Some Open Forum threads:
Dorothea Jones
"....Many more men than women have personal Web pages
- is that just down to access to the technology and interest in
developing the skills, or do other factors come into play?...."
Helen Thorington
"For me the question of gender has been fading...perhaps
it's a function of age, perhaps of an environment in which women
function far more comfortably and with far more opportunities than
they did when I was younger... Anybody agree?"
Nell Tenhaaf
"....Catherine and I provoked discussion of gender issues
in the statement we sent out: we went back to basics,
framing our ideas with the comment that the current state of
the apparatus still generates subjectivity within a philosophical
history of dualism between body/mind, nature/culture,
female/male....."
Anna Couey
"....Sexism hasn't been overt. But I keep finding myself circling
back -- suddenly realizing that I'm doing the leg work at the
organizational homefront, while a man is out generating new projects
in the field on the basis of my labor...and other types of power
plays.
Aviva Rahmani writes, "I also see the discrimination as more subtle
and sophisticated and therefore harder to fight," and I think that's
very true. We become much more complacent when we think we're free, but
allowing us into the workplace is different than sharing power."
Sheila Pinkel
I believe that part of the liberating process is to get away
from these gender oriented terms to describe the parts of
the persona and to work on generating whole fully manifested
people and an appreciation for the spectrum of qualities
in each person. I personally have found that
this way of thinking is very liberating for me.
Jacalyn Lopez Garcia
"When I think in terms of my own
art making as a web-based artist (who explores the
complexities of cultural identity from a Mexican-American
perspective) I feel determined to address issues related
to gender as well as other contemporary issues that focus on
race, sexuality and feminist concerns......."
Moderator
This section would also be a good place to post information about current projects which would be of interest to this discussion.
What are folks working on?
|
From:
Dorothea Jones I'm a mature Fine Art degree student researching for a dissertation on aspects of identity on the Internet. I'm interested to have any views on gender bias in the construction of 'family-type' Home pages/Web sites, and I'm looking for examples of these on the Web. Many more men than women have personal Web pages - is that just down to access to the technology and interest in developing the skills, or do other factors come into play? Are there differences in the information given and how family members are identified in pages designed by men and by women? What are the significant differences and similarities between personal web pages and family photograph albums? As an Internet newbie, I hope that these questions are not inappropriate for this forum - my apologies if they are.
From:Judy Malloy Dorothea, your questions are not at all inappropriate. Thanks for joining us! I wasn't aware that many more men than women have personal home pages and would be interested in knowing what the statistics are.
From: Dorothea Jones Judy - I'm trying to get more up-to-date statistics on women's authorship of personal web pages. In "The first World Wide Web Personal Home Page Survey" in 1996, John Buten says that 34% of US Web users in April 1996 were women, but only 14% of personal web page authors were female. If anyone has more recent figures, I'd be glad to have them.
From: Aviva Rahmani
I was pleased to see Dorothea Jones address the question of differences
between web sites by & women. I have noticed the web sites by men are
definitely larger. There was a web site mounted by the husband and sons
of a friend who died of cancer this past spring
From: Helen Thorington
For me the question of gender has been fading...perhaps it's a function
of age, perhaos of an environment in which women function far more
comfortably and with far more opportunities than they did when I was
younger... Anybody agree?
From: Dawn Stoppiello
I found Dorothea's correlation between web pages and family photo albums
interesting. I would say tradionally that it has been the women in
families who organize and cherish the family photo albums. Perhaps men
are not so much interested in the content of the Web page but more in the
creation of it. There seems to be a kind of machismo associated with
being able to program html or java or whatever and have that world wide
presence. "Look what my web page can do" is heard more often then "look
at this beautiful picture of my family". This is a generalization of
course, but I guess we're looking at generalizations.
I also wanted to respond to Helen's thoughts on the fading of gender
concerns. I was recently (two weeks ago) diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
I instantly thought - oh, now I belong to a distinct group. It seems so
important in current times (maybe it always has been) to associate
oneself with a group. But I never felt that being a woman was being part
of a distinct group (even though it of course does mean that) because of
the enviornment that Helen describes. I have not experienced blatant
predjudice for being a woman. I have had many opportunites and so have
most of the women around me. I have a deep respect for all the women who
came before me to insure that I would have those opportunities but I
don't use woman as a signifier before my art making. I am a choreographer
not a hetrosexual, married woman choreographer. Of course that makes me
different than a man choreographer or a gay choreographer or a catholic
choreographer or a diabetic choreographer - which is what I am now too.
