wolff, 1990) and Vita Sackville West in the early 20h centufl tmk to dressing as men in order to stroli in the cities at night undisturbed. One of the few urban spaces deemed legitimate for women to appear in public unaccompanied were the shopping arcades and department stores that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. However, as Wolff (1990) argues "the fleeting, anonymous encounier and the purposeless strollingn which characterized the modem civic culture can hardly be said to apply to shopping (p. 46). If an upper class or middle class woman could not be said to have a public existence, neither could she be said to have a pnvate one in the way that a man did. As Habermas (1989) points out, the independence of the property owner in the market and in his own business was complementeâ by the dependence of the wife and children on the male head of the family; private autonomy in the former realm was tmsformed into authority in the latter.. . (p. 47)
An examination of the arrangement of domestic space rnakes it clear that the home did not provide anything resembling "privateautonomy" for its mistress. According to Spain (1992), the ideal home of the lgOcentury was the "Gentleman's Country House" and while only the very wealthy could actually affurd to live in one, it nonetheless functioned as a mode1 for more modest middle class homes. In her study of a book of house design pubiished in 1871, Spain notes that all rooms, of which there were at least 27 excluding main halls or galleries, were describeci in tems of the sex of their user. Oniy three were identitied as being for women-the drawing rom, the breakfast or moming room and the boudoir off the bedroorn-of which oniy the latter was exclusively for the lady of the house. In contrast, six roorns were designated for men's use, including "the library, billiard room, gentleman's room (for business transactions),
A footnote by Nigel Nicolson in Wwif's Or&, verifies thnt the protagonist's donning of deciothing as a disguise to going out dong at night was bdon his mother's actions (1992, p. 333). 63 study, smoking room, and gentleman's odd rmm (where young gentlemen could 'do as they like') " (p. 114). With some of these having adjoining bathrooms and cloa,krooms, they formed an isolated male "sanctum" off Lirnits to women. It is small wonder then, that bourgeois women wouid literally long for "a room of one's own", a longing encapsulated so neatly by Virginia Woolf s book title (1977). The process of suburbanisation that began in the industrialized cities of mid- nineteenth century England also served to reinforce the home as domestic sphere with which women were identifid. Wolff (1990) dzscribzs the building of 35 new suburban homes in Victoria Park outside the centre of Manchester and a sirnilar development in Edgbaston on the outsfirts of Birmingham. In both cases the new homes were built on the mode1 of separate spheres described above. It goes without saying that the notion of pnvacy is also shot through with ch,the emerging working class homes, like those of the tenant fmers and cottagers offering little in the way of personal space for any family member. Even so, the male "breadwinners" had access to the informal social space of the pubs in which to spend their leisure time at the end of the working day.
Technolo~vand the Power of DM?" If an alignment of state and capital reinforced the publidprivate binary, containing bourgeois women in the home, the alignment of capital and technology during the so-called Industrial ~evolution~'blurred that sarne binary, enabling the formation of potentially heterotopic spaces for many working class women. According to Siiverstone (l994), technology does not come naked. It does not come neutd. Nor, indeed, does it come simply or straightforwardly. For technology arrives. ..carrying on its back a burden of social, economic and political implications, and carrying in its baggage bundles of material and symbolic ~tringwhich tie those who use it into systems of social [and spatiall relations and cultural meanings, which are as disguiseci and unwelcome sometimes as they are obvious and welcome. @. 79)
This heading is a paraphrase of a 'Television and the power of dia", a chnpter titie of Hadey (1992b).
Hetherington (1997) argues thaî the industriai Revolution was less a break hmearlier des of production than "a partial transformation that re~dthe continuation of earlier systems of production" and that the factory system did not have a real impact und the 1840s (p. 113). Thus the new railway systems, powered by Watts' steam engine, enabled large numbers of wage labourers to lave the rural areas to work and Live in a series of emerging industrial centres. Manchester, for example, went from having a population of 27,000 when it had no textile mills in 1773 to 95,000 and 52 mils by 1802. Fifty years later, the population reached 303,000 (Comgan & Sayer, 1985). The earlier factories were often no more than large workshops with different products being made by groups of joumeymen and apprentices working for different craftsmen, who had subletted space in the same structure: It was not until the machine and non-animate sources of power were used together that the manufacturer was able to exercise control over the production process and organize the division of labour accordingly .. . . Machinofacture, as Marx called it, is the production process associated with machine production and non-animate power. (Hetherington, 1997, p. 116)
Thus, it was the convergence of two different sets of technologies-those bat produced power and those that produced goods-in the space of the factory that led to a rupture in the social division of Iabour that had existed since the establishment of the first guilds. The new indusmal technologies can be thought wielding the power of din. Hartley (1992b) defines dirt in tenns of ambiguous boundaries and in this sense these new industrial technologies were "dirtynbecause they had the power to disturb social and spatial divisions. One enorrnous disturbance was that the iimited practice of employing groups of women as carders and spinners in the workshops of the textile centres of lya century Northem Europe becarne the normative practice of the enormous Cotton milis of England and the United States of the 19' century. Manufacturen hired women and children to be in charge of the spiming jenny and the power loom. There is no doubt that the conditions of employment were often appalling: long hours for low wages in poor lighting and ventilation perfonning tasks with machinery that were often dangerous. But for the first tirne in Western history, significant nurnbers of single women were able to support themselves and marrieci wornen support their families. As the following quotation fiom Engels implies, one of the greatest "evils" of the capitalist mode of production was thought to be its power to destroy the traditional family order based on patnarchal authority: The wife supports the family, the husband sits at home, tends the children, sweeps the room and cooks. This case happens very frequently: in Manchester aime, many hundred such men could be cited, condemned to domesk occuparions. It is easy to imagine the wrath aroused arnong the working-men by ihis reversal of aii relations within the family . (Quoted in Massey, 1994, p. 196, rny emphasis)
Engels was correct about the first part of the equation but wrong about the second: Men did not take over the domestic responsibilities; rather, other women were hired to do so (Massey, 1994). Moreover, in working collectively in the space of the factory, women were able to form their own communities. In Loweil, Massachusetts, for example, the female workers had access to a circulating library as well as informal education. More significantly, they fomed "Improvement Circleswin which they "talked about current events and shared their original essays and poetryn(Spain, 1992, p. 185). The Lancashire " rnill-girlsn formed their own trade unions, as they were barred from joining the existing ones, "and it was from this base of organized working women that arose the local suffrage campaign of the early twentieth century" (Massey, 1994, p.
In light of the above, it is not surprising that a "'coincidence of interests' between philanthropists, the state-representing the collective interests of capital-and the male working class who were represented by the trade union movement and Chartism" undertook to regulate and ultimately eliminate the presence of women in the factory (Hall,quoted in Massey, 1994, p. 196). In the case of the "Lowe11 girlsw,boarding houses were established to attract young fmgirls "of good moral fibren. They were "supervised by matrons who enforced the company's paternalistic policies of strict curfews, mandatory church attendance, and abstinence from aicohol and sex" (Spain, 1992, p. 184). Moreover, "each girl was required to have a paper anesting to her character, and those suspected of being disreputable were immediately dismissed (185). The French foilowed suit a few years later with the establishment of internats, which by 188 1, housed 1,110 young women. After ten years, the occupants could (in theory) "lave with a sufficient dowry to found a new famiiy" (Boxer & Quataert, 1987, p. 101). Beginning with the Factory Acts of 1833, legislation was passed for the expressed purpose of "protecting" women and children Erom exploitation. However, limiting women's working hours, the main objective, was a means of not only limiting the type of work they were able to perfonn but defining the5 role and place in society. In its decision to uphold such a law in Pemsylvania, for example, the Superior Court of that state commented: Surely an act which prevents the mothers of Our race fiom being tempted to endanger their life and heaith by exhaustive employment can be condemned by none save those who expect to profit by it. ..A is undisputed that some employments may be admissable [sic] for maies and yet improper for females, and regulations recognizing and forbidding women to engage in such would be open to no reasonable objection.. ..Adult females are a class as distinct from al1 other Iaborers, and so constituted to be unable to endure physical exertion and exposure to the extent and degree that is not harmful to adult males. (Quoted in Baker, 1964, p. 96)
A discourse of "technoIogica1 progress" was aiso mobilized in the move to force women back into the acceptable sphere of the domestic. When the spinning jenny, invented in 1764, was replaced by the more "efficient" spinning mule, women were replaced by men, it being assumed that they had neither the strength nor the skills to operate the new machinery (Massey, 1994). Of course, this begs the question of exactiy how men had managed to acquire this skïii set. Moreover, the trade unions representing mule spinners had no intention of leaving their positions vulnerable to the vagaries of capitaiism and technology: At their meeting in the Isle of Man in 1829 the spinners stipulated 'that no person be learned or aiiowed to spin except the son, brother, or orphan nephew of spinners.' Those women spinners who had managed to maintain their position were advised to form their own union. From then on the entry to the trade was very tightly controiied and the days of the female spimers were indeed numbered. (Hall, quoted in Massey, p. 195)
There were a few exceptions that demonstrate the dirty power of technology. In a union breaking move, sik factory owners in New Jersey replaced the horizontal warping mil1 with a newer Swiss mode1 that they felt could be operateci by girls and women who were non unionized and therefore could be paid much less (Baker, 1964). But even with these changes, wornen's jobs were not secure. In the New England factories, Amencan bom women were eventually replaced by male Irish immigrants to operate the power looms (Spain, 1992). In the end, the combined restrictions and replacements that passed themselves off as "protectionn or "progress" took their toll. In 1828, 98 per cent of textile workers in Massachusetts were femde; by 1848, fernale employment had declined to 69 per cent, and by the end of the century, it was 4 1 per cent. The boarding house system of Loweil and other centres "lasted less than three decades in an entire century of production", replaced by a system of " farnily" employment in which a " family " wage was paid to a male breadwinner (pp. 186-7). It is important to stress that is was not the fact that women worked that upset the social order but the fact that they worked collecrively and had access to other non-domestic spaces. As Massey (1994) observes, nobody objected to women working in the rag trades of London in the same time period because they put out piece work from within the confines of the home, yet under conditions often no better than those found in the "dark, satanic mills". If industrial technologies disrupted the gendered spatial practice of England and North America for a pend in the lgQcentury, the typewriter and the telephone were to permanently redraw the publiclprivate binary and enable another set of potentially heterotopic sites to open up. Until the 1870s, the office was the domain of male clerks. With the completion of the continental railruad in the United States in 1869, the demand for business correspondence, record keeping and general office work exploded (Baker, 1964). As weii, with large numbers of men enlisting to fight in the American Civil War, the federal government began to employ women to fil1 the vacancies (Srole, 1987). This move did not corne out of the blue though; a precedent had been set in the 1840s and 50s involving the hinng of women to copy business correspondence at home. Interestingly enough, the kst government office to hire women to perform their duties in the workplace was the Treasury. This change in policy occurred solely because it was felt money could not be counted in an unsupervised environment (Srole, 1987). In this particular context at least, the need for surveillance, a rechnology in the production of what Foucault (1979) describes as docile bodies, overrode the need to police the public/private binary. In 1870, 16 per cent of ali US govemment clerks were femde; thuzy years later, this percentage had doubled. In private industry, the number of women in the office went from 2 per cent to 30 per cent in the same time span (Spain, 1992). At first, objections to the presence of women working in an office mobilized the same discourses of virtue and morality as those around women in the factory. Newspapers, for example, canied suggestive stories of " treasury courtesans" (Spain, 1992). Yet Srole provides convincing evidence that the typewriter was designed and marketed as a tool to be used by women copyists: al1 the magazine advertisements showed women operating the machines and women were spificaiiy hired as demonstrators to prornote this new technology. Indeed, its inventor is reportai to have said, "1 feel I have done something for the women who have always had to work so hard. This will help them earn a living more easily" (Sholes, quoted in Baker, 1964, p. 71). "By the rnid 1880s," notes Srole, "typing was recognired as women's work" (p. 87) Why, then, was the disruption of normed spatial practices accepted in the office when it was never accepted in the factory? One argument made is that women could be paid almost half as much as a male clerk and that this was justified on the basis that typing was mechanical and did not require the same level of education or ski11 as clerking had done. While this was an important factor, it was not the whole story, For female factory workers were paid less than organized male workers. Srole suggests a more fundamental reason: Some [men] employed them because they sought to acquire the personal attention that women appeared to offer. Women were expected to brhg flowers, cheemilness, and beauty to the office.. .. Others employed stenographers and typists as symbols of authority. Hiring a stenographer meant that the employer was truly a boss, one who "dictatedmand told others what to do. ... A female in the office was always the inferior; the male, the superior.. .. And finally, male employers found women appeaiing because they were not potential competitors. (P. 92)
Similarly, the advantages of hiring women as secretaries, according to an 1883 publication, were that they were "more contented with their lot as private secretaries, more cheerfui, less restless, more to be depended [upon], more flexible than young men. [She is] more willuig to do as asked, more teachable..." (Pemh 's Monthiy Stenographer, quoted in Srole, p. 95). In other words, domestic relations of power could be reproduced Ni the space of the oflce. Thus, it is no coincidence that the function of the secretary has always been twofold: to assist her employer in the realrn of private enterprise and in the realm of the pnvate familial sphere, when she undertakes some of the duties of his wife by bringing him coffee, arranging personai appointments and buying gifts on his behalf for family rnembers. Moreover, the majority of wornen filling these "pink collarnjobs were young and single, and thus were expected to rem pemanently to the domestic sphere when they maïïied. Tne supposed temporary nature of their employment thus appeased concems and, not surprisingly, justifiai low wages. There was, however, one perceived disadvantage to having women in the space of the office. As one male stenographer succinctiy put it, "Femaie neat clean, no bad habits, except talking" (Rutherford, quoted in Srole, p. 92, my emphasis). Like in the factory, women were able to interact with euch other, providing an opportunity to form their own communities. This was especialiy tnie in areas in which large groups of women worked together in the secreiarial and typing pools as well as in the telephone exchanges. At the turn of the 19' century, for exarnple, the operators in a number of American cities formed reading and gardening clubs (Baker, 1964). A hundred years later, the office retains its informal designatîon as "pink coiîar ghetton, as indicated by cunent statistics that show that the majority of Western middle class women make their living perfonning clerical work (Probert & Wilson, 1993). Dedicated word processing machines, such as those made by the Wang corporation, were developed in the 1970s with features that directly resembled the typewriter so as to be easy for a typist to operate without much training (Webster, 1996). One of the earliest word processing programs, Wordstar, was originaiiy designed to help male computer programmers write machine code. Once the micro-cornputer began to enter the space of the office, it was redesigned, packaged and promoted as a replacement for the dedicated word pracessor (Webster, 1993). While Webster argues that the development of various business software in the 1980s which targeted managers and other professionals has broken dom the keyboard's association with women, the fact remains that word processing is stül a woman's job. Moreover, clencal workers often have gained more responsibilities since printingftypesetting technologies, originaüy the domain of highiy paid and highly skilied ex-lino operators, were integrated with office technologies in the form of desktop publishing. If men had been intended to do this job, Webster (1996) argues, then the Linotype keyboard, distinct from the QWERTY keyboard of the typewriter and word processor, would have ben adopted: Everything about the work, the keyboard lay, the styleci plastic machine, the closeness of the keys, the smallness of the installation, the posture of the operator and the history of typing, ail of these things make [the compositor] feel that he is doing 'a woman's job'. (Cockburn, quoted in Webster, p. 64).
Although the social and spatial relations of the office have seldom openly led to direct contestation of the patnarchai order in the way that those of the Lancashire factories did, the sheer numbers of women working together in the "pink colîar ghetto" ensure the possibility of resistance or subversion in some form. The demand for pay equity in Canada, for example, has corne out of organized office spaces of the federal govemment and the telecommunications giant, Bell Canada, and only 1st year did both groups win their cases in court after years of delays and appeals. Webster (1993), for example, reports on a group of typists workhg in a large British office who decided to piay to their male employers' assumptions of their lack of sus, by typing up exactly what had ken dictated- asides, hesitations and revisions: "So, some of them came back and were furious about this and said 'This is absolute rubbish'. We said, 'Weli, that is what you dictated, so we typed it'. They wouldn't admit that they had done it" (Webster, p. 52). Despite the number of women who did work outside the home and had the opportunity to furm their own communities infthrough the workplace, even larger numben of middle class North American and European women remained entrenched in the domestic sphere until the 1970s. Spain (1992) notes that between 1890 and the First World War, the bungalow became the ideal American family home, "in which a pleasant living room with a cozy firepIace, bookcases, and a cupboard or two would serve the combined functions of library, parlor, and sitting rwrn" (p. 127). At the end of the Second World War, the ranch house "carried the intenor informality of the bungalow one step mer. Most rooms in the ranch house could serve multiple purposes- a study-guest rmm, living-dining room, kitchen-laundry. This was also the era of the " family room "anew place.. .for children and teenagersn (p. 128). While these changes to the floor plan may have reduced the gender segregation typically found in Victorian homes, these spaces were hardly gender neutral. The kitchen- laundry was still a place for wives and mothers to prepare rneals for the rest of the famüy and wash their clothes. Similady, the living room-dining room was primarily a place for the male head of the household to be served in and then aftenvards to relax in his Lazyboy with his newspaper while his wife washed ihe dishes. As with industrial technologies, the introduction of various domestic technologies into the new suburban homes in the 1350s both reinforced and blurred the public/private binary. Prior to the 20' century, upper to upper- midâie class women in England and continental Europe would not have done housework such as cmking and cleaning or even child rea~g.Instead they would have hired other women as domestic servants to do such tasks. By 1950, the mistress of the home had become a housewife, technologically enabled to perforrn the work of three or four domestic servants (Wajcman, 1992). The mechanization of housework was supposai to relieve the dnidgery and labour intensity of housework and save time. The automatic washer, for example, was supposed to make "wash day play &y" (Parr, 1997). As Wajcman points out, however, there is no evidence that possessing these technologies reduced the number of hours that women spent on household chores, giving them more time to thernselves. Rather standards of cleanliness and child care becarne higher. Such technologies in fact more closely tied women to the home: "housework began to be represented as an expression of the housewife's affection for her family" (Wajcman, 1992, p. 241). At the same time, domestic arrangements that involved altemate social and spatial relations were aiways short lived, limited in xope or ignore.. Early feminists and socialists alike caüed for the coktivization of domestic responsibiiities. The potential heterotopia of the communal laundry existed in the early part of 20b century London, in the socialist States of Eastern Euope, and, to some extent, in the laundromats and apartment laundry mms of Amencan cities: Often two women from two different apartment buildings will meet in the laundry room, recognize each other ; although they may never have spoken a single work to each other back on 99& Street, suddenly here they become 'best fnends.' If one of these two already has a fnend or two in her own building, the other is likely to be drawn into that circle and begins to make her fiiendships. (Jacobs, 1961)
Amencan feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman called for a "professionalized system of housekeepingn,whiie others argued that domestic work could be shared by al1 members of the familv.-. including husbands and sons (Wajcman. 1992, p. 247). Fuidly. there was the self-cleaning house designed by Francis Gabe, which was greeted with ridicule, but has since been deemed " functional and attractiven by architects. As Wajcman notes wryly, "one cannot help speculating that the development of an effective self-cleaning house has not been high on the agenda of male engineers" (p. 25 l), no doubt as they do not have to worry about domestic responsibilities. In short, just as the discourse of technological progress was used to get women out of the factories, it was used to keep women in the home. The arrivai of television in the 1950s had a similar effect. Many advertisements in contemporary magazines, for example, promoted the television as a "family theatre" or "living room theatre" but as Spigel (1992) points out, "the movie theater .. .was an arena in which the housewife was given access to social life in the public sphere" (13). In other words, these discourses promoted women's containment in the home. Similarly, television was supposed to bring families together and accordingiy ads would show the family seated in front of the set having dinner, except for the mother, who was seen in the background going about the preparing and serving of the meal. Soon enough, "this problem of female spatial isolation gave way to what can be called a corrective cycle of commodity purchases" (p. 14): the dishwasher was marketed as the solution that would allow Mom to partake in the fun of family viewing. Given ihe dirty power of technology, the potentid existed for women to invertlsubvertlresist their isolation in the suburbs. Although Jacobs (1961) does not interpret the design of city space from a feminist perspective, her comments on (sub)urban planning are interesthg and revealing: Most city architectural designers and planners are men. Curiously, they design and plan to exclude men as part of normal, daytirne Life wherever people live. In planning residential life, they aim at Nling the presumed daily needs of impossibly vacuous housewives and preschool tots. They plan, in short, strictly for rnatnarchal societies. The ideal of a matriarchy inevitably accompanies ail planning in which residences are isolated from other parts of life. It accompanies al1 planning for children in which their incidental play is set apart from its own preserves. (p. 84)
What Jacobs interprets as the "curiousn exclusion of men in a "matriarchai society", 1 int~rpr~ias the deliberatz containment of womén in a patnarchal, hzterosexist scciéty . Nonetheless, in pointing out the intendeci segregation of "residential iife", she is alluding to the design and use of spaces such as shopping centres, supermarkets, parks, playgrounds, and even the houses themselves. These spaces afforded women the opportunity to fulfil their roles as "goodn housewives and mothers, but also to potentiaily form their own communities. Jacobs describes a street in a residential neighbourhood in Baltimore in which an experimental street park was developed: The mothers from nearby blocks who bring small children here, and corne here to find some contact with others themselves, perforce go into the houses of acquaintances dong the street to warm up in winter, to make telephone calls, to take their children in emergencies to the bathroom. Their hostesses offer them coffee, for there is no other place to get coffee, and naturaily considerable social life of this kind has arisen around the park. Much is shared. (p. 63)
This social life, then, includes an informal gathering of female fiiends and neighbours, often refend to by the German compound noun k@eklasch, the latter noun meaning "gossip". In addition, some developments include a "residents' club, which hold parties, dances, reunions, hm ladies ' activities like bridge and sewing punies, and holds dances and parties for the children" (p. 64, my emphasis) . One key domestic technology that actively enabled the maintenance and extension of these communal relations forged in the heterotopic spaces of the suburbs was the telephone. When the telephone first entered the "private" home in the late 19' cenhuy, enthusiasts waxed eloquently on its potentiai: It is nothing las than a new organization of society-a state of things in which every individual, however secluded, will have .. .[access to] every other individual in the comrnunity, to the saving of no end of social and business complications, of needless goings to and fro, of disappointments, delays, and a countiess host of those great and Little.. mnoyances which.. .make iife laborious and unsatisfactory. (quoted in Marvin, 1988, p. 65)
Yet, as Plant (1997) notes, "profound technological change tends to be looked at through a 'rear-view &or' with the hrture irnagined as 'a greatly improved version of the immediate present'"(p. 182). In the case of the telephone, these "improvements" did not include any changes to the social order, for it was intended to be used by men for business matters and by women to order services related to the upkeep of the home as weli as to anange social engagements fur the fainily (Frissen, 1995). What in fact happened was that women began using the telephone for their own social purposes, often having lengthy conversations with friends and relatives. In a study of a group of women in a small mid-western Arnencan town, Rakow (1992) concluded that the telephone was integral to maintainhg a sense of local community as the demands of the women's lives were such that their opportunities for getting together in a physical location were restricted. If men could not stop women from subverting the intended use of "their" technology, they could certainly denigrate it. Marvin (1988) provides an example of a typical "joke" which appeared in the EIecmical Review in 1887. It consists of a dialogue in which Mrs. Wary forgets to dial after lifting the receiver and then forgets the number once the operator cornes on the line to patch the cal1 through. Once connecte. with Mrs. Prim, the two fnends "discuss the good looks of several local pastors and gossip about fashion and dressmakhg". Mrs Wary concludes the conversation by claiming she can no longer remember why she called but that the two of them had so much fun "chatting" that it no longer mattered @p. 23-24). Women were thus positioned as "parasitic consumers of men's laborn for engaging in "idle taik" (p. 24). In the part few years, fibre optic technologies have contributed to the drastic drop in long distance rates in North Amena. Most long distance carrien in Canada offer a rnonthly flat fee for long distance caUs within the country evenings and weekends. The advertisements for such services, though, almost aiways depict women making and receiving the calis. My personal favounte is a receni ad for a digital mobile phone service, which tnimpets, "Attention teenaged girls! Free evening and weekend calling!" With large profits to be made, electronically mediateci "gossipn has become a legitimate
C-erspace: The Final Frontier? " Like the industrial, office and domestic technologies describeci above, ICTs also possess the power of dirt, enabhg the formation of heterotopic cyberspaces and on-line women's only communities. Such a phenomenon rnay seem rather unlikely, given that the history of prosthetic communication is unquestionabiy very much one of maie design and use. The first computer network, ARPANET was set up by the American military, and then expanded to allow for computer conferencing among the upper echelons of the United States Governrnent (Rheingold, 199%). Cornputer hobbyists/enthusiasts were the next group to get involved, setting up the first BBSs (bulletin board services) in the mid 1970s' primarily to exchange programs that they had developed (hence the term "shareware").As late as 1994, when the fist DDEB was formed, mearchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology reported that 94 per cent of those who responded to their first survey of Internet use were male, the majority of whom worked as computer professionals (Graphies Visualization & Usability Center, 1994). One could argue that there is nothing particularly novel about the interactivity of ICTs given the telephone's long history of social use. Yet the telephone's strong aügnrnent with women's social and spatid practices has resulted in its conspicuous absence from the historiography of media. Poster (1994; 1995), for example, compiles a list of "fïrst age" media from radio through to television to demonstrate that ICTs constitute "a second media agen,pointing to interactivity as a dividing factor. Whiie the telephone is obviously not a medium of mass communication as radio and television are, it is most certainly an interactive technology. But because men are not constnicted/do not construct themselves as social users of the telephone (which is not to say they did not and do not use the telephone for this purpose), they
* This title is a refaence to the opening sequence of the television series Star Trck me Nat Gheratz'an, which consists of music and a monologue cited by the main cbaractet, USS Enterprise Captain Jean Luc Picard, piayed by the actor Paüick Stewart. have had to draw on a different set of narratives to make sense of their "new" social prac tice. In the early to mid 1990s, the articles that appeared in self-proclaimed "cutting edge" technocultural magazines such as Wïred and Mondo 2(XM were infusai with narratives of exploration. Cyberspace was seen as a "frontiern to be "settled"in the style of the Amencan West. Similarly, the books examining this new phenomena had titles such as The Virtud Cornmuniry: Homesteading on the Fronrier (Rheingold, 1993b), High Noon on ik Elecnoiic Frontiec Conceptuitl Issues N1 Qberspace (Ludlow, 1996) and Qberia: Life in the Trenches of fSpenpace (Rushkoff, 1994). Imagining cyberspace as a frontier is obviously problematic in that the spaces of 19& century North America were only empty in the sense that they had yet to be occupied by white Europeans. Moreover, stories of the "Wild Westn and zones of active combat focus almost exclusively on the actions of white men while the stories of women or peoples of colour are only mentioned in passing or not told at all. The frontier, however, is not simply an abstract concept applied to cyberspace, but one that is (re)produced by the social practices of the on-iine "pioneers" or "cybemautsn. Much has been written about the hostile and aggressive nature of Intemet exchmges, particuiarly on the Usenet. Insulting messages directed at other newsgroup participants have become known as "flames" and the practice of posting the vitriolic messages known as "flaming".Indeed Dery (1994) titled his edited collection of essays about the Internet Flame Wars. In the introduction, he attributes flaming to "the wraithlike [wrath-fie?] nature of electronic communicationn: When tempers fi are,. ..disembodied, sometimes pseudonymous combatants tend to feei that they cm hurl insults with impurity (or at least without fear of bodily hm). Moreover, E-mail missives or "posts"seem to encourage rnisinterpretation. @. 2)
The reason for the latter, contends Dery, is the lack of nonverbal clues. He concludes by quoting a nameless "net surfern who informs us that "shit happens on the Net" and that "anyone who plans to spend time on-line has to grow a few psychic calluses" @. 2). By resorting to technologid determùiism, Dery avoids questions as to who actually engages in flaming, how it became so widespread in the first place, and why "everyone" should just accept this practice as "the way things are". AU the same, Dery indirectiy answers the f%st question when he describes flaming as a less ritualized, cybercultural counterpart to the Afncan-American phenomenon known as "the dozens," in which duelists one-up each other with elaborate, sometimes rhyming gibes involving the sexual exploits of each other's mothers. @* 4)
Of course, one ne& never to have heard of "the dozens" to realize that the adjective rnissing in front of 'phenomenon' is male. Although Rheingold (1993a) does not use the term " flaming" , he does refer to "sport hassling " , which he describes as "vicious online verbal combat", p. 621. Like Dery, he blames such behaviour on the medium, specificaily the "anarchic" structure of the Net and its lack of formal rules and reguiations. Associating flaming with men is not to suggest that women do not engage in this practice. In the case of the DDEBRP participants, however, the major@ expresseci thek general disapproval of flaming, even though a number had been on the receiving end: 1 generally prefer not to reply to messages 1 find offensive, both in ernail and on the newsgroups. 1 feel it's immature to spam people and isnlt likely to cause trolls ta change for the better. (Gan-)
1 don't flame. Life is too short not to grow up. (us)
1 guess 1 tend to identify with the person who has "inserted- foot-in-mouth" and feel sorry for them - 1 donlt feel 1 need to participate in harassment of that kind. And it is juvenile and rude. (Fada)
Paula's comment points to the most common reason for flaming: a Net newcomer (" newbie") has inadvertentiy broken an informal rule around posting procedures, which could involve anything hmposting to the wrong aewsgroup to asking a question already answered in the official FAQ.~~It is interesthg that of the two participants who admitted to being or baWig been "flame throwers", neither saw it as something to be proud of or to engage in iightiy.
33 1 wiii spdabout soma of these 'des' of posting to lists and newsgroups (known as "Netiquette")in the context of codtymaking in Chapter 7. When 1 first arrived online 1 used to state my opinion in a rather obnoxious manner. Since then, I1ve learned a lot about how other people see things. (Dd)
Oh, yes, 1 dontt suffer fools lightly. If someone disagrees with me, that's just fine, but *donft+ tell me 1 can't hold an opinion or that I'm an idiot for not believing X. Also, I wontt stand still for racist, sexist or other narrow minded bigoted statements . (Liz) Fiaming, 1 argue, is a gendered practice that has, in part, marked cyberspace as a male social space that is often hostile to women in the way that the Amencan West was in the lgm century. It is small wonder that Camp (1996) described her on-iine experience as anaiogous to sailing in rough seas, "buffeted by high winds of derision and sucked dom into whirlpools of contention," and Systers, the mailing List for female computer professionals to which she subscribes, as a welcorning "port of callN@. 1 14). Case (1996) uses the "oceann metaphor to describe Sappho, the electronic mailing list for lesbian women, as a "serene isle.. . [that] fioats within a wide sexist sean (p. 84). Just as women's use of the telephone was denigrated through jokes about the " frivoüty " of their conversations, so has their use of ICTs: 1 was on alt. tv.x-files for awhile first, then as usually happens whenever a woman starts to express her appreciation for an actor on the net we started getting "me toosl' from women and flack from the men. (Why is it men can talk about actresses in public and not get flack, but let a woman talk about a man and we get jumped al1 over!) Anyway, thatls why Julia and 1 started the original DDEB.... 1 pretty much quit reading a.t.x.. The signal to noise ratio got utterly unmanageable. (Kollie3')
1 decided as soon as 1 read Kelliers post. People think nothing of it if men talk about lusting after women, but if women discuss the sexual attractiveness of men, people act like were [sic] sluts. I wanted the freedom of being able to talk about lust without being exposed to condesension [sic] for it. (Hollis)
X think it was in Febzuary of 1994. 1 decided to join because I found the news groups to be a little hostile to women expressing their admiration of an actor. Also 1 thought it might be fun. I decided to stick oround because the conversation was never limited to DD or to the X-files and because 1 met such interesting women from so many different parts of the world. (Moll)
Y "Kellicnand 'Julii' are ral nama and 1 have used them with permission in the context of this particuiac quote as the idormation identifjhg them as the founders of the DDEB is available to anyone who visits theu websites. As the above quotations from a few of the research participants indicate, some male X- Files fans felt it necessary to dismiss female fan talk as "drool", a term which suggests something dirty and infantile. When these same women sought out a cyberspace of their own, these spaces in tum became the targets of ridicule: The only time 1 ever flamed somebody was when a certain male personage slagged the DDEB repeate&y in his posts .... In particular 1 objected to his assertion that women "couldn't possibly have anything interesting to talk about" by themselves without men present. 1 REALLY let him have it, in front of the entire X-Files mailing list. So did a couple other DDEB sisters, and he kasn't Yeer, kar5 frcm ir= a LONG tirne. (-i)
A male fkiend of one of the participants had a different, though equally critical reading of a women-only fan List: From: Sonya He thought that since we were an "estrogen" brigade, that we were al1 man-haters, and al1 got together to bash men and (1 guess) elevate women (and what's Our David--isntt he a Y chromosome, too?) :-). It seemed hard for him to believe othemise, but 1 tried to explain that it's "estrogen" only because we're al1 women, and that our purpose isn't to get togethex and trash the male sex.
Despite the hostility and ridicule that women face if they venture into cyberspace, survey results which point to white, middle class women as the largest growing demographic on the htemet. When 1 set up the DDEBRP in 1996, the number of female users was estimateci to be 3 1.5 per cent (Graphies, M6), up from oniy 6 per cent from 1994. In the ninth survey, fkom April 1998, the percentage incTeased to 38.7 per cent but dropped, interestingly enough in the last swey completed in October 1998 to 33.6 per cent. However, the Strategis Group (2000), which released its survey results in March 2000, daims that the number of women with Intemet access has tripled since December 1998 and is now at 49 per cent. In Canada, the percentages are simüar. As of December 1998, Comquest Communications (1999), for example, estirnated that out of 6.3 million Canadians on he, 2.9 million are women. These figures are not surprising as they might seem, given women's historia1 connections with the telephone in the home and the computer in the office. With a long history of engaging in electronidy mediated "gossip" as weli as king proficient "keyboardists" and front heusers of new office technologies such as email, cyberspace is, in fact, a space ripe for "colonization" by women. For the participants of this study quoted below, establishing relationships with other wornen on the DDEBs had had a profound effect on their "rdlives": In many ways the brigadiers know more about whatls going on in rny life on a daily level right now than my RL friends. At least 1 interact more, and receive support from, my DDEBx friends on a regular basis. With my RL friends, because of physical distance (usually hundreds of miles) we only get to update and support eac other every month/couple months or so .... With the brigadiers, like a sorority, there is a bond that surpasses typical dif ferences that might contraindicate a f riendship in RL. (Sonya)
My net friends, including some DDEBers are the closest friends 1 have. Scme cf these ;ec;lc 1 hz-~eshared zy decptst thoughts ànd troubles with. Drucilla (for example) is, in many ways, closer to me than my sisters. (Liz)
For the most part, my friendships on the list go beyond that to a sisterhood. 1 can tell them anything -- they will understand and most will sympathize. No tpic (sic] is off-limits -- relationships, jobs, sex (ask about the naked men web page and ou~ reactions to it Cg>), and those awful aspects of your personality youlre ashamed of and hide from everyone. 1 can tell the DDEB1s about it and find out that most of them fight off the same things. Deeply persona1 things 1 canlt talk about to anyone else except rny best friend, 1 can talk to them about. (Ash)
These virtual "sisterhoods"intersecte. in interesting ways with some of the "real' public and private spaces that have been dixussed earlier. Based on the data coiiected fiom the DDEBRP,the workplace was generally the primary point of entry for the majority of memben, faciltated by easy and muent access to email: I blip on to check my e-mail frequently throughout the day while I1m waiting for queries to run at work. Then 1 also usually log on in the evening to check my mail again. (Hollis)
Actually, my job is pretty great, b/c my boss is absent. Shels a faculty member who has an office on another floor, and 1 see her prolly [probably] once a week, and that just to pass paperwork back and forth. So, as long as 1 run the office in a decent way, the students get the attention they need, and 1 get my work done, nobody seems to care how much I1m on my computer for persona1 stuff. (Daphrie)
First thing in the morning when 1 get to work, then I check mail periodically throughout the day. I1f [sic] I1m overloaded with work, 1'11 log on from home around 3:00 at night to read my mail. Galeva
Gawddess, this is embarrassing. 1 leave my work cornputer on-Une al1 day and check it periodically. 1 don't know if that counts as being on hours a day. *Actual* the spent on-line is much lower, probably an houx to two hours, counting the in the evenings when 1 log-on from home. (Drucilla) Given the office's status as a pink collar ghetto, it is telling that of the nineteen research participants, only four did not work in offices at the start of the project- one was a full time MSc. student, two worked out of their homes as a fixelance writer and independent composer respectively, and another worked in a bookstore." Of those who did, four identified themselves as professionals working in their field: two in computer science, one in astronomy and one in information science. Two others held liberal arts degrees but worked as professionals in computer support and in fundraising for a large institution ïqectively. Of the remahhg ten, al1 worked in various administrative support positions ranging from temp to executive secretary. Only two had not completed at least one university degree. Even Daphne who Iiked her job because she had a fair arnount of independence and responsibility, was keedy aware of how undervaiued office work was: I1rn a secretary. I'm a good one, and 1 care about my students and try to give them the best service possible. Yet, secretarial work is looked down on, jokes are made about "governrnent employees" etc.
The DDEBs are heterotopic sites that invert/subvert the normative social and spatiai relations of the office precisely busetheir creation involves indulging in an activity that De Certeau (1984) names la perruque (literally 'makhg the wig')- the use of work time to produce "work" of one's own: "the worker who indulges in la perruque actuaiiy diverts time.. .frorn the factory [or office] for work that is fk, creative, and precisely not directed toward profit" (p. 25). Thus, going on Line to interact with her DDEB "sisten" was for Daphne a deserved break for her eficiency. For others iike Hoilis, who had what she described as "the job hmheuH, it was a necessity: My job is high-stress and 1 depend on the DDEB lists as my lifeline to sanity. The worse the job gets, the more 1 feel a need to be on the 'net, and the less the 1 have that 1 can afford to be there.
