First off, I like that this was written by two women. Once I started reading, I saw that the paper was from a female gendered perspective. I then went to the "credits" page and wondered how many women were involved there. Total women (apparently - may be off by 1 or two based on gender non-specific names and lot's of assumption): 16 of 33. 50% of the "Guest editors" were women (1 of 2), the editor was a man (100%), 75% of the technical staff were women (yay!), and of 26 reviewers, 46% were women. This is certainly better than the realm in which I work where men utterly dominate the employment for technical roles. I just thought this was interesting.
The rest was actually a good read. I was dreading reading this as it was rather lengthy, but, it was a fairly good and certainly an interesting read. Not the least of which was how the women felt about going into this virtual space; it was almost as though they were getting ready to walk through a "bad part of town" and feared they may be assaulted. Their reaction on going into Second Life was so strong, one of the authors choosing to go in with an avatar of a male, the other not wanting to behave in a manner that might upset her partner (p. 10). Would I as a man have felt similarly? I don't think so. Does that make me some kind of schmuck? I don't know. What I do know is that I am just stunned at the impact these choices in a "game" had for these women. I think this in and of itself is an enormous statement about our society.
Perhaps too, this effect, of the authors feeling uncomfortable about entering as women, is an effect of their mode of research, the "autoethnograpic" mode they chose. I personally like this mode of research; I tend to be able to say fairly clearly for myself what I know and feel to be true and an generally at liberty to do so in such an effort, not unlike these blog posts. Either way, I have to believe that aside from the additional paper these authors indicate is forthcoming (footnote 5, pg. 8), a separate paper on a study of a larger segment of women on how they feel in a similar circumstance would be greatly informative.
Chato,
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the article, I too was surprised by the women's reaction when they were about to enter the Second Life environment. It was startling to see that they were so freaked out when entering a virtual world. It did seem like they thought they were going to be attacked or messed with upon entering. You could really see how unsure they were about getting involved with one of the women avoiding interaction and the other choosing to go in with a male avatar. I agree that this reflects poorly on society. I would also like to see a bigger study and see if the same conclusions were reached.