I guess gender issues for me aren't fading away, they were never really
there. But maybe they should be?
I do however make it a personal goal to encourage women to get there
hands into technology whenever I can to keep the balance right. Anyway...
From: Karen O'Rourke
Six years after the publication of Frank Popper's book, "Art in the
Electronic Age" is now part of the arts curriculum of the CAPES exam for
future high school teachers in France. Looking at the names of invited
speakers at the Universite de Paris I, which include media artist
Katerina Thomadaki, writer and curator Anne-Marie Duguet and critic
Annick Bureaud, one is struck by the fact that not only do women appear
to have a prominent place among specialists in the field but that the
list contains only one man!
From: Annick Bureaud
I would like to add another story . Some months ago I was asked to be
part of a panel about digital images in Paris. It turned out that we were
4 people : 2 men and 2 women. And I thought to myself : oh, wonderful,
there are as many women as men on this panel. The fact that I noticed it
just means that it is unusual (at least in this country). The *moderator*
surely thought the same as he mentionned it in his introductory
presentation ! The question of gender is diminishing but not totally
fading away.
One remark for Karen : you know that the French system of education
encounters much more women than men. It is just NOT the site of power
(socially, economically, etc.). How many women do we have in the business
? (I mean high-tech business).
But, Karen, I agree, it's good that so many women are involved in this
teaching programme...
From: Dorothea Jones
There are many interesting strands to this debate! I would like to
access the Web site mentioned by Aviva Rahmani [do you recall the name or
URL please], also any other Home Pages that any of you think worth
looking at for my research.
Dawn Stoppiello's thoughts about women vis-a-vis family photo albums
contrasted with men's attitudes re Web pages seem to ring true - a woman
suggested to me that men's making of Web pages can sometimes ring of a
marking out of territory!
It was notable that a UK man's family page I recently found had one page
with a photo, cartoons and lists of hobbies, favourite bands etc for each
of each two young daughters, and about 5 pages showing him racing cars at
UK race circuits, with links to Porsche pages plus 1 photo of himself.
His wife appeared on one page with simply a photograph and her name. I
wondered whether this was her choice, and how the Web pages for that
family might have been different if she had authored them - assuming of
course that she wanted Web pages at all.
An American woman directed me to her Web Page - no photo, very orientated
to spirituality and feminist support groups - and contrasted it with her
husband's which told where they lived, that they had 2 daughters, and
detailed his Church and computer interests.
I definitely need more examples of men's and women's home pages to pursue
these lines of enquiry.
From: Karen O'Rourke
Annick mentioned earlier that tech-art wasnt taken seriously. Perhaps
this made it easier for women to gain entry and to achieve recognition.
There are still many deep-rooted predjudices against women. The French
university is notoriously male-oriented (white upper middle-class) as
Pierre Bourdieu showed in Homo Academicus. However many women have made
names for themselves in spite of this. Its true that the art school is
not the seat of power at the university nor is the university the center
of power in France. But we shouldnt undermine its influence. There are
many women teachers at the university but I wouldnt be surprised if
statistically they didnt tend to cluster in the lower ranks with more men
at the top; it would seem that more men occupy key power positions than
women. However we did have a woman president for a while, the rector of
Paris is a woman... (It is also those same developing countries where
girls work to put their brothers through college which have been known to
elect women prime ministers...)
From: Aviva Rahmani
The web site is
From: Aviva Rahmani
Pardon me, Dorothea Jones, apparently the URL got lost on both postings
because of brackets.
It is jamien.com
From: Diane Gage
Dorothea -- you might be interested for your research in my friend Helen
Redman's website
www.birthingthecrone.com, which presents a body of
artwork dealing with menopause and issues of female aging.
From:
Dorothea Jones
Many thanks for the recommendations as to Web sites, Aviva and Diane -
both are most interesting to me not only for my dissertation research but
also in terms of the themes of my studio practice [various aspects of
being human].
I suspect that in the UK we have fewer personal Web sites per Web user
than in the US - some of the reasons may be cultural but there is also
the eminently practical disincentive that we have to pay for all local
telephone calls by the minute!
Anyway, many thanks to everyone who has contributed - any further
thoughts would be welcome, of course.
