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Post Dec 16
The over surveillance on marginal internet users is also a kind of social oppression. Marginal internet users feel anxious and unsafe about the surveillance of government and other authorities; however, they do not have many chances and rights to defend their privacy during the process of using the broadband technology. In fact, marginal internet users just get the access to technology information and the skills of using it. Dominant authorities do not give marginal internet users the opportunity to understand how the information technology network work and “the way others—employers, banks, learning institutions, law enforcement, retailers, and more—interact with marginal internet users” (14). For marginal internet users, their submissive and oppressive roles in digital world make them get more harm rather than benefits from broadband technology. Their low digital literacy and limited technology skills make them fail to identify digital harm targeted at them.
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Post Dec 6: Al-Chaar’s Selfie
Through western media’s coverage of Al-Chaar’s death and the selfie he took with his friends before the bomb, it is true that the western culture takes the selfie as a western mode of expression to interpret Al-Chaar’s death and the cultural conditions of his death. Through the process of reporting Al-Chaar’s death, the young Lebanese’s story and the selfie “move into a Western and especially a U.S. media context, Al-Chaar and his death become subject to the dominant narratives of the War on Terror” (1665). People always like to see what they want to see. The “westernized” identity of Al-Chaar (he is represented as an upper-middle class, English speaking, secular, urban teenager who wants to move to America and play for NBA) precisely meet Western media and audiences’ expectation and imagination of Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within the nation of Lebanon. Within Western media’s narrative, Al-Chaar is constructed as a cosmopolitan symbol that shows “democratic struggle within Lebanon or encroachment from authoritarian Syria”, which is palatable to Western media audience and in accordance with the Islamphobia and “Otherness” constructed in the discourse of Occidentalism. Based on Said’s deconstruction of orientalism, I would argue that Western media coverage of Al-Chaar’s death still demonstrate a truth that the “Orient is unable to represent itself” (1666). There are so many deaths caused by bombs just like Al-Chaar’s death; however, ultimately, it is the West and western value that determine which death deserves to be grievable.
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Post Nov 30
It seems that Facebook tries to build strong relationships with both users and advertising clients: the 56 new genders set on the profile page indeed show Facebook’s support and alliance with trans and gender non-conforming communities; the male-female options set on the sign-up page also reflect Facebook’s attempt to make the gender data more manageable and benefit for its financial success. However, the mandatory male-female option set on the sign-up page indicates that underneath the surface (conditions like the multiple choices for gender) Facebook still serves the hegemonic regimes and gender binary system. Also, I still doubt that the legitimacy and reasonability of Facebook’s Terms of Service. Facebook believes that “authentic identity” is the core of Facebook’s experience and the future of the Internet. However, like Blvens demonstrated in the article, the emphasis on authenticity “erase(s) and delegitimize(s) the many authentic experiences of people who question their identity, people with identities that change over time, and people who depend on aliases for safety” (5). For myself, I prefer use aliases for the safety reason. Facebook establishes the Terms of Service to encourage people to use the real identity on social media platform while I feel that it does not make enough effort to protect people’s authenticity and privacy. For example, Facebook needs to think about how to protect the trans and non-conforming gender groups who are given choice to show their gender identity from the violence and discrimination caused by the hegemonic system. Another paradox within Facebook is that although the Terms of Service encourage people to use the real demographic information, which includes the gender, the binary option on the sign-up page block the trans and non-conforming gender people’s access to demonstrate their real gender identities.
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Post Nov 23
Before reading Hasinoff’s article, I thought that I was just like many other people who consider “sexting” as a kind of immoral and illegal behavior. However, after reading Hasinoff’s article which provides a new perspective on the topic of sexting, I agree that we should regard sexting as a kind of media production that require us to think about the both the “opportunities” and “risks” within it (449). On the one hand, we should pay attention to the risky aspects of sexting, like danger caused by the online anonymity; on the other hand, we should not ignore the positive aspects brought by sexting to youth. For instance, the anonymity could protect femininity to some extent; and media communication like sexting could also help women and girls to enhance their self-expression and “navigate their sexual relationships” (455). Moreover, the discussion of sexting asks us to pay more attention on the privacy and authorship issues within the media communication discourse. The privacy and authorship of sexting should be protected.