Using the office as a point of entry into DDEB (and DDEBRP) cyberspace, however, was not just contingent upon Internet access at work, bm restrictions to it ar
The information in this section on the employment and marital srints of îhe rese~rch participants was pmvided in the prehhry Questionnaire. home, restrictions directly related to domestic spatial and social practices outiined earlier in the chapter. It should come as no surprise that although al1 the DDEBRP members had Internet access at home, the six who were single and lived alone were the ones who stated that they had no constraints that limited the time that they spent on iine. This was also the case for the three who lived at home with their parents and had their own cornputers in their bedrooms, aithough Ash noted that she had to share the second phone line with her mother. In Mou's house, where there was only one computer, she found it "impossibie to get my boyfiend or my brother off it". it is ais0 interesting that both she and Geneva specifically mentioned that they were encouraging the5 mothers to go on line. In contrast to the single women, none of the married or divorced women with children had sole access to a cornputer even though two stated that the computer was in their office. The others named shared locations such as the bedroom, study, and in Mrs Hale's home "in the corner of the dining area". Several of these women, however, indicated that they were the primary users: Ail members of the family use it. After me, the most frequent user is rny 4 year old daughter, who plays CD games on it.,..After that cornes my 7 year old, who is well into writing her first novel.. . . then cornes my husband, who uses it almost exclusively for games ....finally, my mom uses it for letters and mailing lists for her flouer clubs. (Mrs Hale)
My husband uses it fairly often, when he can pry me off it ;) I"m the one who actually goes out and spends my money on the computer equipment, so 1 get first dibs. (Hollin)
My children use the word processor, My husband is cornputel illiterate. (Dani) Nonetheless, aU but one said that they found the amount of time they could spend on ihe at home constrained in some way by fady responsibilities: 1 have things to do with/for my family and non- virtual frlends, 1 also write, so a lot of my free the is taken up doing that. 1 used to spend much more the on the net, but it was interfering with my life so 1 cut back some. (Drucilla)
My daughter and my job must come before my net activities. That doesnft mean that there asenrt times when 1 log on while shels awake or that 1 donlt read mail whfle Itmsitting on hold waiting to talk with Microsoft support or snmething. (Liz)
Although 1 do not have children, I alrnost never check or send email in the evening either, generally setting aside that the to pfepare and eat meals and spend the with my partner, who works during the day. The only participant in this category who did not feel her home access was restricted was Mrs Hale, but it is clear frorn her comments that she had conflicting feelings: It should be, but it isnlt. :) 1 admit 1 neglect some of rny work responsibilities, and sometimes my home responsibilities as well. 1 rationalize the latter by reminding myself I am actually earning money by working on the Net. In a similx vein, the single women in relationships cited these as priorities over being on line. Geneva, for example, noted Tmgenerally too busy with my fiance and my pets to read mail on the weekend". Moll joked that her on-1Uie time outside of work was limited "by the fact that the modem lines are always busy when 1 try to dial in from home. And my boyfiiend keeps insisting on taking me outn. Of course, not aU time spent off line can be interpreted as time that one would prefer to spend on line if given the opportunity, but one cannot dismiss the historical construction of the domestic sphere as one of work for women and one of leisure for men. Compare the tone and content of the above responses with the opening paragraph of Rheingold (1993b): "Daddy is saying 'Holy moly! ' to his cornputer again!" Those words have becorne a family code for the way my virtual community has infiltrated our real world. My seven-year-old daughter knows that her father congregates with a family of invisible fiiends who seem to gather in his cornputer. @. 1)
Family responsibilities do not seem to present any limits to the Net activities of this self-proclairned cybemaut, and one can ody wonder if this freedom is ~0~eCtedto the "real life" presence of the child's mother in the home. Speculation aside, only one participant, who identified herself as not being in a relationship, described herself as an
There is one finai point 1 wish to make about the heterotopia with respect to the DDEBs. Foucault (1986) states that such sites always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates hem and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public space. Either the entry is compulsory.. .or the individual has to submit to rites and purifications. To get in one must have a certain permission and make certain gestures. @. 26) Although 1 have argue. for a brader definition of the heterotopia to take account of agency and resistance, this point does raise some interesting issues around boundaries and how they are maintained from wiihin. The creation of the first DDEB involved an invitation to female X-Files fans posted to Alt.tv.x-files by Keiiie and Julia. Julia was already a member of one of the first female fan lists called the Star Fleet Ladies AuxiIiary and Baking Society and "iiked the idea of trying to replicate what we had over in the SFLA.. . plus [David Duchovny] is, well, shaU we say, 'interesting ' to discuss :-)".Others, UeSel and Mrs Hale heard about the cre;itioii of the DDEB through friends on other email iists or were invited to join by Kellie or Julia. According to the DDEB FAQ, the decision to close the List to new membership was based in part on the limitation of the server to handle the high volumes of messages generated on open lists: The list was threatened by extinction if we didn't keep the volume of mail dom. We were able to find a new mailing listserver with no such restrictions, but we kept the iist closed as each mernber figured that 100 to 200 messages was about all they could handle fiom one list. :-)
But another reason is implied in a message posted to the DDEBRP, which 1 quoted from at the beginning of the chapter: Fzora: Liz [Closed lists] tend to be relatively small, about 30-50 members. In general, after the first flurry of discussion about whatever topic brought them together, threads drift and the group becomes less a discussion group on a certain topic and more like a group of friends sitting around sorneoners kitchen shooting the breeze about whatever cornes to mind. Membe.rs talk about their lives and their problems and, in sucessful [sic] groups, a valuable support network begins to develop.
Thus it seems that a list can only function as a community based on values of intimacy and support when it places boundaries around itself, a practice which keeps out not only men but other women who may not have been in the right public space at the right the when the list was announced. Excluding others who might also have experienced marpiaaüzation and exclusion on the open, mixed fora, however, was clearly problernatic for some DDEBRP members:
From: -8 Hale Judging from my mail, there are a LOT of DD fans out there trying to join fan clubs, probably for the same reason 1 did (to talk to other women without male harrassment [sic]). There are no open groups, and some of them sound pretty desperate. 1 wish someone WOULD start up a new group. 1 sympathize with these ladies deeply.
The initial response of the DDEB rnembers was to set up DDEB;? and then DDEB3. At that point, the total membership decided that no more DDEBs would be formed, a decision that has resulted in charges of elitisrn frorn other female fans. On the one hand, the DDEBRP participants expressed a desire to help those excluded to form their own groups. Bel suggested in one thread that she would consider starting up a group, though assuring the other DDEBRP members that "it would NOT be a DD-named group, although I'd let people talk about DD if they reaily wanted to :-)". Others then
From: Liz You know, it might not be a bad idea to come up with a little one or two screen FAQ that pretty much tells people *howf to go about setting up their O-m lists. Not the nitty gritty details (go ask your ISP would satisfy that bit) but just the "Well, you decide if you want to run a list, you either ~hinkup your own unique name or let your members decide on one after you put it together, you announce it in the appropriate places and start talking. Maybe add some insights on the kinds of things to avoid or to be prepared for or something. Mainly just a slap in the head for the clueless (or the honestly ignorant) .
From: Megan If you get something up, let me know and 1'11 add it to the DDEB2 site and pass it on to the DDEB3. If 1 come across a good reference page about setting up mailing lists, 1'11 let you know. . , On the other hand, some members expressed fnistration with those who threatened to appropriate the name, as illustrated in the responses to a rumour that a group of America On Line (AOL) fans were planning to start their own DDEB: From: Dani NOOOOOO!!!! No AOL DDEB!!!!! mHHHHH!!!!!! (AOL = Airbrains OnLine)
From: as. Hale Much as 1 despise AOL, 1 will go surf the folders there this weekend and see what's brewing. If the group is seriously concerned about this, we can send a message to Deb Brown (Mrs Spooky) ....If [RI or someone of equal authority can tell her we are tradernarked, registered, locked and loaded, she might back dom on this. Since it's her job to mo~torthe playpen, if she says no AOL DDEB, there wontt be one. At least not publicly. Of course we cannot help what people do on private mailing lists, 1s there +any* way to handle this without sounding elitist? Please tell me. The strong reaction to having the DDEB narne "usurped" was directly co~ectedto the fact that the usurpers were subscribers of the largest Intemet se~ceprovider in the world. Indeed, many Internet "old-timersn believe that the "signal to noisen ratio on discussion fora jumped dramatically when AOL gave its 10 million subscribers full Internet access in 1996. This reaction, of course, is shot through with class, AOL subscribers being positioned as the Intemet's "unwashed masses". Classed discourses of ownership and propriety are also drawn upon by Mrs Hale with her references to the DDEBs as registered trademarks. Moreover, her references to being "locked and loadedn echo the amendment of the Amencan constitution that gives its citizens the right to bear and use arms to defend property. Thus the DDEBs are constructed as both the private spaces of women and the private space of the individual as produceci and protected by the state, indicating an intersection of class and femininity. Yet, as Mrs Haie's concluding line indicates, policing boundaries is not an act that cornes without a price. It was one that led to conflict in one DDEBRP exchange: From: Sonya ...The AOL DD forums may have changed since two years ago (when 1 did some lurking and they were *really* bitter about the DDEB),but on the other hand, 1 think on some levels, no matter how polite or non-elitist we are, some people might be potd [pissed off] anyway,
Fzom: Erin People will think what they want no matter how we go about doing things. As long as we are polite, not condescending and friendly, we've done al1 we can do about it. 1 do think it also helps to encourage people to form their own groups ...but 1 may be wrong as that migbt emphasize the idea that "you can't join us." Ideas? While Erin wanted to find ways to avoid conflict and appease those who were upset with the DDEB members for not letting hem join, Sonya felt that such efforts would not make any difference. Most of the participants in this thread end& up agreeing with Sonya, Mrs Hale adding, "practically ANYTHING you say that isn 't 'yes, we'd be delighted to have you join' will be put down as evidence that we are snobbish jerks, anyway " .% That said, none of the thread participants wanted to be perceived as rude or elitist. This is illustrated by the responses to a post forwarded by
16 This thread pmved to be highiy cmtentious. stiniDg up undetlying teasions among some of the members that at the time I had no idea existed. This incident will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 7 in terms of practices of silence. Mrs Hale some months later, in which an AOL X-Files fan claimed to have received a rude response from a DDEB member: Fr-: Drucilla The scary thing is that it could easily be me, even though 1 *never* intend to be rude to anyone. 1 know 1 +have* told people that Ivmtoo busy to start up new correspondences, but that was just plain honesty, not rudeness as far as 1 was concerned, Until now it never occurred to me that anyone might be offended by it. "sigh*
Hofis joined the thread, reassuring DruciUa that she had done nothing wrong: If ;ecple are gcirzg t3 zead snottiness into 'four messages regardless of how politely they are written, there isn't much point in worrying about it. Remember what "Mrs. Hale" said last week about a lot of people being so immature that they'll get pissy if they can't have what they want even if there is a good reason for it? That applies to minor things like wanting to get a long, persona1 response to their e-mails, too. The bottom line is, if someone thinks you're a bitch when you haven1t done anything to deserve it, itls their problem, not yours. Not that that changes the fact that it is human nature to wish to be thought well of by everyone . :) However, this desire to be "thought weli of is not universal, as Hollis suggests, but is very much bound up with articulating a white, rniddle class ferninine identity. Thus maintainhg a community based on "ferninine" values of intimacy and inclusiveness is ultimately a process that relies on exclusion to protect those values.
Conclusion In this chapter, 1 have tri4 to provide a historical context for the formation of women-only cyberspaces/cornmuniti~such as the DDEBs. The public/private binary, with its complex of heteronormative discourses of masculinity and femininity, has long functioned to exclude women from the public and contain them in the private as wives and mothers. In ancient Greece and in the Middle Ages, women "belonged" to the household, court or rnanor in which power and authority was aligneci with patnarchy. With the "birth"of the private sanctioned by the laws of the nation state, a space was created from which men stepped out into the public to take care of business, discuss affairs that concemed them and aimlessfy stroII. Women remained contained in this new pnvate reah under the authority of fkthers and husbands. At least that's the official story. Herstory is one of gaps, cracks and chioks in the retaining wall buttressing the households and guilds, one of convents, local markets, pest houses and inns and workshops. The dirty power of the industriai age that &ove the stem engines and the machinery of the factories reinforced some sections to ensure that women remained in the new domestic sphere. It also reduced other sections to rubble, bulidozing through roads that led directly to the gates of the first separate spheres of work. #en those roads that led to the factories wrre effectively blocked, others were built that led to the office. But even from with the space of the domestic, women managed to %id ways to gather together, in person or via the telephone to resist their isolation. And so the pattern continues into the realm of the vimial, "women" creating their own spaces in the "Wild Westn. While there is no guarantee that these spaces of women will be heterotopic and that communities will form that will lead to open resistance or changes to the existing social order, the potential for some form of inversion is always there. The DDEBs are heterotopic sites in that they refuse the normative practices of the Intemet fan fora where male participants may express desire for female actors but female participants may not do the same for male actors?' Moreover, they refuse to be delimitai as "fan fora", and are shaped b y a desire for community based on practices of fandom and fiiendship. They also juxtapose the space of work with the space of leisure- the DDEBs are virtual sisterhoods that exist on company time and in company space. However, they are not unbounded spaces and in fact rquire boundaries if they are to be imagined as intimate "kitchen" gathe~gs. It is also my intention that this sketch of the DDEB spaces and their boundaries serve as an introduction to the DDEBRP and the practices that shaped it. 1 now tuni to the DDEBRP and in the following chapters, 1 provide a much more thorough mapping of DDEBRP space through the presentation of data that details its process of community making and the performances of ferninine identities that inform the process.
If straight women expressing heterosexuil deJira were targets of idide, the miction to expressions of qaeer desire on such sites wodd no doubt have been more vitriolic. Chapter 4 Stories for Girls: Making Ferninine Pleasures out of Masculine Television Texts
With a shared interest in The X-Files fûnctioning as the "glue" that bound the DDEB members together initially, the DDEBs are on one level fan communities. This was also the case with the DDEBRP, a sizeabie portion of interaction related to the series in some way. This chapter focusses on the practices that served to create and maintain the DDEBRP as a femde fan community. Specifically, they involved performances of feminine identities through the process of coUectively making sense of both individual X-Files episodes and those texts produced by the entertainment industry about the actors who play the lead roles. Given women's appropriation of men's technological inventions such as the telephone, it should corne as no surprise that women do the sarne with television, taking male-produced narratives and inverting/subverting them. Drawing upon Jenkins (1992), I argue that the DDEBRP rnemben engaged in reading practices in order to gain feminine pleasures from texts produced predominately by men for male viewers. The data revealed two sets of practices that stood out. One was idenrifiafion with the character of Dana Scully and, at some moments, Fox Mulder when he displayed emotional vulnerability. The other was the reading of feminine quest story lines, those of the romance, into the texts framed by the masculine "Holy Grail" quest involving Mulder's search for proof of extraterrestrial life. It was through the practice of reading The X-Files episodes paradigmaricczIly that the characters and the show became "emotionally real" (Jenkins, 1992) for the DDEBRP members. The last section of this chapter looks at how members used the same feminine reading practices to make sense of the secondary X- Files texts, Le., the "me" stories about the stars themselves. Of Fans and Femiriinitv Jenkins (1992) distinguishes between regular viewers and fans of a television program based on their level of emotional commitment: Fans, as committed viewers, organize the5 schedules to ensure that they will be able to see their favorite program.. .. The series becomes the object of anticipation: previews are scrutinized in detail, each frame stopped and examined for suggestions of plot developments; fans race to buy TV Guide as soon as it hits the newsstands so that they may gather new materiai for speculation from its program descriptions. Secondary materials about the stars and producars are coiiected and exchanged within the fan network. (p. 57-58)
Moreover, fans are not simply avid consumers but often active producers of comic books, artwork, fiction and even music. Furthemore, interaction is an important component of fandom, ranging from attending "conventions" (known simply as "consn) held regularly in different North American cities to sharing interpretations of individual episodes with other fans face to face or, more recently, on the Internet. The members of the DDEBRP ail engaged in a range of these fan practices both on line and "in real life". Beyond being comrnitted viewers, 13 members said that they cokcted items such as t-shirts, comics, novels, and magazines. Fourteen were also writers of fan fiction, and 11 had attended at least one convention, two others commenting that they would attend one if it were heid in the area in which they lived. And, of course, by joining the DDEBs, and then the DDEBRP, they had some level of commitment to creating and maintaining an X-Files fan community through the process of negotiating a collective meaning for an episode out of individual viewing experiences. For such a process to work, "a certain common ground, a set of shared assumptions, interpretive and rhetorical strategies, inferentiai moves, semantic fields and metaphorsn must exist among the community members (Jenkins, 1992, p. 89). When 1 asked the DDEBRP members about what drew them to The X-Files, it is signincant that no one mentioned the themes emphasized by the writers and producen in the plot narratives and heralded by television cntics as the reason for the show's
From M011: .... 1 couldnlt believe that something that sounded so lame could attract so much attention so I watched my first episode in January of the first season. ft was Beyond the Sea and 1 was hooked. :-) Strangely enough, what attracted me to the series first wasn't DD [David Duchovny] but Gillian Anderson and the character of Scully. This was the most intelligent, competent woman 1 had ever seen on a tv show and her partner treated her as an equal. Which is also one of the reasons why 1 find Mulder so attractive.
From: Drucilla 1 started watching from the first episode. 1 started raving to al1 rny friends... you get the picture. 1 was hooked. Two strong, intelligent characters, a female lead who wasntt a bimbo, a male lead with a *brain+ as well as looks! Intelligent, challenging scripts that refused to tie everything up neatly each week. How could 1 resist?.. .. From: Erin 1 couldn't agree more! 1 kept seeing adverts for the show and thinking, "Man, this is going to be some lame alien thing. . . .but Irve seen that actor before, where 1 [sic] have 1 seen him?". , . .
Both MOU and Erin immediately disrnissed the alien theme as "lame", and it was for this reason that 1 resisted watching nie X-Files for the fist season. Moreover, Mol1 and Drucilla pointed to the lead characters and their relationship. OnIy one member expressed an interest in Mdder's quest for "the tnith" about "paranormaln events: From: Megan .... Although 1 am trained as a scientist (maybe 1 should Say 'because') there are still things in this world that can't be totally explained and 1 like that challenge to my rational and practical mind. 1 think thatts one of the things that attracted me to the X-Files (DD being one of the other!)f also love the charactex of Dana Scully. 1 was a major ST:TNG [Star Trek: The Next Generation] fan and I was really getting tired of some of the stories that they were giving the female characters on that show. Scully was vexy refreshing .
As was the case with the others, though, it was ultimately the main characters and the actors who played those roles that appealed to Megan and made her a fan of the show. According to Jenkins (1992), valuing character over narrative is an interpretive practice associated with female fans. In examining the interpretive practices of female fans of the Star Trek series, he found that they "focus their interests on the elaboration of purodigmatic relationships, reading plot actions as shedding light on character psychology and motivations" (p. 109). In contrast, the male fans of the David Lynch series XnPeak "focus on moments of chamcter interaction as clues for resolving syntagmatic questions" @. 109). The former practice can thus be understood as extending the text vertically by taking the characters and developing them, whem the latter extends it horizontally, by sketching in details that advance the plot lines. While Jenkins' account has an essentialist ring to it, he does link these gender-differentiated interpretive practices to socialization, tracing them back to "our earliest encounters with fiction". 1 wiil "poststnicturaiizenhis account by adding that the publishing house, school and family are ail sites which serve to circulate "me" discourses of masculine and feminine reading practices. Thus action, adven ture and science fiction narratives are deemed appropriate genres for boys while romance and other "relationship-centred" narratives are posited as suitable for girls. As a fourth-grade girl, the effect of these "gender tniihs" was that I was discouraged by the school librarim from ieading non- fiction books about anirnals io take up instead Linle Women or Little House on the Prairie. (We finally compromised on the "boy and his horse" narratives found in the Black Stallion series.) In adult narratives, the gender boundary is most obvious in those classifiecl as popular, although the "stories for boysNlargely remain unmarked as such while the Harlequin romances and soap operas are associated with women and devalueci as a resdt of plus rnale/minur male binary logic. Reading the romance, to appropriate Radway (1984), and other relationship-centred texts, is a performance of heterosexuai feminine identity and as such, the pleasures of the text (Barthes, 1975) cm be descnbed as ones of recognition. Fiske (1987) suggests that this is a moment at which the discourses of the subject and the text intersect, a moment in which the reader takes up the offered subject position. Ang makes a similar point when she says that such pleasures are "characterized by an immediate emotionaî or sensuai involvement. .. . What matters is the possibility of identifying oneself with [the object of pleasure] in sorne way or another to integrate it into everyday life" (quoted in Stacey, 1994, p. 43.'' Reading paradigmaticdly is, by extension, a means of producing feminine pleasures from masculine texts, but one which often requires a certain amount of reworking of the text on the part of the viewer to obtain a good "fit" between socidly located self and subject position. As the research participants' cornments indicate, one of the main sources of pleasure gained from watching The X-Files was the charmer of Dana Scuily. Moii
Ang, like Sîacy (1994) is drawing on psychdytic feminist film theory to point to processes of identification connected to the unconscious, whereas I am drawing on pst-stnicturaiîst notions of identity as articulation and performance. described her as "the most intelligent, competent woman 1 had ever seen on a tv show and her partner treated her as an equal". Similarly , Drucilia praised the casting of "a female lead who wasn't a bimbon. Finaiiy , Megan described the character of Scully as "refreshingnin cornparison to the fernale characterr in recent Star Trek series The Nat Generdon. In her reply, Drucilla elaborated on the problems she had with the femaie characters of the series: "1 loved TNG,but I got so SICK of the constant 'caretaker' roles they assigned to the women. Bleah. Barf". The main fernale characters being aüuded to were Diana Troy, the ship's counciiior, who did not even Wear a Starfieet uniform but rather low cut, clingy outfits, and Beverly Casher, who was just as often seen in her professional we taking role as the ship's doctor, and as the (over?)protective mother of her adolescent son, Wesley. The only high ranking female commanding officer, Chief of Security, Tasha Yar, was "kiki off' at the end of the first season. These characters, however, were improvements over the ones on the shows that the majority of the DDEBRP member grew up with in the 1960s and 1970s. As Liz wryly noted Frankly, *I* always wanted to be one of the Musketeers. 1 always identified with the swashbuckling hero.... The women's parts were always soooo... icky. They always needed rescuing and all. How boring. [second set of ellipsis marks in the original]
Sirnilarly, 1 remember as an eleven-year-old aligning myself with the male horse and the adolescent male trainer fiom the stories in The BIack Stallion series but feeling no aMnity with the more "deiicaten femde horses or riders of "girl and horse" storks like Narional Velvef. Taken coiiectively, our viewing experiences cast into sharp relief the dearth of strong female characters traditionally found in popular American television series and highlight ourefusal to take up the "damsel in distress" subject positions offered to us." While we aii "recognizedn the character of Sculiy, a white, heterosexual, well educated professional (she trained as a medicai doctor), the pleasures she brought us
39 SeDouglas (1994) for a detailed account of femaie television characters fiom the 1950s through to the 1980s. Shows discussed include me Dick Van Dyke Show, I Drem of hie,Bewitched, Mary ïjler Moore Show, Chmlie's Angels, me Bionic Woman, Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law and Moonlighsing. were not uniform. For example, when 1 suggested that Scully was still "second fiddlen to Mulder within the senes narrative, reaction was swift: From: Mol1 Mulder rnay have started this quest, but now they both own it. They have both lost a sister to it. They give each other the strength to journey on.O0. . . . Irrn pretty impressed with the job that these hormonally challenged men have done so far in writing a kick-ass female character.. ..
From: Geneva ....Mulder would long since have been unemployed and/or dead meat if Scully wasn't therc to protect and support him. Mulder is depaxknt on hcr for the ~sèkiyinfomaZion düixip, running interference with their superiors and bringing hirn back down ta earth when his theorizing becomes too wild.
Similady, when I noted that one my favourite elements of the show was the Stream of one-liners delivered deadpan by Duchovny, MOU repüed, " What about Scully's lines? She's gotten a few of her own back. :-) "If this is monkey pee, Mulder, you're on your ownn.4' As this defence of Scully from my perceived cnticism of her position of power in relation to Mulder suggests, there were differing levels of investments among the DDEBRP members, investments that were collectively negotiated through discussions about individual episodes.
Watchin~the Detectives: S~otliehton Scullv One of the longest and most intense discussions involving Scully and her status as Muider's partner centred on a scene from the premiere to the fourth season, "Herrenvolk" (Fox, 4 October 1996).~The conclusion to the third season fmale, it basically involves Agent Mulder on a search to uncover a secret governrnent expenment on a bee farm in Alberta involving alien cloning, an experiment that might
Muider's sister disappeared hmthe fPmily home when they were children in what he believes was a case of alien abduction. Scdiy's sister was shot to death by an assassin who had intendai to kiil ScuUy.
'' This iine is hma scene in the ktseason finale, 'The Erlenmeyer FiaskW(Fox, 13 May 1994) in which Mulder and Scuiiy hda solution in the laboratory of a doctor whom Mulder suspects is taking part in a secret aiien cloning experiment.
Discussions about individuai episodes generdy Cook place shortfy after theû initiai air date. which 1have provided in brackets beside the episode title and the American network which origidy aired them. lead him to the whereabouts of his sister. The supporting characters who are key to the plot are Jeremiah, a benevolent alien whose extraordinary healing powers Mulder hopes can cure his mother who recently had a stroke; an malevolent alien of the same species, referred to on the list as Chuckles, Lumpy or Tenninator, who is out to assassinate Jeremiah ; "Ms X,"a United Nations employee wlio is inwduced as Mulder's new informant to replace "Mr X," who has been executed presumably for leaking Mulder information; and the powerful conspirator known as The Cigarette Smoking Man or Cancer Man who is behind both assassination plots. A number of members had been discussing the episode with great enthusiasm when Drucilla began a separate thread, objecting to Mulder's treatment of Scully: Okay.,. does it bother any of you when Mulder runs off and leaves Scully?
1 mean, they're supposed to be +partners* but he seems to feel no compunction at al1 about haring off on wild alien chases and not letting her in on what's going on. Take the scene in "Herrenvolk" when he goes off with Jeremiah in the boat and leaves Scully there in the millyard with a (hopefully) dead alien to explain. 1 was sitting there "inventing" dialogue =or her at that point ... "Mulder! Get back here! Mulder donlt you dare go off and leave me here with this dead guy! Mulder, you asshole![both sets of ellipses in the original]"
Her post generated imrnediately generated a fluny of responses from members who had had the sarne reaction at the moment of viewing: From: Sonya This is funny, because right when that happened, 1 talked to the television (for Scully) ... "You asshole!" To me, it was unspoken, but very loud. :-1
From: Megan ... . 1 love the really pissed look on here [sic] face when he finally called her from Canada. And 1 seem to remember the word "asshole" popping into my head right about then as well.... The negative reaction to Mulder's treatment of Scully can be understood in tenns of a performance of liberal ferninist identity. These members, drawing upon the former, expected Scuiiy to be portrayed by the series writers and producers as Mulder's quai and, within the senes nanative, expected Mulder to treat her as one. As Drucilla's pst suggested, this includes making joint decisions about how to proceed in an investigation. When Mulder makes the unilateral decision to take off with Jeremiah in a motorboat, these members were required to rewrite the scene to make it work for them, imagining a furious Scully cursing Mulder for leaving her behhd with the supposedly dead Terminator. Others such as Ardis, however, tried to make the scene work as written: Fxom: Ardis .... It is one of his more annoying habits, and while he hasn't outgrown it after al1 this time, at least Scully's figured out how to deal with it. She just leaves him to his own devices and goes off to do her own thing. And you know that plays into Mulder's logic about it, i.e., "She's a big girl, she can take care of herself". . . . .
Ardis associated Mulder's behaviour with masculine immaturity by refemng to him as a boy, and Scully's appearance of acceptance as a sign of feminine matunty and independence. Responding passively to acts of violence, cruelty or disrespect are very much normed performances of femininity. In her sîudy of girl's comics, Walkerdine (1990) notes that all the story lines of the hvo series posited such responses as the conditions for resolution: selflessness, even though it brings pain and suffering, b~gsits own rewards.. .. The heroines suffer in silence: they display virtues of patience and forbearance and are rewarded for silence, for selfiessness, for helpfulness. (p. 95)
Ardis is thus articulating both a feminine and feminist discourse, for she valued both passive acceptance and independence. Winnie took up a similar position, stating that her reaction to Mulder's actions "is always some sort of rnild resignationn. While different positions were taken up, there was consensus that Scully's position as Mulder's equal was being undermined. When Mrs Haie joined the thread, however, she directly chaüenged this shared view: To be honest, 1 really can't see why everyone is so focused on this. If Scully had been a man, I don't think anyone would have thought twice about Mulder running off in pursuit of a suspect. 1 give [Chris] Carter full marks for TRLATING her as Mulder' s equal, and not shackling Mulder with a lot of emotional baggage about protecting her, going back for her, etc. In fact, he *did* cal1 her later, when they were on the ground again (cell phone calls from airplanes are bad for your health), and he was very solicitous. How the hell was he to know she was in trouble, when her answer to "Are you al1 right"? was "Finen? If 1 had Lumpy sitting behind me with an icepick in my ear I'd manage to say something other than "Fine".
Frankly, 1 think you guys are missing the forest for the trees. Not mincing her words, she turned the issue on its head, equating differential or "special" treatment to patriarchy and paternalism. She also put the onus on Sculiy to communicate any problems she had with her partner's treatment of her, thereby refusing the position of the "helplesslhapless femden for both Scully and herself. This position partially draws upon a set of discourses that have assembleci under the rubric of neofeminism or post-feminism. Proponents, the most weLi known of whom is Camille Paglia, accuse mainstrearn feminists (who they represent as a homogenous, undifferentiated category sometimes referred to as "femi-nazis") of disempowering women by tuming them into "victimsnofpatriarchal oppression. While a strong argument can be made that this position misrepresents both liberai and radicd feminisms and in fact functions to reinforce an alignment of conservative, anti-feminist forces, it is one that resonates with many women who do not want to think of themselves as victims and, more irnportantly, do not feel like victims. It also allows women to reclaim the subject position of 'feminist' in a way that avoids accusations of being dismissed as a "whiner". Mrs Hale's bald assertions ("1 give Carter full marks"), strong language ("How the hell was he supposed to know") and final line openly criticizing the position of the other participants in the thread ("hkly, 1 think you guys are rnissing the forest for the trees") had the effect of creating tension on the Iist. While some of the members who responded indignantly objectai to her implication they were in some way being sexist for raising the issue of inequality, they also made it clear that they too felt that Scuily was neither helpless nor hapless: From: Daphne ..., 1 would feel the same if Scully was a man. Mulder gets so intent on his own pursuit that he LEAVES his partner in dangerous circurnstances. Lone wolf is one thing, leaving your partner in danger is another.... She's perfectly capable of taking care of herself, we know that. If Mulder is a partner, he has to act like one.
Daphne's comment "we know thatn serves to rebuild a unified position that had ben undermined by Mrs Hale's criticisrn. For her part, Mrs Hale apologized for her antagonistic tone but reiterated her point, this time recasting Assistant Director Skinner in the role of Scully: But if Skinner was amoyed with Mulder for doing that, he would not have said "Fine" when Mulder asked him how he was. He'd have given him hell. What does it say about Scully that she puts up with this treatment £rom her partner? It was not Mulder's behaviour that she interpreted as problernatic but Scully's acceptance of it, which she contrasted with the valued masculine response of confrontation. Yet in answering ber own question she did not condemn Scuily for being a "wimp", suggesting that Scully recognized such treatment as "part of the temtory", which could imply a liberal feminist understanding of the difficulties in working in a male dominated field where sexisrn abounds. But then she immediately added: If she's not worked up about it, 1 don't know that Itmgoing to be. It seems pretty much in character for her to "carry her own water", from where I stand.
As a result, a new alignment formed, this time around Winnie and Ardis's acceptance of Scuiiy's "choice" to remain silent. It is clear that none of the members who participated in this thread was completely comfortable with identiwng with this normative ferninine response but at the same time, they were not prepared to devalue it or suggest that Sculiy was a victim. Daphne's final rernark, "Maybe she yells at him off-screen. But I'd like to see it" , sums up the difficulties that confront fernale appropriators of male-produced texts: the subject positions that are proffered around fernininity may not be the preferred ones but they are not aiways so easy to tum down. In contrast, narratives that better "matchedn mernbers' gender locations were unequivocally embraced. This was the case with another fourth season episode, "Never Againn (Fox February 2, 1997). Sarah Stegall's review of the opening scene in which
Sculiy does confront Mulder is representative of the list response: " Dana Scully, having corne to a minor crisis in her life brought on by depression, finds herself rebelling against Mulder, against her job, against her self. When Mulder is forced to go on vacation (to Graceland, of course), he reluctantly leaves her in charge of a case. In a scene we have waited for [sic] +yearsf, Scully finally asks why she does not have a desk, flat-out refuses to investigate a farcical case, and stonily refuses to be drawn into a debate with Mulder over her cornmitment ta The X-Files. Mulder goes from
a The above is an excerpt from 'Screwed, Blue, and Taîtooed' by Sarah Stegall. Sarah wss a member of the DDEBRP and regularly posted copies of her X-Files reviews that appeard on her website to the list. To preserve confidentiaiity, 1 have used her real name in this context, not her pseudonym, with her permission. To see the entire text of this review and any of the others quoted in this thesis, please visit her website
The phrase "in a scene we have waited for *years*" is signifiant, for it serves to bind together female fans into a community whose interests are often at odds with those who control the story lines." A sense of unity among DDEBRP members, though, fragmented during the discussion of Sculiy's ensuing acts of rebellion: going to a bar by herself, picking up a man with a tattoo and then getting one herself on her buttock. 1 began the thread by expressing both disappointment and annoyance with the plot development for equating rejection of patriarchal authority with having heteronormative sex with a stranger and for portraying Scully as confused and weak: It seerns that she's worked hard to establish herself as an equal to Mulder and now she's suddenly crumbling. Yes, it's true, it is Mulder's work but she seemed to have taken a lot of her own initiatives.
Those who replied to my pst, however, held a different view. Moll thought Scully's resentment and confusion was understandable in light of the traumas she had experienced in the last two "yearsn- she was abducted by aliens in cooperation with the govemment (Mulder's explmation which she is only now starting to seriously entertain) and developed a deadly cancer as a result of the experiments performed on her. Drucilla agreed, adding that this episode "showed us that Scully's *human*, not a superwoman". Scully's "rebellion", 1 would argue however, was not understood by these participants as universal but as a reversal of the "good girYbad girl" binary: From: Moll ....1 think this episode takes a good look at the Scully who does what she's told. This is not just with Mulder, but with the Bureau itself. She started out as the good agent, following whatever orders they gave her. After hanging out with Mulder for a while, she starts to show signs of rebellion and now doesntt do everything the bureau way.
From Daphne: .. . . it's interesting to see, when [Scully] starts getting mad at herself about doing whatever other people tell her, that she indulges in "bad" behaviour....
Only six episodes in the htfour sepsons were written by women. (Sarah Stegall, personal communication, 27 October, 1997). While these members might not have found a comection with the form of Scully's rebellion (Daphne acknowledged that her actions were "a trifle out of character" within the series narrative), they clearly empathized with her situation. My attempt to problematize the narrative was foreclosed by the other participants in the thread who were more strongly invested in aligning themselves with Scully. The final paragraph of Moll's post makes explicit the emotional reality that Scully's experience as a wornan struggling to assert herself held for hem:
!Tcv =hoi= rehelli~g=g=ir,st Mclder.. .?.rhc ches ~ZVC2 ttxk~~yt= try to control her, even though 1 don't think it's calculated on his part. It's the hardest kind of rebellion because it's against someone she cares about. This is a thing 1 think most women face at some tinte or other. We like to help the people we love but sometimes in doing that we can lose sight of what we need for ourselves.
Moll's last sentence in particular recasts Scully's rebeilion from a professional one to a personal, emotional one, which had the effect of positioning Mulder as a father or husband. As 1 will discuss in a later section, none of the list members' advocated a romantic relationship between the two characters. Yet scenes that build on the emotional intimacy of the characters were sources of collective pleasure. In the context of this discussion, maintainhg a sense of coherence on the list necessitated containhg my different position. Although I did not feel "hurtn or marginalized, 1 felt uncornfortable being "the odd girl out". 1 also began to doubt my reading of the episode and try to "fit in" by seeing it from the others' perspective.
Bovs Will Be-Bvm Girb
The performances of ferninine identities that clustered around watching Scully stand up to Mulder did not preclude aiignments with Mulder at other moments. As 1 pointed out eariier, the pleasures of recognition do not necessarily take place dong gender lines. in other scenes in Herrenvolk, for example, Mulder's behaviour evoked sympathy and empathy , as in this excerpt of Sarah's review "Blood on the Threshold": It seems to me a great turning point has corne for Fox Mulder in "Herrenvolk". In the hospital scenes in Act Four, 1 was struck by his silence, his anguish, his hopelessness. In the United Nations scenes which follow, the normally gl.ib Fox Mulder is struck dumb with grief. The naturalness of this performance is one of David Duchovny's finest portrayals, as he manages to convey in an entirely authentic moment the depths of Mulder's despair and bewilderment . The "United Nations" scene advanced the series narrative by introducing Mulder to his new informant, providing him with a reason to beiieve that his sister may be still alive ("Not everything dies, Mr. Mulder"). It was his open display of emotional distress, however, that stnick a chord with the participants of this particulas thread. As the excerpt ftom Sarah's review suggests, the character of Mulder had never expressed any doubt about his quest to find out "the truthn about his sister's disappearance. Those moments of self-doubt and grief function to "ferninizen the character, thus enabling an aiignment with Mulder. It is also signifiant that this paradigrnatic reading is framed by a critical discourse, even by those Like Daphne and myself who were not writing a formal review for "publicn consurnption: From: Rhiannon .... 1 thaught the final scenes with the grieving Mulder were superb and DD very convincing indeed.
From: Daphne WOW! What a really great episode! There were parts of it 1 really, really liked, esp the bits where David gets to ACT and breaks up. The part he did in front of the new Ms. X was particularly effective.. . . Given that those of us who participateci in the thread had at least one degree in English or a related discipline, it is not surprising that we would deploy the critical reading strategies that we would have learned through formal study of liierary or cinematic narratives. Thus, Sarah referred to Duchovny 's performance as one of his finest because of its "authenticityn. Similarly, 1 descnbed it as "convincing" and Daphne as "effective". Maintainhg a distance from a text in order to evaluate it "objectivelynis, according to Bourdieu, "a comerstone of bourgeois aestheticsn that continues to be reproduced by the academy (quoted in Jenkins, 1992, p. 18). The same aesthetic " standardn presumes that the untrained reader is incapable of distinguishing " good" texts from "bad" and simply "identifies" with the characters on an emotional level. Thus, for female fans steeped in such an aesthetic, ferninine pleasures of the text are always ambivalent ones that need to be legitimated, even to ourselves, lest we be Wntten off as faogirls. If Mulder's displays of emotions were valued, more nomed masculine behaviours were not, even if they seemed justifiable under the circumstances. In "Tema" (Fox, 1 December 1996). for example, Mulder punches out a minor character, Alex Krycek, who once posed as an FBI Agent supporthg Mulder's investigations. As it tumed out, he was working for Cancer Man, under whose orders he executed Mulder's father. Despite Krycek's portraya1 as a "bad guy", most participants of the thread expressed sympathy for him, indirectly expressing disapproval of Mulder's violent response: From: Daphne .... Poor guy! Mulder was sure beating the crap out of hirn last night, huh? It was pretty sadistic.
From: Be1 . .. . 1 felt so sorry for Krycek. First Mulder, then [FBI Assistant Director] Skinner pounding on hirn, "Hefll be safe here". says Skinner and then proceeds to beat on him. I bet Krycek almost had second thoughts.
After Daphne suggested that perhaps Scully should have taken a swing at him as well, Bel added: She certainly had good reason to, but she is much calmer than the guys, 1 guess. Or perhaps it's that she strongly believes in "justice"? (1 didnft memorize her opening statement, but she seemed to comment on believing in what the department stood for.) This member overtly linked the recourse to violence to masculinity by contrasting it with a more "cool headedn, ferninine response. Only Mrs Hale thought Mulder's use of violence was justifiable under the circumstances: ,... If someone murdered my dad and delivered my partner into Duane Barry's hands, Ifd be out for blood. 1 thought Mulder showed admirable restraint .
Reading (in) the Romance If ferninine texts and the reading practices they engender are defîned in terms of relationships, then the romance is the mother of aii heterononative ferninine texts, to
Duane Barry was a minor character who was the subjact of a two part episode in the second season (Fox, 14 October 1994)* Believing he is about to be abducted again by aliêns, he kidnaps Scuiiy and takes her to the abduction site to offa her in exchange. Mulder anives at the site but it is too late. After king presumed dead, ScuUy mystexïously appears in a Washington, D.C. hospitai in a episode aired several weeks fater, with no memory of whaî has happened to her. recast the North American media's favourite Saddarn Hussein soundbite from the Gulf War. The practice of weaving romantic story lines into male produced narratives is yet another means of appropriation. Before examining its deployment by DDEBRP members, it is important to unpack the term romance. Davies (1992), drawing upon Cixous, nominates Pygmalion as the quintessentiai romantic story lin* the myth of the Greek king for whom Aphrodite brought to He the carved ivory figure of a beautifid
Thc secret of her beauty 'kpt for him: she has the perfection of someihing finished. Or not begun. However she is breathing. Just enough lif-d not too much. Then he wîil kiss her. So that when she opens her eyes she will see ody him; him; him in place of everything, di him.