From: Judy Malloy
A few of the artist's sites listed in the Sources section of this panel
might also be of interest. In particular, Shirley Sneve's A Story of
Mothers and Daughters in South Dakata and Abbe Don's Bubbe's
Back Porch -
http://www.bubbe.com come to mind. (but the link is blown on
Shirley's site and I have on my list to contact her)
From: Nell Tenhaaf
In 1991, I and longtime friend, colleague and fellow media
artist Catherine Richards organized the bioapparatus event
at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. This was a ten-week
residency plus seminar that brought together twenty or so
artistic/theoretical minds to think through the history and
current configuration of the mind-body-machine meld. We
coined the term "bioapparatus" for the residency, to describe
a multi-layered theme of the technological apparatus, the
technologized body, and new ways of looking at biology.
Plus at the time, we were looking at all of this through the
scrim of public fascination with virtual reality, which was
coming to a peak just about then. The method was to
disseminate very widely a one page text about issues related
to the bioapparatus, request short responses, have our residents
address these at the two-day seminar, and compile all of that
into a publication. Dense, consdensed, and really interesting.
Our residents ended up being about one third women, a result
of chance to a very great extent given the length of stay.
Although this wasn't entirely to our liking, they were strong
women with solid practices and ideas. Catherine and I provoked
discussion of gender issues in the statement we sent out: we
went back to basics, framing our ideas with the comment that
the current state of the apparatus still generates subjectivity
within a philosophical history of dualism between body/mind,
nature/culture, female/male. We cited Rosi Braidotti's concept
of "bodily materiality" in relation to virtuality and the
mythologies being generated around it. The responses we got
were again about one-third women -- odd, but perhaps
symptomatic of the territory. We categorized the responses
for discussion under headings that included Natural Artifice,
Designing the Social, Re-embodiment, Perfect Bodies,
Subjectivities, Cyborg Fictions.
I think we really succeeded in integrating gender issues into
what was in fact a very guy kind of affair because the real
authorities there in terms of VR technology were men --
and I don't disparage them at all, they were great. In fact
we were introducing the issues to some of them, as they may
have been very advanced in their techno field but hadn't had
to encounter the challenge of contextualizing their work
culturally and socially. It was a heady moment in that way,
and indicated that we needed to do more mixing of types of
people working in new technologies. Well we said that then,
but unfortunately haven't worked the reality of it into our
lives except on a more ad hoc basis.
From: Moderator
Nell, I like what you and Catherine said in the introduction to
BIOAPPARATUS (the book which came out of the process) -- "Rather
than create a category in the discussion paper that focused on gender
issues, we preferred to have these questions, like questions of race,
class and cultural differences integrated as much as possible into all
the discussions."
From: Anna Couey
A couple additions to the website list:
Jacalyn Lopez Garcia's "Glass Houses" Fuses autobiography as a
way of exploring issues of race, class, acculturation and nationalism.
Also Carolyn Guyer's project, Mother Millenia, gathering stories about
mothers -
http://mothermillennia.org/
To resurface a thread that Helen and Dawn raised about gender
identity...I wonder (& Judy and Sonya and I have had some discussions
about it) to what extent age plays a role -- at least for educated white
women in the US. Many of the men my age (late 30s) know how to cook, for
example; it's rare in my father's generation. That's got to play out in
male/female relationships somehow. In the workplace, like Dawn, I feel
that I've had a number of opportunties -- and sometimes advantages, being
a woman. Sexism hasn't been overt. But I keep finding myself circling
back -- suddenly realizing that I'm doing the leg work at the
organizational homefront, while a man is out generating new projects in
the field on the basis of my labor...and other types of power plays.
Aviva Rahmani writes, "I also see the discrimination as more subtle and
sophisticated and therefore harder to fight," and I think that's very
true. We become much more complacent when we think we're free, but
allowing us into the workplace is different than sharing power.
From: Dorothea Jones
Thanks, the web sites are very relevant for me.
On gender identity, as an older woman [in my 50s] I know a number of
partnerships in my age group where the men have domestic skills,
especially enjoying cooking. But the majority of husbands/wives seem to
have settled for the "traditional" marital roles, with the wives
apparently uncomfortable if their husband tries to get involved with
cooking etc when he retires.
In my work [local government], the sexism was subtle and generally
unrecognised by the "suits" who perpetrated it. When I left 5 years ago,
women still had to struggle to be taken altogether seriously, and I still
got "talked down" and my ideas appropriated by male managers at my own
and higher levels.
Another issue I find with age is a feeling of being less acknowledged and
less valued by those who don't know me. Perhaps I'm becoming paranoid! In
my College year group [UK Fine Art degree] there are 70 students mainly
around 21 years old. I am in the top 2 or 3 on assessments, but I believe
the College is mainly interested in promoting one or two of the young men
as their artists of the future - of course, they do have more years in
front of them!