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Post Nov 16
When talking about the Internet access and interactivity within the cyberworld, it is obvious that the upper-middle-class white community holds the most power of digital production. The white group is the major producer of visual logic of race on the Internet. Compared with other racial minority groups, people usually believe that the Asian American group has the most opportunities to Internet access and cyberspace participation. Although for a long time the mainstream media including the press, television and films try to reinforce the racial stereotypes of Asian Americans, it is unreasonable to shape the whole Asian American community as upper-middle-class "model minority". Nakamura's article points out that some surveys and studies of Asian Americans' digital interactivity and Internet access actually ignore the "immigrants a or recently arrived and undereducated Asian Americans"(171). The results derived from these surveys do not account for the non-English speakers within the Asian American community. The large number of these non-English speakers and undereducated individuals within the Asian American group reflects some facts that "minority groups such as Asians who have been believed to be especially wired have less interactivity than previously thought"(172). In fact, since Asian Americans are "classed as honorary or approximate whites" when referred to the digital participation and access, their "oppression and position as material labor base" are actually obscured (178). Like other racial minority groups, Asian Americans are still passive audience and consumers of the racial cyberworld. The access of the Internet is not equally distributed.
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Post Nov. 9
In the class, we have concluded that the virtual world tries to manages differences by effacing them. From Fernandez’s research, we could find that the cyberspace nullifies race and racism. However, the erasure of “differences” and race in the cyber world does not mean that we have figured out racism problems. For me, this kind of erasure or effacement is more like a temporary escape from real world which suffers oppression and brutality from patriarchy system. People claim that there is no racism in the virtual world; nevertheless, racism behavior usually happens under people’s unawareness and unconsciousness. Fernandez mentions this kind of humans’ unconsciousness of racism in the article that:
“I’m proposing that like other social habits, many racist behaviors occur below the level of conscious awareness. Racism can be performed without deliberation; thus, an individual may vehemently oppose racist beliefs and consistently behave in racist ways” (39).
These “unconscious” behaviors help to reinforce racism, naturalize and legitimate racism, and then make it become an unquestioned part of our daily life. The stereotypes of specific ethnic groups reflected in the visual media field demonstrate how racism has been transformed into a social agreement by the privileged ethnic groups. To be honest, I am tired of watching stereotypical Asian characters in Western films or TV series. With visual media’s advanced development, it is ridiculous to see that many visual media works still prefer characterize Asian figures as nerds.
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Post Nov. 2nd
From the “No Makeup” Makeup tutorial video, it is clearly that “naturality” has become a standard of beauty even people may not aware of it. Countless videos on YouTube like the “No Makeup” tutorial contribute to create an atmosphere that emphasizes “right” femininity should be with naturality, self-effacing and “pure’ beauty. Undoubtedly, in a white-male dominated society, the “naturality” of beauty does not apply to all races, genders or sexualities; in fact, the “natural” beauties refer to people who are white in terms of race and with the visibility of cis-gender females. The terms of “femininity”, “beauty”, and “naturality” are always socialized and should be interpreted in social discourse.
Moreover, with makeups, there is no femininity that is “natural”. The weird but interesting thing is people try to “naturalize” femininity by unnatural ways. As we have mentioned in class, femininity is a technology that has specific purposes and uses. The unnatural behaviors practiced on femininity satisfy some specific kinds of social needs and power. The “No Makeup” Makeup tutorial also reminds me of an essay from Kobena Mercer which focus on black people’s hair styles and politics within different black hair styles. Below is a quote from the essay:
Our hair, like our skin, is a highly sensitive surface on which competing definitions of ‘the beautiful’ are played out in struggle. The racial overdeterminations of this nature/ culture ambivalence are writ large in this description of hair-straightening by a Jamaican hairdresser:
Next, apply hot oil, massaging the hair well which prepares it for a shampoo. You dry the hair, leaving little moisture in it, and then apply grease. When the hair is completely dry you start cultivating it with a hot comb… Now the hair is all straight. You can use the curling iron on it. Most people like it curled and waved, not just straight, not just dead straight.(quoted in Henriques 1953:55)
Her metaphor of ‘cultivation’ is telling because it makes sense in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, it recuperates the brutal logic of white-bias: to cultivate is to transform something found ‘in the wild’ into something of social use and value, like domesticating a forest into a field. It thus implies that in its natural given state, black people’shair has no inherent aesthetic value: it must be worked upon before it can be beautiful. But on the other hand, all human hair is ‘cultivated’ in this way in so far as it merely provides the raw material for practices, procedures and ritual techniques of cultural writing and social inscription. Moreover, in bringing out other aspects of the styling process which highlight its specificity as a cultural practice—the skills of the hairdresser, the choices of the client—the ambiguous metaphor alerts us to the fact that nobody’s hair is ever just natural, but is always shaped and reshaped by social convention and symbolic intervention.