Davies argues that Cixous' retelling of Sleeping Beaucy, a variation on the aforementioned classic, "reveals the absence of women to herself inside the romantic story line.. ..The achievement of oneself as women within the romantic story heis not being a subject (not-object) but being subjectedn (p. 65-66). Heterosexual romantic love is the goal of the heroine of romantic fiction and the plot is her quest to meet "the man of her drearnsn. Gilbert and Taylor provide a sketch of the quintessentiai quest narrative of the romance novel: The private worId of the ernotions is the world of the romance heroine. She is done: emotionaily isolated except for the possible ministrations of a fernale fnend who may or may not be totaily tnistworthy. Ali women are potential ememies because they are looking for men. Consequently the quest for love is a lonely quest and it is in dead earnest, because the promise of a loving and lasting heterosexual relationship is seen to demonstrate the successful acquisition of femininity . (p. 8 1)
There are, however, many variations on the theme and like other genres, the romance has changed over tirne. According to Wie, a DDEBRP member who is both a reader and writer of romantic fiction There are three major types of romance navels -- the Regency, the historical and the category. The Regencies are the ones that 1 think are more likely ta get our hackles up -- the "la, sir, 1 think 1 shall faint". The ones that hit the best-seller lists -- the Danielle Steeles, Jude Devereauxs, Beatrice Smalls...-- tend to write in the historical vein. The ones that +really* drive the romance train are the category romances. The category romances are the lines that put out four to six new ones a month -- the Harlequin Intrigue line, Silhouette Desire, Silhouette Intimate Moments, Loveswept, etc
As her cornments about "getting Our hackles upn indicate, the traditional swooning heroine is no longer a source of pleasure for rnany conternporary readers of the genre. Beginning in the eari y 1970s, contemporary romance texts mobilized liberal feminist discourses, putting "qualifications on the kind of love that overcomes ali problems and obstacles.. . qualifications that are inextricably intemHined with the fiIl development of the heroine as an individual in ber own right" (Thurston, 1987, p. 7). Thurston's sketch of what she caiis the neofeminisr romance is supporteci and Nled in further by Winnie: Category romances have contemporary settings with equally contemporary heroines in real-life situations -- single mothers, divorced women, career women, etc., who don't faint, are in control of their lives and -- gasp! -- have sex. Romance, formally symbolized by the kiss, is no longer separated From sexual desire. Winnie made the above comments in the context of a list discussion on the merits of romantic fiction. Mrs Hale had begun the thrad with a critique of a romance novel she had recentiy read, her anticipated pleasure spoiled by a series of historicai inaccuracies. Ardis then admitted to being put off by the Liner notes on most popular titles and suggested that the publishers were appealing to "the lowest common denominator" and were insulting the intelligence of their readers. 1 remember reading her message and nodding my head with a guilty conscience. Just as 1 had never watched television, thinking it too "lowbrow" for my refined tastes, 1 certainly never read romances, and indeed, as an undergraduate, once ruthlessly ridiculed an acquaintance for reading such "trash". Now, although I have changed my tune intellectually, 1 stiiî get no pleasure from reading them. A few summers ago, 1 picked up several that had been left behind at my partner's family cottage, including one title that had been recommended on the list, but ali 1 noticed were the cliches and tirai plots: my alignment with high culture forms of literature is too strong. If others felt the same way as Ardis, they did not say so. Winnie, however, defended the romance, pointedly noting that the denigration of the genre was directly related to its being marketed "to women rather than a general audiencen and chided those members who would create an udthem binary around readers of romance fiction: And, dammit, I enjoy them! 1 know many women who do. -- and those women aren't stereotypical housewives looking for "mind candy" -- theytre like *us*, m'dears. They have broad interests, have educations beyond high school, even tend to be feminists (though many eschew the term). You wanna know who theytre like? The regular ATXC (a1t.tv.x-files.creative] audience. Ail those Mulder-Scully "relationship" stories? They would fit right into the Silhouette Intirnate Moments or Harlequin Intrigue category
Uniike Mrs Hale, who directly chailenged those who felt that Mulder was not treahng Scully as an equal, Winnie offered only a mild rebuke of the other participants of the thread by refemng to hem as "m'dears" and concentrateci on highlighting the similarities between the X-Files fan fiction which focusses on a roman tic involvement of Mulder and Scuiiy and category romances. As suggested above, taking a masculine quest and reworking it as a ferninine quest is an established practice of fan fiction writers, who are predominately women (Jenkins, 1992).46In the context of DDEBRP interaction, however, a full blown romance between Mulder and Scully was rejected out of hand. Creator and producer Chris Carter has always stated in interviews that a relationship between these two characters would never happa, the implication being that it would disrupt the quest narrative. Thus an episode like "The Field Where 1 Died" (Fox, 3 November 1996) has Mulder lem, through regressive hypnosis of his past lives, that the wife of a doomsday cult leader was his wife during the Amencan Civil war, thus explaining the instant conneetion he feels with her when they meet during an FBI investigation into the cult's activities. Scully, on the other hand, was his Company sergeant. List sentiment about this scenario is summed up by Daphne's comment that it was "entirely fitting that Nulder and Scuiiy have] been together beyond this iife and were 'cornrades in wu', in more than one lifetime". Indeed, Megan referred disparagingly to those who had have been hoping for any evidence of a romantic relationship, even in a past life, as "relationshipperswwho must have "barfed up a lung over Mulder and Scuiiy not beiig
Ait.tv.x-f3es.c is the Usenet newsgmup dedicaîed to the miting of X-FiIes fàn fiction. Since the anaiysis of fàn fiction. even thai producd by the DDEBRP members, falls outnde the scope of this thesis, see Jenkins (1992) pp. 152-222 for detailed accounts of this popular $a practice. soui-matesn. Yet, she did not distance herself from this position completely, adding, "although 1 think they are, just of a different sortn. In a similar vein, moments of intimacy that hinted at some kind of sexual tension behveen Mulder and Scully were pointed out and spoken of with enthusiasm. In "Maxn (Fox, 23 March 1997), for example, Mulder makes a point of remembering Scully's birthday, rather awkwardly presenting her with a snack cake from a vending machine and a few gifts: Zzom Daphne .... That was such a cute scene. Mulder gets so thrilled giving Scully stuff, and it's SUCH weird stuff. :-> The football video really took the cake, tho. :->
From: Drucilla Yeah, but the Snowball [snack cake] with the sparkler in it was so cute.
From: Daphne St was adorable. And he looked so cute and boyish, didn't he? DD does cute and boyish very well.
The use of the adjectives "boyish" and "cuten are indicative of the adolescent heteronormative romantic story of the awkward male suitor interacting with a girl on whom he has a cnish. The Mulder/ScuUy romantic story heis containeci, though, by Daphne's use of a critical discourse to Duchovny's acting ability. Sometimes romantic "sub-narrativesn involving other characters were woven into episode discussion and as above, their pleasures were often ambivalent. In the context of the "Herrenvolkn discussion, for example, 1 speculated on a possible affair between Cancer Man and Mulder's mother. From: Rhiannon . .. .In the [third season] finale, 1 thought [Cancer Man's] comment to Mulder about knowing his mother for a long time was telling, perhaps implying that they had had an affair. Aiso, [in 'Herrenvolk'] he seems genuinely upset about Mrs Mulder's illness and 1 thought his explanation to the "Terminator" seemed a pretext, that he really wants her saved because of his own persona1 feelings . 1 dunno .. . MOU was sceptical but achowledged that "an affair may welî have happened. Of [sic] perhaps CM just wanted her but couldn't have her". In the end, she resorted to an explanation for Cancer Man's concem for Mrs Mulder that fit within the male ....I think it may very well be that CM wanted her to recover...the bit where we see a hand holding hers and then it pulls back to show itls him, not Mulder, really makes that point. At the same time, 1 think the fact that Mulder has survived for so long, especially when the Morphinf Dude [alien assassin] has had so many opportunities to get rid of him, gives a great deal of support to CM'S reasons. If Mulder is a vital part of the equation, then they need to be able to predict bis actions. Take everything away from hirn and there's no telling what he would do. Her final line is in fact a paraphrase of Cancer Man's words to his fellow co- conspirators, who in a previous episode advocated Mulder's execution to protect their secret project of &en coionization from being exposed. Al1 the participants of this thread, however, drew the line at my other suggestion that Cancer Man could be Muider's biological father. Moll referred to such a plot development as too "soap operaish", interesting for its devaiuation of a "stereotypically ferninine" (Walkerdine, 1990) genre of television text. Mobilizing a similar critical discourse, Mrs Hale thought it was too "cliched" but she acknowledged that she liked the idea of Cancer Man as the "jilted lover"." The romantic story iine had revealed itself to be a dangerous one for women familiar with literary standards to embrace too wholeheartedly, and the subsequent consensus that had fomed positioned me at that moment as an outsider From inside the boundaries of DDEBRP space. That said, romantic "sub-narratives" were embraced at other moments, particuiarly when legitimated by the episode writers. Take, for instance, the reaction to the introduction of FBI Agent Pendrell: From Drucilla: [quoting from Sarah Stegal18s review of "Teliko"] >Howard Gordon has written some good Scully ("Dod Kalm") and some >great Mulder ("Grotesque"), and here he gives us wonderful >Pendrell. The lovelorn Agent Pendrell (Brendan Beiser) waiting >hopefully for Agent Scully, then sagging in despair when Mulder >teases him that "she has a date", outdoes even David Duchovny in >the wounded puppy-dog look department. Only Mulder drooling on >himself could top it.
Yes! 1 loved that scene. 1 do hope they're not setting up Pendrell to [sic] killed later on in the season. That would really piss me off.....
" [nterestingly enough, Carter gave "officiai sanctionwto a possible Cancer MP~/MIsMulder Liaison in "Demons"(Fox, 11 May 1997). In this episode, Mulder becornes suspicious enough of an affair between them to confront his mother, whose reaction is to slap him in the fiice without answering the question. Unfortunateiy, the data collection pendhad mded by the broadcast date so I have no record of the participants' reactions. Liz and Drucilla did not hesitate to weave their own romantic narrative, fleshing out Pendreli's character as scripted to make hirn a suitable "matchn for Scuiiy: From: Liz Personally, 1 think it would be cool if he actually got up the nerve to ask Scully out and she *went*! Or, even better, if +she* asked +himf out sometime. :-) Surelv hets got more of personality and I'd like to see it. :-)
From: Dacilla . .. .He has *tons* of personality. You can tell. :-) 1 wonder how his genetic material is? :-)
From: Liz hehehehehe! I'm just thinking that he could probably be great fun and very interesting (once he stopped tripping over his tongue) and Scully deserves someone like him. :-1
The above is an example of the collective storytebg that took place on a nurnber of occasions on the list. These members underscored their shared pleasures with the repeated use of the "sdey" and the written representation of "stereotypically femininen giggles. Drucilla's suggestion that Scuiiy ask Pendrell out also provides a ferninist reworking of the romance in which women refuse the traditional roles of waiting passively for men to initiate a date. It is too simplistic and reductionist to suggest that these participants were engaging in an act of vicarious fantasy that posited them as the objects of either Mulder's affection in the "snackcake" scene or as Pendreii's "daten. Clearly, gaining ferninine pleasures from these scenes involved a certain amount of fantasizing, and was, to some degree, "a game that enables one to place the limits of the fictional and the reai under discussion and make them fluid" (Ang, quoted in Stacey, 1994, p. 45). This is not to suggest, however, that female fans are no longer able to separate "realityn from "fiction", merging the identities of the characters with their own; such an interpretation plays into the fangirl discourse th& seeks to disquaüfy ferninine pleasures of the text. What Drucilla and Liz are signaihg through their exchange is the appeal that a particular type of mascuiinity held for them- the SNAG ("sensitive new age mann) versus the "macho man"- as exhibited by Mulder in the "Terman scene with In any case, the paradigrnatic potential provided b y Pendreil came to an abrupt end in 'Max' when, as Drucilla feared, the character is "killed off" : From: Rhiannon .... POOR AGENT PENDRELL!!!! Years of unrequeited [sic] love, he finally gets to buy the lady the drink and look what he gets for his trouble, Do you think hels going to die?
From: Drucilla .... 1 hope not. Killing Max [a WFO abductee] was bad enough! Grrrrrr ! From: Daphne .... Yeah, poor guy. 1 yelled at the tv. Why do they always shoot someone wno we iike? :->....
From: Drucilla To keep us from writing fanfic [fan fiction] about them?
While producing romantic sub-narratives was often an ambivalent process due to the pressures exerted b y the overarching mascuiine quest narrative, hahg a "sanctioned" romantic sub-narrative foreclosexi by the producers was greeted with open hostility and cynicism. The use of the pronouns "they" and "wen highlights the faultlines that run between female fans and the predominately male writers of The x-~iles,~~as weU as reinforces a sense of community in the "localwcontext of the DDEBRP. Another fissure between the DDEBRP members and the producers opened up around "Ms X", the United Nations official introduced in "Hemnvok", who is not only set up as an informant but also a potential love interest for Mulder (he is seen going to her apartrnent at night and leaving in the morning). Reaction, as the foiiowing message revds, was scathing : From: Hollis .... After seeing that they hired Barbie (TM) as the new X, 1 fear that The X-files may be pandering more to the mainstream audience. Bad idea.
....Barbie X gets on rny nerves. 1 find it really jarring to have someone who looks like a fugitive £rom Melrose Place thrown into the midst of a program that has been so good about using average looking people. Sure Duchovny and Anderson are both attractive, but at least they arenlt good looking in a bland cookie cutter way . With teferences to the character as "Barbienand "a fugitive from Melrose Placen, Hollis levelled criticism at the writers for creating a fernale character who appeared to
nMax8was writtea by Chris Cirter and Frank Spotaitz. 110 be made from the blond, beautifid "bimbon mould. LU agreed with this assessrnent but hoped the producers would be clever enough to play on this stere~type.~' .... The *only* way 1 can think of this working is if they *use* that fact. If sornehow the fact that she *is* of the 'cookie cutterf vaxiety allows her to blend in and be ignored by many of the people in the circles she moves around. Maybe she fosters the image to encourage the MIB [Men in Black] to underestimate her (and so not see her as a threat) or to gain their trust (they see her as a sex object). Just trying ta figure out how they can do this without utterly screwing things up. (Pun intended. :-) Given the investments in aligning ourseIves to some degree with a strong female character iike Scully, it is not surprising that Ms X, despite her professional status, would hold no appeal for the DDEBRP members. In fact, Megan made the contrast clear by trying to imagine Scully's reaction to Mulder's relationship with Ms X: " Its [sic] going to be interesting to see her reactions to Ms. X too. Its [sic] one thing to be dumped to chase after aliens and mutants, but another entirely to be dumped for boinking a leggy blonden. This reaction drew on a stereotypical plot device of the traditional romance which sees the heroine's quest for "me loven thwarted (at least temporarily) by the arriva1 of the (evil) Other Woman. While the "deathn of Agent Pendrell and appearance of Ms X detracted from the pleasures of those episodes, a few othen were dismissed by the majonty of DDEBRP mernbers because their main narratives were not open to being read paradigmaticaüy. "Home" (Fox, 11 October 1996), for example, concerns an investigation by Mulder and Scuily into the disappearance of the mother of a family of "hillbilliesn who live on an isolated run dom farm in rural Pennsylvania. It contains a great deal of graphic violence as the sons, who are suspected of killing their mother, have booby trapped the farm house with a variety of weapons that impaie, decapitate and otherwise kill their victims in some unpleasant way. The agents do manage to successfully enter the house where they find the Limbless but othenvise unharmed mother hidden under the flwr boards, who, it tums out, willingly bars the children of her sons to continue the family
ïhe X-filesdid play with lhis stemtype in a third season episode "War of ihe Coprophages" (Fox, 05 Januafy 1996). A fernale entornologist called Bambi, who is intended to look and act iike an "airtiead", tries to help MuIder soIve a case involving mutant cockroaches. in one of the pivotai scenes, Bambi and Scully arrive at a building in which Mulder is trappeci. Scully tells the frightened Bambi to stay put while she puUs out her gun, loads a magnum and leaps out of the car to rescue Mulder. line. The foilowing posts from the thread capture the geneml distaste expressed by list members: From: Hollis Dang! 1 stayed home to watch The X-Files, but mysteriously found a drive-in movie playing on my tv that had Mulder and Scully in it.... The hubby was sa grossed out that he stopped watching after the first 20 minutes. Memo to Morgan and Wong [episode writers] : Ickiness plus violence does not necessarily equal scary. They did have a couple of nice touches like Scullyls line and the music in the Cadillac. Aside from that, though, this is not the kind of episode that 1 watch The X-Files for.
From: Sonya 1 agree. 1 was on irc #xf [ an X-Files chat], and we were al1 grossed out. 1 think it's probably a good thing 1 was watching on a black 6 white tv. It was way too violent. Someone on #xf mentioned that the kid's use of the word "bitch" was new for XF, too, which 1 had also noticed (and didnlt like--itrs just not XF).
Thus both posters saw "Home" as deviating ffom the narrative noms of the show, placing it in the slashedhorror category, a genre in which much of the violence is directed against women. In poh~gout the use of the word "bitchn,Sonya hints at the underlying current threat of such violence. In my message, 1 directly took issue with the incest theme build around sons having consensual sex with a mother who has no legs or arms. It is not surprishg that the only redeeming moments mentioned by those who disliked the episode involved the scenes that were open to being rad paradigmatically: From: Drucilla .... I1d love to edit out everything but the Scully and Mulder bits and just watch those, though.
The appeal of this scene in which Mulder and Scully are outside the booby-trapped house, talking about their families and what it would be like to be parents, is that it adds a sense of intimacy to the Mulder/ScuUy relationship. The only member who expressed a sense of pleasure with the episode was Sarah, who, in her review, "Family Plot", cast Scully's key role in the investigation into sharp relief against the themes of violence and incest: Scully takes the driver's seat both literally and rnetaphorically in this episode. Warm, funny, and wise, Gillian Anderson's "uber-Scully" is a warrior-scientist mother figure who strides across this story like Brunnhilde in a tailored suit. Despite Mulder's insistence that this case is not an X-File, she persists in liberating the helpless woman she is convinced is being held in the Peacock house. She leads the investigation with her head but backs it up superbly with her heart, unwilling to risk leaving a defenseless [sic] victim in peril another minute even if it means risking her own life.
Sarah articulated both feminist and ferninine discourses in aligning herself with the Agent. Scully is positioned as a powerful figure, a "warrior-scientist" or "Brunnhilde" who "strides across the story" wearing the "power suit" that symbolized the career women. At the same time, she is a mother figure who is able to emotionally identiQ with the situation of another women in distress, acting with not only her head but her heart. It is interesting that Sarah's review was never referred to in the thread on the episode as was often the case, perhaps because there was no common ground upon which consensus codd be built.
To argue that female fans rad rnaie-produced narratives paradigmaticaily is not to suggest a lack of concern with syntagmatic issues of plot. To this end, fan criticism was an interpretative practice widely engaged in or1 the DDEBRP. Clearly related to criticism of texts on the "high culturen side of the binary, it is "concemed with the particularity of textual detail and with the need for internai consistency across the program episodesn (Jenkins, 1992, p. 278). Pointing out plot inconsistencies tends to be a middle class practice, for it demonstrates to the other members of the community that one is familiar with and able to apply literary "standards" valued by the social group. In the nexi sample, Daphne posted four questions related to the plot of
1, When Chuckles had Scully by the throat, why didn't she just shoot him in the face? She had her gun in her hand, and 1 think (despite Mulder l s warning) that I would have, just to get him ta back off.
2. Why didn't Jerexrûah and Mulder take the telephone repairmants van?
3. Why was the repairman still out on the road? If he had a work order, and didnlt return, don't you think the Company would have sent someone looking for him? And there was NO other traffic on that road for a full day?
4. Why did Jeremiah get al1 weak and floppy when Mulder was knocked out and Chuckles was after him? Yes, Chuckles smashed the van into the car, but it wasn't THAT bad of a wreck. Note that Daphne's criticisms were framed as questions. Jenkins (1992) points out that unlike literary critics, fan critics do not simply compile a list of "flaws" that take away from the text, but "work to resolve gaps, to explore excess details and undeveloped potentialsn (p. 278). Moreuver, questions rather than statements provide the oppominity to engage in gap resolution as part of the process of community making by working collectively to arrive at a comrnon resolution. This is what happened in the "Herrenvolk" thread. In explainhg why Scully did not try to shoot the assassin, for example, LU referred to information about the alien assassin's physiology revealed in previous episodes: "It would likely have killed her. Remember, they bled a highly toxic and corosive [sic] chernical". Unlike Daphne, she thought it plausible that a body could remain undiscovered for a full day "in places way out in the middle of nowhere". With the second and fourth questions, however, she also had no explanation and responded by either praising Daphne for pointing out the gap that she had not noticed herself or by commenting "1think that's one of the mysteries" . Drucilla, on the other hand, felt that Jererniah may have been suffering From "sheer terrorn. As for Mulder and Jeremiah not taking advantage of the telephone van to escape from the assassin, she acknowledged its implausibility by jokingly refemng to a later scene: "Silly, because then Lumpy wouldn't have been able to use it to run them mulder and Jeremiah] down!" Other plot concems that members worked on together included the problem with Mulder and Jeremiah driving to Alberta seemingly on one tank of gas, and Mr X, Mulder's govemment informant, being assassinated in the hailway of Mulder's apartment building without any of the neighbours appearing to hear the gunshots. It is also signifiant that as long as an episode containing such plot inconsistencies also had paradigrnatic potential, such flaws did not detract from the pleasure of making meaning fiom it. Daphne, for example, concluded her list of questions by noting that they were only "nitpicksnin light of Mulder's open display of grief and despair. While fan cnticism was engaged in when discussing each new episode, it is important to note that just as members had differing levels of investments in the character of Scully or the romantic narrative, they had differing levels of investments in this particular practice. One DDEBRP member told me in confidence of her misgivings of the practice: We11, starting quite some time ago, 1 noticed how hypexcritical rny fellow ...brigadiers were getting. They would rip apart every episode, not just in a good-natured analytical sort of way but with a certain jadedness and bad attitude that annoyed me. So 1 stopped reading their messages because they depressed me and made me think less of them! I'm more easily amused, 1 guess, and though 1 may see the same flaws in something that sornebody else does, I donlt think 1 take it so personally. in the view of this member, too much cnticism spoiled the pleasures of the text, to play with an old adage. This member's rehisal to not ody engage in the practice but follow the threads that did so, resulted in her silent self-exclusion from the DDEBRP at the level of a critical fan comrnunity.
Star Storie Iust as television texts can be read paradigmatically, so can the texts produced abour the show and the people associateci with it. By its third season, The X-Files had generated a plethora of feature articles in entertainment and Lifestyle magazines such as GQ, People, Rolling Stone, TV Guide. Us and Van@ Fair, as well as appemces by Carter and the Iead actors on talk shows and television industq award shows. Refemng to them as secondary terts, Fiske (1989) says that they are valued because they "extend the fan's pleasures by extending the primary text" and "invite fans to explore the intertextual relations berneen the representation and the realn (p. 66). Thus, just as the primary texts offer narratives revolving around a set of characters, the secondary texts offer narratives- one might use the term 'gossip'-about the actors who play those roles. That said, the "realn actor may be different from hidher character but slhe must also be recognized as a representation, and celebrity "rdlife" stories must be recognized as constmcted narratives. In other words, the stories we read about celebrities in entertainment magazines or hear on tak shows are also fictions, constructed by writers, interviews, editors, and, of course, the celebrities themselves. As narratives, they rquire interpretation and, as with primary texts, becorne "real" on an emotional level, Bennett (1987) uses the term paramts, one which is a more accurate term in some ways, for such texts can be more important to fans than the actual show itself. On the DDEBRP,tales of Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny occasionally generated extended discussions and provided their own pleasures or displeasures depending on how closely members were able to identify with the subject positions offered. 1 would like to present a sample f'rom the DDEBRP data excerpted fiom a thread that began with the news that David Duchonvy had not been nominated for an Emmy award in 1396, whereas Gillian Anderson had. While some felt his "understatedw style of acting had cost him the nomination, Erin felt his performances in the third season had been "lacklustren , not for Iack of talent but lack of enthusiasm for his craft: Well, as much as 1 like David, 1 do think Gillian is a better actor. 1 think a large part of that is Gillian loves acting... itfs what she wants to do more than anything. David is not too sure acting is what's for him... (esp acting in a TV show) he's exp~esseddoubts about this quite often. It's hard to give something your [sic] not sure you love your all...and it often shows. (ellipsis in the original)
Not knowing the actor personally, Erin's information on Duchovny's feelings about acting is obviously based on a variety of secondary sources. The story of the person whose hart is not in hislher work is emotionally real for her as her Iast sentence indicaies. Others joined the thread, fleshing out the story of Duchovny's supposed unfulfilled desire to write and the ways in which he deait with his frustrations: From: Exin Yeah...and 1 think that's why he's so prone to whining.,.I do think that hets a whiner by nature (takes one to spot one cg> [grin]), but when you aren't happy with what you are doing, complaining about it cornes much easier, :)
Fzom: Mrs Hale It would probably help if he would stop publîcly and openly *bitching* about his life to the press. I'm sure the nominators are no more fond of having their profession so consistently dissed by someone who has made a success of it than anyone else would be. Erin again identified with Duchovny, not as a celebrity, which of course she was not, but through this middle class story line of being the thwarted artist unable to contain hisher frustration. Mrs Hale, took a different position on the same story line, though, suggesting that the fmstrated dstshould "g~and bear itn. She also "feminizes" Duchovny by associating the act of cornplainhg with the use of the term "bitching". Later on in the thread, Duchovny's appearance on The David Lenemion Show came under scnitiny: From: Erin ....So many people expect him to congratulate Gillian on her nod and get pissed when he doesn't, but why should he? They are just CO-workers ...they are not joined at the hip .... I don't go around telling people about the achievements of my CO-workers. 1 wouldntt expect her to do the same if the situation was reversed ...
In de fending Duchovny 's " failure" to public1y recognize his CO-star's achievement , Erin rezontextualized his "work" experience to fit with her own. Drucilla then did the same but to take the opposite view: Let me see if I can explain it. Most of what he said 1 could have [sic] accepted as funny, but it was what he +diàntt+ Say that was telling. When Letteman was going on and on about how DD was the reason people watch X-Files did he Lave +one+ +word* to Say about the fact that he and Gillian are *both* part of the show? Or anything kind to Say about the rest of the cast and crew? No. Not a word. Yes they are "just coworkers" but 1 think that acknowledging his coworkers would be gracious and appropriate .... If someone I work with does something really fabulous, you BET I'm going to sing his or her praises! Why *not+? The only reason 1 could see for not doing so would be pettiness.
In expressing strong disapprovai of Duchovny's behaviour in this situation, implying that it was inappropriate and a case of "sou grapesn,she distanced herself from the actor and by extension, Erin. Daphne then joined the thread, supporting Drucilla. Instead of reconstnicting the celebrity as an "ordinary person" with a job like herself, she placed the celebrity on a higher plane as one whose behaviour should be exernplary. Specifically, she cited Gillian Anderson as an example of a celebrity who possesses the qualities that fans expect celebrities to embrace: From: Daphne Yes! GA can be extremely gracious, and that's what people expect out of celebs. We WANT them to Say that everyone they work with are wonderful and funny and hardworking and a joy to be around. DD has got to learn to play that game. Itts basic niceness.,...I think his attitude is very sad,
Fans thus expected both male and fernale celebrities to be "nice", a code word for a set of moral behaviours that has been historicdy associated with the performance of middle class identity in general and ferninine rniddle class identity in particular." In her study of female spectatorship of Hollywood films from the 1940s, Stacey (1994) notes that the fascination that the female stars held for her participants was a combination of both "the recognition of familiar aspects of everyday life" as weU as "the possible fantasy of something better" (p. 126). Daphne's emphasis on 1' . phrase "we want" suggests a collective desire for celebrities to rise above the petty behaviours that mark daily iife and maintain the illusion of good relations and harrnony even in situations where they do not exist. in otkr words, being "nice" is a job requirernent, ihat aiiows for the creation of a fan fantasy of an ideal world. The collective "wen, however, effectively excluded Erin who did not share this particular view as weIl as anyone else who might have disagreed but stayed silent. When Mrs Hale joined the thread, any sense of consensus was undone: 1 don't want David to be nice. 1 want him to be honest and sincere. Rudeness would have been dissing GA on Letterman. Hypocrisy would have been some false sentimental blather about how happy he is for her, and John Bartley, and Jeff Charbonneau, and so forth.. . . .Best to do what he did and preserve a dignified silence on the subject while *Letterman* rubbed it in. Mrs Hale uncoupleci "nicew from "nide",inverting its valued statu by Wgit with insincenty and false sentimentality. Daphne held her ground, insisting that "people can be honest and sincere and nice at the same timew,and argued that Duchovny would have to leam to compensate for not having a naturally "bubbly personalityw,a phrase almost always used in relation to women. In this sense, a more ferninine perforinance fiom Duchovny was required for this member to identify with him. Moreover, 'niceness' became a contested term, the participants in the thread drawing upon their own contexts to argue their point: From: Liz .... If someone compliments me about my job performance and asks me about it, I'm going to talk about me and my job not about my coworkers or the help desk or anyone else.. ..
Fr-: Daphne .. ,,Yes, and if someone was giving you credit for what was essentially a group effort, would you take al1 the credit? David did. ...
'Sa Chspter 6 for an extencied discarsion on supportiveness and Chapter 7 for one on practices of politeness. In light of the above, it is clear that some members were more heavily invested in the discourse of "nicenesswthan others, some taking it up and others refushg it to collectively make sense of Duchovny 's "Letterman story " . If Duchovny's behaviour as a celebrity did not result in a sense of common pleasure, his rumoured sexual mores were collectively disapproved of. Erin added to the "Emmy threadn by offering another explanation of the actor's lacklustre performance in the third season: ....As one person put it, "he seemed too busy testing out the springs in his trailer to have the energy to give his on camera performance his all".
Mrs Haie then suggested that his "bimbo-chasing" would divert him from his ?rue vocationn, writing. She concluded her post by chiding Duchovny directly, noting that "sex, too, is an art form but not an Olympic sport, David hint hint hintw, to which Hollis quipped: ifint hint, indeed, especially considering that according to Woman's Day, it sounds Like his event would be speed sex!
In positioning Duchovny as a philanderer, he is woven into the romantic story line as the obstacle to achieving and maintaining "truen romantic love. Moreover, he is aiso positioned as being a lover who does not take the time to sexually satisfy his female partner. This move is a feminist rejection of the traditional virginal heroine for whom sexual pleasure is not an objective. If Duchovny was criticized for violating the romantic story line, he was praised for adhering to it. When the rumour that Duchovny had mhed actress Tea Leoni was made official with press releases from both celebrities' publicists, the participants overtiy rejected the way in which the media positioned them as being "in lovel'with David, as in the following line that Winnie found on an entertainment web site and posted to the list, "And yes, that sound you hear is the collective heart of the 'David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade' breaking " : From: Winnie I'm having lunch with a fellow DD admirer today and we plan to lift a congratulatory glass. Any heaxts broken out there? Mine's fine.
From: Mëgan Mine se- to be ticking along just fine.. .. From: Drucilla Minets intact as well.
From: Bel Takes more than that to break my heart. I'd actually have to personally *know* the guy for it to affect me. It is clear from these comments that the mdgeof the couple was not a source of grief or jealousy, the response anticipated by those who would constnict the DDEB members as "fangirls", but one of great pleasure, recognized as the desired culmination of the romance. However , given that Duchovny had been cast as a " womanizer " , not aii members were convinced that it would end "happily ever af'ter": From: Liz ....Itd love to see it work out for them.. .. but 1 cantt help being somewhat pessimistic. If he cats around on her, 1 hope she dumps him hard and fast.
From: Winnie I think that pretty much sums up how I feel about it too. "Best of luck, D&T -- but heaven help ya, DD, if you're unfaithful! " Instead of being "jealous" of Leoni, they aiigned themselves with her, positioning her not as the traditional bride who will stand by her man even if he breaks his vows, but as a contemporary romance heroine who is an quai in a relationship and will have the power and strength to waik out on the lover who betrays her. As in the discussions of Scuiiy and Mulder, these members performed a heterosexual feminine identity based on a discourse of gender equality and fair treatment.
Conclusion in this chapter, 1 have examined the ways in which the DDEBRP members appropriated the masculine narratives of nie X-Files to gain feminine pleasures from them. In reviewing the list interaction, 1 argue here that when female fans engage in such practices, we do not invert or fully rewrite the story hes offered by the predorninately male writers and producers. In fact, the amount of ferninine pleasure gained from the texts corresponds to the amount of paradigrnatic potential contained in the text. An episode like "Herrenvolkn was popular despite the numerous holes in the plot and the introduction of a "bimbonlove interest for Mulder, because it expanded on the character of Mulder, showing him to have an emotiond, vuinerable side, as weU as the relationship between Mulder and Scuiiy. Where it feli short of some members' expectations of Scully, it was open to being reworked to aiiow members to align themselves with her, constructing her as a strong, independent professional woman. Similarly, episodes that focussed on Scully's rejection of patnarchal authority or provided a potentiai love interest for her, allowing members to develop romantic sub- narratives appealed to most members. On the other end of the scale were episodes like "Home" which offered plots andlor themes devoid of any character or relationship development, or were not open to being easily reworked. i have aiso argued that university educated femak fans live with the contradiction of articulahg both discourses of the romance and those of aesthetic "standards", making for somew hat ambivalent pleasures of producing roman tic sub-narratives, especiaily when they are not "sanctionedn to some degree by the producers. Similarly, extensive criticism of the plot lines can have an alienating effect on other rnembers of the fan comrnunity and can jeopardise one's position as a fan, as suggested b y the one DDEBRP member who stopped reading the critical exchanges. Similarly, the stories of the actors' lives were read paradigmatically. Many did not hesitate to use classed discourses of "nicenessn and the story lines of the romance to criticise Duchovny's behaviour for failing to act graciously like his CO-staror for "screwuig aroundn with women. Although the participants might have been members of the David Duchovny Estmgen Brigade, this did not mean that they were "hopelessly devoted" to the actor, to paraphrase the titie from the 1970s hit song recorded by Olivia Newton John. That the mainstream media would suggest that they would be coliectively "heart broken" by Duchovny's mamiage is based on a set of highly problernatic assumptions about fernale fandom, fantasy and desire. In the next chapter, I wili take issue with the fangirl construction by taking a closer look at how desire was "spoken into existence" on the DDEBRP through discussion of the images of Duchovny and Anderson. Chapter 5 The Gaze of the Cyborgs: Objectifying and Identifying with Celebrity Images On Line
In Chapter 3, 1 quoted several DDEBRP members who stated that one of the reasoos they joined their respective "brigades" was to mate a safe space in which to express admiration for the male actors they found attractive, a practice denigrated on the open, mixai fan fora on the Usenet and in the "chat rmms". Wethe majority of the X-Files related exchanges involved the paradigrnatic and critical reading practices of both primary and secondary texts, some centred on the appearances and desirability of television celebrities in general and David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in particular. It is this type of talk that is associated with the much devalued category of the fangirl, a categorization that positions the female fans as the victims of their excessive, obsessive desires, ignited by every image of their "Prince CharrningV "Knight in Shining Amourn. At any "in the flesh" sighting, they can be expected to scream, cry or faint. Borrowing and redeploying notions that corne out of psychoanalytic film theory, 1 argue that the DDEBRP members were not "fangi.snbut active spectators whose cyborg gaze subjected male celebrities to processes of objecrif~~on,a reversai of the male spectator/female spectacle binary. We also directeci our gaze at images of female stars, a practice that primarily involved processes of identt~canWon,meaning that we recognized in the image what it is to be constructeci as an object of desire by the male spectator. In this sense, both processes involved performances of ferninine identity founded on hetetonormative desire and desirability . As with the intexpretive practices described in the previous chapter, the consumption of images on the DDEBRP ne& to be understood as a practices that produced the substance of a female fan cornmunity .
IymYour Fan The term fa,an abbreviation of the Latin fdcw that was coined about a hundred years ago, has dways relied on a plus male/minus male logic. Accorduig to Jenkins (1992), it was used playfuily in reference to male sports enthusiasts but as a put dom by film and theatre critics of women who supposedly attended the performances for the sole purpose of admiring the actors. Mia Farrow played one such "matinee girl" in Woody Men's film, nie Purple Rose of Cairo whose romantic fantasy cornes true when her "idol" walks off the screen and into her life. Beginning in the era of Frank Sinatra, the image of the swooning, besotted female fan was complemented by that of the hysterical, screarning girl. The section of fandom in the Rock and Roll Fall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio is domhated by huge blo~vpsof such "Fangirls". Tnus, the fangirl is always constnicted as a victirn of her own romantic fantasies or her uncontrollabIe desire. It is such a devaiued category that when 1 asked the research participants how others reacted to their being a member of a list whose name seemed to shout devotion to an actor, the majonty felt they had to justify their membership by emphasizing the List's social function or the popular appeal of nie X-Files itself: Dontt discuss it much, Mostly people are surprised and impressed, but 1 don't describe it as a fan club, but as a support group. (Bal1
IRL [In Real Life], they thought 1 was a bit weird [at] first, 1 was a bit embarrassed at first too, But once 1 made them understand that we talked about a lot more thân the X-files, they got used to the idea and found it interesting that 1 was getting mail front so many different places. Online, it seems that we are often perceived as a bunch of fangirls. (Moll)
Since most of the stuff that 1 post to and people that 1 know like the X-Files, they think that it's pretty cool. If it had been another actor, who knows . ., (Mugan) The negative fangirl label is thus one that the participants actively sought to avoid, emphasuing the relationship or friendship aspects of list rnembership. In Megan's case, the popularity and legitimacy of The X-Files as a "cult hit" served to legitimate her membership. Mari admitted that she did not identify herself as a DDEB member outside in cyberspace outside her "brigaden : 1 don't publicize that fact on the Net unless 1 am specifically asked. 1 never put it in my .sig [signature] file, as 1 want to be taken seriously by everybody 1 emailed [sic]. Fangirls, she inferred, are also thought to be stupid, which takes away their credibility in unrelateci areas. Mrs Hale neatiy summed up the way that she understood herself to be portrayed as a DDEB member: They assume 1 drool over him and think he can do no wrong. They assume that 1 am jealous of his girlfriend or that 1 stalk him. Ai1 of these assumptions are wrong and 1 find them offensive,
A fangirl is thus assumed to be unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality , between gazkg at an image with desire and desiring a "rd" man. To reinforce her point, she uses the term "drooln. In fact a number of the DDEBRP participants used this word when distancing themselves fiom its negative connotations. One member, for exarnple, noted her initial reluctance to joining a list that she imaginecl might be full of "drooling fendes". Two others indicated that they lefi an open list called "The Duchovniks" because they felt there was just "too much drool" . Moreover, femaie fans who behaved like fangirls, crying or screaming hysterically at Duchovny's public appearances, were roundly criticized by a number of the members in one exchange . The rejection of the fangirl categorization is not just about rejecting false assumptions about "drooling", but about clairning the nght to construct male actors as objects of feminhe heterosexual desire. ïïze gaze is a concept deployed in film studies to make sense of the visual pleasures of the cinerna through psychoanalysis. It was Freud who first noted that "most normal people desire to look at and derive pleasure fiom lwking at things they find sexually attractive" (quoted in Barnard, 1996, p. 114). In her important 1975 article, Mulvey used both Freudian and LaCanian notions of (hetero)sexual difference to argue that the narrative structure of Hollywood films operates on the binary logic of an active "looking" male spectator and a passive "looked-atmfernale character." While her work exolicitly identified popular cinema as being patriarchal, it also positioned women as mere objects of the gaze and took no account of female spectatorship. In response, other feminist theorists ûied to find ways to account for an active female gaze and specifically ferninine cinematic pleasures. Kaplan, for example, concludes that the gaze is not inherently male but in order to own the gaze, a female spectator has to take up the masculine position (referenced in Barnard, 1996). Others such as Doane have suggested that studies on female
'' For an overview of ferninist film theory, beginning with Mulvey's 1975 article, see (Stacey, 1994, pp. 19-30) spectatorship need to move beyond textual analysis and account for the experiences of actual women seated in the theatre watching a film (referenced in Stacey, 1994). Giving the concept a poststmchimlist deployment, 1 think the gaze is best thought of a social pracrice in which heteronormative, patriarchal discourses of masc~tyand femininity can be both taken up and resisted. Thus, while the objectification of femaie bodies by male spectators is a normative practice, other possibilities range from a reversai of the binary with women looking at men to the queer practices of men looking at men and women at wornen. The process of objectification is not solely a visual practice. Harvey and Shalom (1997) argue that there exists a "ne& to encode desiren: "Naming it, renaming it, finding a verbal image for it, revealing it, recounting it .. . these are the verbal acts constantly repeated and refashioned by the desiring speakmg subjectn (p. 2). In the context of prosthetic communication, the gazes directed at images on television, in the movie theatm, in magazines, on billboards, on the Intemet are reproduced at the moment of speakuig/writing. In the context of the DDEBs and by extension the DDEBRP, the gaze cm be said to be cyborg, for in choosing to constitute the male body as spectacle, technology has, as Sofia (1995) suggests, gone over to the ferninine side.