From: Christy Sheffield Sanford
Oh, I don't think you're being paranoid, Dorothea. I just can't let
myself dwell on the specific injustices for long or I'd lose my focus.
When I find myself becoming angry about the male
dominance/slights/unfairness, I rededicate myself to promoting women and
to voicing my art/thoughts/beliefs. I have one friend, a mere child of
22, who taught me a very important thing: think more about what you want
to happen than on what you don't have. This has helped enormously in my
outlook and goals.
As to the practical matter of looking up home pages (Are you sure you
want to do this, sounds like torture.), go to individual domains, often
they list home pages. For example, Zetnet has a users page index
http://users.zetnet.co.uk/ as do many domains.
To Helen Thorington, yes and no. I find some gender issues rather
veiled. Here's a typical male ploy: talking too much. The aggression is
in sheer number of words. I find this often on lists. Another WAS the
emphasis on number of links, like notches in a gun belt. In fact, and
I'm sure many will disagree, I find the whole overdependence on linking
to a new URL (constant spurting) to be rather male. I think it has
almost killed hypertext. Some of us have recognized this (even men) and
are allowing the work to unfold, allowing people to play the page. All
thanks to the miracle of Java Scripting. I'm not a Java Scriptor but I
know how to download scripts and how to use Dreamweaver to create my own.
From: Jennifer Ley
This is a rather intriguing discussion, given the fact that a few weeks
ago I was speaking with a man who does creative technical work on the
net, and he commented that in his estimation, it was the women who were
doing all the most interesting work in new media. So I would have to
second Christy's thoughts and focus on what women are doing, rather than
whether or not we have web page parity in numbers with men. Reading
through the panelists for this conference, I am struck by just how many
women I know who are doing everything from making art to editing literary
websites to creating hypertext/hypermedia work to coordinating online
writers workshops, etc, whose names I don't see listed. (And please
don't take this statement to imply anything ... I also see many women
whose work I admire ... my point being our numbers are greater than we
sometimes know. Many of the people I'll list below are part of the
literary world on the web.)
Here is a partial list of women who come to mind, in no particular order,
with some urls:
Sue Thomas, Director: trAce online writers community
http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/
At the same, what Anna Couey says "....Sexism hasn't been overt. But I
keep finding myself circling back -- suddenly realizing that I'm doing
the leg work at the organizational homefront, while a man is out
generating new projects in the field on the basis of my labor...and other
types of power plays," is sadly, in my experience sometimes true. But it
is also our responsibility to leave situations where we find this to be
the case. When it comes to the web, perhaps more so than ever before,
women have no reason to be left behind.
From: Margaret Morse
In response to Dorothea Jones, are you familiar with the artist Rebecca
Bollinger's work? Her research is near your area. I heard her give a
talk comparing family web pages at Chik Tek in San Jose circa two years
ago. I believe she is in residence at the Exploratorium in San Francisco
now.
I like the idea of web pages as the fat photo wallets my adolescent
friends and I carried in the 1950's, mini-shrines we whipped out of our
gigantic purses, seemingly personal but made for show.
From: CK Tower
Greetings,
A correction on the address to Conspire:
http://www.conspire.org and the special issue highlighting women
writers, Ms. Ley and I co-produced:
http://www.conspire.org/0208/
and the sister issue:
http://www.heelstone.com/wherewewere/p-text4.htm
Jennifer and I will be back again in Feb. 2000 with the 2nd annual
women's issue- some talented women are already clamoring to get in.
Besides that there are many many exciting projects in the works involving
the internet literary community, where women are heading them up.
Best Wishes
From: Sheila Pinkel
In the context of this discuss I must say that I have always been
uncomfortable with the terms male and female when they are used to
describe character traits. I do much better when I think of all people as
having the capacity for assertive/aggressive and intuitive/subjective
behavior and experiences. I also believe that men suffer as much as women
in this misuse of gendering of language to describe human qualities
because they are not given adequate room to identify their own
subjective experiences.
This lack of conceptual space for mens development is part of the problem
today. We all have a spectrum of aggressive and subjective potential
abilities. The misuse of language obfuscates rather than clarifies the
realities and dilemmas confronting men and women. I would rather think
about each person in terms of the extent to which both aspects of the
persona have been developed.
