Masculinities on the Web
I found the article about masculinity on the web interesting, and thought several of the sites mentioned within the article sounded pretty cool. Being a woman, I hadn’t given much thought to the ideas of web-based masculinity before. I actually am not sure if these ideas factored into my avatar construction and interaction very much, as I am a girl who created an avatar that was a girl. I didn’t even really think about creating a male avatar. My first impulse was to create an avatar that looked like me, only a little bit better. Masculinity wasn’t on my mind at all.
However, I found during my time in Second Life that some ideas of masculinity were still relevant. Though I felt sort of weird talking to random strangers at all, I became more likely to respond to women who approached me, because they were less likely to make uncomfortable sexual advances. Perhaps this is a way for male users (or female users trying to experience a role reversal) to assert masculinity, especially those who don’t feel particularly adept at asserting it in real life.
Turkle’s quote, “by enabling people to experience what it feels like to be the opposite gender or to have no gender at all, the practice encourages reflection on the way ideas about gender shape our expectations,” raises an interesting point. I didn’t attempt to assume a male identity, but if I had, how much of my interactions would I have to change to pass as a male?
I feel like it’s still pretty common to assume that the avatars we encounter are representing users of the same gender – though we always know in the back of our minds that’s not necessarily true, it’s not one of the first things that pops into our minds when someone approaches us. Generally, I think we start entertaining these questions more seriously when someone doesn’t act the way we’d expect a person of their gender to act; maybe they don’t talk like a guy, they don’t dress like a guy, or the topics they bring up don’t seem masculine. This brings us back to Turkle’s quote. What do we inherently expect from someone based on gender, and how does the ability for users to assume the opposite gender mess with those expectations?
This really brought up some good points that I hadn’t considered. When encountering avatars on Second Life, I always assumed the person behind the avatar was the same sex as their avatar as well. All the avatars seemed to act in accordance with whichever particular gender they were, but if an avatar had not done so I would have definitely began to question the gender of the individual behind the avatar. Masculinity was playing a bigger role in my perception of Second Life than I had realized.
| Posted 2 years, 12 months ago