NDrooiinnnOver David The distinction that DDEBRP members made between passively drwling and actively gazing became evident in the response to a quotation included in the joint conference paper that they felt positioned them as Sleeping Beauties to Duchovny's Prince Charming: From: Dmcilla Blorch! 1 hardly think of myself as absolutely powerless and waiting for DD to wake me up!
1 don't think we want to be subjected by DD, and 1 think the whole concept of trying to fit the image of romantic love onto the DDEB is a bit fax fetched. Hell, we're a bunch of healthy, lustful women who find DD attractive, both physically and intellectually. What does that have to do with the concept of courtly lave???.... Desire, for this research list member, was not about "true love" but about lust. Aithough she seems to suggest that lust is "natural" or based in biology, like Davies (lggo), 1 believe that desire is in fact spoken into existence, it is shaped through discursive and interactive practices.. .. Desires are constituted through the narratives and storylines, the metaphoa, the very language and patterns of existence through which we are "interpellated" [or articulate ourselves] into the social world. (p. 501)
In this framework, Drucilla can be said to have rejected the traditional romantic nanative for its reworked Liberal ferninist iine in which the heroine is not just a passive recipient of the hero's affections, but a desiring subject. Her use of the term "wen serves to evoke a community of women with similar desires. For her part, Sonya was willing to accept that "DD takWcontained some ekments of romance, which she dehed as " fantastical" and "idealisticn: 1 see that aspect in the lists in the various situations we wish/dream on... DD in various states of dress/undress, mental and physical stimulation, etc....
The role of fantasy in the construction of desire cannot be overestimated.. ..The fascination of the beloved stems to an unknown degree from meanings and values, some personal, some cultural, which invest this body, these actions. People fall in love with film stars, or with voices on the telephone, or with the authors of the books they rad. They imagine what is absent. This is only mildly eccentric. Roland Barthes asks, "whether the object is present or absent? " Isn't the object always absent? 1s desire real, the only reality, or unreal, precisely romance, fairy tale, a temporary madness, an obsession fkom which we recover? (p. 78)
Belsey points out that desire cannot be thought of as only involving "realn and "presentn objects, and indeed, suggests that the object of desire is always discursively produced. Duncombe and Marsden put it another way: "even at what may feel like the most spontaneous and authentic moments in their lives- 'being in love'-people are performing or staging romancen (quoted in Harvey & Shalom, 1997, p. 2). Belsey's choice of words to describe this "unreai"desire- "romance","fairy tale", "madness", "obsessionn- found routinely in literary works, offers up the spectre of the fangirl whose desires control her and not vice versa, a version of desire rejected by Drucilla above and Sonya below: From: Sonya HOWEVER, 1 will vehemently deny that these fantasies involve us being, or desiring to be, "powerless". In that area, 1 would Say that the women on the lists are Modern Wornen (or Post-Modern...) who have no desire to be in a relationship of unequal power, in reality or f antasy.
Liz also makes it clear that she does draw a line between "realWand "present" objets of desire: 1 don't feel anything romantic either. Romance, to me, has *infinitlyf [sic] more to do with love than with appreciation or even lust. I'd Say, just off the top of my head, that anyone who felt *romantic+ toward a person they'd never met should have their head examined.
Considering the "rdweffects of the fangirl dixourse, however, it is understandable that these members would decouple the concepts of "romancenand "lustn. In the next sample, the power that lies with the spectator is overtly recognized and claimed: From: Mol1 .... 1 also find it very empowering that we are able to express ourselves as sexual beings in this group. Fickle sexual beings too since we usually end up discussing the latest flavour of the month anyway. :-)
From: Liz .... *We* are the ones in power with this. If our purpose was to al1 Have A Date With DD (dom, ladies ! :-) then, yes, we'd fit the powerless image, but thatts not what's going on. We have as much 'of1 DD, Mulder, sakes2, whoever as we want. With *that* we can do as *wef will.
Erotic, not romantic, fantasy is at the heart of the desirous cyborg gaze. Afier ali, the romantic storyline dictates devotion to one man alone (and vice versa). Moreover Moii's comment about the "latest flavour of the month" suggests an wanton "infidelityu to Duchovny as object, highlighting the irony of belonging to lists supposedly "dedicated" to the actor. Moreover, this is a collective cyborg gaze where the object of desire, be it the "rdnactor or the characters he plays, is shared, disrupting the heroinelother woman rivalry of the romance. These disarticulations of the romantic story line as this moment and its rearticuiation when discussing Duchovny's rumoured
Jake is the character that Duchovny plays in the HBO show 'Red Shoe Diaries". 127 "rdlife" prorniscuity and mariage are one of those contradictions behkreen feminism and femininity spoken about by Davies (1990).
Masculinities on Dis~lav Centrai to the practices of objectification that took place on the DDEBRP,is the complicity of the objects of desire, who actively covet the gaze of spectators like the DDEBRP members. The man who offers himself up as erotic spectacle is a relatively ment mainstrearn pnenomenon and is ofien referred to as "the new man" (Barnard, 1996; Moore, 1988). Such displays of masculinity were first seen in the British campaigns for Levi's 501 jeans and Grey Flamel fragrance of the mid 1980s. In one ad for the former, a man is seen in the bathroom preening himself, presumably in preparation for a date. He then slips into the bath still wearing his jeans, the camera focussing on his crotch as the water envelops him (Moore, 1988, p. 54). The same game of reveaUconceal is played in the more farnous "launderette" ad in which models Nick Kamen and James Mardle unbutton their jeans and toss them casually into the washing machine and then sit and wait "in the buff" to the disrnay/titillation of the other patrons." Similarly, print ads for fashion-related products such as fragrance, clothing and underwear were often shot in soft focus or black and white and featured the naked male torso (Barnard, 1996). Thus the new man, whose image was also fihg the ad space of new magazines such as GQ,Arena, For Him and ne Face, could be described as self conscious and concerne-with image "but not in a wirnpy or girly sort of way" (p. 138). While these images were designed and deployed to seli product, television did not lag far behind in constructing the male body as sexual spectacle. Andrew Ross makes a case that the police drama Miami Vice was the first television show to position its male protagonists as objects of desire: "the widespread incidence of that male flesh .. . has become .. . a primary means of seliing the show as TV commodity " (quoted in Tasker, 1993, p. 112). Sirnilarly, contemporary Hoilywood cinema began treating its audiences to regular displays of male fiesh: Richard Gere in
In March 20,a man wsarrested in a Toronto iaundromat for puhg a simiîar shmt, wkch goes to prove chat Iife does not imitate advertising. Amencan Gigolo, Brad Pin as a "toyboy" in Thelma and Louise and KeWi Costner's bare demere in Dances with Wolves corne to mind. According to Chapman, "the new man was an attempt to resolve some of the obvious contradictions of the Classic Macho, to recognize and make peace with the ferninine within itself, in response to feminist critiquesn (quoted in Tasker, 1993, p. 120). The "classic machon being refend to is the normative trope of masculinity historically constructed in visual media: "When not caught in an act, the male image promises activity by the way the body is posed" @yer, quoted in Taslier, 1993, p. 118). In describing publicity shots of Bogart, Dyer refers to "the clenched fist, the buiging muscles, the hardened jaws" as a "proliferation of phallic symbols.. . striving afler what can never be achieved, the embodiment of phallic mystique" (quoted in Moore, 1988, p. 53). There was, however, one notable exception in the early days of Hollywood cinema: the dancer tumed actor Rudolph Valentino was a new man fifty years ahead of his time: Mercedes is in love. He is W- at Ieast she thinks sdark, that's for sure, and handsome, no question. His eyes burn into her very sou1 and seem to say, 1 need so much, so badly, for a good woman to love me and tame me. He wears a turban. He is most often to be found in his lavish striped tent, or galloping across the sands on a white Arabian charger. He is Rudolph Valentino.. .. Mercedes has told only Helen Frye, who is in love too, with Douglas Fairbanks. Mercedes indulges Helen's schwlgirl cash but can't sympathize; Fairbanks is somehow smug and self-sufficient. Valentino is haplessly fierce and hopelessly needy. Helen once said he was cm- there almost went the friendship. But they made up the next day and took turns describing their future manied life with their respective paramours. (MacDonald, 1996, p. 196)
While this schoolgirl romance fantasy is an excerpt from the award-winning novel, FaIl on Your Knees, the description neatly contrasts the normed white masculinity of screen stars like Douglas Fairbanks with the excessive, exotic "othern masculinity of Valentino. According to Studiar (1993), the latter represented "'the lure of the flesh', the male quivalent of the vampn (p. 28), and, not surprisingly, Amencan men felt it necessary to deride not only Valentino, referring to him disparagingly as a "pink powder pur, a "male butterfly" and a "man-womann, but also the women who gazed upon him with desire. His legions of ado~gfemale fans were portrayed in the popular press as either mindless victims of manipulation or destroyers of traditional masculinity, "ultimately forc[ingJ respectable men to ape the manners of these menid and sensual men to hold their own women. .. and this process would leme them Iost and adrift" (quoted in Studlar, 1993, p. 27). Clearly, images of Valentino, unlike those of his contemporaries, unsettled the binary of active male spectatoripassive female object. While the nomed "hard body" that deflects the gaze is still highly visible in popular cultum, it is not a masculinity that appeaied to DDEBRP membêrs like Sonya: ....DD is no Arnold Schwarzenegger, but also because he's *intelligent* and not into the machismo thing. Now you take women that would be attracted to this (which increases their intelligence and sensibility), and add the factor that they must be netecapable, and you have a bunch of pretty intelligent women, who appreciate subtly [sic] , and intelligence, *and* the occasional red ~peedo.~~:-)
Duchovny, for his part, certainiy wears the look of the new man well, his image having graced the covers of numerous popular magazines such as GQ, Vaniry Fair, Details, Phgirl, Rolling Stone (with Gillian Anderson) and Us. Many of the poses are clearly intended to position him as an object of desire. These include head shots in which the actor "pouting"at the spectator, as weU as torso shots in which he appears with his shirt unbuttoned, wearing only an undershkt or not wearing any shirt at dl. Then there are the images of him with legs casually sprawled apart to draw the viewer's gaze to his crotch. In one image, the discussion of which 1 present in the next section, he is standing outdoors, hands at his side, a pair of suspenders framing his bue chest, which is further emphasized by the cropping of the image at the crotch. His msand chest are weli tond and he has some muscle definition but could hardly be descnbed as muscle bound. Instead of looking defiantly into the camera, as the macho trope demands, however, his eyes are averted and he seems to be squinting slightly as if lookuig into the Sun. Morever, his hair is tousled as if by the wind, creating a soft, almost vulnerable image. As Sonya's comment suggests, what distinguished Duchovny from the Teminator star was not only a different body type and look but personal
Y One of the openhg scenes in 'Due Barry", Muider cornes out of a swimming pool wearing a reû @O bathing suit. attributes such as intelligence and acting talent that Sonya saw him as possessing. In this sense, the Duchovny spectacle is one of a "soft" masculinity. Another actor appreciated for his "soft"mascwty was Adrian Paul, the star of the Highlander series. Unfamiliar with the show, 1 asked for a description of the actor: From: D~ciïla A gorgeous Italiante [sic] hunk of manhood. Looks like a young Sean Connery (in fact, we've speculated more than once on his possible parentage) . From: Daphne It's ?i$hlander, the scrics. Check it rut! Satrrday nigkts. .9c!ziac Paul plays angsty immortal Duncan MacLeod (and does a mighty fine job of it, too), Tall, dark and EXTRF;MELY handsorne, with a body to kill for. Bettern' David's, although that's heresy, I know....
Fr-: Drucilla .,..Iqllsecond that, though they're completely different *types* so it doesn't much matter. 1 like them both. For different reasons. They both ANGST so damned well. *sigh* By linking Paul to Sean Comery and referring to him as a "gorgeous Italian hunk of manhood" with "a body to kiU for", his "macho" heage was established. According to Bennett and Woollacott (1987), Sean Connery was chosen to play the first James Bond because the film producers wanted the character "to look iike he had bails"; the Bond of the novels was deemed to be too "upper crust", code for too "effeminaten (p. 55). Yet Paul was also positioned as the classic hero of the romance ("tau, dark and handsomeN)with the ability, like Duchovny, to display emotional distress or seem troubled- "to angst" as Daphne and Drucilia put it. It is important to recognize that, coma Chapman, images such as these are les likely a response to feminism and the demands of women like the DDEBRP members than to the growing consumer presence of the affluent gay man. McDoweU credits Calvin Klein's undewear campaign in particular for "taking the male body out of the gay closet and giving it a much wider application" (quoted in Kelly, 1998, p. D6). As Moore argues, "the ccxiiication of men via male gay discourse" does not preclude or exclude the female gaze; on the contrary, it creates a space in which women can activeiy lookn (p. 53)."
" Television, however, continues to reinforce the heteronormetive gender boundary in its dispiays of erotic despectacle. Bamard descni a Levis ad fiom 1994 in which two young women come upon a hidden spot by a cm& wfiere an attractive wd-built man is having a "slcinny dip,' if the In naming the desire produced by gazing at images of new men like Duchovny, members usually rejected the pejorative "drool" in favour of "squidge" , a word which suggests the fluids and secretions of femde sexual excitation. While 1 have never heard this term before 1 conducted this research, according to the participants, it is commonly used by female fans in relation to actors whom they find sexually attractive. For example, Duchovny was described as a favourite "objet d'squidgen and as "major squidge" in the subject line of the message on the "suspenders"image: From: &a Hale ....1 just now came across the picture of David ... on the DD Photo Gallery pages6, with him wearing suspenders and no shirt. 1 was sitting there drooling into my keyboard and whimpering. 1 dontt care what rny CO-workers think of me any more. Jesus wept. 1 have never seen so LUSCIOUS a photo of David in my life. This single photo reminds me of why 1 joined the DDEB in the first place. Oh my goddess .... It is interesting that Mrs Hale uses "squidge" and describes herself as "drooling" and "whimpering", and that she refers to his lack of clothing ("wea~gno shirt") rather than his body directly . Moreover, while the exclamation "oh my goddess" serves to affirm the comection between feminisrn, power, and desire, she concluded with the foiiowing "disclaimer" addressed direct1y to me: Thank Goddess 1 have a nice safe place like the Brigade to express myself. Rhiannon .. 1 do NOT usually do this, but now and then...oh me. oh my. oh jeez.
Expressing desire for an actor, as 1 have suggested, is risky business for female fans, even among themselves and especidy in the "presencen of an academic who may have written her off as a fangirl.
discarded jeans and other apparel beside the water are any indication. The women, hidden behind a tree, giggle and are clearly meant to be sexurrlly excited by his ernergence hmthe water, although the camera, naturally, oniy pans dom the body as Iàr as his waistline. For the male viewef, what is being offered is not the debody as sexual spectacle per se, but the potentiai to be the object of desire for women who see him in (or not in) these jeans. In a simila.vein, Coke ran a television ad in North America in 1996 in which a group of fende office workers start primping and exhibithg signs of excitement (Iicking their lips, wiping perspidon hmtheir brows) m anticipation of the amval of the 'hunk' delivering a case of Coke. Again, this is an attempt to foreclose the homoerotic gaze and instead offer the male viewet the fimtasy of king the heterosexual hunk.
J6 This image, dong with muiy others. an be viewed Pt the David Duchovny Image ûaUery on the DDEB3 website:
From: Wannie I became a Biehn-atic when I saw hirn in Aliens, and he gave that little grin and said to Ripley, "It doesn't rnean we're engaged or anything". Whoa, baby! Did the temperature suddenly rise in here?? Woof! *pant* +pant*
1 saw Terminator on video a couple of weeks after Aliens, and that cutê iitti= butt of his dfd me in! As far as 1 ]inox, NB did not have a stand-in butt. :-) ....
From: Us Hale Oh, lord. As if it isn't hot enough here in [name of city withheld], you gotta go raise my temperature again. Woohoo! And the funny thing is, 1 normally don't even LIKE blue-eyed men. Nordic types just don't do a thing for me, EXCEPT for Clancy Brown and Michael Biehn. Two men who get better looking as they get older .. . .
Frorn: Dani Winnie; Even if Michael did have a body double for the nude scene (which 1 doubt), he was most squidgewoxthy running around in those borxowed pants and no shirt. : :sigh: :57
From: Winnie That's certainly true! Have you checked out Trouble's Michael Biehn [web] Page yet? There's at least one photo of Michael in that very ...ahem...attire. *blink**blink* Interspersed with the references to the actor's genrral appeal ("he was most squidgeworthyn)were comrnents about his "cute Little butt", which suggests a "soft" rather than "hardn masculinity, as weU as to his physicai type, hair, skin and eye colouring. In addition, there are numerous orthographie representations of sounds and gestures that suggest a state of sexual excitation brought about through the act of looking: Woof! +pant* *pant*, ::sigh::. *blink* *blink*. At the same time, a sense of modesty or propnety was playfull y evoked ("his, ahem. .attiren). It is interesting that while the participants ardently claimed their nght to look and to express sexual desire, none of these encodings are particulariy graphic or sexually explicit. As it was for Mrs Hale, my "presence" could have been an inhibithg factor. After all, some members
The double colons mund the word "sigh"are altemiove mprLings to asterisks and ire used for emphasis. wrote explicit fan "eroticawin other contexts. The normative ferninine discourse of modesty rnay have also exerted pressure on mernbers to suggestive, indirect references to theu desire, especially in a context where a close intimacy had not been established. In the above exchange and others, metaphor was also drawn on as a means of suggesting desire. Using the Collins COBUILD corpus of English, made up of over 200 million words culied from a plethora of print sources, Deignan (1997) came up with nine classifications of conventional metaphors of desire. One of these is "desire as
In English, fire as a metaphor for sexual desire highlights the notion of desire as a dangerous or even destructive, which can spread rapidly in a way that is difficult to control. Positive entaürnents of this metaphor are connotations of vitality and the wannth associated with fire.. .. this metaphor is grounded in Our physical experience of desire, which includes feelings of raised body temperature. (p. 34)
In the Biehn exchange, both Winnie and h4rs Hale make use of the wmth connotation, coyly suggesting the outside temperature has mystenously nsen. Another thread began with Bel's comment that she liked men with deep voices. She then asked, "Besides DD :-) what kind of guys catch your eye?" From: Mrs Hale ....Smoldering types. :) James Morrison, Colin Firth, Michael Weiss. In earlier days, Harrison Ford and Leonard Nirnoy.
From: -dia ....Oh, yes, smoldering! Let me add to the list David McCallum (Illya used to send us 'round the twist) and James Stacy (back in his Lancer days, before the motorcycle accident and he went off the deep end :- ( ) . And then there's the chadng, intelligent types. 1 will readily admit to a fondness for Scott Bakula, Richard Dean Anderson, Robert Hays and Jerry O'Connel1 (cradle robber that 1 am).
Of course, when you put smoldering and charming/intelligent together, you get the reason why we' re al1 here. ;)
While Mrs Hale provides a list of desirable men, based on their abiiity to "igniten desire within her, Ardis extends the metaphor beyond physical appearance to include personal qualities such as chann and intelligence. Another common metaphor used on the DDEBRP was that of desire as appetite. The need for food, as that for wamth, argues Deignan (1997), "isone of our most basic physical needs, which may provide a Mermu for the frequency and range of expressions of this metaphor" (p. 34). Moreover, satisfjhg hunger, like desire, "is a source of pleasure" (p. 30). In thîs vein, the actor BUy Zane is referred to as "some nice eyecandy". in another exchange, Daphne teased Mrs Hale, "You'd drink [Duchovny] for lunch every &y if you could! :-> ",whose reply, in the form of a "stage direction", drew on the heat metaphor: Ooo dontt get me started. The images that brings up....oooo [ellipsis in the original]
Mrs Hale adjusting office thermostat
In another exchange, Mrs Hale concluded a message with the one-liner, "Would iike some DD Jeily". This lads to a humourous exchange of food metaphors with Winnie: From: Winnie "Wouldja like sonaa fries with that?"[Last name] On white, wheat or rye?
From: Mrs Hale What else but....WRY bread? (ducking, running) This exchange also reveals the degree to which desire and humour were intertwined on the DDEBRP. In many cases a suggestive one-üner was dropped into a more general thread. For example, when asking Mrs Hale for a copy of one of her erotic stories, Moll added, "Pretty please with David on top (or on the bottorn, whichever you prefer)". Similarly, when Erin wrote that she had "wanted to do cartwheels" when she found a sexy image of DD in her email inbox, Dani quipped, "I'd do cartwheels, too, if 1 found David in my boxn, to which she added, "hey, it was just sitting there, waiting to be said!" When one participant mentioned that she had interviewai Duchovny for a magazine article, Winnie exclairned, "Would that we could ali Get David. Yow! !" On one level, these jokes function as a protective shield to deflect any charges of "drooling" over an actor, the line between "drool"and " squidge" always a fuie one. On another, they dow members to display their linguistic resources by quickly formulating witty replies and engaging in clever word play. As 1 will discuss in more detail in Chapter 7 these displays were key to the process of community mking on the DDEBRP. In this particular context, they senmi to turn the object of desire into a social lubricd8,whose primary function was to facilitate list interaction and enable the participants of the thread to establish a communal bond. The metaphors of desire described above were often mixed with others in the same exchange: From: Dani .... Didn't David look just yummy last night? Let the church give an ay-MEN for the Mulderangst!
From: Mrs Hale .... Especially when he said, "You are the only one 1 trust". Oooo iidnave rneicea.
From: Erin *Erin lets out a big ay-MEN!* I love MulderAngst. From al1 the plot synopsis, it looks like the season finale is going to give us MulderAngst in spades.,.I cantt wait. :) .... What made Duchovny's character " yummyn in this scene was his display of vulnerability and dependence on Scully 's importance, the line quoted by Mrs Hale being addressed to Anderson's character. As the imagined recipient of Mulder's attention, Mrs Hale shifted from Dani's food metaphor to a water metaphor, which Deignan (1997) includes under the classification "desire as an extemal force". Moreover, Dani also introduced one of desire as worship, with her reference to religion and her wordplay on "amenn. Erin picked up this metaphor, providing a personai "stage directionn for her action and then reiterating the importance of vulnerability in the construction of Mulder as an object of desire.
The Clothes Make the (New) Man Central to many of the exchanges which deployed the desirous DDEBRP gaze of objectification were references to the actor's attire or hair style. In the Biehn exchange, as many comments were made about his nude scene as to an image of him in "bonowed pants and no shirtn.The new man often deploys fahion to covet the gaze , a rnove that cm be traced back to Valentino: Although his early publicity photos duplicated the starch-shirted attire of Anglo rnatinee idols like Waliace Reid and Anglicized ethnics like Antonio Moreno, Valentino's publicity photos increasingly displayed him in ethnic costumes from
1 am gratehil to Lee Easton for this pu. 136 his films andor assuming the costumes (or lack of them) and poses similar to those employed in dance studies of both interpetive and ballet dancers. (Studlar, 1993, p. 37)
Although notions like being "in fashion, out of fashion, fashionable, and fashion- conscious" are imbricated with femininity (Schreier, 1989, p. 2), this has not always been the case. Both Steele (1989a) and Barnard (1996) provide historicai overviews of clothing styles, demonstrating that from medieval urnes through to the 18" century, items, accessories, fabrks and colours now associated with women were associated with men. Steele links the change in men's attire from bright to dark colours, from sik to wool and from stockings and robes to trousers, to changes in English political ideals. "Fashionablenclothing for men thus came to be associated with what was perceived as the comption of pre-revolutionary France. Barnard points to the Industrial Revolution as a decisive moment in the ostensible vacating of men From the realm of fashion. The involvement of middle class men in trade and industry meant that their clothing had to "match" the ideals associated with such positions- those of hard work, frugality and sobriety. Bright, decorative clothing did not fit the image of the indushiai age man and came to be thought of as frivolous and thus associated with women following plus male/minui male binary logic. When taking up the discourses of fashion offereû by the actors they gazed at, the DDEBRP members identified several "looksn as appealing. One such look was that of the "man in the suitw.Duchovny usually wore a suit and tie in his role of Fox Mulder, which generated this comment from Bel: David does look good in suits.... 1 loved the "GQ" pose in wHumbugn or "Freaks" or whatever that episode was called. David looked gorgeous !
In this scene from the "Humbug" episode (Fox, 3 1 March, 1995), Mulder is in the background, leaning against a doorway as if modelling a suit. This classic representation of an upper class masculinity, however, is acWybeing parodied by the show's producers who have placed the midget owner of the motel where the FBI agents are staying to conduct their investigation, in the foreground telling Scully that the red "fi&" in society are tall, well-dressed men like Mulder. Steele (198%) notes that a suit "is certainly not sexy in the way that many women's clothes aren, that is, it does not reveal or accentuate parts of the body. Instead, it is the garment's association with masculine power that makes the wearer look sexually appealing (p. 6 1). 1 would add the tailored suit also signds that its wearer is a mernber of a dominant social group. In contrast, a man wearing a suit that is poorly cut and made of polyester would hardly be thought of as attractive. Moreover, as the scene makes explicit, the sexiness of the suit is directly linked to the body type of he who wears it. Iust as clothing styles have changed, so have styles of bodies, "the development of the modern physical ideal- younger, der, thinner and more muscuiar- Degiming] around the turn of the century .. . for both sexes" (Steele, 1989a, p. 20). In this sense, Duchovny at six feet and 170 pounds with a fit, trim build is a perfect "match" for the suks9Hence, even if the midget had been wearing an expensive suit, it is highly unlikely that Bel, or anyone else, would have thought he looked sexy. Although Duchovny usually wore a suit and tie in his role of Fox Mulder, it was the tuxedos he wore to award shows that generated discussion: Pxom: Sonya . . . . The (19971 Golden Globe awards were on tonight (the Foreign Press Association gives them out. GA but not DD was nominated last year) . But *thisc year, first GA won for best actress in a drarna, then DD won for beçt actor in a drama, then the show won for best drama . . . . . David wore a very nice tux (black--no funny stuff this year ...[ellipsis in the original])
Both Mrs Hale and Daphne agreed that he looked wondemil, Mrs Hale cynically suggesting, "maybe that's why he won the award :)". It is noteworthy that another male celebrity present at the ceremony, Patrick Stewart (most famous for his role in the television series Star Trek: ï3e Nat Generdon as Captain Jean-Luc Picard), was also spoken of admiringly in terms of his "classic" evening Wear: Fsorn: Daphne .... PS and Gillian [Anderson] presented together. He is sooooo fine. So regal in bearing. He had a big grin on his face and of course, was superb. And he looked incredibly fine in his tux.
Duchovny's "vital statisticswwere fomd on the DDEB's Dennitive David Duchovny FAQ iocaied at www. munchyn.comlddlddfiiq. ha,March 2000. Simply heaven, you PSEB~~'s".Therets something about a man in tux that is so wonderful. David Duchovny, however, did not always appear at such events dressai so conventionally. As the following exchange indicates, some variations of the traditional black tuxedo were thought to suit him: From: Ardis .... He was wearing his understated (thank you, God) black tux with the tieless black shirt. New addition this time: Something of a spitcurl on his forehead. Not quite the Superman look, but definitely different.
From: Drucilla . . . Actually, it was a lovely mink-brown tux. He never does the usual. But it was very attractive on him.
Deviating too far from the conventions of formal dress, however, was not seen as appeaiing. Sonya's earlier reference to "funny stuff" was a shiny, silver outfit that the actor wore to the 1995 Ernmy Awards, a look usually associated with performers such as Liberace, Elton John or Michael Jackson. These "dubiousnrepresentations of masculinity serve to disrupt the heteronormative gaze, even if only momentarily. Although not as much a departure, the outfit he wore on an appearance on The David Lettennun Show inspired this comment from Erin: "Heh ...and what was with that suit? 1 saw a pst on usenet called something üke 'Did DD mug an ice cream man?' and almost died laughing " . The formal look, however, was not the only one that DDEBRP members liked. In the exchange in which Duchovny was described as looking "yumrnynin the episode "Wetwired" (Fox, 10 May, M6), Erin commented on another recent appearance on a promotional program which contained clips of the lead actors being intenriewed about their characters: From: Erin .... [II ...also like the rumpled DD look during the interview bits in the so-called Secrets of XF special ... From: Dani .... Re: rumpled DD. Yep, he sure scruffs up real purty, don't he?61
PSEB stands for The Patrick Stewart Estmgen Brigade, the nrst aii-fernale eleetronic mailing list to be caiied a "brigade".
61 1 wiii discuss Dani's intentional use of substandard English as a meaas of showing off an ability to play with language and therefote meet community standard in Chapter 6. From: Erin . . . . [Erin] nods rapidly. One of my favorite pics of him was from a tabloid mg. It looks like it was taken in an airport or something. His hair kind of sticking out al1 over, hels wearing old, grubby jeans, dirty tennis shoes, a t-shirt and a huge parka like coat. 1 want a color 8x10 glossy. : )
Aithough this last image is clearly not a publicity photo, it does not actually work against the grain of fashion norms in the way that the shiny suit did. As Barnard (1996) points out, the adoption of aspects of working class dress by the middle classes began in eamest in the early 1970s and now "dressing domnin a t-shirt and jeans is presented in countless ad campaigns as fashionable and sexy for both men and women. Moreover, thanks to actors such as Don Johnson of Miami Vice and singers such as George Michael ftom the 1980s British pop group Wham, a few days worth of facial stubble is dso accepted as fashionable on the right male face. It is therefore not that much of a stretch to read the airport snapshot as if it were an 8x10 glossy. It is also important to note that this exchange, like a number of the others, is another exarnple of cokctive objectification, with Enn and Dani "woWngfl the image to extend their mutuai pleasures.
Gillian's "Golden Globesn If gazing at the new man is intricately linked to objectification , 1 will argue in this section that gazhg at the female body is primarily about identification, about taking up discourses of fernininity clustered around beauty, sexudity, and desirability offered to the female spectator by the female body on display. Arising out of this link between identification and desire is the question: When both spectator and object of the gaze are female, is the gaze homoerotic? Afier aIl, the gaze is, as 1 suggested earlier, a social practice that is subject to heterosexual norms, but the potential aiways exists for transgression. Stacey (1994) makes a strong case that "fascination with the idealized othern may weii contain elements of homoeroticism. While she acknowledges that identification and desire are not the same, she argues for a broader definition of desire, one that aiiows for the exploration "of the ways in which female identification contains forms of desire which include, ihrough not exclusively, homoerotic desire" (p. 29). This rnakes sense in the context of her study in which female fans expressed their devotion to and worship of the "glamour queens" of the 1940s and 1950s. Looking through the list discussions, I did not flnd discussions on images of Gillian Anderson and other actresses which contained expressions of homoerotic desire that paralleLled those expressions of heterosexual desire directed towards Duchovny or other male actors. There are no references to sexual arousal or use of metaphors of desire. 1 did corne across one humourous comment that played with the notion of bisexual desire. In criticizing Lee and me for suggesling in our paper Lhat the DDEBs had sent gifts to Duchovny "obviously with the hope of catching his eye," Daphne retorted: Like this is anything new. People have been giving celebrities gifts since the earth cooled. A gift can be a sign of appreciation as well as affection. Also, the DDEBl has give [sic] GA gifts. This kind of shoots this scenario to hell, doesntt it?? Drucilla then countered, "Unless, of course, we're al1 bisexuals and hoping to get *both* of them. :-)" Another exchange identified Anderson as an object of desire but for other women who identified as lesbian: From: Rhiannon 1 finally listened to the [interview] tape of GA on "Real time" [CBC Radio Programme] from last Sat. A caller asked her what she thought about having fernale admirers and she asked if they meant from the gay community or "general pop".. It turned out that the caller meant the latter but afterwards the interviewer asked her if she had a following in the lesbian community and she said yes and mentioned the GATE [Gillian Anderson Testosterone Brigade] as an example! What a blow to those male egos!
Pronr: Erin .... Hmmmm... she rnust have been trying to Say GAEB [Gillian Anderson Estrogen Brigade] and got confused. :) BTW [by the way] , there is a GAEB and they have a web page...
Mrs Hale joined the thread, shifting the focus to what she perceived to be more evidence of Anderson's " cluelessness", ending her pst with the suggestion that Anderson stick to semi-scnpted public statements prepared by or with the help of a publicist. The thread quickly medinto a debate about Anderson's cornportment when making public appearances and her acting dents. This does not mean, however, that Anderson's physical appearance and physical attractiveness were never discussed. On the contmy, the most extended threads on the X-Files' star focussed on her choices of wardrobe and hair style and whether they were the appropriate choices to pull off a particular look successfully. No other aspect of femininity is subject to as much discipline as appearance. Bartsky (1988) refers to the regulation of the female body as "perpetual and exhaustives regulation of the body's size and contours, its appetite, posture, gestures and general cornportment in space, and the appearance of each of its visible partsn (p. 80). And no other female body is subject to more regulation than that of the mode1 and beauty contestant, closely followed by actresses and othzr fimale celebritias. Thz ability to cultivate and turn out a "look" is a result of years of both scrutiny of fashionably attired female bodies in magazines, in films, on television, as weU as self-srutiny in front of the minor. The litmus test of any ferninine look, however, is not the approval of other female spectators but its success in drawing the desirous male gaze. The heterosexual female spectator, whether looking at her own body in the &or or at the image of another women in a magazine can be said to be looking "as if she were a man with the phallic power of the gaze, at a woman who would attract the gaze, in order to be that woman" (Doane, quoted in Stacey, p. 26). The first extended exchange in which the gaze of the DDEBRP members was directed at Anderson twk place foilowing her appearance at the 1996 Ernmy Awards as a nominee for Best Actress: Fzom: Winnie How many of you watched the Emmies last night, and how many of you thought GA'S hair was AWFUL??? Yow! Even my husband hated it (though he remarked upon her cleavage shawing, whaddya expect? Actually the dress wasn't sa hot either!)
Winnie's post gestures to the differences in the ways that male and female spectators regard the female body. While she noticed the components of Anderson's look-hair and dress-and judged her on these choices, her husband noticed her breasts, which the cut of the dress obviously reveaied (at least partially). Moreover, she erpected him to gaze at Anderson as an object of desire, despite the bad hairdo, based on the display of cleavage. It is also interesting the Winnie seemed to qualiQ her opinion by adding the phrase "feeling snippy this moniing" as a postscript to her message. That way, if others disagreed with her assesment, she would still be able to blame her original position on her bad mood and rework it to fit with that of the majority. As it tumed out, those who responded to her pst were equally disapproving : From: Liz . .. . She loooked [sic] like she'd rolled her hair and taken the curlers out without cornbing it.... [In reference to the dress] The style wasn't bad, but the material/color scheme sucked.
From: Mrs Hale . . . . Not surprising, considering what she used to Wear as a teenager. How could one reasonably expect her to be dressing like a glarnor queen if she grew up a punk?
Anderson's display was thus interpreted as a Ïded attempt to look "giamourous". nie above comments suggest that glamour is understood by these members as not about having good iooks as much as it is about producing a spectacle of ferninine beauty, one that requires attention to details regarding choice of material and colour. Glamour was also defined in terms of what it is not. Liz's comments on Anderson's hairstyle conjure up an image of a fiumpy 1950s housewife, an image that also mobilizes discourses of class. Anderson's teenaged years as a punk were seen as the problem in Mrs Haie's eyes, a looWlifestyle understood as being "anti-fashion".62 That said, the subject line of the thread, " What was she THINKING?", suggests a sense of dismay at Anderson's "poorn sense of style, for who aside from a fashion model could be expected to have mastered the beauty routine better than a television actress? Normative discourses of femininity and fashion were articulateci in a similar exchange that took place several months later in January 1997 afler the broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards. Sonya started the thread, which she entitled, "WOO HOO!" , to express her delight that The X-FiZes, Duchovny and Anderson had dl received awards. After commenting on Duchovny's appearance, she noted that "Gillian wore a beautiful dress, big on cleavagen.This quotation is one of the few that could be interpreted as homoerotic, although it also could be an identification with and approval of Anderson's use of a low neckiine to successfidly draw the male gaze. In providing a history of the low neckline, which has existed since the lSO century, Steele (1989b) describes its function in formal evening Wear:
For a discussion of the pu& aesthetic, sa Bd1996. pp. 129-132. 143 A low neckline creates a very different effect than total toplessness. A women in a low necked evening dress may be saying "1 have beautifid breasts. Some lucky person may get to see them-not just anyone and not in public. You are free to fantasize".(p. 59)
Dressing to create sexuai dure is not only about exposure but concealmenr (Barnard, 1996). "1s not the most erotic portion of a body where the garment gapes?" , asks Barthes (1975). "It is this flash itself which seduces, or rather: the staging of an appearmce-as-disappearance" @p. 9-10, emphasis in the original). Baniard quotes costume designer Lisa Jenson who States that one should aim to "play hide and seek with the body" (p. 173). The responses to Sonya's message indicate that other members did not feel that Anderson's low cut dress ac hieved the rig ht reveal/conceal balance: From: Mrs Hale ....1 have to disagree about GA'S dress, however--1 thought it was an X-file in itself. WHY does this pale woman insist on wearing colors that wash her out even further? And that cleavage certainly must have riveted the attention of every man in the room, who was wondering what would happen if she bent forward even a little bit.. .
From: Rhiarnnon No kidding! 1 hope GA took a good look at Kristin Scott Thomas in a black strapless for pointers on how to be sexy and *classy*. It's not just a matter of letting it al1 hang out.
