Today’s Plan• Manago et al article

– identity, looking-glass self– online/offline

• Hegland and Nelson article– reading assignment question– queer politics, genderqueer

• BREAK• Castells

– mass self-communication– counter-power

• wrap up and what is coming next

Manago et al article

• what is different about online identity construction?– co-produced with others – ‘virtual applause’

from Wikipedia

Online/Offline

• should we be surprised to see traditional gender norms reproduced online?

• is the virtual male gaze worse online?• no accountability online?

What did Hegland and Nelson’s article tell us?• Community for cross-dressers• Find stores of others, tutorials• Internet as positive space• Cross-dresser consultants• To pass in public – alter voice• Explored differences between sexuality and gender• Anonymity – support system online; not out offline• Pictures – space to share story• Coming out, first time cross-dressing• Projecting femininity and feminine gender norms• Acts as component of femininity (what it is to be a woman for

these individuals• what dose the male gaze mean

Hegland and Nelson Critiques

• only MtF• “I felt that their comments relating to male-to-

female cross dressers embodying stereotypical views of femininity, which feminists seek to dismantle was an erasure of female and femme-identified queers who have found empowerment through being hyper-feminine.”

Hegland and Nelson article

This article could certainly do with being translated into our current dynamics around

queer politics. Can you apply any of the conclusions reached here to the potential of

social media for the expression of a genderqueer identity?

QUEER POLITICS• what might we mean by queer politics?• Politics without binaries

– Fluidity of gender and sexuality– Denouncing specific labels (gender pronouns –

he/she; heterosexual/homosexual)• Heteronormativity and homonormativty• Compulsory heterosexuality – everything we

buy; assumed we are hetero so we have to come out; opposite of queer politics

GENDERQUEER“a colloquial or community term that describes someone who identifies as a gender other than ‘man’ or ‘woman’, or someone who identifies as neither, both, or some combination thereof. In relation to the male/female genderqueer people generally identify as more ‘both/and’ or ‘neither/nor’, rather than ‘either/or’. Some genderqueer people may identify as a third gender in addition to the traditional two. The commonality is that all genderqueer people are ambivalent about the notion that there are only two genders in the world.” (Rooke 2010:667)

• web 1.0 versus web 2.0 – what impact does this have?– greater potential for community with 2.0?

• safety changed with advent of social media?• is anonymity equated with safety?

Castells

• information and communication are vital sources of:– power– counter-power– domination– social change

• connected to how we think; how we socially construct norms and values

Power• “the structural capacity of a social actor to

impose its will over other social actor(s)” (239)

Counter-Power• “the capacity of a social

actor to resist and challenge power relations that are institutionalized” (239)

91% of the links originating within either the conservative or liberal communities stay within that community

Castells

• media = social space where power is decided– define boundaries– infinite capacity to integrate & exclude

• electronically processed information networks– organizing form of life, including social life– social networks process and manage information using

technologies• interactive, horizontal networks

– mass self-communication– disrupt top-down, vertical traditional media

mass self-communication

• “new form of socialized communication”• “mass communication because it reaches

potentially a global audience” • multimodal• “self-generated in content, self-directed in

emission, and self-selected in reception by many that communicate with many”

(Castells, 248)

Castells

• production of meaning in the public mind– power holders are entering the battle in

horizontal communication networks– networks make possible:

• unlimited diversity• largely autonomous origin

• sociability is transformed– individual-centered culture + need and

desire for sharing and co-experiencing

Wajcman critiques Castells• common theme: “everything in the digital future will be

different”– what about the social relations of gender?

• “optimistic commentators on the digital revolution promise freedom, empowerment and wealth” BUT “rarely any consciousness of the relationship between technology and gender”– “oblivious to the fact that men still dominate scientific and

technological fields and institutions”• “to be in command of the very latest technology signifies a

greater involvement in, if not power over, the future”• feminist scholarship “identified women's absence from these

spheres of influence as a key feature of gender power relations”

Technofeminism, pgs 11-12

Test Yourself

Which of the following could be classified as mass self-communication?

① an email from you to me about your essay② a video you take on your phone and upload

to YouTube③ the television show Girls④ all of the above⑤ none of the above

Test Yourself

Which of the following could be classified as mass self-communication?

① e-newsletter from a non-profit organization② character in Second Life③ YouTube video④ all of the above⑤ none of the above

Week Ten: Places and Spaces• Marwick, Alice E. and danah boyd. 2011. “I Tweet

Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience.” New Media and Society 13:96-113. (M)

• Wakeford, Nina. 2000. “Cyberqueer.” Pp. 403-415 in The Cybercultures Reader, edited by David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy. New York: Routledge. (M)

• Rooke, Alison. 2010. “Trans Youth, Science and Art: Creating (Trans) Gendered Space.” Gender, Place and Culture 17(5):655-672.