When I think about my own life experience, I have not thought that I was
limited by being a woman. My limitations were more from a paucity of
imagination or capability. I found that if I could clearly imagine what I
wanted to do, I usually found a way to do it.
That said, I also believe that women must continue to develop new
narratives which will provide alternative options and goals besides
those presented by the power structure. Women must continue the
groundbreaking work they have been doing for the last thirty years to do
research and creative works which provide understanding and empowerment
and must continue to support one anther in their efforts. The web is an
extraordinary vehicle for dissemination of ideas. However, unless we
also implement those ideas in the physical world, we remain virtually
empowered
Finally, I agree with Brenda Laurel in being tired of seeing things
explode. I applaud her efforts to generate a new narrative format and
believe that we all need to work on this, both women and men.
From: Jacalyn Lopez Garcia
When I think in terms of my own art making as a web-based artist (who
explores the complexities of cultural identity from a Mexican-American
perspective) I feel determined to address issues related to gender as
well as other contemporary issues that focus on race, sexuality and
feminist concerns. As an artist, activist and humanitarian, I also have
a strong desire to create art that can inspire a need for an open-minded
society: the kind that can embrace differences. Therefore, it is never
my intention to completely isolate the female experience but rather to
create a space for raising consciousness with regard to developing a
greater understanding of humanity.
Presently I am an instructor at Los Angeles Mission College where I teach
Visual Communication classes and it is exciting for me to report that
one-third of the students enrolled in my classes are women. So I find
the notion that ....gender is fading an interesting one. As much as I
would like to believe this true, I cant help feeling that issues based on
inequalities and injustices (with regard to women in the work place and
in the art world) still needs to be addressed. And so I question...what
responsibility are individuals willing to take in order to create greater
opportunities for women to succeed in the field of computer-based art
technologies of today's art world? In answer to my own question, I
believe it is important for us to focus on examining the relationship
between strengths & similarities rather than the negative aspects of
differences.
Note:
Glass Houses exemplifies the methodologies I used
to explore contemporary themes based on the fear of becoming
disenfranchised from ones cultural roots. This website is further
intended to examine how an artist creates reflections of the past (with
the use of an autobiographical narrative and family photographs) while
exploring new understandings of the present.
From: Cynthia Rubin
On this, the last day of this discussion, it has been of interest of me
that much of the discussion has focused on questions of identity, My
thoughts are from this are not that some parts of identity are more
important than others (as has been suggested) but that different parts of
our identities pose different problems and pleasures.
Being a woman is clearly one of the most important aspects of my
identity. But it is one that is so woven into who I am, (both because it
is immediately evident to other when they meet me and because it is
something that is essentially unchangeable) that in some ways it is less
interesting to me. There is no borderline here. I am female.
The other aspects of my identity are more complicated. I embrace being
Jewish and American, but each of these aspects of my identity can be
submerged, forgotten, or hidden. Some of us get to do this more easily
than others (my features are distinctly Jewish, and my facility with
accents is poor) but still these parts of my identity are only obvious to
those who know. And there is a play between these identities. When I
travel in Europe I am sometimes asked if I am from the Netherlands, and I
assume that those who ask this know that I am Jewish (dark hair,
significant Jewish population in the Netherlands) but do not think of me
as American because I do not fit that stereotype.
As an artist, I am more intrigued by these border-line identities. They
offer me more of a challenge in exploration. But ironically, in the late
20th century, it is being a woman that poses more challenges in my daily
life.
From: Jenni
I don't blame the men for the way that some of them are....It is the
government... The government has made women responsible for men's
irresponsibilities. A man can walk out and then the woman has to
raise the kids and work while Mr. loser is out getting what he
calls a life. I don't believe that going against everything that is
morally right is getting a life. Until women decide to take a stand
and let the Congressman of their state know that the system is
not fair... Than I guess the system will stay the way it is...I
am not some knot head who hasn't lived, nor am I someone who sits
idly by. I am a mother with 3 children from a previous marriage
(one of those soap opera divorce scenerios..my ex is with my
ex-bestfriend..and they belong together!) I also have to children
from another relationship, all under 8 years . I love them and
would give my life for them. I work, go to school(to be an
attorney) and I raise my kids. What does the ex do? Not a darn
thing....
Do I want sympathy? GOD NO! I want to make a difference in this
world and I will. If you have a comment please email me at
jenniwillsucceed@yahoo.com
|
[Gender & Identity Panel] [The Panelists] [Keynote Statements] [Icebreaker] [About this Panel]