Fr-: Drucilla .... Maybe shels compensating for the fact that she never gets to show *any* clevage [sic] on the show? :-)
From Daphne .... Gillianls dress was indeed, a bit stxange. The sheath part was fine, but the neckline was pretty odd. Not as bad as Madonna's dress, tho. My god! I know she's nursing, and therefore HUGE, but I think 1 would have chosen something a little more modest. 1 started calling it The Breast Show. ;->
Mrs Haie, never one to mince words, retorted that the dress was "an X-File in itself", echoing cornedieme Joan Rivers in her pre-Academy show in which she and her daughter make cutting, "catty" remarks about the attire of the stars entering the building? 1positioned the "littleblack dressn as timeless and dways in style (in fact it
ln recent years, discussing the outfits of actors and singer5 attendhg industry awad shows has moved froin informai discussion among viewer to a sociaiiy sanctioned activity among the middle classes. Toronto's "high-brow"daily newspaper, ïhe Globe and Mail ran a fuii page feature foliowing the 2000 Academy Awards focussing on the attire of the stars and offering similar types of critiques made was designed by Coco Channel in the 1930s). Moreover, 1 referred to the revealkonceal balance that stipulates that too much of the former is a "violation" of middle class values of modesty. Thus 1constructed Scott as the "good girl" and Anderson as the "bad girln. Daphne articulated a sidar position but in reference to Madoma whose dress was even Iess "modestwthan Anderson's, not because the neckline was necessarily lower but because of her status as a nursing mother, who is only supposed to expose her breasts in the maternai "non-sexual" context of nursing. DruciUa took a different ta&, rationahhg Anderson's "overexposure" at the ceremony (albeit in a tongue in cheek manner) as a way of making up for her "underexposure" in the role of Scully. Scully's wardrobe is bas4 on the "dress for successn mode1 in which professional women Wear dark coloun and tailored suits so as to present themselves as "Career Womenn in order to be taken seriously by their male colleagues and avoid being constructed as objects of desire. Yet as invested as those of us participating seemed to be in striking the right reveaUconcea1 balance, the foliowing exchange on the subject of Patrick Stewart and Gillian Anderson as presenters on the show suggests that achieving this balance is not vaiued by the male spectators of "the breast show": From: Daphne ... .Althof when they were on stage together it was kinda hard to keep one's eyes off Gillian's breasts. :-> It's like: "Where am 1 supposed to be looking right now?" ;->
From: Dmacilla BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHA! Did you catch PS looking dom her clevage [sic]? :-)
From: Daphne ....Not at all. He is SUCH a gentleman.
From: Drucilla 1 bet he did when they werenlt on carnera! Hell, I'm a woman and I'd have been hard put not to stare... (ellipsis in the original)
From: Daphne . .. . Stop it. You're ruining my fantasy of PS as THE perfect man, who would never do such a thing. :->
Fzom: Drucilla Hey, if he didn't do that held be dead, and 1 don't care if he is perfect, I prefer my men *alive*. :-)
by the DDEBRP members. In jokingly suggesting that a "gentlemann Wre Patrick Stewart could resist such temptation, Daphne thus rnobilized a discourse of class and chivairy, the noms of propriety and morality associated with the middlelupper classes dictating that the gaze be averted. That even her gaze was drawn to Anderson's display of flesh suggests that the female body exudes sexuality powerful enough to disrupt even if only ternporarily, queering the gaze of the heterosexual female spectator. Drucilla retorted that staring, on the part of the male spectator, was not oniy expected but desirable, a sign of "naturaln male desire. It is thus the responsibility of the female coveting the gaze to perfect the reveaVconceal balance so as to avoid putting men with "classn in an awkward position. The low neckiine was not the only aspect of Anderson's spectacle that came under scmtiny. A number of members dso focussed on the "inappropriate" choice of colour of her dress: From: Mrs. Hale .... Jewel tones. Definitely jewel ones. She is making herself practically invisible by constantly choosing colors that wash out her skin tones.
From: Liz .... YES! Shoot, even a decent cool *red* would be better than what shegs been wearing.
Fxom: Geneva .... 1 can't help but wonder if there's a joke in her wearing breast-revealing golden dresses to the Golden Globes. :)
From: Drucilla ....She looks marvelous in burgundy. Remember that one picture of her in the burgundy evening gown that was in Starlog?
From: -dis ....Agreed on the jewel tones. That burgundy dress in the Starlog poster was fabulous! And the neckline of the GG dress IMHO [in my humble opinion] didn't suit her. Sure, her very nice globes, er, breasts were hanging out for al1 the world to see, but 1 didntt think it was a flattering look. 1 mean, they were just sort of hanging there. Not being a guy, 1 didnrt find that attractive. She certainly was the focus of attention, tho!
While colour has always ben an important component of style, it was foregrounded in the 1980s by a schema from the bestselling book called Colour Me Beau@l (Jackson, 1980). The author basically divideci the colour palette into four "seasonsn. A variety of measures such as skin tone and hair colour determine whether one is a "Spring", "Summer", "Fall"or "Wintern, each of which is associated with a range of colours from which to chwse one's wardrobe and cosmetic products such as foundation, eye shadow and lipstick. The participants of the above thread did not refer to the specifics of the charts, but as many were college-aged women at the time this schema was at its height in popularity, they would almost certainly be aware of its workings. In selecting coiours that they felt would have looked better on Anderson on account of her hair colour and skin tone, they were in effect doing the job of colour consuitant. This consuiting rok is rlaborated in Uie next posts: From: Liz BLECH! 1 just saw [the dress] on Entertainment Tonight.*sigh+I wish shetd let +me+ dress her! :-)
From: Drucilla Or me. Perhaps we should offer to take her shopping?
These quotations also recail the normative "girl" activity of playing with dolls, rnobilizing discourses of both ownership and protection. Drucilla's use of 'we', can be extended beyond the dyad and to the DDEBRP community at large. In this sense, Anderson is constructed as a classrnate or friend who needs some useful fashion advice. While the representations of paralinguistic features (*sigh*, :) ) give the text a sense of playfulness, a senous hvesment in seeing Anderson adhere to middle class tastes valued by the DDEBRP members is also being signaiied. This desire is confirmai in the exchange about her subsequent appearance at the Screen Actors' Guild (SAG) Awards. Members expressed pleasure and relief that Anderson's fashion tastes were haüy in line with the middle cfass noms of fashion and "taste" valued by the DDEBRP community: From: Geneva .... 1 knew she got some kind of award because there was a news snippet during the X-Files of her holding up yet another statue. This time, she was wearing a tasteful black number.
From: Drucilia ,,.. Yeah! The first +ever+ great dress for an awards show! She should get an award just for the drcss ! :-)
It is important not to forget, however, that there was one dissenting voice in the three threads discussed, that of Sonya, who liked Gillian's golden dress. 1 do not know why she never foliowed up her original pst to change or defend her opinion, but the possibility that she felt marginaiised in the face of majority opinion cannot be discounted, the consequence of which was to exclude herself through silence. Although members criticized Anderson and other actresses for failing to live up to fashion noms and praised them when they did, this does not mean that they did not at other moments mobilhe discourses of feminism to resist the pressure to passively accept such noms. Drucilla began a thrad entitled "Grmr!" after watchuig a program on television about the Miss Universe beauty pageant: 1 doubt that the rest of you watch ET [Entertainment Tonight) , but they had a story on tonight that just rankled me. It seems that the current Miss Universe has put on some weight. Donald Trurnp (who apparently owns the contest or something) has forced her into a diet and exercize [sic] program using humiliation tactics that would make a Nazi proud. He's also apparently planning to institute new policies for the contest that say if the winner gains any weight she'll be dismissed and lose al1 her winnings. He said "Boxers have weight limits, why not Miss Universe? No one wants to see a fat Miss Universe".
grrrrrrxrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrxrr! !!1 am *still* pissed.
Her opening comment that the other members did not watch ET is interesting in itself as it suggests that the show is "trashyn and thus feu below the DDEBRP "community standards" of television consumption. She was clearly appalled by the tactics of Tmmp to force the woman who has been crowned the winner of the contest to lose weight. The members who replied added both details and their own sense of indignation: Fr=: Mol1 Apparently, the girl is 5'9" and had used diet powders and starved herself down to 118 pounds for the actual contest. Then afterwards she started eating like a normal person and went up to 160 pounds .. . which doesn' t sound like a whole hell of a lot for someone 5'9". The doctor whots helping her lose the weight says her weight should really be about 135-140, definitely not the 118 she had been. So where exactly does the Donald think she should ber 1 wonder? And when is he going to start weighing himself, I'd like to know. He's not going to win any beauty pageants either.
This whole thing just reminds me how much 1 hate beauty pageants. This kind of bas. just brings out what a sham it really is. If you donit measure up to some perverse male sense of beauty then you're worthless . MOU pointed out not only the contradiction between aesthetic and medical discourses on designathg an "ideal"weight for women (135 lbs as opposed to 118). As well, she drew on a liberal feminist discourse of equality, suggesting that men need to subject themselves to the same ideals of beauty, and finally, pointed out the impact that these ideals have on women in generd. She conchdeci her post "lucky there's no men nearby, I feel like a little bashing " . Drucilla replied by trying to explain why the pageant wuuier would allow herself to be treated in such way: Yes ! It's awful! Unfortunately she's from Venezuela (yes, I'm making an unsupported value judgement about South American countries here ...), so she's probably inculcated in the mindset that he has the right to do this to her. Last year's Miss Universe said she was +appalled+ that he would do such a thing, but then she admitted that she *fasted for a month* before the contest. Drucilla first pointed to Miss Universe's ethnicity and nationality as a factor but immediately qualified her statement by conceding that her judgernent could be based on a stereotype. Her comment about the previous year's contest winner confims the contradictory position that women are placed in by normative discourses: while they may recognize the unfaimess and sexism inherent in the male gaze, the desire to covet it and meet its approval in a sanctioned contest that provides substantial material and symbolic resources is extremely powemil. To the delight of a number of members, Ardis then fonvarded a "letter from Barbienaddressed to the CE0 of the Mattel corporation. In it the do11 makes a set of iiberai feminist demands that challenge the gender noms that regulate women's clothing , bodies and choices of career: >1. A nice, comfy pair of sweat pants and a frumpy, oversized sweatshirt. Itm sick of looking like a hooker. How much smaller are these bathing suits gonna get? Do you have any idea what it feels like to have nylon and velcro crawling up your butt?
>2. Real underwear that can be pulled on and off. Preferably white. What bonehead at Mattel decided to cheap out and MOLD imitation underwear to my skin? !? It looks like cellulite!
>5. Breast reduction surgery. 1 don't care whose amyou have to twist, just get it done.
>6. A sports bra. To Wear until 1 get the surgery.
>7. A new career. Pet doctor and school teacher just dontt cut it. How about a systems analyst? Or better yet, an advertising account exec ! Conclusion As 1 hope I have been successful in demonstrating, the collective cyborg gaze of the DDEBRP members was both transgressive and normative. On the one hand, members refùsed the denigrated position as the fangirl who is rendered hysterical or delusional by her excess desire, "tumed onn by her id01 who gazes at her from the screen, stage, television, magazine or CD cover. Rather, we took up the position of the active spectator tnditiondy associated with men and gazed at the new men on display for iisual consumption, to use a "desire as appetite" metaphor. Duchov~yand other actors were desired for a type of masculinity "softened" not only by less muscular definition but also by emotional displays of vulnerability and distress, normally associated with femininity, as weil as by personal attributes such as intelligence. This desire was reproduced through narning it as "squidge", using orthographie representations of sounds and gestures indicating sexual arousal, as well as through use of metaphor. As 1 have noted, the line between "squidge" and "drool" is a thin one, and to ward off charges of the latter, the expressions of desire on the DDEBRP were indirect. Discourses of fashion were also taken up to discuss the desirability of certain masculine "looksn from the classic suit to t-shirt and jeans. Such practices of objectification are also highly pleasurable as a result of occupying the powerful position of spectator. On the other hand, members, for the most part, did not gaze at the bodies of actresses with lesbian desire but rather identified with hem as women on display for the male spectator. Regdatory discounes of fashion and "good taste" were taken up in the process of scrutininng Anderson to see whether her tastes matched ours, necessary to produce pleasures of recognition. Upsetting the reveaVconcea1 balance with too much exposure of cleavage was seen as a vulgar attempt at coveting the male gaze even though it was acknowledged as a successful strategy due to the "nature" of male desire. Instead of simply criticising her for failug to meet the DDEBRP community "standards" of fhshion sensibility, some members took up the role of fashion consultant offering friendly "advice"as if Anderson were a member of the list. When her efforts were deemed successful, high praise was offered. Yet, as the "Miss Universe" thread and Barbie joke indicate, these same noms are refused at other moments and their painful "re.ln effects flagged. To conclude, both processes of objectification and identification are linked to performances of white, rnidde class, heterosexual feminine identity, for it is not only through style that "biologicai males and females are transfomed into particular types of men and women" (Steele, 1989a, p. 15) but also through talk about style, body types, and taste. Chapter 6 An Electronic arcbffeeklatch
In the previous two chapters, 1 have focussed on the practices and performances of fernininity that served to constmct and maintain a female fan community out of the heterotopic space of the DDEBRP: producing both paradigrnatic and critical readhgs of The X-Files episodes, evaluaeing the dress and cornportment of male and female celebrities, positioning male celebrities as objects of desire and irnagining how male fans do the same with female stars based on their lived experiences. However, iike the DDEBs, the research list was never intended to be only a "denspace in which to discuss The X-Files ' primary texts, paratexts, and images. Several participants specificaily stated that by joining the DDEBRP,they hoped to have the opportunity to get to know women from the other "brigades". Based on my analysis of list interaction, 1 argue in this chapter that the DDEBRP was in fact a space in which members sought to establish personal connections and fiiendships through the sharing of lived expe~ence,expenence that at moments involved both the pains and pleasures of taking up romantic storylines and ferninine noms of beauty and appearance. Through the process of routinely offering and picking up threads of advice and support, members were able to weave together swatches of commonality, resulting in the substance of a "sharing and caring" electronic k@eekkusch.
Sharine and caring According to Rubin, "women have more fnendships ... than men, and the ciifferences in the content and quality of their fnendships are marked and unmistakable" (quoted in Porter, 1996, p. 58). Moreover, "women's friendships and intimate relationships are sustained by talk (Holmes, 1995, p 38). While close, ca~g friendships are today associated with women, this was not always the case. Indeed, lüce 'the public', the concept of fnendship cm be traced back to the Greeks. Aristotle wrote extensively about the importance and value of fkiendship, which according to Porter (1996), entailed among other things, "reciprocal goodwill, familiarity, mutual love, a similarity of age, a common upbringing, a sharing of common property, equality , and time spent sharing in discussion and thought" (p. 57). The latter three items should also make it clear that the philosopher envisioned such a bond as existing between men, for women, of course could not own property or engage in leris, which was part of the polis, or public sphere (see my quotation fiom Habermas on this subject at the beginning of Chapter 3). Porter argues that "women's inclusion into full citizenship rernoves traditional philosophic bamers to considering women as 'goai fkiends'" (p. 57). That may so, but this did not lead to women's fnendships being valued in Western societies. Porter quotes a medieval source which clairns that once women experience (heterosexual) love, they will corne to find their relations with other wornen "bo~g". To get at Victorian notions of women's fnendships as superficial and trivial, she uses a quote from Jane Austin's Nonhanger Abbey: "the men think us incapable of real fkiendship you know, and I am determined to show them the difference" (p. 56). By the mid 19' century, the views of evolutionary biologists began to take hold and wornen were defined by their "nurturant, co~ective,and reproductive roles" (Collier, Rosaldo, & Yanagisako, 1997, p. 74). The numiring and care that they bestowed upon their offspring was then assumed to be extended to others around them in their personal and professional roles: husbands, other family members, friends, patients, pupils etc. This patriarchal, heteronormative discourse which provided a rationale with which to exclude women from political and civil society, has been taken up by both liberal and radical feminists, who have tumed it on its head, affirming the value of what Gilligan refers to as an "ethic of are"(quoted in Porter, p. 58). Porter restates Choderow's position that "girls' relational tendencies emerge from their interaction with their mothers and this gives them the necessary mothering skills to nurture others and define themselves in comection to othersn (p. 58). Other researchers focus on children's single sex peer groups to explain ciifferences between men's and women's friendships. Whereas boys have been shown to play outdoors in large collective groups, girls' play mostly takes in confineci indoor spaces in srna groups, "where they leam to maximise intimacy and minimise conflictn (Cameron, 1992, p. 73). These feminist understandings of women and friendship tend to rely on notions of essential difference between men and women or on a deterministic mode1 of childhood socialization, but there can be Little doubt that the "sharing and caring" subject is irnbricated heavily with dixourses of ferninullty with "real" effects on those of us with female bodies. These effects have often ben negative, the care of others coming at the expense of a woman's own needs, constituting an ethic of self-sacrifice. However, they have also enabled the formation of women-only support networks to offset the burden of care. As Simone de Bzauvoir put it: "women help one another, discuss their social problems, each creating for the others a kind of protecting nestn (quoted in Porter, p. 65). Porter herself says that "the expression of female ffiendship involves.. .the shared participation in a common world, a merging of personal and political aspects of life that gives women's friendship its strengthn (p. 64). 1 think it safe to say that the heterotopic spaces of the rnills and factories of the industrial revolution, the offices and kitchens of Our own century, and now cyberspace at the beginning of the next have been and are all bound together to some degree by corporeal and linguistic acts of caretaking and support. That said, it is important not to assume that aIi women's comrnunities are based on intimate fnendship and to recognize that levels of friendship Vary among and within groups of women. In other words, a close intimate fnendship is not always the result or even the objective of sharing with and caring for other members of the community. Aristotie did in fact identify three diEerent types of fnendships, some based on usefulness as a source of cornfort, support and encouragement, others based on pleasur~rthesharing of fun and "mutual delightsn, and yet others based on a "shared happinessn which "affinns selfhood" (Porter, p. 57). While girls may becarne best fiiends over night, this is rarely the case with adult women, and so one might expect that any community based in part on a feminine desire to support and be supportai by others does not just form and "congeal" instantly because aU the members share this desire. The quotation below recounts this process as it took place on one DDEB: From: Winriie For instance, DDEBx talk at the beginning was an explosive outpouring of discovery about each other, our thoughts, values, likes, dislikes, etc. Then followed a period of such intense soul-baring it was almost painful, like walking around with your skin off. As a counter-balance, that was followed by a period of humor and silliness. Wevve had our share of political and philosophical talk, over time, but some of our members lately have been going thxough such a rough period that the support group aspect has pretty much taken over. (DDEB~~~S,do you agree?)
This initial "explosion" was paraileiled on the DDEBRP with interaction proceeding dong two overarching threads: one in which everyone introduced themselves by providing mini "biographies" and one based on reactions to the conference paper CO- written with Lee. The iirst message sent to the hst, excerpted in Chapter 2, was sent by Mrs Hale: *clearing throat* Tap..tap.. .is this thing on?
Hi. My name is [Mrs Hale] . .. . 1 am short, loud, partial to tie-dye, and drink my whiskey straight up, no soda. By day 1 am a mild-mannered secretary in a[n] ...engineering fim which investigates things that break (like the Exxon Valdez) or blow up (like the Oklahoma City bornbing) . At night 1 write..*and tend to the care and feeding of my large husband and two small daughters.
This first paragraph plays with the "thumbnail sketch" in its style and in the information it provides. With her orthographie representation of standing in front of a microphone preparing to speak, she implied that she would be giving a formal oral presentation, yet she immediately switched to a more informal register with the use of "hi". The personal "facts" she provides are both self-depreciating (" short, loud, partial to tie-dye, "a secretary ") and aggrandizingdy suggesting that she is "mild mannemi", she was drawing on the Superman discourse, implying that she had the ability to change into the more powerfid figure, perhaps the liberal feminist figure of "Supermom" judging by the last sentence. Her underlying "toughness" was reinforced by her reference to the way she dnnks her whisky. In the rest of her message (not quoted here) , she spoke about her X-Files related activities in more detail, but concluded by recommending a book on tantric philosophy to the other list members, demonstrating that her interests were not limited to popular culture and fandom. The next members to present themselves took their cue from Mrs Hale, sending humourous descriptions of aspects of their background, age, jobs, hobbies, marital status, and so on. Mari used a similar opening , "Hi everybod y! test, test, test. .. :) " , and capriceM directly echoed Mrs Hale's "by day. ..by nightn structure but comoted a Jekyll and Hyde split- an Assistant Professor of Medicine by day but at night a brainless zombie that lays on the couch and maybe watches television if 1 can remember to point my head in the right direction. 1 used to have hobbies, but Itve forgotten what they were. 1 'm single--small surprise-- with two cats . Caprice's "biography" is much more self-depreciating than Mrs Hale's, positioning her status as a single woman as negative. These introductions generated replies from members who had already knew each other. Mrs Haie and Daphne, who were members of the same brigade, began joking about Mrs Hale's "obsessionnwith Duchovny (previously quoted in Chapters 2 and 5 ). Mrs Haie and Caprice, however, did not know each other and set about establishing a connection based on the former's writing and the latter's medical knowledge (Mrs Haie's text is marked by the > symbol): > Hi, Cap. (Do you like that tem or do you prefer Caprice?) Cap is fine.. ..
> Can 1 pick your brains (metaphorically speaking) when 1 need >medical info for an X-Files [story]? Sure, if you can find them when you need them. ;-1
> What kind of cancer are you researching? Uh-oh. Don't get me started! 1 am basic scientist working in a nest of hematologic oncologists ....
> Mrs Hale > nosy
Mn Hale thus started out by ushg a standard abbreviation of Caprice's "real"name, but then checked to make sure that she was not being too familiar. Caprice assured her that this was fine, and indeed, "signed" this message with the abbreviated version. She also responded favourably to Mrs Hale's request for medical information for her story. Mrs Haie then asked Caprice to provide more details about her research, referring to
" "Caprice' was one of the five members who hpped out of the research pmject within the fint week, and so I did not inctude her in the count of the core mernbership of the DDEBRP. She did, however, give me permission to use her contributions and pruvided me with a pseudonym. herself as "nosyn in case Caprice felt that she was being rude in asking too many questions, and Caprice obliged with a long, detailai paragraph. Erin aiso responded to Caprice's introduction but identified with her "Hyden
Cap ...we are so much alike here that it's frightening. :D Except that you do brainy work at day and f'm part of the brainless government bureaucracy at night ...1 too have forgotten hobbies since the net has taken over rny life, am single and have 2 cats.
Erin was even more self-depreciating than Caprice, admitting that she does not even have a weer that she cm be proud of. As 1 wili discuss further in Chapter 7, self- depreciation was not just limited to the intmductions, but was in fact itself a communal practice involving performances of femininity and class. The initial "discovery period" lasted about one month, with mernbers building connections through finding commonalities in music, pets and hobbies to name but a few areas. While humourous and playful exchanges became established communal practices (discussed in detail in Chapter 7), the DDEBRP did not become an intimate and "confessional" space in which members could be said to have baxd their collective souk. Porter, drawing on Friedman, argues that "close Fnendship requires particular committed responsibilities.. .. Intimacy requires partiality , special attentiveness, responsiveness and favoritism. Being a fiend involves being committed to and tnisting Our ffiend" @p. 68-69).There are a number of rasons that the DDEBRP was not characterized by this level of closeness, including its overail function as a forum to collect data, the existence of the DDEBs to filfil this function and finaily, the existing, underlying tensions between the brigades that resulted in sorne members not tnisting one another. As 1 noted in Chapter 2, 1 was unaware of the extent of these tensions until they suddenly Bard up six months into the data collection period. That said, the DDEBRP did congeal into a community in which varying degrees of support were regularIy sought out and offered. The least emotionally charged practices took the form of asking for advice or ideas including ways to get cats to stop straying indoors (me), Christmas gift suggestions (Bel), or web design tips to name but a few such threads. Occasionally members would use the list to gain material resources. Men Mrs Haie's husband accidentally taped over an &Files episode, for instance, she asked if someone else could send her a copy. Drucilla approached me another time, asking me if 1could tape a documentary on the making of the film, The English Parient, being broadcast on the CBC. TypicaUy, the person on the receiving end would make an effort to thank those who had responded. One of the advice threads involved the normative ferninine practices of sewing and "arts and crafisn. Until the 1970s, North Amencan women's magazines focussed on "the Homemaker" and regularly featured instructions and patterns on how to make srnail decorative objects that invoived sewing, embroidery and ndlrpoint to name a few skilis. 1 remember tracing out and completing embroidery patterns from Women's Day for tea towels and pillows when 1 was a young teenager. Once the "Career Wornan" became the target audience, though, such features disappeared. Thanks to Martha Stewart, whose wildly successful television program spawned an entire industry dedicated to home decorating and entertaining, the low stock of "arts and cmfts" is once again on the nse. Although no references were made to Stewart, a number of DDEBRP members taked about the various projects they were working on or were
From: Daphne 1 saw the cutest little ponies in Santa Fe! They were sewn out of canvas and were 3-D, and painted lightly, so they had palorninos and paints and appoloosafs [sic] and stuff, and then they were decorated with the cleverest little accoutremont [sic], little saddles and blankies, and drums and stuf f . They were about 18 inches high and very realistic. So, of course 1 want to make one. Does anyone know a good pattern for a horse? The ones Ifve seen only have two legs and are really gross. This stood up and was very detailed. 1 thought it might be neat to make it out of ultra-suede and real horse hair. Interestecl in making a pony similar to the ones she had seen, Daphne appealed for help in finding a suitable pattern. Drucilla suggested that she contact a mernber of another list who made stuffed Unicorns. Geneva was able to offer direct advice: They sound adorable! You can always buy a plastic horse at a toy store and use it as a dress mannequin. If itts on that scale, you can buy the tack ready-made if you like. Horse hair is easily available at any ranch. Just hang around when sorneone's grooming a horse. Tis the season for horses to shed, so they'll be letting loose handfulls of the stuff. In her response to Geneva's message, Daphne noted that she did not want to include any kind of plastic tack (Yack-y if you get my drift") and confirmed that she had a fnend who could supply the real horse hair. At this moment the DDEBRP functioned like a vircual "sewing circlen. As somme who took sewing only because it was still a compulsory "Home economics" subject for girls in my high school, 1 was surprised by the thread. 1 had thought that only the "blue rinse" generation did such things. 1 then asked who else was involved in "making wondemil thingsw. 1received responses from Megan, Bel, Daphne, HoEs, Geneva and MOU, who did a combination of quilting, Imitting, lace-making, sewing, rnillinery, crocheting, cross-stitching, needlepoint, and painting miniatures. Mou's pst in particular emphasized that women oflen do these activities collectively and gestured to the heterotopic potential of the "reain spaces in which they met: Every week 1 get together with two of my friends for Stitch and Bitch. We do crafts (they mostly do cross-stitch) and bitch about life, the universe and everything...not unlike the ddeb. Another "advice" exchange revolved around doing car repairs, nonnaiiy a performance of masculinity but one encouraged by liberal ferninists to avoid dependence on men. Afler explainhg her "quietnessn on the list over a certain period, Megan added the following advice: For the record, if you ever decide to replace your own valve cover gasket, be sure not to break any of the bolts that hold the cover onto the engine block! Its really a bitch if you do...
Her advice not only assumed a shared knowledge of cars through the use of technical terms like "valve cover gasketn and "engine blockn but implied that she had just learaed this the hard way, but breaking one of the bolts. Moreover, by referring to the brraking the bol& as "a bitch", she engaged in a normed masculine practice of femuiuing problems and difficulties." 1 then admitted that 1 had never touched anything under the hood of a car, letting a mechanic or my male partner take care of such matters, but to align myself with Megan, 1 noted that I had maintained and repâired my bicycle. I added the following tag hebelow my "signature": "confessions
a Refeming to clifficuit car repah as "a bitchwis typid language used by demechanics in autobocly shops. 1am gratefid to Neil McDermid for this observation. of a feminist who doesn't like to get her hands greasy!" Megan responded that the grease was a problem and then made her own confession: I have to admit that 1 still have never changed a flat, but then again, I1ve never had to (thank goodness!). My next task will be to change the spark plugs! And if I'm feeling really brave 1 may try to bleed my brake lines and replace the really nasty brake fluid.. .
It is interesting how 1 praised Megan by downplaying my own ability to do repairs on a bicycle and how Megan reacted to my praise by pointing out what she could not yet do. Liz then johed the lhread to share her experience of car maintenance, whicii included changing Bats, fuel Nters and air filters, and provided some advice to Megan and indirectly to me about avoiding greasy nails: "Next time, scrape your nails across a bar of soap first to pack soap under them. That'U wash right out and prevent grease from getting in there". Her advice was an interesting articulation of masculine discounes on working with mechanical devices and ferninine discourses involving the appearance of one's nails. Beyond requests and simple advice, most members felt cornfortable enough to share "rd life" experiences and news, and could expect some form of positive reinforcement from other members. Erin described how this support aspect functioned in her brigade: One thing that 1 like about the list is the way we commiserate and celebrate together. Quite a few members seem to be going through similar things and it's nice to see them offer up support and help to each other as well as deal with and accept the other's venting. Sornetirnes rit] is just as important to find someone who will yell with it as it is to find a shoulder ta cry on. :)
The DDEBRP members similady engaged in practices of celebration and commiseration. The foiiowing exchange began with Hofis' announcement that she had quit her job as a secretary at the university: Frorn: Hollis Rhiannon as ks : > So what's everyone else been up to?
Well, 1 just quit my job £rom hell last Friday. Silly me, 1 waited until the very end of-busy season to do it. NOW 1 Ive-got so much catching up to do in my non-work life that 1 haven't been able to start unwinding yet.
Anyway, 1 have this deal going with my husband whereby 1 stayed in a job 1 loathed for a couple of extra years so he could get half-price tüition while he was in grad school (1 worked at a universiy [sic]). In exchange, 1 get to take a couple of years off while he supposts me now that he's got his M.B.A. (also last Friday) . . . .
Aside from learning to dance and getting a lot of sex, rny big plans for the surrmier are to do some renovations on my house and to refinish furniture. I've done some minor upholstery work, and I'm itching to try something more compllcated. HoGs received praise and kudos fiom members who could identify with being trapped in a job that they hated: Frm: Erin Wooohoooo! You are free! What a wonderful feeling that must be!!! I'm playing hooky from rny job from hell tonight ...too bad 1 have to go back tomorrow....Kick back, relax and enjoy. You deserve it for surving [sic] that job!
From: Megaa Happy Happy Joy Joy!!!! 1 hadn't seen the countdown lately, but 1 knew it was getting close! Almost exactly a year aga, 1 quit a job from hell, so 1 know how you feel ...Enjoy your time, and the sex! ;1 Other connections were made as weU. Her mention of refinishing funiiture generated a response from Liz who was planning to buy an unrinished dresser for her daughter's room and stain it herself. She highlighted the sense of comection that having shared plans provided by adding, "Wemay be furnituring together this summer :-)". Megan then sent another message in which she included the above comment and then exclaimed "Me too!" She went on to describe her project to restore a deacon bench that her mother had built a number of years ago. Not surprisingly , when an experience stmck a chord with a number of members, the thread could quickly displace others and become the central one. In the next sample, Sonya, one of the younger members, mentioned receiving an invitation for her tenth year high school reunion and her ambivalent feelings about attending: From: Sonya ....1 didnlt really have *any* close friends in high school, and hated high school anyway, so I'm not sure if 1 want to shell out the **$71.00** for a ticket that they want. If 1 could find at hast one person to go with, the four-houx open bar might be fun, though ...j ust sit in a corner and make fun of/spew hate at everyone.
1 imnediately responded, reiating my experience of king a middle class fish in an upper middle class pond: 1 was still in Europe when my 10th came round sa didn't have to make the decision. I also *hated* high school. Ail the really rich kids who weren't at private school went there, you know, the types that got Cameros for their 16th birthday and drove ta school even though they were only a S minute walk away. No doubt they're al1 doctors and lawyers or "happy homemakers" married to one. 1 can't imagine what I'd have to Say to these people. Maybe 1 could have shown up [to the 10 year reunion] wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and beret and lept [sic] up and shouted "Death to the bourgeosie" [sic]. : ) Bel, Erin, Dani, Drucilla, Daphne, Mol1 and Mari participateci in the thread, swapping stories about high school mernories of being outsiders or on the fringes of the "in" crowd, and aü had chosen not to attend their remions as a result. Sonya's feelings of marginalization in high school and unease about the reunion were thus validateci by the DDEBRP community. On the occasions when members shared a painfbi or stresshl experience, others quickly formed a support network. For exarnple, members tned to comfort Ash when she posted news of her cat's death: Frorn: Ash Well, shit. It's just been that kind of month, 1 guess,
Last weekend, we took my cat (a three-legged sweetheart who's never happier than when she's curled in someone's amlicking them as much as possible) to the vet because she was so listless. Turned out she was severely anemic [siclas a side-effect of the feline leukemia which has been in remission for the last six years . [JI died this afternoon, God, 1 hurt, 1 got to cuddle her goodbye this afternoon, before i went back to work, but she was gone when i got home.
It's not fair. Severai members immediately offered their sympathy and condolences: From: Bel Oh Ash! I'm so sorry to hear that. many hugs to you.
From: Drucilla Oh, hon! I'm so sorry for you! 1 know how much that hurts, 1 have a 3-legged kitty too. 1 think 1'11 go give him a hug. And here are some for you, too. 1 know this kind aren't as good as the Rfi kind, but they're al1 we can do... It is interesthg that both respondents offered Ash a virtual embrace and, as with the happy events, related similar personal experiences. Drucilla, quoted above, mentioned having a three-legged cat, and 1 empathized, recounting my own sorrow about losing one of my pets not long before. In fact, when 1 sent a message in which 1 mentioned his death in passing to the DDEB members who had expressed interest in joining the research project, 1 remember being surprised and very touched to receive a number of messages offering syrqathy and other kind words from people to whom 1 was stiU a "Wtual" stranger @un intended). In the next sample, a new thread began when Erin mentioned in passing that she had a job interview the following Monday: From: mgan Cool! Was it for the web job? You might want to take along that write-up that you passed along ... GOOD LUCK VIBES!! !!
From: Erin .... thanks! the interview is at 3pm on Monday ...al1 vibes are greatly appreciated ...DDEBers seem to have very powerful vibes! :) From: Mol1 .... Good luck on that job interview, Of course you have a lot of vibing support behind you which should make it go that much better . The terms "vibes" and "vibing" were examples of the communal practice of wishing other members luck in an endeavour. Phrases such as "good luck vibes" were usdy typeci in capital letters for emphasis or depicted graphicaiiy as foilows: ((((((((Good luck vibes)))))))). In joining the thread, Mrs Hale elaborated on its effects in the context of her brigade: And 1 can *personally* attest to the power of DDEBx vibing, It accomplished outright miracles for me last month--the new job was only a tiny part of it! 1'11 be thinking of you on Monday.
Both Erin and 1, who had not heard Mrs Hale's news, then posted messages offering Our congratulations. 1 also added that my partner had finaily ben accepted into a multimedia course for which he had been waitlisted, and in tum, was congratulated by a couple of members. The next &y, EM send a long message to the List which opened
Since so many of yau were so nice as to wish me good luck on my job interview, 1 thought 1 [sic] post the tale of my day here... I got up way too early after too little sleep ...1 was nervous. Better yet ...I'd started my period and had major cramps going. Bleah. 1 got ready and left the apt. Luckily, it was overcast today, so the car hadn't quite reached it's usual steering-wheel-melting-tempuraturature [sic]. The air- conditioning actually kicked in a bit and 1 wasn't a total puddle by the time 1 got there. She had amived ten minutes early and was feeling confident in the new outfit she had bought for the occasion but was caught off guard when the interviewer took a folder with my name on it out of a big stack of folders with names on them. :/ To make matters worse, Her first set of questions had me squirming in my sleep. She said she was supposed to ask me if 1 was familiar with these software programs: Webweaver, BBedit and Pagemill ... I'd never heard of any of them except webweaver and that one only in passing! 1 was feeling like an idiot. At just that time, Kay's assistant walked in to tell her something and on her way out she looked at me, introduced herself and then tucked one of those white- strings- for- wide- necked- dresses- so- they-can-stay-on-the-hanger-thingies under my collar =-A c=iA ""Phrrirrrht ~nghtrd=>fi= kfi=w ~2sh=r_minri ni*+". Y*.- -..*-, -**--=..- 3"'Y --- was now ready to admit defeat and crawl under the table.
While Erin felt the rest of the interview had gone okay, her anxiety and nervousness were obvious, and others provided in-depth responses, inserthg supportive comments throughout the tale. Mrs Hale, who had lived in the same state, shared her memories of suRering in the summer heat and then assured her that not knowing the programs that the inte~ewerhad mentioned should not have ben a problem: Isn't WebWeaver brand new? You'd have to be a genius to be an expert at it. At which point you'd be too expensive for her. PageMill is Adobe's new web editing software and it sucks.
As for the dress loop hanging out, she retorted: Nah. Dontt worry about it. 1 interviewed a guy for a job today who came in with no tie. 1 don't care how he dresses as long as he can code HTML. As long as you are not interviewing for a meet-the-public position, like a receptionist, why would they care? Besides, real prograrmners (of which web coding is a subset) dress like geeks anyway.
Once Mrs Hale lemed that Erin's interview had been with a agency that hires for companies, she gave her a detailed account of how the system works based on her experience. She concluded her message with some advice, based on a personai experience: Good luck! Even if you don't get this opening, that agency has your resme on file. They *dof cal1 back. My mom, who has been retired for four years, is currently getting phone calls from job-shoppers pulling her resume out of their files from five years ago! ! They hang on to those resumes forever. And you can always send them an "updated" resume in the future to remind them you are around. They have called me from time to time asking for an updated resume. Others responded in khd, sha~gtheir own experiences: From: Bel ....Don't get discoaraged. It is a letdown to see stacks of resumes, but remember *yourf resume was one of the ones that made an impression and *you* got the interview. 1 know how shocked 1 felt the first few jobs 1 interviewed for and found out they received *hundredsh of resumes. It helps you appreciate getting the interview - and the job! - that much more. Good luck.
From: Hollir Good luck, Erin! Tt would be foolish of them not to hire you just because you've never been *paid* to do that before. The web pages youlve written for fun blow away the ones I've written for my old job. 1 also hope they aren't too sticky about being familiar with those particular web editing programs. It's not like most web =t'2ting przqrzrns =r=>It easy e~e2-h ~icktvn CE, and iikt Y -- 'CI 1"- said, a lot of the time itts almost easier to write code without them.
1'11 be keeping my fingers crossed for you! :) In this way, the DDEBRP members forma a supportive cornrnunity around Erin in an effort to build her confidence and self-esteem. The same support was offered to Sarah Stegaii when she shared her outrage and shock with the List that some of her reviews of nie X-Files' episodes had been plagiarized and published as someone else's work. Those of us who responded not only echoed Sarah's anger and pain but offered solidarity and suggestions such as the following: Fr-: Ardis Nail their butts to the floor, girl. Welre behind you (no pun intended) 1000%. You've been copyrighting your reviews for some time now, so the law (as f understand it) is on your side. Let us know if therets anything we can do to help.
Shall we spread the news of their nefarious deeds to al1 the XF lists around? If those guys are so keen to cruise the net in search of booty to plunder maybe they'll pay attention if they see calm, well-measured posts warning people not to buy a book that egregiously violates your rights... .. Ardis who can feel her blood pressure going up at least 15 points.
The next &y, Sarah informed us that she had no legal recourse, but a few days later, in a message with the subject line, "there is a god", she gleefully noted that "the plagiarizers have been plagiarizedw,as she had corne across a quiz on the Net directly lifted fiom the offending book. Ardis joined the thread, teasing her for "taking the hi@ road in aLî this ;)" and then related the actions that she and Erin had taken in support: For those of you who aren't on the [X-Files] list, in response to a post praising the XF book Erin and 1 have been politely but firmly raising the issue of the P-word [plagiarisml and author responsibility. While one fellow (who in other posts is quickly revealing himself to be a jerk of the first water) said "what #s the big deal?", al1 the other posts have been with us rather than agin [sic] us. It hasntt been a major thread, but it's a good sign and 1 think the message is being received. Erin, wouldn't you say welve been especially mature about the whole thing? It is worth noting Ardis' choice of words such as "polite", "firm" and "mature"to describe the merin which she breached the subject on the Est, which signal the taking up of the rnidde class discourse of politeness (to be discussed further in the next chapter). Erin then posted to admit that she had had to rewrite her message to ensure that it sounded polite, to which Ardis then admitted having done the same.
