online theater:
gender, dating & race
narratives
April 14, 2004
IS 208B
Today’s topics
1.
2.
3.
4.
Brenda Laurel, computers as theater –
what kinds of narratives do people enact?
Tinysex: narratives about gender
Nakamura: narratives about race
Dating: narratives about market exchange
Laurel, Online dramaturgical
metaphors
Software is a communications medium built
upon culture -- metaphors, storylines,
action.
} ‘tool’ & ‘user’ are metaphors with limited
utility.
} Metaphors are ‘cognitive hooks,’ enabling
action with low cultural overhead
} Computers theater -- focus upon directing
actors and actions in a story.
Computers as theater?
1.
Identity construction / deception, the
emotional infrastructure of nearly all human
communication


2.
Goffman views identity as constrained by roles and
feedback that have real consequences in RL, and in
virtual environments linked to RL.
It looks as if online social networks are frequently
reinforced by RL social networks.
Three keys to identity:
 Sex & gender is a tacit drama within every organization
-- a fundamental building block of organizations.
 Race
 Markets
2. Tinysex: some definitions
No-one uses these terms with any consistency but
here’s a try at defining them:
 Sex differences = biological differences, including
chromosomes, hormones, anatomy, secondary
sex characteristics
 Transexuals = sense you’re in the wrong body

Gender = cultural practices that construct
behavior and ideas about sex differences.
 Transgender = feeling you don’t fit either M/F categories
“sex roles”
Persistent cultural practice to read gender as
important part of every social context, whether
salient or not.
Sex “roles” are expectations of M/F behavior, people
violating these expectations subject to negative
feedback outside of their own subculture. For this
reason ‘signs expressed’ tend to be in code.
Gender socially constructed as “opposite sexes,” as
if two species, although in fact behavior is a
variable with feminine men and masculine women
in every possible combination.
Organizations are (always)
gendered

Social networks have a tendency to be more or
less single sex (depending upon context)
 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice – study of
gender culture of children’s games.
 Masculinity = rights, competition, rule oriented
 Femininity = social relationships

Rosabeth Kanter, Men and Women of the
Corporation. Corporations (and utopias) are
gendered -- men in authority roles, women in
relationship roles.
Sex & gender online
Turkle: Gender becomes a variable when there are
no consequences outside the MUD of not living
up to sex role expectations
– and yet people demand that you enact a sex role =
theater of gender.
}
}
No consequences -- but there may be personal
emotional consequences in RL.
And online social networks often seem to link to RL
social networks, so there may be consequences.
Turkle, on tinysex
The emotional functions of tinysex
 Turkle thinks the function of play is emotional
growth, experimentation to solve deeply felt
problems or issues (Erickson, Childhood &
Society; Turkle The Second Self)
 Gender identity play a form of entertainment, but
because gender is so closely tied to identity, has
emotional consequences in RL.
M/F interactive patterns of
dependence
F presenting identities are constantly offered help -reinforcing feelings of dependence, inadequacy.
M presenting identities are not offered help,
expected to learn rules through competition,
games, assertion of rights.
Barrie Thorne, Gender Play. How games reflect
and reinforce ‘sex roles’ (great chapter on ‘cooties’
– contamination by the other sex)
Note that M/F inequality exists in every culture, but
there is considerable variation in how sex
roles/gender is performed.
Software design & gender


NOTE: If sex roles/gender is persistent
online theater it becomes a design issue:
the use of identity/anonymity.
Sherry Hsi == girls drop out of class
discussions in middle school because of
gender; online discussions that don’t reveal
sex are much more egalitarian. See
http://www.concord.org/~sherry/dissertation/index.html.
Nakamura on race ‘roles?’
Race as a ‘role:’ stereotypes of being Asian
 Nakamura: sex is choice, but default race is white
(absence of definition is white)
 Because participants are largely white
 Because MUD goal is harmony, race is regarded as
unharmonious

Identity tourism = recreational race
 Male = Samuri warrior fantasies
 Female = exgeisha

Edward Said = marginalizing the ‘other’ = fantasy
of control because other is stereotyped. Tacit
theater of Western culture is colonial attitude
towards people of color.
3. Dating & social networks: the
theater of market exchange
}
}
}
‘dating and mating’ occurs within context of
strong tie social networks in RL (neighborhood,
education)
matchmaking by family, friends -- self
confidence, advising, helping to calculate
exchange value. (Note arranged marriages).
Note success of British site “Friends reunited” -1/6 the British population belongs -- to find high
school loves (and have affairs with them). The
persistence of early strong networks.
Online dating

Lifestage: after college social networks of single
people tend to become much smaller, harder to
find mates.
 Acceptance of online matchmakers due to
confidentiality, ability to assess the other without
commitment, ability to escalate commitment
slowly. How well can software do this?
 Profiles/search and match/private messaging/exchange
of pictures
 Eventually FtF meeting (pheromones?)
Marriage markets
M/F construct identity profiles thinking about what
the ‘other’ is looking for: exchange of social status,
educational level, attractiveness, expressive
quality.
Dating a classic market, but with imperfect
information about the other; function of SN is to
qualify information. (See Geertz on Morocco street
markets)
What holds the relation together during
negotiations? SN in RL; online matchmakers have
an interest in keeping people trying.
Monday, April 19
Theme: Blogs (and other kinds of social software)
o as an innovation -- how do innovations spread?
o The ‘S’ curve: where has it taken hold? What are
accelerators?
o Diffusion of innovation follows social networks (early
adopters / influentials) -- which are engaged now?
o Reinvention. Typically innovations accelerate the ‘S’
curve when they find a new social context -- is that
happening?
o
As genre -- are there rules that make info more
redundant? What relation to social networks?