Living the Romance " Sharing and caring " , as describeci above, was a performance of femininity in itself, but on occasion, it was reinforced with the infusion of liveû heteronorrnative romantic storylines. 1 discussed the articulation of such narratives in reading and reworkhg the male-produceci X-Files storyhes in Chapter 4 as weil as their disarticulation when expressing desire for male actors. In this chapter, 1 discuss the ways in which these storylines were mobilized to make sense of iived experience. As Davies (1990) notes, "our lived narratives. ..are also the means whereby that original assignment [to being a female] is confirmeci, made mal, achieved as an accomplishment in the everyday worldw(p. 506). The first exchange that 1 present began with an anniversary announcement: Fronr: Uua ...ten years ago today, a momentous thing happened at least in the lives of two people. A lonesome, dreamy yet ambitious child-woman of 19 encountered a darkly dashing, sophisticated and world-weary older man of 28 on a stairway landing of the Holiday Inn ... in the midst of a [fan convention] :)....[first ellipsis in the original] Mari deliberately uses the stereotypical Regency Romance convention to recount the story of meeting her husband, emphasizing the importance of the occasion in her life and the alignment of "real Me" with fhntasy at this particuiar moment. The replies she received offering congratulations highlight the desire to be part of a community of women who have seemingiy achieved the "happily ever after" ending to the romance: From: Megan And it was a good day to meet too, it's Albert Einstein's birthday :) Congrats on 10 years! That's much better than Itve ever done!!!
From: Bel Same here!! Itrn lucky if a guy sticks around for more than three months (moi bitter? Nah! :) Happy Anniversary, [Mari]. I'm very happy for you. . . . . 1'11 wait until 1 meet David [Duchovny] before 1 start celebrating anniversaries!
From: Rhiannon Ditto from me! 1 just hope 1 feel the same way if.. .no, "when* EL.] and 1 reach that point four years from now. A toast to both of you! It is interesting to note that it was those of us whose Lived narratives had "failed"to measure up to the idd of the romantic storyline who responded. Like Mari, Bel also intemvined "fantasy " with "reality" to make Light of her situation by making a reference to meeting Duchovny. While 1 was in a relationship, 1 had to consciously change my "if" to "when" to maintain the continuity of the storyline. The other sarnples, Like the responses to Mari's announcement, ail emphasized the gap between the romance and lived expenence. In response to Daphne's comment that she hated "getting spoiledwin the sense that she disliked having the plot of a television episode that she had not yet seen revealed (spoiled) in an email message, Bel remarked: Well, it depends on the context. When it cornes to shows, 1 hate getting spoiled. However, when some gorgeous man absolutely haç to force flowers and dinner and dancing on me, 1 don't cornplain too much. Or wouldn ' t, if such a thing ever happened to me ! : )
Closing her message with the line "always the dreamer", Daphne reassured her that she had not been being "dined and wined" either, and questioned the "realitywof this classic roman tic date: Something like that happening is totally outside of the realm of my comprehension. What are you talking about? Flowers? Dinner? Dancing? With a gorgeous man? Do people actually DO those things? :->
Bel was circumspect, but made it clear that living the romance as such would be a "dream corne me": They do in the books I've read and the movies I1ve seen. I'm not sure if it happens in real life or not. 1'11 let you know if it ever does. In fact, 1 probably wonlt even need the computer. You al1 will be able to hear me yelling and screaming wherever you are-even.. . . [name withheld] in Hawai ' i [sic] will be able to hear me! :) The fdure of experience to measure up to the ideal of the romantic storyline is ais0 evident in the thread that 1 began on Valentine's Day: So who's got something special planned for tomorrow (or think something special is being planned for them :)?
Considering 1 have passed most of my adult Feb 14's single, this date has never had much significance for me. And now I'm living with The Worldls Most Unromantic Man, nothingls changed. Still, 1 wouldn't object to, Say, a solid milk chocolate heart (hell forget the heart, any chocolate wiii do j or fiowers of any kind, GE the other hand, 1 have a close friend whose partner is just the opposite. One day, she came home to find a trail of those cinnamon hearts leading to a lovely gift . Sigh. . . 1 can say that my message was somewhat tongue and cheek and that 1 was not deeply perturbed by the Iack of fiowers and chocolate. Nonetheless, there was, and is, some tmth to its wistN tone, as 1 will admit that I get pleasure out of being on the receiving end of the romantic "treatmentn.Judging by the responses 1 rezeived, 1 was not the only one who felt this way: From: Megan My only plans for tomorrow are to go to the ... State Archives and Genealogy library al1 day. 1 get a comp day for working a big VIP meeting last Saturday.... Anything's better than sitting in my office freezing and depressed because 1 am spending yet another Valentine1s Day single : (
Actually, 1 like not a having a boyfriend at this moment in rny life. f'm finally getting time for myself, which is something my last guy didn't give me too much of!
From Bel: The closest I'm getting to Valentiners this year is giving some of my red blood to the doctor.... Othe: than that, nothing, nada, zip. I've never had a boyfriend/mate on Valentine's day (or even my birthday for that matter!) so it's just another day for me, Of course, itts a real pain trying to go out for supper that night! Every restaurant has reservations for couples!
Fxom: Daphne Not a chance in hell for me. Not that I'm bitter or anything. :-> But then again, maybe the cats have something planned, Maybe theylll surprise me by doing the dishes instead of sleeping in various places al1 day and ordering their #%+%# expensive kitty toys over the phone when I'm gone.
Megan emphasized her feelings and depression with the use of the sad face emoticon, but changed acknowledged that the problems encountered in "rdlifen relationships- in her case a possessive, dornineering boyfriend-can outweigh the more minor disappointment of being single on Valentine's Day. Bel and Daphne both joked about their single status, with a play on the syrnbolic and medical connotation of the colour red and cat behaviour, the latter echoing Steve Martin's comedy routine from the 1970s about his cat's expensive purchasing habits. Bel also acknowledged another negative effect of Valentine's Day for the single wornan+ting alone at a restaurant on a night when restaurants are Nled with couples. Tne iwo members who did have plans and posted hem to the Est were marrieci, but there was no overt references to "romancenper se: From: Winnie [Name withheld] and 1 were *supposed* to go out to dinner -- Our VDay tradition has been to go a restaurant we've never been to before -- but our babysitter took so long getting back to us on whether she could sit that we ended up booking my mother instead, by which time *none* of the restaurants we wanted to go to had +any* reservations available. So we're going to go see "Star Wars" instead. 1 told [my husband] he owes me a dinner though. :-) While Winnie and her husband went out for dimer, their criterion for selecting a restaurant was not a special meal or presentation for the occasion but sirnply a restaurant that they had never tried before. As she explained, any opportunity for a romantic dinner was thwarted by the lived narrative of parenthood and the extra efforts involved, such as arranging for a babysitter, in order to go out as a couple. Nonetheless, Winnie made it clear that going to a re-release of an old film, even one that involves a romantic storyline-Pnncess Lea and Luke Skywalker in this case- was a substandard substitute to going out for dinner. Similarly, Drucilla and her husband were planning to go out for dinner but her husband's work required them to celebrate one day early. While she refered to the restaurant as one of the fancier ones in town, she made no mention of any of the classic romantic motifs of dining out: an ambience of low lighting or candlelight, the prospect of holding hands across the table. Rather the highlight of the evening was dessert: "Their Mud Pie is to *die* for! :-)". In addition to swapping stories about being single, members talked about another set back in the quest for romantic love: dating "Mr Wrongn. This particular thread was starteci by Mrs Hale in response to a comment by Geneva about how disconcerthg it was to meet someone on line who will not reveal their gender: From: Geneva .... It's hard to start a conversation if you don't know what you might have in cornmon with someone else. "So, you're hman, right?" doesn't cut it. Especially if s/he answers "no" ....
From: Mrs Hale . . . .Geneva, 1 ' ve had *dates+ that answered this way. Geez, but yourre picky! Next thing, youlll want to go out with someone who walks upright! Me, 1 take what 1 can get.
In joking about the proto-human "substandard" of men she had dated, she implied that her unattractiveness iimited her choices ("1 take what 1 can get"). Megan admitted to having gone out with "rnister Neander-man himself" and underneath her "signature" wrote "wanting someone whose knuckles don't scrape the ground". Geneva sent a humourous reply, but supported her Fnend by blaming the limited supply of men available in Mrs Hale's home state. She then referred ro an experience of dating a " knuckle-walker" back in her "punk days" and then used ailiteration to ask playfuiiy , "So who has dated the seamiest specimen of specious species?" Several of us provided stories from our days as undergraduates, Daphne of dating a convicted felon, me of a performance pet who refemxi to himself as a "human minefield" and Geneva of a guy who liked throwing himself head fhst down a set of stairs "for fun". When prompted for a story, Mrs Haie continuai in the self-depreciative mode, noting that to share a tale, "first 1 would have had to have actual *dates*". While we joked about being single or the bad romantic choices we had made in the past, the "rd"hurt, loneliness or unhappiness that usually corne with the temtory of relationships at some stage, were rarely aiiuded to and only discussed once in detail. Speaktng for myself, 1 did not feel that 1 was emotionaiiy close enough to the other members to divulge any problems 1 might have been having in my relationship. As with "mliife" Fnendships, Net ones take time for trust and intimacy to develop. Megan's comment about being glad to be single at that particular moment in her Life suggested that she had recently ended a difficult relationship, but nothing more was said b y her or anyone else. Similady, Sonya made several indirect references to a recent break up. The first was in the context of her message in which she recounted her explanation to a male friend that the DDEBs were not "man-hatingn ferninist groups. She told him that a number of members had "SOS [sigaifant others] though that number has decreased recently on the DDEBxW. She then concluded with the tag line "miss[ingJher ffiend [name withheld]". In a reply sent the same day as part of a thread on Intemet semice costs, she added this aside: "However, having decided to not sponge off my ex-boyfnend (sigh, at typing the word ex), 1 decided 1 [can't] afford that much on my current salaryn. It was almost as if Sonya wanted to talk about her break up but did not feel cornfortable making it the subject of a thread. Her asides were also made in the first month of the project when the nurnber of daily messages numbered between 40 to 80, so I suspect othen were not ignoring Sonya but simpiy did not know her weii enough to inquire or simply did not notice. This was not the case six months later when Liz raised the emotional pain she was in after the break up of her marriage during the thread on the "Herrenvolk" episode, discussed extensively in Chapter 4. Liz was one of the members who answered Daphne's question concerning " Chuckles" , the alien assassin: ....1 hate the name lChuckles'. My one-day-to-be-ex uses that and since his whore, 1 mean his mistress is in one of these groups (yes, she's a former friend of mine - the bitch) 1 can't help but suspect that shets the one who started using it. Needless to Say, it's still like a knife twisting in the wound from tirne to tirne ....
Sorry, it doesn't usually bother me much anymore, but 1 ran across some old mail from her over the weekend where she was being just oh so supportive and oh so understanding al1 the while she was starting (or in the process of having) an affair with my suicida1 husband. The fact that it was electronic (and mil) for the most part doesn' t keep it from being a bona fide affair.
Maybe 1'11 just skip the rest of the discussion about this ep. [episodej Liz's story is not only one of a failed relationship but of betrayal by a female f'riend in whom she had confided. It is also interesthg that she intentionally used the word "whoren as an insult, thus mobilizing a discourse of sexual mores that produces the "good girllbad girlw binary. Even "mistressn indicated that Liz thought that this woman's current relationship with her ex-husband was illegitimate, positioning her as "the other womann in the romantic storyline gone wrong. "Other woman" story lines in particular serve to reinforce gender noms. By placing the blarne for an affair squareIy on the shoulders of the "other woman", the men in the story are let off the hook for their actions. Liz' description of her husband as "suicidaln serves as a justification for his actions, the implication being that he was emotionally vulnerable and therefore open to manipulation andor the ego boost in being an object of desire by a woman other than his wife. Those of us on line when Liz posted her message immediately fomed a community of support around her. Drucilla, without mentionhg Liz's situation directly, replied, "How about if we just switch to calling him Lumpy?". Daphne, who had used the offending term, apologized profusely : I'n so szrry, Liz! IUUzlt d25r! ?logse rrc=e;=tny apclcqies. f didn't mean to hurt you. 1 can easi!y cal1 him something else. That's not a big deal.
1 also sent my sympathies in my next message: "And on another note, sorry, Liz that the discussion inadvertently brought up some painhl stuff". For her part, Liz thanked us for Our apologies, assuring us that it "wasn't any one's fault": I'm certainly not angry with anyone here. :-) (Though, to show how my luck runs, I had to walk past BitchFace on the way back from picking up lunch this afternoon... since 1 was with my boss 1 didnft feel cornfortable saying anything to her so 1 just ignored her like the non-person she is. ) Her choice of words to describe her ex-fnend " ("Bitchface", "non-person") suggest that her feeling of hurt were infused with anger and a desire for revenge. Others made comments like "how irritating" to validate her response. Men Sonya joined the thread, she finally was able to articulate her story of betrayal and fantasy of revenge: 1 can totally agree with [Liz] . A couple weeks ago 1 made rnyself silly-happy by thinking of al1 the cool things I could do with a iittle bit of hacking knowledge to the web site of the bitch in my particular situation. In short, after chasing after my ex, and having a brief affair with him, she then decided that she really did want to try tu be committed to her marriage (only two years, too--arentt you supposed to be still googly-eyed then?).... As her last line indicates, Sonya expressed surprise that the "Other Woman" of her story was not still "googly-eyed" over her husband of hHo years so as to refrain from seeking out an aff& with someone else's husband. It is interesthg that her anger was directly entirely towards "the bitch" for pursuing the boyfiend as if he had no choice other than to give in to her attentions. The tone of the thread became more light-hearted as collective "revenge" story lines were written for Liz, who in tum acknowledged that they "are always fun, if for no other reason than the emotionai gratification of thinking 'but what W...':-):-)".The final pst to the thread was made by Ardis who tied lived experience of the failed romance back to the narrative of a popular cultural text, this tirne a fiim in release at the time of writing: From: AEdis Hey, you know, we could make a movie out of this. +slaps head* Doh! Somebody already beat us to it! ;););)
Not having seen the movie "The First Wives Club" but having read the The cover story about it last night, al1 this is hitting home. When 1 finished reading the article, 1 actually felt glad that I'm 40-something and still unmarried. Irm not "back to Square i" at this certain age --Inever lèft it. There's nùrnething to be said about being in the same place but without al1 the sturm und drang. Not that any of that bad stuff would happen to *mef, of course. : (
My sympathies, ladies. There are some truly vicious people out there. We really can't win against them. AU we can do is be strong, be good, and get over it without going to jail.
HaWig missed out on the pleasure of the "happily ever after" romance, Ardis was able to find consolation in the fact that she had also missed out on the pain. She did, however, write herself into the story by presenting it as a mordity play in which the DDEBRP members are "good" and women who "steal" husbands and betray best friends are "badn .
Bodies on (the) Line Another normative discourse of femininity articulated with "sharing and caring" discourse was that related to beauty and fashion noms. The power of the male gaze and its effects on those of us subjected to it was raised by Geneva in the foilowing message: ...1 had the duty earlier this week of escorting a professor around the campus who was a dead ringer for [actorj John Malkovitch. Because of his looks, 1 kept expecting him to drag me off in the bushes and exsanguinate me or something, Once we finally got a conversation going and he finished examining my chest, 1 found he was actually a pretty decent guy. If the physical stuff hadn't been interfering, we would have had more time for a meaningful conversation.
Geneva did not see this objet-g gaze as offensive as much as an expected irritant. From her description of her encounter with the visiting professor, it wodd seem that it was a common experience for her. Erin then suggested that on-line interaction may provide some relief from the judgrnental gaze: Some of the 'nerdiestt looking people are the 'coolest' online...some of the shyest the most outgoing. It helps people who are insecure about their looks thrive and interact with people in a way that they are not cornfortable with in 'real life.'
From: Mrr Hale 1 wish I had a dime for every person who has asked me what 1 look like and expressed astonishment that 1 look like ~rohike". One guy flatly disbelieved me and said 1 must surely be tall, blonde, and built. 1 don't know what his problem was.. ..But 1 get fooled, b--LU-. When I fizst met a fziexll frrm Xatrrsil, ISlurtrd =ut,, "Yeu look taller online!"
Mrs Hale's response to Erin, whiie confirming her assertion, problematises the gap that prosthetic communication creates between the body and the technosocial subject. For while she was not judged immediately on her appearance, she was imagined by her male interlocutor to be the ultimate object of desire in Western society- "tail, blonde and built". His "problemn, it would appear, was that he continued to draw upon normative images of femininity and desirability when interacting with women on line. Geneva recognized the gap between reptesentations of feminine desirabüity and women's "realn bodies when she quipped, "Weli, you are built. Just not the way he'd like you to be :)".By adding a srniley, she also signaileci her support and familiarity with Mrs Haie's predicament, whose quip about looking like one of the Lone Gunmen made it clear that she had no illusions about her ability to covet the gaze with any "success". As the next two excerpts from the thread make clear, being subjected to the gaze meant being judged by standards to which "rd"women can never quite rneasure up:
Fzom -8 Hale: ,,,.Sure. Guys love big breasts. They don't like the big butts that go with them. +poutf
From Megan: Youtd be surprised. 1 actually had a guy complain when 1 lost weight and 1 didn't have as much padding as 1 used to. (1 think his main problem was with the fact that my Levi's didnlt fit as tight anymore. . .. )
Fmhike is a minor chatacter on ZkX-Files. He b a member of a pupof conspiracy theoristsJhackers who call themselves The Lone Gimmen (in teference to the supposed singie assassin of John F. Kennedy) and are consulteci regularly by MuIder for help in his mvestigations. In seeming to dispute Mrs Hale's observation about what she had experienced as a result of the male obsession with the large breast/small behind figure (almost always a product of an airbrush, digital manipulation or silicon implants), Megan ended up sha~gan experience which reinforced it, by implying that loshg weight and thus reducing the size of one's posterior did not necessarily guarantee approval from the male spectator for more closely adhering to the noms of ferninine desirability. In a thread about the CBC television drama, BIack Harbour, the subject of very short hair and ferninine identity came up: From: Mol1 ....The only other thing of note was that 1 thought the youngest kid was a boy for most of the epiosode [sic] until someone finally referred to her as "sheW:-) 1 think she had a boyish name and her hair was cut very, very short and not very girlish... although maybe 1 shouldn't use those terms, given the discussion we've been having over on DDEBx :-) ... From: Rhiannon .. ..Until last year, 1 had been wearing my hair really short and cropped. On numerous occasions 1 was taken to be lesbian on account of it by both straight and gay women and men. Last year 1 decided to grow my hair out (1 cal1 it rny Scully look :) )and it's interesting how it has changed how others take me up. When you're over 30, donvt look like a supermodel and have short cropped hair, men never notice you, period. But when you have longish reddish, blond hair, they look--if only to turn away again once they realize you're over 30 and not a supernodel! :)....
Hair length was thus understood as being at the hart of gender performance. Moll had conhised the gender identity of the young fernale character, and 1 shared my experience of being read as lesbian and found unattractive by heterosexual men on account of having short hair. 1 also raised the age factor, which I felt overrode other markers of desirable femininity such as long, blonde hair. The male gaze may have been drawn on account of the latter but was then "deflected" by the former. Two other members shared their experiences with short hair: From: Bel I chopped my hair off in '94. 1 had a good hairdresser and a wonderful hairstyle. Then 1 moved to [name of place withheld] and couldn't iind *anyone* to duplicate the style. 1 ate out a lot and got called "sir" several times because of my "boyishw cut, 1 got sick of the short hair (and the comments) and also decided 1 wanted to start french-braiding it again, so have been growing it out.. . . From: Moll [My boyfriend] liked my long hair....when 1 got it cut short, it took him a while before he agreed that it looked good on me....that is before he honestly agreed rather than just saying he agreed. :-). ... Bel implied that she was happy with her short cut when she had a hair stylist who was able to make it look ferninine enough. Once she moved, however, and she ended up with a "boyish" cut, she was subjected to the ultimate affront to normative, heterosexual feminlne identity by being mistaken for a man. Her desire for french braids, a style with a strong co~ectionwith femininity , is suggestive of a strategy to fit more closely with the ideals of ferninine beauty. Moll was the only member who seemed cornfortable with her short hair and maintaineci it despite the initial disapproval of her boyfriend and the pressure he no doubt exerted on her to grow it out. The male gaze, however, was not the only regulating and painful gaze. Scrutinizing one's own appearance and the appearance of other women, as 1 argued in Chapter 5, is an extremely powerfbl practice of (self) regulation that ensures the maintenance of the "to-be-looked-at-ness" status of the fernale body. In an exchange that began as a discussion of human/technology relations, Daphne had argued that a car was purely functional, to which Mrs Hale replied, "You're not your car?" and then closed by describing herself as "'89 Mercury Tracer, but would like to be a '65 Ford Mustang convertiblen. Although a joke, the cornparison of a plain mode1 to a classic American sports car that could be expected to turn heads in the parking lot does reveal a sense of how Mrs Hale saw herself at that moment. The connection between car and appearance is made explicit in the next pst: From: Daphne 1 guess if 1 WAS going to be a car, I 'd like to be my first car, a 1964 Chrysler New Yorker, with a square steering wheel, push button tranny and gobs of chrome. Big and flashy. In actuality, 1 think I'd prolly turn out looking more like a VW Thing 1 saw today, crumpled and smeared with dirt. My opinion of my looks isnft too high today. :-Ç Drucilla, who "in real lifenworked in an office not far fiom Daphne, immediately chided her for being so self-cntical: "Daphne! I'm going to corne over there and attack you with a makeup brush if you don? cut it out! :-)". Her redeployment of an instrument crucial to the beauty routine is interesting, for although said in jest, it effectively formed a refusal to accept the noms of feminine beauty and the negative effects of trying to measure up to them. Moreover this reply was a form of support for her friend and thus contnbuted to the construction of the list as a support network. Other threads contained saippets that suggested that members did not feel their bodies conformeci to feminine ideals. In the thread about hat making, Daphne had added Before 1 became too large ..., 1 used to LOVE wearing hats. Sometimes I can still find a style that looks okay, but berets are ~irrht nqtt Kat ha; r 2 E)L=~~E~.,bgt i+-t J jz=t 3~,3+-h,er~rte 3f L*J*LI "YI. ..-Ci ..L.-- those things we women suffer with for the sake of beauty. :->
Even when wea~ga hat had been a part of Daphne's feminine identity, one that she felt she was no longer able to sustain because of her weight gain, she humourously acknowledged that there was a price to pay as it messed up one's hair. The following comment by Erin points to the pain and insecurity that cm be inflicted through the gazes and comments of other women, who in this case happened to be members of her own family gathered at her ili grandmother's bedside: My Aunt remarks about how much weight 1 tve gained and my Grandmother agrees saying it's just a shame since my hair has finally gxown out to a length that is almost attractive - too bad I'm fat as a cow again. Then she proceeded to offer me cake, ice cream and cookies non-stop until 1 left! 1 wanted to scream. 1 did finally eat a cookie (she had one of my favorite kinds and 1 was hungry) and then she told me that 1 was an idiot for just eating one - you can't just eat one cookie. 1 stayed as long as 1 could before 1 just had to get out of there.
Her female relatives' comments put Erin in no-win situation: while her hair was now an "acceptable" length, she was in their eyes too heavy. Erin's "sigh" underscores her sense of frustration and demoraiization, to which Geneva repliai, "Sorry to hear about your family problems, Erin. They may aU be annoying in their own peculia. ways, but at Ieast they care about you and each othern. Erin agreed and in her reply included a paragraph of how much she loved her grandmother and how close they were. Even these recollections of other acts of carhg and affection, though, cannot entirely remove the sting of these types of ndouble-voiciagsn("lose weight but eat upn). As with the taik on the bodies of celebrities, a few references were made by members to their own clothing choices that suggests the imbrication of fashion with the desirous or regulatory gaze. Several examples have already been quoted or referred to in other contexts above. In the first, Mrs Hale made fun of her sense of fashion by described herself in her introduction as king "short, loud and partial to tie dye", a "hippien look that by her own admission in the thread about Anderson was the opposite of glarnour. A second example can be found in Ends description of her job interview. She talked about the confidence she felt on her choice of wardrobe for her job interview: "1 only saw 3 people there, though, and they were ali dressed fairly casual, so 1 felt damn good about my brand spanking nzw outfifit :)". Her sense of well being, however, evaporated when the interviewer's assistant walked in, noticed that one of the tabs us& to keep the dress from coming off the hanger was exposed and tucked it in for her. The fact that this woman had noticed and taken it upon herself io "fix Erin up" in the context of the interview was a gesture that made Erin feel like she had committed a "fashion faux pasn,which she felt was on par with not knowing the programs that the interviewer had asked her about moments earlier. There were also examples in which members focussed on the positive results of meeting fashion noms. Megan's comment about a boyfnend being disappointeci that her jeans no longer fit tightly enough because she had lost weight suggests that she knew how to dress to successfully covet the gaze. In a thread in which she announced that she would be givhg a performance of her music, Mari described the program and then descnbed her outfit: "I'U be wearing a black robe with a green lace sash and long witchy sleeves :)". Her choice of the adjective 'witchy' reinforces the image of an enchanthg feminine figure such as Lady Guinevere out of a legend of "King Arthurn.
Conclusion In this chapter I have tri4 to demonstrate that the DDEBRP was not merely a community of female fans but a community bas4 on friendship and support. As soon as the list became operational, members actively set out to get to know one another, establishing common interests and experiences from their own lives. The DDEBRP became a Wace in which memben could count on soineone to oEer practical advice or suggestions on finding a gift for a five year old nephew, getting a pattern to make a stuffed horse or repairing one's car. It was also a space in which members could swap mernories of not fitting in high school and dating "losers". Beyond that, enough trust was built up that members could share positive life events such as getting a new job or quitting the "job from heun and also seek solace, comfort and reassurance around painN or stressfd events such as the death of a bcloved pet, a job interview or creative thefi. While tak of more intimate matters and personal struggles was less common than the other communal practices described above, members did nonetheless talk about Uieir relationships with men, or lack thereof, as well as provide "glimpsesn of their appearances and their perceived failure to meet ferninine ide& of beauty . Sharing these life experiences and demonstrating an interest in and concem for other members was a practice of community imbricated with performances of white, middle class, heterosexual femininities, not only in being a "sharing and caringn female friend but in being a woman for whom king wined and dined or receiving flowers on Valentine's Day is a romantic fantasy, in being a woman who announces her 10' anniversary with pride and happiness, who jokes about dating Mr Wrong or having a big butt, or who feels that she is too heavy to Wear the hats she loves. The experiences themselves are not unique to being a middle class, white, heterosexuai fernale in the world-men of the same class and sexual orientation obviously get stressed about job interviews, date the "wrongn women, worry about being single have loved ones die and grow too large to fit into a favourite item of clothing. The difference is that men are less likely to sit around in a group on a regular basis, especially with other men they do not know well, and have extended discussions about these feelings and experiences. It is the routine selection of these experiences to share with others and the reasons for sharing them that constitutes hem as practices of a women's only community. In making claims about the "sharing and caringn aspect of any women-only community, the danger of romanticizing it or positing it as some bdof ideal exists. Given my position on utopic dreams of alternatives, this is not a move that I am making, for such support networks are, for the most part, based on normative performances of fernininity. Yet, in the sharing the expenences of being a certain kind of female in the world, there is an acknowledgement of the pleasure and some of the pain involved in these daily acts. Thus, 1 do not wish to undermine the positive effect that being a member of an electronic k@eeklutsch can have. Spealang for myself, 1felt that sharing my experiences and fuiding comrnonalities was pleasurable and cornforthg as both a recipient and giver of advice and support. In the next chapter, one practice that 1 look at is that of politeness which, among other things, facilitateci the creation and maintenance of the DDEBRP as a "sharing and caringn community. Chapter 7 Good Mamers, Good Grammar and Silence: The "Golden Rules* of Community Making
In Chapters 4 and 5, 1 examineci the DDEBRP practices that created and maintained a female fan cornmunity, and in the previous chapter, 1 examined those which produced an electronic ka$ieeklatch. But the DDEBRP was more than the sum of these parts. The empirical evidence presented in these chaptea supports the notion of community as a provisional alignment whose %ose ends" regroup with the ebb and flow of interaction. Nonetheless, certain overarching practices existed to ensure that it "felt" like a coherent whole for its members and could be represented as such through pronouns like "we" or "usn. These practices, in combination with the others that 1 have descnbed, gave the community its substance, In this chapter 1 discuss two sets of "de- bound" practices that achieved this effect, both of which are steeped in gender and class: one of etiquette, or politeness behavioun, appropriately termed netiquerte in the context of prosthetic communication, and the other one of language use. By "rule boundn, 1 do not mean that there were expiicit codes of conduct or grammars that members had to follow . Rather, discourses of politeness and language use are inherently prescriptive, offering middle class bodies in generai and middle class female bodies in particular, ways of acting and speaking/writing "appropriately" or "properly". The third practice 1 discuss involves silence. in every thread there were always members who were unable or unwilhg to participate for a variety of reasons. 1 have pointed out a few of these moments in the previous chapters and now wish to explore the meanings of silence and their relation to the comrnunity making process in more depth. As 1 have suggested, to successfuiiy achieve the effect of a stable, coherent community requires that differences be managed and contained. Politeness behaviows, avoiding conflict or quickly resolving it, using a certain standard and style of English, as weîi as remaining silent, as I wiu argue in the pages that follow, are ail stratepies of binding "looseends" together but in ways that contain difference. The Rule. of the Game 1 The importance of being polite, considerate, courteous andlor gracious figured prominently in several exchanges excerpted in earlier chapters. In dealing with appeals to join the closed DDEB lists, some members expressed concern that they had been constnied as rude for turning dom those appeals. Also in the discussion on the behaviour of celebrities, everyone involved praised Anderson for being gracious for praising her coworkers and criticized Duchovny for being rude for failing to do so. Oniy Mn Hale broke rank, insisting that she did not expect nor want Duchovny to be "nice". In terms of interacting with each other, members were polite in that they adhered to netiquette. Sutton (1996) notes that the concept of the "courtesy manual" coincided with the formation of the bourgeoisie, who needed to have the normed behaviours of the aristocracy made explicit to them if they were to intermingle without inadvertently causing offence. In the 1920s, such guides to "propern social behaviour, the most famous of which was Emily Post's Etiquette: The Blue Book for Social Usage, becarne popular in the United States arnong the classes made rich through industrialization who wanted to gain access to the "old money " club of elites. The efforts of those who tried to master the "niles"of upper class cornportment may or may not have been sufficient to gain acceptance, but they resulted in the entrenchment of these rules arnongst the rniddle classes themselves. While the specifics of Post's book may seem quaint and old-fashioned today, its general principles have become so "commonsensicalwthat they, in part, define the middle class subject. Researchers in pragmatics use the concept of face to speak of the politeness strategies that people employ when interacting with others. Fairclough (1993) sums up Brown and Levinson's account as fouows: People have 'positive face'- they want to be liked, understood, adrnired, etc.- and 'negative face'- they do not want to be impinged upon or irnpeded by others. prown and Levinson] see politeness in terms of sets of strategies on the part of discourse participants for mitigating speech acts which are potentially threatening to their own 'face' or that of an interlocutor. (p. 162)
In any interaction, there are five strategies that can be deployed to deal with a potentialIy "face-threatening act" (FTA). Let's take the instance of me coming out of the OISE building and discovering that my bicycle has a flat tire? The first three strategies are clustered around going "on record". First, 1can make no attempt to mitigate the FTA and make a "bald statement", saying to my thesis supervisor who happeas to be passing by "Change the tire for me". If 1 make an attempt to mitigate, a wiser option if 1 wish to successfully secure his help, 1 cm employ positive politeness ("You know what a drag it is to get a flat. Can you give me a hand in changing it?") or negative politeness ("I'm really sorry to impose on you like this but could you give me a hand with Uiis?"). nie fourth choice is &O go "off recordNand hint at the FTA, implying but not directly stating it as in "Gee look at that, my tire is flat. What am 1 going to do?" The final choice is to remain siient and refrain from doing the FTA at all ("Have a nice evening, Bob".). Fairclough, quite rightly , criticizes this research for its assumption that politeness is a universal human need as opposed to a classed discourse being offered to particular subjects. Drawing on Bourdieu, he argues that "politeness conventions embody, and their use implicitly acknowledges, particular social and power relations ... and in so far as they are drawn upon they must contribute to reproducing those relationsn (p. 163). Hence, mastery of the niles of rnitigating FTAs is a way of performing a middle class identity and in doing so marking oneself out a member of that class. Just as etiquette handbwks prescribed a set of acceptable behaviours Wrst for the bourgeoisie and then the middle class, they also included specific "niles" aimed at women, some of which dealt with speech. In Chapter 3, 1 discussed the attempt to relegate women to the private sphere. There they were expected to refrain from "gossiping" among themselves and to defer to the male head of the household (Cameron, 1995). Cameron, who refers to such prescriptivism as a form of verbal hygiene, quotes Emily Post as stating that "the cleverest woman is she who, in talking to a man, makes him seem clevern (p. 174). A substantial body of evidence has been arnassed by empirical sociolinguistic studies claiming that women interact in mixed-sex groups in line with Post's advice." Women not only introduce more topics thus giving men the "floor" but provide "hearer support" by asking questions and using minimal response markers ("uh-huh", mmmm, "yes", "right" "1 see") which enable men to keep the floor (Cameron, 1992). For their part, men interrupt women when the latter have the flwr more than vice versa (Holmes, 1995). In addition to this undertaking of what Fishman caiis "interactional shitworkn (quoted in Cameron, 1992, p. 72), other feminist researchers, the most well hown of whom is Robin Lakoff, have clairned that women couch statements as questions and use 'tag questions" ("nice day, isn'i Mn)and other forms of qualifiers which make assertions seem tentative and uncertain, a sign for Lakoff of their (our) position of powerlessness relative to that of men in society. Cameron quite rightiy challenges Lakoff's assertion that there exists an authentic but iiiegitimate "women's languagen distinct from the powerfùl and valued styles of men, arguing that "the meaning of a linguistic feature cannot be determineci outside its context" (p. 52). A tag question, she explains, could be used to seek approvai in one context but in another it could be a put dom, as when 1 look at my partner and say "You're not going to Wear that shirt with those pants, are you?" Similarly, a continuous Stream of minimal responses can also signal impatience on the part of the Listener (Holmes, 1995). Nonetheless, in many contexts, using these types of linguistic features is an articulation of a discourse of selfeffacement or modesty associateci with normative femininity. If etiquette dictated that women were only supposed to speak to support men, expressing strong opinions and spiking of their own accomplishments would certainly have been deemed to be most improper behaviour. Just as "ladiesn were supposed to dress modestly so as not to draw the desirous male gaze, they would have been expected to speak modestly so as not to draw unwarrante. attention to themselves. Even today, women who speak "assenively"and express high Mnity (Fairclough, 1993) with their assertions are likely to be dismissed as "aggressive" or " mouthy " .
See Clmeron (1992) and Hoimes (1999 for an ovemiew of empiricai sociohguistic studies pduced on women and men's different interactional styles. Some feminist sociolinguists suc h as Holmes (l995), however, have interpreted the above features of women's speech somewhat differently. Rather than being a sign of powerlessness, offering "hearer supportN,hedging and otherwise weakening the cornmitment to their propositions, especially those which involve disagreement, are rneans of observing positive and negative politeness. Thus, one "qualif[ies] the force of an assertion so as not to intimidate, offend or exclude other points of viewn (Carneron, 1992, p. 73). Gal (1989) argues that it is not that conflict does not exist among girls and women but " their verbai interactions implicitly deny confict and hierarchy " : Girls and women carefully link their utterances to the previous speaker's contribution and develop each other's topics, asking questions rather for conversational maintenance than for information or challenge. (p. 1 1)
It is interesthg that the sociolinguistic literature on women's interactional behaviours tends not distinguish between supportiveness, politeness and intimacy. When 1 originally Note this chapter, I had included aspects of "sharing and caringn but r&ed that only conside~gthe latter as a practice of poiiteness was to give it short shrift. Although interconnected and often deployed in the same speech event, the latter is irnbricated with getting to how others in order to establish a fnendship or supportive relationship, whereas the former is tied up with not giving offence. In other words, providing hearer support, asking questions and softening strong statements or disagreement do not in rhemcelves promote intimacy. 1 may use these features when interacting with soineone on the bus with whom 1 have no interest in forming a relationship . Intirnacy requires a desire to establish a relationship and is accomplished through the sharing of experiences and discovery of other commonalities in ways that employ poiiteness strategies and attend to "face wantsn. Thus poiiteness behaviours may facilitate intimacy but they do not create it.
Politeness in Cvbemace With the spread of the ICTs, there is once again a need to make noms of politeness explicit, or at least, to reinterpret and rewrite those relevant to the form of communication. In addition to a fidi scale handbook, simply entitled Netiquene (Shea, 1994), most public mailing lists, aewsgroups and chats have explicit des or codes of conduct that are either posted on a website or are mailed to new members. Hening (1996) did a content analysis of what she refers to as "netiquette statements" culleci fiom seven professional or academic mailing lists, classifjhg hem as prescribing both the observance of negative (+N)and positive (+P) politeness as well as the avoidance of violating these forms of politness (-N, -P)? The examples that she provides fiom each are as follows (p. 132): 1 Avoid irrelevancies. .. . The message that rnakes its point and fits on one screen does its job bat, and you will be well regarded. +N 1 Please include a meaningf'ul subject header, so that people will 1 know whether your message deals with a topic of interest to them. Avoid - P There may be no flames of a personal nature on this list. + P We are strongly committed to maintaining an uncensored List; 1 but to do this, it is important that members respect in their 1 postings the attitudes and sensibilities of al1 the other members.
On private lists like the DDEBs, and by extension the DDEBRP, statements of netiquette are rarely explicit, yet they are understood as a matter of prior howledge gained from previous Internet experience in public spaces as well as from face-to-face communication. Based on her comparative study of men and women's styles on the mailing lists from which the above netiquette statements were taken, Herring concluded that while both sexes are mindfid of negative politeness on line, women are more concemed with maintaining positive politeness, which centres on the "face want" of being validated and iiked by others and the desire to make others feel validated. The data samples presented in this section conîïrm that DDEBRP members, for the most part, confomed
* SocioIinguists differ in the way they classiq politeness behaviours. For exampk, Holmes (1995) describes negative politeness as "tak[ing] the form of expressions or straîegies which reduce the effect of face-threaîening speech acts such as directives, threats, ipsults, complaints, disagreement or criticisms. She would classiS. flarning as negative politeness derthan a vioIaîion of positive politeness as Herring does. to the "rules" of rniddle class, ferninine on-line conduct, valuing politeness in general and positive politeness in particular. Beginning with the avoidance of imposing on others (- N), some members expressed concern that their contributions to a thread were relevant and to the point. For example, Winnie closed a message with the tag line "not sure if this is quite on topic, but thinking it *is*". Bel did the sarne several times when she felt her contribution might be "off topic". After noting that she had liked a recent episode of Star Siek: Voyager, sne added, "Oh wait, this is the X-Mes group, not Star Trek. Pardon the interruption. Return to your regular conversations now :-)". Her use of the pronoun "your" suggests that she marked herself out as an outsider in the thread to some degree, although her use of the smiley indicates that she was joking. Concems about imposing on others were the most evident in the context of talking about oneself, particularly if the message was long or detailed in parts. During the fist round of introductions, Megan concluded her introductory "biography" with "1 guess that's al1 I wiil torture you with for now. 1 look forward to getting to know al1 of you from the other îists!!" Similarly she concluded other messages with phrases like "will stop rambhg now" and "aw, hell, I'm just rambling nuw. 1 think its time for my coffee". After providing a detailed explanation of her emaii "hande"or nickname in response to an inquiry, Dani added, "Now are you sorry you asked? :)" When Bel provided an update on her pet ferret at the request of the other ferret owner on the list she added, "More than you wanted to laiow about ferrets, huh? :)" . She then informed the list that her rent was being raised and expressed concem about being able to afford the increase. Despite the support and "good luck vibesn that could be expected frorn such an announcement, Bel's next comment suggests that she was concerned that the others might thinb her a " whiner" , a trait perceived in a negative light, as indicated by discussions excerpted in Chapter 4 around Duchovny's cornplaints about having no time to write: "Now you know why I've ben quiet; every time 1open my "mouthn [start typing] I start complaining". Ln response to one of my first inquines as to the lack of activity on the list, Erin gave her reply the subject header "long rambhg whine" and opened with "I've been a bit quite [sicl lately (lucky for you)
While she hesitantly agreed to the request (". ..Umm.. . suren), she also gave her an "outn to refuse it by mentioning all the story's supposai flaws so as not waste Sarah's tirne. Her tag iine, "digging toe in dirtn represents a physical act that is understood to signify bashfulness. In this context, Wnnie may hve felt shy in sending it to a weii- known and respected fan fiction writer in Internet circles. In making self-depreciating comments, these DDEBRP members were not only seeking to avoid imposing on others but indirectly seeking approvai and affirmation of their worth. In other words, they were taking meof both the negative politeness needs of others as well as their own positive face wants. Often they received this positive reinforcement and reassurance. Erin need not have worried about boring the list with her grandmother's eye troubles, as she received a number of responses lüce this one frorn Hoilis: "That's OK. With al1 that going on, no wonder you needed to vent! 1 hope things start going better soon :)". HoUs also reassured Erin that she had every reason to "toot her own hom" over the website: No problem. Itts nice to hear of someone getting praised for doing a good job, especially when that person is one of our own. And that site *is+ damned impresçive! :, In light of Erin's particularly self-effacing posting style, it is ironic that when she did express high affinity for the assertion that Duchovny was dating actress Winona Rider, she was criticized: Okay, someone sent me mail privately that my comment... was snotty. It was certainly not intended that way at all. The only reason 1 added that bit was that people would know that it had been confirmed by 'someone in the know' rather than just a rumor being passed on by someone 'cornpletely cluelessl - ie, me. Sorry if it sounded like 1 was being snotty and pretentious. Cleariy this accusation violated her positive face, so she went "public" to qualify her statement. Everyone w ho responded, however , validated her original wording and tone, including Dani, who rebuked the sender of the private message for being the one who had breached the rules of netiquette. You weren't being snotty nor pretentious. Some people just can't stand it if anyone knows something s/o/m/e/o/n/e they dontt. You were relaying information, and if someone else couldntt deal with the fact that your information came from a source close to the show, that's their problem. Trust me, there was no other way you could have said it. And, whoever it was who emailed you about it should be ashamed of herself. In terms of observing negative politeness (+N), members not oniy included only the relevant text from a previous pst to which they were responding but went a step mer,intercutting their response with the original text. In long threads, where replies often contained a series of previous replies, some members added the names of the interactants of each section as foilows: From: Megan Rhiannon wondered? >>But like Winnie, started to wonder where everybody is?
Marif s reason: >IBm busy getting ready for my May 4 concert. Sound system, >background tapes, what to Wear, memorizing stuff. Thatls my >excuse.. .lately 1 haven't been -anywhere-, cybernetically. . . My excuse: Well, 1 donrt' [sic] really have one other than a really crappy weekend and Monday,so I haventt really felt like sending out mail...but since f'm writing this one, 1 guess Itve gotten over it :1
The purpose of this convention was to not only to make a written exchange more akin to a conversation, as 1 noted in Chapter 2, but made exchanges easier to follow for other iist members, particularly if they were not reading the messages at the tirne they were posted. As with the examples of -Nbehaviours, this particula. exchange was also infus& with a concern to avoid hurting another member's feelings ( -P). By emphasizing that "rd lifen had limited the time they had avdable to spend on line, Megan and Mari were attending to my positive face wants by making it clear to me that their reasons for not posting did not signal a lack of interest in my project. Indeed, each tirne 1 made such an inquiry, 1 received a number of sirnilar responses offe~gexcuses for being "quietn. Another practice related to negative politeness came to light through my inadvertent failure to recognize it as such. As 1 briefly recounted in Chapter 2, fans of a show usually added a screen's worth of blank lines to any message containhg details of an episode that could give away the plot for other members who had yet to watch the show. They also added the word "spoilers" to their subject he. In addition to eliminating the blank space, 1 added the comment "does that make me a spoiler of spoilers? :)" 1 included the smiley to show that my intentions were not malicious: Fram Hollir: Maybe for Drucilla. She hasntt watched it yet. DRUCILLA!!!! Stop reaàing right this instant or you just wontt get the full effect when you watch it tonight. OTOH (on the other hand), that might not be any loss.
From Wannon: SORRY DRUCILLA! 1 didntl [sic] know what the spoilers were for! 1 remember asking earlier no one responded, Now it's so obvious! That definitely warrants a few lashes with the wet noodle for me. As soon as 1 read Hollis' warning to Drucilla, 1 realized my mistake and apologized profusely, not only because 1 felt 1 had offended or "spoiled"the episode for another list member, but because I felt like a fwl. By displayhg ignorance of a significant fan practice in general and DDEB/DDEBRP practice in particular after the research List had been ninning for over six months, I had marked myself out as an outsider. When Drucilla joined the thread, however, she reassured me by saying "S'okay , really , 1 happen to *like* spoilers". 1 was then teased by Mrs Haie, but in a way that made me id like a member of the community, by taking the generic idiomatic expression 1 nad used to signal self-rebuke and tuming it into an "in-joken that 1 understood : "No, silly . That's forty lashes with a wet MULDER..". Thus, any potential for conflict created by my "violationnwas contained and a sense of community maintained by this joint engagement in a combination of negative and positive politeness.
Nice Girls DonatRame As indicated in Hening's chart, the posting practice of flarning violates positive politeness and is therefore to be avoided." As 1 noted in Chapter 3, DDEBRP members generally disapproved of this practice. The next sample is usehl in more precisely identifjing those behavioun that the participants asmciated with flaming. hterestingly enough, the topic arose out of a question 1 had posed on "socio-political" discussions:
Well, we could start an example discussion here, just to see how it flows. How does everyone feel about the idea of skinning [O.S. Republican House Representative Pat] Buchanan and feeding him to people on welfare who continue to smoke, drink, and breed indiscriminantly [sic] instead of spending their time supporting the IRA and growing vegetables to send to Bosnians, and using Buchanan's skin to make a tent to house homeless nuclear physicists who formerly helped manufacture bombs that were used to nuke whales?
Obviously , Geneva's pst, which included the tag line "living dangerously " afler her signature, was a joke, a mock flame designed to offend everyone from Born-Agah
One would ibioL that flaming wouid fall completeiy outside the boundaries of netiquette; on the contrary, Shea's handbook has an entire chapter dedicated to the "art of flaming" (Sutton, 1996). This is aot tmlike Dery's concept, metitioned in Chapter 3, of the "good flame", defineci in terms of its cleverness and sarcastic wit. Holmes (1995) makes the case that men may see themselves as observing positive politeness or creating solidarity by hutling insults at each other. Christians to Greenpeace supporters. Harning, then, was not just about name calling but expressing strong views that some would find offensive. Daphne and then Liz picked up the "flamebait" and engaged in a "drag"performance associated with normative on-line masculinity (see Chapter 3): Geneva, sez: .... the #"t#$, I am absolutely incredulized [sic] that you could even Say the above #"&$#! You are an @@#%$#and an #SA##. 1 am an expert in this area, and your ideas are #%&$#Q!! !
From Liz: Yeah ! And the horse you rode in on, too! . . . . It is interesting that Daphne used symbols in place of the actual swear-words, a choice which both highlights both the taboo aspect of such words as well as the humour of the flame by imitahg the mode of representation commonly used in comic strips. Indeed, she added an explanatory closing he: "Had this been an actual fiame, you would have been able to ascertain the actual swear words used herein". The unacceptability of name-calling and directing abusive language at others was aiso rai& in another exchange in which Mrs Hale joked about what she felt like saylng, but would never actually Say, to someone looking io join one of the DDEBs: "Usually 1 teii hem they will never be worthy of the honor, and to fuck off'. me insulting comment generated responses such as the following: From: Liz BWHAHAAHAHAHA! ! ! This could explain the letter bombs 1 keep getting from time to time. :-) :-)
From: Winnie HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ! ! ! ! ! !
From: =dis I see you're still striving every day to live up to that degree you earned £rom the Saddam Hussein School of Diplomacy.
Mernbers clearly thought the flame was extremely funny, as indicated by the orthographie representation of laughter, yet acknowledging that it was a gross violation of politeness. Winnie pretended to be so shocked that she fell off her chair and Ardis, with her reference to the Iraqi leader, demonized in the American press, positioned such behaviour as not only "unferninine",but "un-Americannas well. Mrs Hale's violation of ferninine noms in particular was further emphasized by Daphne when she teased Mrs Hale about what would happen to her as "punishmentn: Fzom: Daphne This kind of behaviour necessitates MORE lashing with wet Muldexs, you realize.
You're going to be an unconscious, quivering mass of protoplasm before the day is out, you know. And THEN you'll become a slime mold, maybe a. ~sieowethertheaoidy~',with the huge penis . You' 11 be sorry then girl, that's for sure. :-D
Thus Mrs Hale would not only be "punished" by a man, in this case Duchovny, but if she continued to behave "badlyn,she wouid literally become a male, albeit a non- human one, by growing a penis. Daphne then reaffirmed Mrs Hale's "real"gender by addressing her as "girln. For her part, Mrs Hale quipped, "True, but then you can tell me to go fuck myselr, implying that once she was male, she could legitimately be fiamed. To Ardis' one-liner, she acknowledged her "unladylike" behaviour, refemng to herself as having graduated, "Magna cum loudmouth, that's me!" Shortly after the mock "flame wu", 1 made reference to the absence of swearing in List interaction: In fact 1 had meant to comment how nobody on this list swears in their ernail! In person, 1 swear al1 the time, being a big fan of "fuck" as exclamation, adjective and verb! 1 wonder if this is the self-censoring effect of the written aspect of cybertalk?
Swearing, is a form of "bad language" that violates positive politeness, even if it is not used to insult others. Andersson and Trudgill (1992) divide swearing into four categones: expletive, which is used to express anger or hstration ("shit! "); abusive, as descnbed above; humourous, which is used to tease others ("get your ass in gear!"); and adliary, the use that 1 was refemng to in my message ("this fucking cornputer"). Although what constitutes swearing has changed fcrm over the centuries in English- speaking societies, it has been constituted as "badn since Elizabethan times (Hughes, 1991). Indeed, it became the subject of numerous 17century tracts which condemned it as a vice? Swearing was also seen as particularly inappropriate for women, who
TI A mock name for a type of rnicfo-organism. This is an "injoke" as Geneva worked in research Iab where such orgaaisms were studied.
" The University of Toronto iibrary catalogue Iists a dozen or more of such titles. 193 were deemed too "delicaten to hear, yet alone use such language. In 1619, John Fletcher lashed out at men who would "rack a maid's tender ear with dam's and Devilsn, and Defoe wrote that "the Grace of Swearing has not obtain'd to be a Mode yet among the Women; God damn ye, does not sit wefl upon a Female Tongue" (quoted in Hughes, 199 1, p. 209). While attitudes have softened toward "wlgar" language in the last thirty years, swea~gis still considered offensive in many contexts, particularly for women. 1 remember priding myself on progressively adding
" shit " and " fuck" b y Grade 7- much to my mother's chagrin, who told me that "ladies don't swear" and that 1 sounded "likea sailor" (as 1 didn't want to be a "lady", I took this as my cue to swear even more). As rny message to the DDEBRP suggests, 1 have become more selective in my use of swearing as an adult. Others responded by talking about their perceptions and practices of swearing: From: Drucilla 1 donlt swear much, period, Only when I'm really FUCKING angry. :-1
From: Liz 1 generally swear quite a bit, but I'm trying to tone it dom now that 1 have a little language sponge living with me. :-) 1 don't swear much in cyberspace simply because itts a more formal fom of communication than speech. In general 1 do type the way 1 talk, but the swearing just doesn't corne out... unless... :-)
For Drucilla, swearing was reserved for expressing strong anger, and this message was the only one of hers to make use of the "auxiliary"category. Liz took a similar position to mine on the distinction between oral and written communication even though she saw email as a form in which she generally tned to write in a conversational style. She aiso pointeci to her role as a parent in limited her use of swearing. Geneva was more circumspect about the process of self regulation: f started cussing when 1 was three years old and have had to curb the habit at work. When I'm in acadernic mode.. .I avoid cussing, As a [university ) employee, 1 could be disciplined if another employee heard me cussing and lodged a complaint. 1 also have to ride herd on a grad student who yells "FüCK" al1 the time in the lab, of fending people, so 1 feel like 1 have to provi.de a good example of self-control to him. Generally, anytime I'm in a large group and talking to people 1 donlt know well, 1 moderate my speech quite a bit. It is interesthg that Geneva used the colloquial term "cussing" to refer to swearing. She also pointed to the sanctions that can stiii result from engaging in this language practice, in her case being disciplined as an employee for breaching a code of conduct. Instead of confronthg the graduate student in her lab, she took the normed ferninine approach by remaihg silent and hoping that he would lem to self reguiate by foiiowing her lead. Her message Uispired Liz to send another message, noting how she was also afulto mind her language in the workplace. Ln direct response to Geneva's last point, she added, "Y&, you never lnow who it's going to bother and it really is a minor thing to deal with. A smaU courtesy" . Ln this sense, "cleaning up" one's language is not just about making others feel uncornfortable but about not wanting to impose upon others-a form of negative politeness.
Beyond flaming others by swearing at or otherwise berating hem, or swearing in the presence of others who rnight be offended, what constitutes a violation of positive politeness is open to interpretation. One person's honesty can easiiy be another's rudeness, and thus the possibility of offending others, however unintentiondy, always lurks in any cyberspace, even in women-only spaces like the DDEBRP,where politeness is highly valued. Illustrating my point is my contribution to the thread on the constant strearn of mernbership requests that the DDEBs continued to receive: So why donlt they (just set up their own lists] ! Are they so creatively challenged and rêsource poor that they can't corne up with a name and a list? I'm afraid 1 can't feel too sorry for people incapable of taking initiative. If they *only* want to join a DDEB, then they've really got problems! Even though 1 had couched my claims as questions, Daphne felt that my comments about the writers of the appeals king "creatively chailenged" and "resource poor" and "having problerns" would have been " flame bait" in public space: Oh boy. Rhiannon, be *glad* you said this here, and not out on a.t.x. Yould get royally reamed. Not that you're not *right* but apparently some people feel that saying things like that means were (sic] snobbish jerks. Although DruciUa indirectly included me as a DDEB member by using the pronoun "wenand validated my point of view, 1 still felt thiit 1 had been mildly reprimanded and in rereading my words, felt asharned of my outburst, even if it had not been directeci at anyone on the iist. 1 dso recognized the danger that offending others can pose to a sense of coherence and unity by exposing difference, in this case my own, which in tum could Lead to marginalkation and exclusion. In the following excerpt, 1 admonished rnyseif for taking up the "bad" girl archetype of "the bitchNand relocated to the DDEBRPzndorsed position of "sharing and caringw: On second glance, my words to be rather harsh ...okay, outright bitchy! As other people noted, many may be new to the Net and not have a clue as to set up a list. f certainly wouldn't had it not been for my work with you folks! 1 thought the suggestion to add a "how tom section of the DDEB pages sound like very kind and useful.
Not only did 1 offer sympathy and reaffirm the value of suggestions on how to help those women who felt the need for a space of their own, but 1 acknowledged my debt to the participants for the lmowledge that 1 had gained about listserv technologies. In iight of the above, it is not surprishg that the majonty of members made concerted efforts to observe positive politeness when expressing their views on a subject lest it lead to disagreement or even conflict. One way that this was accomplished was by expressing low mniry modalify with propositions (Fairclough, 1993)~"This involves qualifying one's claims using a variety of linguistic features, as iliustrated in the foliowing exchange in which Erin and Winnie express& their views on Duchovny not being nominated for an Emmy award in 1996 ( 1 have used italics to highlight these features) From Erin: .. . . [Hl is work this season has been a bit lacking (=O) (in my humble opinion]. 1 thought he deserved the nomination for second season, but sometimes this year his performances were very lackluster.. .. Fram: Winnie ...I don't think DD was given as much to work with this year as last, either. Mulder as a character seemed kind of stuck in a rut for most of the year. Though Emmy nominators aze not known for their perspicacity in telling the difference between performance one season to the next...seems to me that nominations are just as
Holmes (1995) counts aii expressions of low &ty modaiity ~s hedges. 196 often given for the *previous* season1s work, or for a +body* of work.. .just MO, of course.. . . This is not to hply that GA [Gillian Anderson] chews the scenery, btw...
From: Erin No, but her perfomances [sic] are subtle with more energy to them. . .does tha t make any sense?
From: Winnie Maybe itqs because Scully developed more as a character this year than Mulder, sa GA just had more to work with.. .or maybe Ernrny nominators just feel more comfortable with Scully because Mulder can be so *out there* -- anyone witk only a passing familiarity with the show could very well have a tendency to pigeonhole DD based on the flake that Mulder is purported to be...
Or maybe I 'm jus t babbling* :-) According to Fairclough (1993), who draws on Halliday as well as Hodge and Kress, using expressions like "1 think", "it seems to me" or variations on the net acronym IMHO (in my humble opinion) are forms of subjective modality that clearly state that the opinion being expressed is not an "objective factn and therefore lacks authoritaty." Adding modal auxiliary verbs like "may be" or "could", modal adverbs ("possibly") and adjectives ("it is possible") " or verbs of perception ("it seems", "it appearsn) serve to weaken one's comrnitment to the claim. Moreover, low modality can be signalled with hedges such as "sort of", " kind of", "a bit of". Beyond modality, Ehand Winnie included a question ("does this make any sense?") and a selfdepreciating remark ("Or maybe I'm just babbling! ") respectively, Merweakening their affllUty with their claims. As Fairclough argues, modality is not solely an indicator of one's comrnitment to a particular proposition, but aiso an indicator of one's "sense of afinity , or solidarity, with interactants" (p. 159). The use of rnodaiity and self-effacement in this exchange facilitated the building up on consensus and avoidance of conflict. In disagreeing with Wuuiie that Anderson's acting was no t much better than Duchovny 's, Erin put Winnie in a position to feel positively valued by asking her to think about and even validate her daim that Anderson's subtlety and energy made her performances superior to Duchovny's. Although Winnie still felt that Andenon had been nominated for other reasons than supenor acting, she repeatediy used the rnodatity adverb
" Hob(1995) points out thai in some texts subjective modility is not a hedge but a 'booster' which strengthens, not weakens, one's assertion. "maybe" to avoid threatening EM's positive face. Similady, by dismisshg her own views as "babble", Winnie avoided putthg Erin in a position to counter argue them. As well, she could expect to receive assurances that she was not in fact "babbling" and indeed it was Dani who replied, "Not at ail. You are right on the moneyn. Hence, conflict is less likely to anse if neither interactant is willing to express high affînity with her propositions. Fairclough takes a similar position to Lakoff , albeit without a specific reference to gender, in suggesting that low affinity can express a lack of power in certain situations (his example cornes from a doctor-patient exchange). Interpreting the interactants' expressions of low afEnity in this exchange as such is plausible given the reputation as "authorities" on The X-Files that a few other rnembers had gained in public on-line fan fora as weli as on the DDEBs based on their writing andlor criticisrn. In the context of another exchange, Paula explicitly stated that she felt intirnidated to express her opinions about the show: ....OK, and 1 will admit it [downcast eyes, shuffling feet] - I am intimidated by the famous folks on this list ... some of the most *hallowed names* [Hey! Don't laugh!! 'Tis true! !) in Duchovnikdom are here, and 1 feel incredibly shy about contributing my humble yatterings .. .. yah, 1 know. Pretty silly attitude for an adult, but there it is....
Although couched in playfbi exaggeration, as indicated by the "stage directionsn for the body language of extreme embamsment, Paula was ashameû of her sense of inadequacy. She did not identiQ the "famous folks" by name, most likely because she assumed that everyone would know to whom she was referring. Indeed, one of the "hallowed names"" joined the thread and tried to reassure her with a joke at the expense of another "authorityn: "Oh, Pwh. [name withheld] pub her pink panties on one leg at a time, know what I mean?". Bel, who was not a "hailowed namen, also attempted to reassure Paula: Ah, but [Paula] wasn't talking about [name withheld]. She was talking about me. Whaddya mean noone ever heard of me? :}
1 have deiiberaîeIy not provideci pdonyms for these X-Fi 'experts' because of a possible breach of coafidentiality . 198 As to being shy, you get over that soon and start babbling away and hope one or two words make sense to your readers. Trust me on that one. :) Bel made herself the bua of the joke, effectively acknowledging her exclusion fiom this particular sub-group of authority. She then aügned herself with Paula in perceiving herself as unable to contribute on a level beyond "babbling", but encouraged her to participate nonetheless.
SmbgHer Mind In her study, Hemng (1996) found that the majority of male respondents valued candid discussion and debate over positive face wants, whereas many of the female respondents "tend[[ed] to group together all foms of adversariality as 'flaming', 'nideness,' or 'provocation'". Despite the value accorded politeness and the dislike of conflict on the DDEBRP, candour and debate were practiseû by some members, including Druciiia, Daphne, Liz and Mrs Hale and rnyself, who saw them as desirable, if not necessary to the process of community making, a indicator of the differing levels of investments in the normative discourse of femininity of modesty and deference. Yet, at the same tirne, even we had no desire to upset the apple cart of cornmunity by producing "irreconcilable differences" to borrow a standard statement issued when an artist leaves a band or a record label or a mamage breaks up. As I will demonstrate, the line between candour and rudeness is a thin one. Chapter 4 provided a glimpse of a candid exchange of ideas and the response to dealing with the resulting differences. In the thread on Mulder's treatment of Scully, Mrs Hale directly chdienged the views of the others that he was not treating her as an equal, the result of which was tensions which were eventually resolved when she apologized and others picked up threads of her argument with which they could agree, namely that Sculiy was strong and independent. A similar pattern of difference, conflict and resolution took place when Daphne expressed her views on the role of the media in the wake of the arrest of the man suspectai of being the "Unabomber": There's a couple of things about the unabornber stuff that pisses me off. One is, is that the Feds were NOT ready to [golinto that cabin yet, but the media got wind of it and were going to break the story, so the Feds had to go in early. Something like that could SERIOUSLY jeopardize the trial, and if the media caused the Feds to fuck up, I'd break the story over their heads. I think the FBI should sue CBS for interferring [sic] with a government investigation. The media has alltogether [sic] WAY too much authority. Who the fuck do they think they are?....
Her key statements were bald assertions, which were further emphasized with the use of capitals ("the Feds were NOT ready") and the swear-word "fuck". Her only attempt to make her views more palatable to those who might not agree was her concluding "Just my $.02". Mer sharing her impression of the events, Winnie took issue with the views expressed by Daphne: And let me add that I'm tired of people bashing "the media" when what they really mean is "the networks". "TV news" is such a joke. How often it is I've seen lead stor!.es on TV turn out to be buried inside the first section or even the second section of the newspaper...
Winnie journalist by training newspaper reporter in her heart
Winnie avoided challenging Daphne directly by using the generic "people" but also made bald assertions, to which she gave more weight by establishing her "credentials" in the tag lines. Geneva took a more balanced approach, agreeing partially with Daphne but then pointing out the problem with the alternative in the form of a question: [The media] can jeopardize people's safety and destroy their privacy, but what can be done to stop them? It's way riskier to try doing without freedom of speech.
The tone of Daphne's response, directed at both Winnie and Geneva, was more conciliatory: Yes, but you'd HOPE that they'd operated with a modicum of respect. And, sorry, Winnie, but I find a lot of the print media is just as bad about this as TV news. I don't mind them giving us the cold hard facts, but most of it is just crap and intrustive [sic] and unneccesary [sic]. Sorry to rant about this, but it's a sore spot with me. I stopped watching the news and reading the newspaper long ago b/c 1) the whole thing is just too depressing, and 2) it's too sensational.
While she apologized twice for offending Winnie and dismissed her message as a "rantn, she also made it clear that she had a strong investment in her position, again relying on unmitigated assertions and strong language ("most of it is just crap and intrusive and u~ecessary").Winnie then sent an impassioned rebuttal, but, once again, she tned to avoid offending Daphne: Çorry, but itts a sore spot with me, too. 1 am tired of having the entire journalistic profession tarred with the same brush because of what a few have done. 1 consider myself an ethical, moral persan, and everyone 1 ever worked with in the journalism field was ethical and moral. Itm tired of taking the rap. Itm tired of having to defend journalism as a profession. I'm just plain tired. 1 was a working journalist from 19xx to 19yy, and it still makes me bieeping angry.
Itts too easy to blame *ail* jouxnalists because you dontt like what you see on W or in your hometown newspaper. Do you go around talking about how sleazy other professions are because of one bad experience or a friendts experience? I'd even feel better if people told jokes about journalists like they do about lawyers or used car salesmen, but they dontt tell jokes about journalists -- they just slam thern unrnercifully and blame them because the news is "depressing" or "sensational". Itm sorry but it makes me blanking angry.
And you wouldn't believe what one person thinks is unncessary [sic] and intrusive with what somebody else wants to know *ail* the tiny details about. Not *one* person Itve ever talked to outside the journalism profession has an inkling of what the job is really like. Not *one*. This isn't aimed at you personally, Daphne, but it's a blankety blank sore spot with me, and you happened to have pulled the scab off.
1 have included the entire text of Winnie's message to demonstrate how she qualified her numerous expressions of anger (Tm tired of" "it makes me .. . angry ") every few sentences with "I'm soqbut", "This isn't aimed at you personally, but", and so on. It is also interesthg in light of my earlier discussion on "bad" language that Winnie, unlike Daphne, was unable to bring herself to use actual swear-words but chose the substitute words "bleepingn, "blanking" and "blankety blank". For her part, Daphne sent a conciliatory message, apologizing again to Winnie for upsetting her. This the, however, she trieci to establish some common ground between their positions by including the parts of Winnie's message that she was able to relate to and agree with. For example, after the first paragraph, she explained that she understood what it meant to be in a maligned profession and then made the comment that 1 quoted back in Chapter 3 about the lack of respect accordai to secretaries. She concluded by retracting her sweeping generalization about journalists, blaming instead the few "bad apples": Sorry again, Winnie. 1 guess there are good and bad people in every profession, itts unfortunate that oftentimes the bad ones are the noisiest. . . When Ash joined the thread the evening following the exchange, she also worked to reestablish a sense of coherence and unity among members by focussing on the personal connection she felt with both parties in the dispute: Winnie's incredibly eloquent rant deleted.
Thank you, Winnie. As a former journalist and one who might be again, 1 was going to do a similar response, but you did it better than i would have.
And Daphne, I'm currently working as a secretary as well, so 1 hear you! Funny how i seem to gravitate towards professions -- sec=e+a=iaT, :=r=2=fisa, wziti~g-- t,k,at ~CYP-C-ammie --WC~-.ILI t= l=ck de>~~ on, since they generally don't know how "&+$% hard it can be!
Having been both a journalist and a secretary, she was able to appeal to the positive face wants of Winie, praising her for taking a strong stand. As well, she empathised with Daphne's position as an undervalued secretary. She avoided using swear-words, using the comic strip-style symbols instead. While it would seem that the conflict had been resolved, Winnie was clearly not cornfortable with her adversarial role, as indicated by the message she sent the next day: Thanks, everyone, for taking rny rant in stride, for the support, apologies, al1 of it.
One day later, I'm embarrassed to have vented like that. 1 usually try to avoid confrontation, but 1 guess 1 was just really tired and my defenses [sic] were dom. It's nice that everyone's been sympathetic about it, and thanks also to everyone who said 1 was passionate and eloquent! 1 guess I've been holding that in for awhile . Daphne, 1 sympathize with folks who look down on your being a secretary. Their loss. I think anyone who loaks dom on secretaries must either have never had a secretary or never had to depend on one. Good secretaries are worth their weight in gold! (And bad secretaries can ruin you. ) As she did on other occasions, she drew upon a discourse of selfeffacement, referring to her defence of the media as a "rant" and herself as having "ventai". In blaming her reaction on exhaustion, she implied that she was unjustifiably emotional, an adherence to the plus male/minus male logic that positions men positively as rationai and women negatively as emotional . At the same time, she reached out to the rest of the thread's participants, by thanking her "supportersnand connecting with Daphne on a personal level by afhning the value of her profession, even if from the position of a superior. In another thread, I was the one who perceived Daphne to have crossed the he between candour and rudeness. After posting the conference papa written with Lee to the list, Daphne responded by quoting the excerpts that she felt implied that the DDEB members were fangirls in love with Duchovny, and interspersed them with critical comments such as "Blorch!" and "This is highly ridiculous". Only in the closing paragraph did she attempt to mitigate the potentialiy FTA by offering an apology and excuse of sorts ("Besides, I'm crabby today and want to bash on something. This was nandy. ThanKs! :-> '). Nonetheless, 1 was still angry and upset at her hasty dismissal of Our ideas without any form of reasoned support. Rather than simply provide a counter argument, I took a few "digs" at her. Under the subject header "Daphne's diatribe", 1 began my reply as foliows: Ok Daphne, take some breaths..inhale slooowly, that's it, now exhale, very good. Feeling calmer! Good. 1 haven't included your text because 1 basically agree with you. However, if 1 could direct your attention to the top of that section...
After a number of others had joined the thread to express their opinions, also critical but in my view observant of positive politenas, 1 contrasted their responses to Daphne's: Have just [been] reading the rest of the posts that carne out of D. 's rave and they (have] been very helpful for thinking through the meaning of DD to the [DDEB members].
While Daphne resisted taking the "flarnebaitn in my first pst, commenting, "1 hope this was meant to be fumy, b/c it DOES have a kind of patronizing tone to it," she calied me on the latter: Excuse me for getting a trifle huffy here, but this is EXACTLY how flame wars start. 1 have now had my post described as a "diatribe" and a "rave". 1 really didn't think it was either. Yes, it was a bit pointed. 1 hope ne can move past that now,
Yet instead of attachg me Mer, she softened her earlier assertions with hedges and subjective modality markers and expressed a desire to put the incident behind us. She also emailed me pnvately apologizing for her tone but explaining that she had reacted the way she did because she felt Lee and 1 had misunderstood and maligned the DDEBs. Relieved, 1 sent the same rype of reply. After exchanging a few more messages, Daphne said that she was giad we had cleared up our misunderstanding and wished me luck on my other papers. 1 then sent a message to the whole list with the subject header "R & D's dialogue" informing the other members that we had reach an understanding if not an agreement. Not aIl confiicts that resulted from candid expression were resolved, or indeai resolvable. In a discussion on fangirl behaviour, 1 had sent a message, remarking that I had seen on the website of DDEB' a "slavering" account of one brigade member's encounter with Duchovny at the taping of a talk show. Two DDEB~members sent messages skhg how embarrassai hg were by UUs woman's behaviour. Not surpnsingly, the DDEB~members jumped to the defence of their "sister". Although the two DDEB' members softened their criticism, the ensuing discussion was critical of inappropriate fan cornportment in the presence of celebrities. Paula added the tag line "hating this conflictn to one of her contributions, yet neither she nor any of the others seemed to be able to reach out to the others to ease tensions. On the contrary, tensions escaiated when a member of DDEB' posted another "fangirlish" account of seeing Duchovny at a taping, and another round of denouncements of such behaviour began, with the members of DDWfalling silent. With no common ground in sight, Megan, who had not participateci in the thread up until this point üied to change the topic by picking up on a reference to basebail and fandom: Oh.. 1 think this is goig [sic] to get me started. 1 am a HUGE baseball fan and 1 used to talk stats and al1 with my ex-boyfriendls male friends and they used to give me hell, especially if 1 got something wrong. Never mind when 1 would cal1 them on something.... They actaully [sic] would tease me about being a baseball fan, bacause [sic] 1 was female. They wouldnî t Say anything about each other, because they were guys and they were expected to be sports fans!
She also took Mrs Hale's passing reference to a film and sent a message about her reaction but ody Paula responded: Megan wrote >Weil, 1 still recommend people see Tank Girl for a good the :)
Me too - 1 just loved this movie! The original comix are pretty bizarre, but the movie is great fun - music is most excellent as well : ) Finally, Mari made a much more direct intervention: 1 think we al1 need a break from al1 this serious discussion--a lot of us don't even know one another yet! So when searching for a topic, 1 decided to go with what 1 know--music. 1. What kinds of music are y'all into?
2. Does anybody know what ambient music is, exactly? 1 'm gonna be on an ambient comp[ilation] and Itmnot even sure what it is. :)
Judging by the explosive response-several hundred messages that spanned alrnost a week, the rest of us were ody too happy to take a topic that easily lent itself to establishing commonalities.
Strikinz a Balance In the next two sarnples, it was not the members involved in a debate who were offended but a third Party. In a X-Files- related thread, Drucilla complained that the poor characterization in ment episodes was the result of the loss of the two head writers, who had left to produce their own show, "Space and Ekyond" . 1 then jumped in: ....Barf! How can you stand al1 that military jingoism? The sad thing is that thatts a more accurate projection of the future than the Enterprise [the ship from Star: Trek] blissfully trekking through space on missions of exploration and peace.
BTW, by dissing the show, I'm not dissing you... different strokes etc.
As 1 sent this message shortly after my dust up with Daphne, 1 felt it necessary to add the final "disc1aimer". Mrs Hale responded with a "spiritedmdefence of the show, opening her message with the fine "Mrs Hale straps on her six-guns" and closing with "unbuckiing six-gunsn. Despite her militaristic references, she never attacked me personally, but drew on a discourse of literary criticism in which she discussed the development of the characters. 1took Mrs Hale up on her challenge and focussed on rebutting some of her points, including a counter argument that portraya1 of the alien enemy was one dimensional and racist. Mrs Hale in tum retorted that she was "*so* tired of the PC lpolitically correct] crap that portrays every enemy of the United States now and in the past and in the future as being the victim of oppression". Had she concluded there, 1 couid weii have taken her comment as a personal insult. However, in her next paragraph, she tried to appeal to my reason: Think about it, Rhiannon. 1s it realistic to think that every the we go to wax it is in order to fusther an imperialist agenda? When you are attacked by a merciless enemy, who not only wonrt negotiate but won't acknowledge your fellow humanity, would you prefer to sit quietly and die?
I'm no militarist, and 1 donlt like violence, but I *do* admire the courage it takes to go out and die for one's nation or people. That level of sacrifice is totally unknown in this self-indulgent culture.
Excuse the rant, 1 really am NOT G. Gordon Liddy. 1 marched against the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, but 1 am no friend to the Vietcong or the Iraqis, both of whom proved themselves over and over and over and over again as no friend ta human rights.
asking questions, for her "xant" her position in more detail, 1 remained cornfortable with the level of debate even though 1 did not agree with Mrs Hale's views. In fact, over the year, we took up opposing sides on a variety of socio-plitical issues, none of which Ied to either of us getting upset. When Bel rad my original "Spacen post the next day, perhaps without reading the rest of the thread, she intervened: You know, 1 don't understand why people have to come dom on (belittle? right term) shows they don't like. 1 don't watch Space but 1 know a lot of people that do and enjoy it. 1 don't watch Soap operas either but 1 try not to come down on thern or the people that watch them.
As Winnie had done with Daphne, she did not directly accuse me of belittiing "Space" but stuck with the more general "peoplew.For Bel, my cnticism of the show was a cnticism of those membea who liked it. Bel's aversion to any form of disagreement surfaced almost a year later during an exchange on gender and language. When Daphne mentioned that her DDEB had just had a debate on sexist language, 1 was interested in hearing more about the issues discussed. Because it had been a long and involved thread, Drucilla suggested that sorne of those messages could be fmarded to the DDEBRP with Lb and Daphne's permission. Bel then spoke up: I1d rather you didn't forward them. Uthough, since al1 1 have ta do is delete them unread, i guess it doesntt matter. 1 deleted over half the discussion unread because 1 didnlt feel Like "listening" to the debate. 1 read a few of the messages, decidsd to let you three hash it out amongst yourselves and just kept deleting and reading whatever other messages came in. Her response is interesthg because it made explicit a strategy specific to prosthetic communication for coping with communal practices in which one does not wish to take part. Not only did Bel rem& "dentn,but she refused to even read the thread she found personally distastefbl. Although she expressmi low affinity, (I'd rather you didn't.. . 1 guess it doesn't matter), this admission of an act of self-exclusion fiorn the cornmunity at that moment had the effect of mildly offendhg Drucilla, as indicated by her rather pointed reply, "I'm sorry you feel that way. 1 didn't think we were boring people". Bel then clarified her position: Not boring, making uncornfortable. 1 don't like arguments at the best of times, and the beginning of the discussion seemed very close to arguing. It did evolve into a debate, which, IMO [in rny opinion], is just a civilized argument. 1 almost jumped in a P-TV-7-eV-r-+ =f ~LF~c~,h~t ===li==d thrc "takinz =idesw xas net J idea and would possibly lead to more confusion...,
Like the female respondents in Hemng's study, Bel associated any type of debate with argument, a threat to the coherence of the community. In her next paragraph, she hinted at the exclusionary effect that such "mlüfen discussions had had on her: If I1m talking with people, and they are starting to get involved in an argument/debate whatever and "ignoring" me, there really is no point in my sticking around, is there? So, perhaps in that sense, it can be considered boring. 1 just think of it as a private discussion, where noone [sic] is going ta miss me, thetefore 1 wander off to talk with sorneone else,
By choosing the word "ignoren even though she put it in quotations and refemng to debates as private discussions, she was implying that debate serves to exclude others and therefore had no place in a communal space. niese comrnents inspired Drucilla, Daphne and Liz to corne to the defence of the practice of debate. in response to Bel's comment that the gender thread on their DDEB sounded confrontational, Daphne replied "Yeah,there was some misunderstanding going on, but we worked thni that". in response to Bel's reluctance to get involved, she wrote, "1 was acWyhoping that more people would jump in and we could have a free-for-all. :- > 1 like lively discussion". Similarly, Liz asserted: That's the nature, IMO, of any meaningful discussion - if you' re talking about anything deeper than the days [sic] activities, you're going to have a period at the beginning when everyonels staking out there [sic] positions and making sure you're using the same tem in the same way and all. Toss a bit of passion into it and it can heat things up a bit. :-)
Daphne reinforced Liz's last point and linked not just her own identity but that of her DDEB community with the emotion that fbeiied these discussions: "Yeah, and if anything, we' re a passionate bunch. :- > Hormones to spare". In drawing on a discourse that links wornen with emotion and passion, Daphne effectively "ferninized" the practice of debate, traditionally associated with "objectivity" and "logicn,thereby making it a legitimate practice in the creation and maintenance of a community based on feminine values of politeness and supportiveness. If Bel wanted to avoid debate altogether and Daphne embraced it, Geneva tned to find a balance between the push of candour and passion and the puil of poiiteness: To some extent, you have to monitor your speech in any group to avoid of fending someone, not just in an e-mail group. When 1 'm hanglng around with my friends IRL, 1 know 1 can't caik a~oucsex in front of one whols a rape victim, can't talk about female cornplaints in front of most of the males, can't criticize a certain person's religion even jokingly, etc. Everyone has a button or two that any polite person will try to avoid pushing, and everyone has certain topics they're squeamish about discussing. It is a little maddening sometimes not to be able to state a strong opinion without risking offending someone else, but that's a small price to pay for belonging to a group.
As Geneva poinied out, the potential for conflict is always present in communal relations when strong views are expressed, and while they canot be eliminated, they can be minimized through following detiquette ("everyone has a button or two that any polite person will try to avoid pushingn). Thus, the coherence of communities iike the DDEBs and the DDEBRP ultimately depend upon poiiteness and some degree of self censorship, but the sense belonging made concession to freedom of expression worthwhile.
Rules of the Game 11 HaWig discussed the practices of detiquete and politeness and their relation to community making, 1 will now focus on a second, though not mutually exclusive, set of practices related to proper or correct language use. As "courtesy manuaIsn and etiquette handbooks have served over the centuries to make explicit "good" manners and conduct, grammars, dictionaries and writing texts have done the same for "good" grammar and "effectiven writing. Until the Ehbethan era, English had no grammar, spelling niles or a national dictionary. It was one of the last vemacular languages in Ewope for which a grammar was produced, in 1586 by William BuUokar, following the Spanish in 1492, with its ties to the project of imperialism (Illich, 198 1). and the French in 1530 (Howatt, 1984). The first English grammars were modelled closely on Latin, the language of schooling, and were airned at three groups: foreign students of English, primarily academics and scholars who needed a good reading knowledge of the language; school pupils who it was felt, would benefit from a basic course in the vernacular to help them with Latin; and finally pnvate scholars with an interest in the philosophy of grammar (Howatt, 1984). With the emergence of the nation state and a new economic order, members of the bourgeoisie felt that they needed not only to weU. Hence the concem for "good English" began in eamest, and what was to becorne "standard English" was the variety spoken and written by the dominant social groups. Today , despite taking a drubbing from popular culture, " standard" English has maintained its value for the educateâ middle chsses and other varieties continue to be understood as substandard deviations from the nom. As Gee (1990) argues, languages are social possessions, possessions that panly define who count as 'rd' mernbers fo the group, 'insiders', we might say. As the language becomes a complicated and intricate form, not tied in any very obvious way to rneaning, only children, people bom into the culture, can master it fully, effortlessly. . . while 'late corners' never hlly master these intricacies, and so always mark themselves out as 'outsiders'. (p. 78)
What Gee says about languages in general can be applied to varieties of languages, and thus it is through using the "standardn variety correctiy and effectively that one performs a middle class identity and marks one's membership in the educated class. To emphasize the imbrication of language, power and identity, Bourdieu (1977) uses the term linguistic capital. As with material resources, people have varying arnounts of linguistic resources and are judged accordingly.
U~hoIdin~the Standard A review of the data samples presented in this dissertation thus far demonstrates that the DDEBRP members were al1 relatively rich in linguistic capital. Not only is there no evidence of major grammatical errors or problems with run-on sentences or fragments, but the level of vocabulary and sentence structure as weli as general expression of ideas is generally sophisticated: After seeing that they hired Barbie (TM) as the new X, 1 feax that The X-files may be pandering more to the rnainstream audience. (Hollis)
Hypocrisy would have been some false sentimental blather about how happy he is for her, and John Bartley, and Jeff Charbonneau, and so forth.....Best to do what he did and preserve a dignified silence on the subject. (MES Hale)
For instance, DDEBx talk at the beginning was an explosive outpouring of discovery about each other, Our thoughts, values, likes, dislikes, etc. Then followed a period of such intense soul-baring it was almost painful. (Winnie)
3haii we spr=ad th= n=w3 3f their néfsrious déèds ta âX. th2 XF lists around? If those guys are so keen to cruise the net in search of booty to plunder maybe they'll pay attention if they see calrn, well-measured posts warning people not to buy a book that egregiously violates your rights ..... (as)
Something like that happening is totally outside of the realm of my comprehension. (Bel)
1 can't help but suspect that she's the one who started using it.
The above are but a few examples that 1 came across in a quick search of my previous chapters. Markers of a university educated person's language use include "1 fear that", "pandering" " false sentimental blather" , "preserve a dignified silence", "explosive outpouring of discovery " , " shall we, " "nefanous deeds, " egregiously violates, " " realm of rny comprehension," and "can't he$ but suspect". Mrs Hale also dropped the standard "itn subject and verb, laving the bare complement "best" in the phrase "best to do nothing..". and Winnie reversed the standard subject-verô order ("then followed a period.. . ") for stylistic efféct . Keeping in rnind my claim made in Chapter 2 that email is a hybrid of writing and speaking, the messages sent to the list also contained numerous features of informal spoken language. The juxtaposition of the informa1 oral and the formal written is highlighted in Ardis' defence of the romance novel and the women who read them (quoted in Chapter 4): And, dammit, 1 enjoy them! 1 know inany women who do. -- and those women aren't stereotypical housewives looking for "mind candy" -- they're like *us*, m'dears. They have broad interests, have educations beyond high school, even tend to be feminists (though many eschew the term). You wanna know who they're like? The regular ATXC [alt.tv.x-files.creative] audience. Ardis used the ddexpletive "darnn it", but represented it orthographically as "dammit" to more closely approximate its casual, contemporary North Amencan pronunciation, as she did with "want to"("wannaw).Her representation of "my dearsn as "m'dears", however, suggests an literary usage commody seen in the dialogue of 19' century novels where the servants address the lord or lady of the manor as " m'lord" or " m'lady". well, she put quotations around " mind candy", marking it out as slang or a colloquial expression not normailj found standard language, and used the verb "exhewn,a term one wouid expect in formal writing rather than casual conversation. In addition to orthographidy representing words as they are pronounced and sounds such as "ah", "umm" and "mmmn "hmm"and "wow", members frequently used slang or colloquial expressions, examples of which include "he's dead mat", "that's cool", "people.. .get pissed," "he rubbed it in," 1 have this deal going," "your web pages blow away [mine]".Thus word choices and spellings normaily deemed inappropriate or unacceptable in Wtten texts were sanctioned in the context of prosthetic communication. Interspersed with features representing an informal conversational style were those specific to this form of communication, described in Chapter 2: the emoticons, the acronyrm, the tag lines and the descriptions of physical gestures and acts, often in the form of "stage directionsn in which the sender often referred to herself in the third person ("here's Mn Hale zooming off to the photo gdlery"). In this way, members demonstrated their "net worth" and legitimated their membership in an on-line community. In iight of the above, it is a safe bet that the vast majority of errors in the DDEBRP messages were typographical. 1 did a Word Perfect search of Chapter 4 for the instances where I had added the Latin sic and found errors such as "a days workn, "where I have I seen him?", "1 love the reaUy pissed look on here face, " "Of perhaps CM just wanted her, " "years of unrequeited love, " "Its going to be interesting, " "corosive, " and "it's hard to give something your iiot sure you love your aiin. Speaking for myself, I never copy edited my messages before posting them, although 1 sometimes studied them carefuily for clarity of content. As Bourdieu (1977) notes, the dominant class[es] can rnake deliberatdy or accidentally lax use of language without their discourse ever king invested with the same social value as that of the dorninated. What speaks is not the utterance, the language, but the whole social person. (p. 653)
Yet in reviewing my messages as part of the analysis, 1 found myself inwardly cringing and rebuking myself for not catching my typos. Others must have felt the sarne way , for on the occasions that the sender noticed some kind of error, she made a point to correct it: From: Drucilla [Rhiannon wrote:] > 1 thought the scsne of Scuiiy doing Z2Z and trying to get him tù keep >breathing was very moving.
Me tao. [Daphne]? Why haventt you spoke up? They finally had Scully trying to help people, like youtve been wanting!
Upon noticing that she had used the incorrect form of the past participle, Drucilla immediately self-corrected in a follow up pst: "Augh! SpokeN! Not Spoke. Someone's stealing my letters again.. .. " . While making üght of the error, she nonetheless was signalling to the other community members that she was a comptent user of the valued standard variety. Erin did the same thing when she noticed that she had typed "I've ben a bit quite lately flucky for you) < g > ": Well...that was obviously supposed to Say tquiett...sheesh. 1 think I'm going to cal1 it a night. Similady, in commenting on forming meaningful relationships on line, Liz noted that in the beginning, "everyone's staking out there positionsn. It was only when Daphne used that portion of her text in a reply that she noticed her error and provided the correct form in capital letters dong with a self-rebuke: "-IR*! Course, sometirnes they *are* 'out there' ! :-) 1 cantt believe 1 did that :-)". In addition to making the correction, Liz provided evidence that she knew how to use the three words correctly with an attempt at a word play. Daphne then emphasized ( "heh, heh, heh. See how imperfect the English language is? ;-> " , but then teasingly suggested that Liz should in fact have known better: "Or maybe it's just user error :-> " . That these self- adrnonishing responses seem excessive for the "crimen cornmittecl suggests the function of "good" grammar as a fonn of covert prestige in the community and the importance of "fitting inn accordingly. Occasionally, members directed their attention to sentence structure. Although
Mari did not bother to rewrite her "temble sentencen, she signalled that she recognized it as a problem: Tt's important to us to keep from hurting each other's feelings, exactly. Certain topics have become, not quite off-limits...but ones where we dontt go into depth discussing. (that was a really terrible sentence. ) : )
Beyond points of gramrnar and sentence structure, some members expressed doubts about their ability to write in a focussed, coherent, and clear manner: "Am 1 making sense?"; "I'm just ramblinglbabbling" "not sure if this is on topicn. In the "DDand Romance" thread, quoted in Chapter 5, Sonya made explicit the conneetion between writing "goodn papers in university and writing "goodn messages: 1 can't believe Itve written al1 this! 1 hope some of it at least was understandable to someone. Where was al1 this energy when 1 was writing papers last year in school? 1 must be having some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, where al1 of a sudden Irm reliving papers 1 should have written (but never did.. .) in college.
There was one example of attention being drawn to an error by someone other than the wnter: From: Rhiannon ....So maybe that will peak your interest....
From: Mrs Hale > pique!!! pique!!!
This reminds me of the tirne 1 was reading some erotica and the writer said something like, "Mulder licked the pique of her breast". 1 was ROFL [rolling on the floor laughing] . From: Rhiannon Oh gawd, 1 can't believe 1 did that. And 1 only teach English for a living!! 1 guess my only excuse was it was the 130th post 1 was responding to....Thanks for the humourous correction (BTW that's Canadian spelling this time)
In making the correction, Mrs Hale, perhaps to avoid violating positive politeness, indirectly pointai out the humour of the mistake by refeming to a sirnilar one she had encountered. Her tag heis also interesting: "Mrs Hale whose mother was fnghtened by a thesaurusn. Thus, making the correction was not simply about pointing out my lapse but couid have been an inference to her linguistic resources, not inherited but eamed through formal ador self-directed education. For my part, 1 reacted in the sarne way as Daphne, Erin and Liz, admonishing myself while stressing I would normdy never confuse two words that sound the same but have different speUings and meanings. At the same time, 1 thanked her for her anecdote to make sure that she lmew that 1 harboured no hard feelings, but lest there be any question of my linguistic resources, 1 clarifiai the legitimacy of the spelling of "humourous". My response also contrasts the legitimacy of trying to represent the pronunciation of a word orthographically ("oh gawd" instead of "oh god") with the illegitimacy of using "peak" insiad of "pique". Tnis distinction is hiter highlighted in Megads response :O hfis Hale's anecdote in which the former shared one of her own about how fumy sound/spelling errors cm be: 1 have a friend that was grading some papers for the class she was TA for and one of the closing lines was "the Greeks were able to take a peak into moden [sic] science" (or soemthing [sic] like that) . We were jsut [sic] dying irom images of al1 these men in togas trying to carry a mountain :) Ironically, in recounting the student's use of "peak" instead of "peek",Megan made three spelling errors, none of which anyone comrnented on as they were obviously the result of inaccurate keyboarding rather than a lack of linguistic capital. The reinforcement of language standards was not limited to messages sent to the iist. When Drucilla and Liz announced that they had posted a joint piece of fan fiction to a website, several members praised it, including Bel, who said, "It's a wonderfbl story. Weil worth reading". After LU thanked her, she added: You're welcome. 1 just regret not getting out my little red pen fast enough to point out the typos 1 found before someone else did. 1 missed out on my chance to feel superior. :-) Be1 Writing's easy, editingfs the hard part .... or is that the other way around?
While she used the smiley to indicate that she did not intend to insult the authors and sofiened her position of the hiemchical relationship between writing and editing with a question, the strong link between correct language and social statu was nonetheless established. And neither author seemed to have taken offence, both agreeing with Bel and adding their own anecdotal evidence in support of this position: From: Liz You're a sick woman, Bel... 1 like that in a person. :-) Drucilla? Didn't you Say you had been making the corrections? Maybe Bel would like to take a gander at the 'correctedi version. :-)
Drucilla and 1 dragged out an old fan-fic with the idea in mind of de-fan-ficcing it and sending it off for publication (we hope :-). 1 found one minor character's name that we spelled at +least* 18 different ways. Ok, maybe 4, but it was embarrassing. And we *didf proof it!!!!....
From: Drucilia ....Sure, 1 could do that if she wants. Then she can find al1 the ones 1 missed :-).
Afier having her linguistic resources as an editor vaiued and confirmeci, Bei backed away from her original position and in the process affirmed the elevated status of the writer as a creative talent, an area in which she confessed to be resource poor: Nah, itls surprising simple to hack other people's work to pieces. :-) [....]Okay, I dontt +really+ do that,...
Creating something, being original is usually more than correcting or fixing what someone else has written, 1 still fear rejection which is why 1 havenit submitted any stories to magazines. Of course, if I ever *finished* writing a story.. . . :-)
1'11 be glad to take another look at your story, Drucilla. 1 donrt consciously look for typos, but 1 do seem to notice them. Bel's "downgradingnof her cultural worth is an articulation of class-vaiuing the "artist"over the "techniciann-andfemininity in that she once again took up the discourse of sdfdeprecation. Whereas in the first two posts, she was able to acknowledge and value her ski11 as an editor, in the one above, she down played these sarne accomplishments. Another indication of the prestige af5orded by DDEBRP members to accurate and effective language use was the praise offered or questions asked of those who were Seen as "expert" users: From: Mxs Hala [Sonya as ked: ] ....what *is* the technical term for "a
Oh, Mrs Hale, you have such a gift for words. :-1 While Sonya's question had been an open one, Daphne addressed a question on etymology directly to Mrs Hale: "1 promise 1 won? get on my high horse about judgmental thinking :-> . BTW, where does the term high horse corne from? Mrs Hale, 1 bet you know". In one of the threads in which the concept of technology was being discussed, Mrs Haie teased Daphne for being "a closet phenomenologistn. In her reply, Daphne repeated the comment prefaced by "Mrs Hale exhibits her superior vocabulary, " and then said, "I'm sorry, that word isn't in my dictionary. What does it mean? Have something to do with scent glands perhaps??? Hmmmm??? Or maybe the reading of bumps on the head???. .." . Although Daphne did not know the exact meaning of the word, her "guesses" were educated ones that implied that she knew the specialized terms "pheromones" and "phren~logy".'~Mrs Hale never replied to that particular query , yet three years later when writing up this sample, I felt the need to look up Terry Eagleton's Lirerary nieory (1983), a text that 1 had used for my M.A. course work in Comparative Literature, perhaps to prove to myself that my academic knowledge was on par with that of Mrs Haie. Even Mrs Hale was not above correction. In response to a message by Bel about a certain feeling that she had had that something was going to happen, Mrs Hale suggested that it was clairvoyance, which she defined as "French, to hear clearly " : From: Bollis Slight correction - clairvoyance is from the French to *seef clearly. Clairvoyants see images in their minds telepathically. Clairaudience is psychically hearing something. 1 believe that just having a feeling like Bel dia is rnerely called intuition. 1 prefer the Scottish term for it - kenning. : ) . . . .
" I am gratefd to Monica Heller for this observaiion about Daphne's vocabulary. 216 Slumming For a cornmunity that valued high "standardsn of English, it may seem surprishg that non-standard usages fiom other oflen devalued varieties were sometimes used. One example, from Chapter 4, is Dani's response to Enn's comment that she really liked the "nimpled" Duchovny look: "Yep, he sure scmffs up real purty , don? he?" Here, Dani used an orthographie representation of a stigmatized variety of Southern Amencan or rural English for humourous effect. Similarly, Hollis borrowed Uie term "dang" from "hillbilly" English when sharing her impression of the X-Files episode "Homen (quoted in Chapter 4) and Mari used the Southem "y,alln to address the membership when askhg about their musical tastes. When Mrs Hale thanked Erin for supplying her with a vidatape ENi repiied, "Just lucky .. .dat's ail. :)", which suggests a variety of black English or even ESL where the voice 'th' is not pronounced "correctlyn. In two other instances, Mrs Haie and 1 both borrowed the verb " to dissn meaning "to treat with disrespect, a term from Afro-Amencan urban culture that has entered mainstream white North Amencan culture. This practice of "standardn English users borrowing From a generaiiy devalued variety can be thought of as a form of code- switching, broadly defined by Heller (1988) as involving "the use of more than one language in the course of a single communicative episoden (p. 1). Code-switching, however, usually takes place betweedarnong interactants who are proficient in the languages involved. Rampton (1995) draws on Gumperz' distinction between simational and rnetaphorical code-switching-"a partial violation of co-occurrence expectations [in which] participants do not settle into the newly introduced contextual ffame as an easy basis for further interaction" (p. 278)-to focus on "code altemation by people who are not accepted members of the group associated with the second language [or variety of language] they employn @. 280). Rampton uses the term crossing to label the use of South Adan English (SAE), a devalued variety of English, and Punjabi by white workuig class youths in London, England. These youths were proficient in neither the variety nor the language and wete not interested in becoming so. Rather, they picked up ritualized language forms to better fit into their peer groups, dorninated by speakers of huijabi and SAE. In this context, mernbers like myself were not crossing as rnuch as "slumrningn, my term for the linguistic quivalent of yuppies hanging out in a biker bar for an evening not to connect with bikers but to impress their feiiow or sister yuppies with tales of their experiences the next day.
raisin^ the Stakes: Word PIav and Re~artee Beyond possessing sufficient iinguistic capitai to use language accurately and effectively in list interaction, engaging in word play, exchanging quips, retorts or witiicisms and engaging in npartee with ather members were all highly valu& practices on the DDEBRP. If some members articulated a discourse of rnodesty and deference on "rdlife" accomplishments, the opposite was me with linguistic capital, which was, in part, constmcted as a talent to be shown off to an admiring audience. 1 have already presented some examples in Chapter 4 in the context of members' expressions of desire for David Duchovny (e.g ".Would iike some DD jeliy?"/ "On white, brown or rye?"/ What else but .. .wry bread"). Others from this chapter include the final line in Hollis' message on clairvoyance, a wordplay on the verb "to kenn and the narne "Kenn: "So, does that make Barbie psychic?" Mn Haie followed suit in one of her messages in the thread: Daphne wrote: >At least today, we're not BEING the medium. :->
No, today, Mrs Halo is being a Large.
Mrs Hale XXL The connection with word play and language ability was made explicit in the context discussing the acronym for the research list, which Geneva thought sounded like "DDE-Burpw.She imploreci, "Can't one of you brilliant writer types come up with a better name?" Drucilla did not like it either, suggesting that the name sounded to het like "DDEB-RIP" as in "rest in peacen. Beth, however, took D~da'sassociation and changed its meaning as her "story" below indicates: DDEB-RIP. . . David suddenly finds himself surrounded by wonderf ul, independent, non-patriarchal Cg>, lusty women...he gets a fearful look on his face and whispers quietly, "DDEB?" Witnesses Say that the next sound heard was the ripping of his clothes..... Thus, the image conjured up by speakuig the list's acronym shifted from what Dani referred to as a "vulgar body noise" and death to a lusty celebration, reminiscent of Bacchic ritual? As for retort and repartee, Geneva was particularly adept at this practice. When 1joked that 1 would cycle over to the publishing house based in Toronto responsible for the X-Files book that contained Sarah's plagiarized reviews, and hurl a Molotov cocktail through the window, she quipped: "Sounds W Word plays and other witticisms did not serve solely as displays of linguistic capital; at some moments, they were intended to ease tensions and otherwise "lighten up" a serious thread, especiaiiy if it was showing signs of creating division or conflict. Mer severai members expressed an objection to being describe. as cyborgs in the conference paper, Geneva then started using the tag Iine "1am DEB of Borgn, a play on the standard "greetingwissued by the cybernetic race of aiiens of Star Trek: The 1am pîehil to Robert Morgan for the classicai feadiag of Erin's DDEBRP "myth'. 219 N+Generation, who assimilate all species they encounter into their collective ("We are the Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated"). Moreover, after a debate on the humdtechnology relationship, the bodylmind spiit, and then the afterlife and divinity, Mrs Hale added the tag line: "lighting incense at the David shrine, a rninor deityn. Her interjection was acknowledged and praised by Sonya, who noted that she "love-Mrs Hale's line about the shrine of David after a lengthy serious pst on other matters spiritual". Sonya's response was itself a display of effective language use, with the reversai of the standard adjective-noun order ("other maners spifitual"). While laughter can be good medicine for what ails a community, se~ngto bind it together, these practices always involved some element of competitiveness. At moments they led to a sense of exclusion for those whose attempts at wit were "upstaged" by those of others. This unintentional result surfaced later in the "technology/humanity" thread when Winnie mused, "lust what *would* the proper term be for a bunch of DDEBers? A worshipfulness? ;-) A covy? A duchovny?" Instead praising Winnie for her puns, other members took a crack at the "challenge". Drucilla quickly suggested "an assimilation" but it was Geneva who received the accolades for her retort, "a duchovenw: From: Drucilla PERFECT ! :- ) From: Dapbne BWWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! 1 read this as Dutch Oven. Please! 1 donlt want to be a cooking utensil. 1 just got over being a cornputer! :-> From: Sonya Geneva, this is *beautiful* I love it. I'rn sure welll corne up with al1 kinds of ideas here, but 1 love yours. 1 donlt know how the catholic sisters would feel about it, but as a (sometimes) Pagan, it's so cool. From: Mrs Hale Geneva, you're a genius!!!! Even if you are blonde. Mrs Hale brunette Geneva then took Daphne's comment about the Dutch oven and ran with it: "But wouldnlt you like DD to get all hot if he were inside you? < vbg > [very big g~]For that matter, he could be a lot of fun in the kitchen". Sonya made an effort to acknowledge the linguistic abilities of the membership in general. While acknowledging Druciila's contribution so that she wodd not feel ignored, she did not mention Geneva, this is *beautiful+ 1 love It. I'm sure we'll corne up with al1 kinds of ideas here, but 1 love yours. 1 donrt know how the catholic sisters would feel about it, but as a (sometimes) Pagan, itls so cool. Anybody got some good words £rom [Duchovny' s B.A. Honour' s] thesis to offer? BTW, 1 loved yours, too, Drucilla, Assimilation is such a good word to have fun with discussing pluralities with. The next day, in the context of the thread on the possible reasons for the lack of participation of some members, ihe daire and pressure &O dispiay the " nght" linguistic stuff became apparent. Sonya, for one, attributed her "quietnessnto the fact that she was "just generaily not too good at short, quick-reponse [sic] posts, at least not yet, on any list I'm on". Winnie named her new job and her young son as limiting her ability to start and join threads, and then admitted: And 1 *so* want to write pithy, reasoned or just plain glib responses . How about 1 admit that 1 was so pleased with myself for coming up with "a duchovny of DDEBersl' that 1 was (ego ego) looking forward to strokes frorn the group over it? Only to be upstaged by "duchoven"? 1 have nothing to corne back with. I'm just not that witty. Or maybe Itmjust tired. It is interesting how Winnie contained her accusation of being left out, by laying the blame at her own feet: it was not the others who had not met the community standard of supportiveness, but she who was unable to meet the community's standard of linguistic capital. Moreover, as she did when apologizing for taking a strong stand on the media, she weakened the affinity with her comolaint, lest it be seen as an accusation, by blarning her response on a smte of exhaustion. The Silence of the Lurkeq One practice that remains to be accounted for is that of silence. 1 have been demg practices of community as ones that are engaged in on a regular basis by enough members to create and maintain a sense of coherence and unity. That means that in every exchange, there will dways be members who remain silent. There are a complex of reasons that people speak at one moment and not others, or that some people are more takative than others in groups, both in cyberspace or "in real life". The "wallfiowers" of the latter are known as "lurkers" in the former. As Orner (1992) puts it there may be compelling conscious and unconscious reasons for not speakjng- for speaking perhaps more loudly with silence. As Patti Lather argues: "We must be wiUuig to learn from those who don't speak up in words. What are their silences tehg us? (p. 8 1) Ga1 (1989) makes a similar point about silence "gain[ing] different meanings and hav[ing] different material effects within specific institutional and cultural contextsn @. 2). Thus, one can never "distill only singular, stable meanings from [on-iine participant] silencen (Orner, 1992, p. 81.) 1 do not have extensive data on the practice of silence but certain comments made on the list and to me via private email suggest several ways in which it was a practice tied up with the process of community making. The est was connected to members' availability for andlor degree of interest in making a cornmitment to the process of creating and maintahhg the DDEBRP. Mer ail, everyone except me was a member of at least one of the three DDEBs, and active participation in any on-line community that involves in-depth discussion and values "sharing and caring" is bound to be time consurning. On the "high traffc" days, 1 used to spend up to four hours reading the mail and responding. 1 have already discussed some of the "real life" time constraints that some members had to contend with in Chapter 3. The mini-exodus at the beginning of the project can be taken as a sign of a lack of time or interest in getting involved in turning the list into a community. Once the Iist was established, a few active members, including Geneva, Hollis and Mrs Hale, lapsed into silence for a period or in the case of Ash and Dani, unsubscribed from the research list part way through the year, citing "personal reaxms" . In Hollis' case, her husband feu ili and she no longer had the time or energy to contribute. Then there were the three "lurkers", who sent las than a total of a dozen messages, most of those in the first two months. Two remained on the list util the end of the project and the third unsubsCnbed two months before the end of the project, citing time constraints. When 1 inquired about the silence of the other two, L~M'~ explained that she had ben iil for an extended pend of time as weU as busy, which made her "brigade" the priority. Even in that space, she descnbed herself as a lurker who read the mail several times a &y but usually only sent messages to other members privately. In the case of the DDEBRP, she claimed that she read the posts once a month. Cleariy the research list was a low prionty for her and, as a resuit, she was a fruige member whose "presence" had little impact on the community making process. In explainhg her "lurkingn habits, Paula also named "real life" responsibilities, as weil as her personality: "1 am normally rather quiet and careful of my speech in groups where 1 have no intimate fiiends". Even on her own brigade, she said that she only sent a few messages a month. She did, however, suggest that long tenn silence could have a negative ekt: "In a 'real world' group one member's silence is noticeable and usualy dealt with; in cyberspace the silent ones become invisible and are quickly forgotten by the group :/" . From an active contributor's perspective, lurking was not really accepted as a legitimate communal practice. Several members, in the context of the smail discussion group that continutxi after the research was complete, and in private follow- up messages to me, said that they regardai lurkers with some suspicion, seeing them more as "eavesdroppers" than community members, who drew on the community 's resources but gave nothing of themselves and, as a result, could not really be trusted. For my part, 1 found the more extended "luils" in conversation disconcerting, as 1 was not sure if the others were still interested in participating in the project: a lack of interest in the project would have had very "rd" consequences for rny academic endeavour of obtaining a PhD! Silence, thus, can have powerful effects. When 1 did make my "1s anyone out there?" interventions, 1 was always glad for the "real lifen excuses, even if some may have been white lies rnotivated by concems about not violating positive politeness by hurting my feelings. Another factor that contributed to some degree to the silences of some rnembers was the practice of posting during the &y. The majority of members found it easier to enter DDEBRP space fiom a work site during the &y because of their time constraints 58 a Lynn" never responded to my request for a pseudonym, so 1 chose with one for ha. at home. As EM explained, those who only had access to emd in the evening had two options: Read through [the messages] and reply one at a the; read through them al1 and reply to certain chosen ones. I've done option one in the past and invariably, as 1 finish reading my email, 1'11 see that someone has already answered the question 1 was answering, expressed a similar opinion to what I was saying (and said it far better), or expressed something that made me change mine [sic] opinion (did 1 mention I'm indecisive?) ;) If 1 try option 2 and read through al1 of the messages before posting, 1 find I'm a bit exhausted :) and feel that so many qreat opinions and ideas have been expressed that some of my posts would mainly be 'me too's ~ikh~~t2 WhCf !3 1st tC 2dd. 1 f~11lib~ I'Z! he2ti~3 2 de2d h3~1 or butting into other conversations.... As Erin's message suggests, it can be daunting to go on line at the end of the day and sift through dozens of messages, "thread" them and then try to respond, particularly if they seemed to have mn their course. Moreover, certain practices such as repartee or retort rely on speed to be deemed a success. However, her message also draws attention to the imbrication of silence and normative discourses of politeness and femininity. Specifically, she expressed a fear of violating negative politeness by repeating what others have already said and thereby wasting their time or disrupting the current threads. Negative politeness was also in formed by a discourse of self- effacement and deference ("and said far better", "so many great opinions and ideas have been expressedw).Others expressed similar feelings of inadequacy: From: Mazi When.. . others are so good at following up, real fast, and voluminously, 1 tend ta back off 'cause 1 wouldn't be as good at it.. .. From: Paula . . ..ALso, by the time 1 get to read [my mail], the topic has been discussed to death & 1 can't think of another original thing to contribute.... Despite the silencing effect of havhg to post in "off hours", Erin and Ardis both managed to contribute regularly despite the fact that she only had evening access. Another practice of silence involved a form of selfexclusion so as not to express difference or create conflict that could upset community relations. At the end of Chapter 4, 1 included a quote from one rnember who emailed me privately stating that she disliked the way in which her sister "brigadiersNdissecteci and criticized individual episodes of The X-Files. Rather than voice her objections and risk a confrontation, she silently read the subject headers and deleted the offending messages. As indicated in the previous section, Bel employed the same strategy at the First hint of disagreement or debate. Ironically, Bel's voicing of her act served to form a ripple in the fabric of the DDEBRP cornmunity, the members whose contributions she had deleted taking mild offence. In this way, these members (and no doubt others) managed to reconstruct the DDEBRP into a comrnunity that suited their needs. Beyond disapproval of a particular type or mode of discussion, some members chose silence when their point of view did not fit with the generai consensus reached around a subject. As 1 suggested in Chapter 4, this may have been the case for Sonya when everyone who responded to her message about the Emmy Awards expressed disapproval of the dress wom by Anderson, which Sonya had liked. Not usually one to back away from a debate, even 1 sometirnes felt "outnumberedn and "outgunned" and dropped out of the thread rather than risk alienating my participants. The most controversial silence, one that was to have a "chiiiing" effect on some members for the remainder of the project, resulted from Erin's abrupt departure halfway through the project. During the discussion on how to respond to the women who wanted to join the DDEBs even though membership was closed (excerpted in Chapter 3) Erin had taken a different position to that of the other participants. The next &y, 1 found an "unsubscribennotice generated by the Iistserv prograrn in my inbox. As 1 had not thought the discussion had been particularly heated, I emailed her and asked her what had happened. She shared her reasons for leaving with me in confidence, so suffice it to say that she felt angry and hurt by the responses of certain members from another DDEB, feeling that they had been rude and dismissive of her views. My suspicions about tensions and divisions arnong the lists had been confirmai, and I realized that this incident had the potential to blow up and possibly result in mass unsubscriptions. Instead, a " wall" of silence that enveloped around Erin's departure. 1 chatted with Erin and she assured me that she harboured no hard feelings towards me or the project and wanted to remain a participant by letting me include her contributions. 1 aiso remained süent on the DDEBRP about what had happened, adopting a policy of "letting sleeping dogs lien. 1 was aftaid of what breaking the silence might entail. Yet at the same time, 1 felt guilty that 1 had not at least hied to get members to talk about what had happened and why. Indeed, only one indirect reference was ever made about EM's departure in the remaining six months of the project and it was made in the context of a discussion about the "gap" between one's intended meaning and the way it is received: From Ardis: Offense is in the eye of the beholder. We have to remember therets the unknown variable of the person receiving the message and al1 the filters he/she has. ... Al1 sorts of weird spins get added [in cybérspzccl tkat xz don't intend -- aad we have tû liüe aith =kit, whether we like it or not. And considering we just chased one of our own out of here, I'd Say wetre all a little more familiar with this than we think. : ( Although she did not name Erin, she clearly held the community responsible for failing to adhere to values of politeness and supportiveness upon which its legitimacy was based. While the collective silence probably prevented the sunde~gof the DDEBRP community dong "brigaden lines, there was a price to pay: those who "silentlyNaügned themselves with their sister "brigadiern felt excluded henceforth. Al1 of these members told me in private email exchanges, after the data collection period had ended, that Erin's departure had a negative impact on their participation. Two made references to the formation of an insider/outsider binary: After that incident 1 felt like the odd man out & was not really cornfortable with sharing myself with the others. If the overall conversations hadn't been so interesting, 1 probably would have left as well. 1 did feel like the discussions tended to be carried on a lot by the DDEBX members. I know there were times that 1 felt like comments 1 made in 'theirt discussions were ignored. One member, however, was much more forthcoming or felt more strongly: The lack of response to her departure just appalled me. The fact that it was never publicly acknowledged by the group ticked me off....It makes me clench rny teeth to think about it still. 1 almost quit DDEBRP myself because of it -- the only reason 1 didnlt is because 1 didntt want to just unsubscribe, and 1 didn't know how ta explain it to you without yelling at you for "allowing" it to happen. 1 guess 1 kept waiting for you as listowner to step in to mediate. Of course, 1 realize that as a researcher you didn' t feel you could do that. This member's 1stparagraph alluded to my different roles and obligations as a list owner and a researcher, which at that moment were in contradiction. As a list owner, it was my responsibility to speak out and mediate but as a researcher 1 was once again "the silent observing other" who stood back and let the dispute play itself out. At this moment, 1 ultirnately chose to put aside my my poststructuralist feminist research principles for the sake of my greater gooddata for a doctoral dissertation. The last point about silence that 1 want to make is that it cannot always be understood in terms of exchsion. W'iiile tfiose wno listen in a face-to-face conversation ofien do so because they cannot speak, this is not always the case. The problem in cyberspace is that "hearer support" in the form of minimal response markers and gestures such as nodding one's head cannot be effectively represented. One example that does corne to mind is Erin's stage direction from a thread on pictures of Duchovny: "Erin nods rapidly". But those types of representations were rare. There were many threads that 1 found interesting but did not join because at that moment, 1 preferred to be a listenerfreader than a participant. Even though one of the "lurkers", Paula, admitted to feeling insecure at times, she did see herself as a community member, noting that she "enjoyed reading the various messages, 'listening' to the interesting opinions & getting X-Files tidbits". Silence at some moments, then, signals a form of "invisible" participation. Conciusion As 1 have argued, practices of poüteness, proper and clever language use and silence were overlapping and overarching practices that had the effect of producing a substance of community on the DDEBRP. Mernbers attended to the face wants of others, observing negative politeness by including "spoilersn in X-Files threads and apologizhg for sending long, boring ador irrelevant messages. There was even more concem with positive politeness, the observance of which involveci expressing low affinity with propositions, and the avoidance of flamuig, swearing , and for some, avoiding disagreement or debate all together. Members also were adherents of "standard" English. Accidental violations such as typographical errors were sornetimes pointed out by the violators themselves as proof that they did in fact know the "niles", while other violations such as the use of a "substandardn variety were intentional, a case of "slumrning" for stylistic and humourous effect. Beyond proper usage, members played with language, from creating puns, retorts and engaging in reparte ofien receiving praise from their "audiencewfor their efforts, efforts that required high levels of linguistic capital. Silence was the most difficult practice to pin down in terms of the rules of engagement: the reasons that members remained silent were never simply attributable to "rd iifintirna constnhts, lirnitcd emd access, a lack of inttmst, a feeling of inadequacy or disapproval of certain list practices and behaviours. Yet, silence, more than any of the other two communal practices, worked prirnarily through exclusion, however unintentional, in order to maintain the effect of inclusion and unity. In this sense, silence was perhaps the most criticai of all to the process of comrnunity making, for without it, the fabric of the DDEBRP community would likely have unravelled as fast as it was woven together. By engaging in these practices, members were also performing middle class and ferninine identities. Concems about violating negative politeness were, in part, articulations of a discourse of self-effacernent as were the siiences that resulted from comparing one's abilities to others on the DDEBRP and feeling asharned or inadequate. A desire to preserve positive politeness at the expense of candour and debate is aiso an articulation of a normative femininity. That said, just as the data reveals different levels of cornmitment to the cornmunity making process, it also reveals differing levels of investment in being polite, with sorne members refusing to stifle candid discussion simply to avoid offending others. Whiie tensions or open conflict were occasionally the result, when members voiced feelings of being hurt or offended by something someone had said, they were often able to mend the tear that had been created as a result. Foilowing Orner (1992), the speakhgs and silences of those who were there occurred in an extremely complex environment where shifting relations of power between and among the mernbers... combined with a multitude of subjectivities, lived identities [as weli as] political and philosophicai positions. @. 8 1) In the face of so many differences, it is amazing that any substance of coherence, however provisional, is achievable. Chapter 8 Towards an Empiridy-Grounded Cyberfeminism Every once in a while a new techndogy amves in our rnidst that seems poised to revolutionize our notions of self, community and place. In the 19~century, it was the stem engine, the light bulb, the industrial loorn and the telephone. In the 20m century it was the automobile, radio, the jet engine, television and now ICTs. Much thinhg about mass technological change is locked into a "hoorayhoo" binary (Ihrtley, 1992b) which either celebrates or bernoans such change. When Biii Gates launched Windows 95, he offered the Amencan rock group REM around 12 million dollars for the rights to their song entitled "It's the end of the world as we know it (And 1 feel fine)". In a stand against cornmerciaüsm rarely seen today, the band refused to seii their music, and Gates had to settle with the Rolling Stones' "Start me upn. Gates' offer is andogous tc what is wrong with blindly celebrating new technologies: he never actually bothered to go beyond the surface of the "upbeat" fienetic melody and the "hooray" refrain to decipher the lyrics (or use his own creation, Intemet Explorer, to find a copy on a fan website). Otherwise, he would have immediately cut a cheque for Mick and the boys, a band whose existence today is rwted entwly in its past. To fully appreciate the irony of using REM'S creation to push Microsoft product, get your hands on a copy of Docwnent (REM,1987) and get ready to sing dong with the second verse: Six o'clock - TV hourIDon't get caught in foreign towerd Slash and bud retdlisten to yourself chuml Locking Ui1 uniforming/book bumin% blood letting/ Every motive escalate/ Automotive incinerate/ Light a candle/ light a votive/ Step dodstep downl Watch your heel cmsN crushed uh-oh/ this means/ no fead cavalier/ renegadel steer clearl A tournament/ a toumamentl a tournament of lies/ Offer me solutions/ offer me alternatives/ and 1dedine? As Mrs Hale would say , " < snerk > " . Gates' choice, though, is actually a good starting place nom which to reflect upon this thesis and the claïms 1 have made about cyberspace, gender and cornrnunity. What this Ioose collection of images offers is a " The Lyrics for the song in its entirety cmbe fomd at