Afro, a typical black hair style which is a sign of Black Pride, empowers black identity and beauty and show blacks’ revolt against white hegemony and white-bias. Although this hair style embrace “naturalness” (the hair is encouraged to grow upwards and outwards, “natural and free”), it is not totally natural. From the text above, we could say that the Afro reflects blacks’ “cultivation” and intervention on body and represents their politics visions and appeals. Like the black hair styles serve black community’s requirements, the “no makeup” makeups are tools to serve specific power and social norms.
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The Anonymous
As we have discussed in class, the Anonymous is anarchic. It aims to be offensive and often defensive. It is interesting to see that the Anonymous do not see themselves as criminals or terrorists. On the contrary, in the film “We Are Legion” they are regarded as “activists and protectors of free speech,” and a group of people who “tend to rise up most powerfully when they perceive a threat to internet freedom or personal privacy.” The Anonymous believe that we are live under the unapproved surveillance and intrusion controlled by government and large corporations. From this aspect, we could believe that the Anonymous challenge the privilege and hegemony within the patriarchy system. However, from my perspective, since any one could wear the mask and demonstrate that he or she is part of the Anonymous, it is hard for the Anonymous to manage its organization and ensure each member’s goal is in accordance with the goal of the whole Anonymous group. Some people may take advantage of the Anonymous’ “good” to do something bad. to Also, it seems that the Anonymous’ ambition is to reveal the free the “truth” and protect privacy, then how do they define the term of “truth”. I like the idea that the professor mentioned in class: the term of “truth” is always socially constructed. How can the Anonymous ensure that the reveal of the “truths” could benefit the society? This may be a problem we need to think about.
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Slash Fiction and Cyberfeminism
Based upon Manovich’s research, I agree that the development of the Internet and social media platforms indeed enhance conversation and communication between commercial content and user-generated content. As one of the noteworthy kinds of fan culture, slash fiction could be a typical example to display how fandom communicate and interact with mass media and culture industries. Unlike western countries in which slash fiction culture has already got well fostered and developed in pre-Internet age, China’s slash fiction culture actually grows up and becomes prevailing with the blossom of the Internet and social media platforms. In other words, the environment of web 2.0 provides platforms for Chinese fandom of slash fiction to create and construct their own culture. Like Kruse demonstrates in the article, “it’s certainly easier for fans to interact and to circulate their own texts and meanings in a digital universe”, the large amount of online reading websites of slash fiction (many of them are commercial) offer authors and readers access to make conversation happen. On these websites, readers and authors could communicate with each other through forums and comments. For example, for slash fiction authors who write on commercial reading websites, they may adjust storylines according to readers’ (consumers of slash )requirement. That is, with the use of digital technology, the process of creating the slash culture becomes more interactive. Moreover, I also would like to consider the development of online slash fiction culture as a way of empowerment of cyberfeminism. Through the “remix” of the original context, online slash fiction subverts the narratives mostly defined and controlled by masculine culture, and demonstrates its rebellion against hegemony and patriarchy.
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4th Post of Tumblr Project
Quotes from “Feminism in China”:
Vagina is a ‘bad’ word in China and saying it out loud was what got Xu Zihua (not her real name) and another 16 of her colleagues in trouble at the beginning of November. The undergraduates from Beijing Foreign Studies Universities (BFSU), one of China’s most prestigious universities, decided to post photographs of themselves holding up messages such as “My Vagina Says: I Want Freedom,” to promote an upcoming campus performance of The Vagina Monologues, U.S. playwright Eve Ensler’s controversial 1996 play.
The young women, all aged around 21, posted the photos on Nov. 7 on Renren, an online community website similar to Facebook and popular with university students. The photos were shared on other social media websites, including the Chinese Twitter-like microblog Sina Weibo and on Youku, China’s leading video sharing platform, and went viral. “We were only promoting our performance, we never thought we’d get that much attention,” explained Xu. But the photos hit a nerve with Chinese internet users and what ensued was a wave of degrading comments online, targeting the girls' looks and their 'deviant sexual morals.'
My views:
In 2013, although the #My Vagina Says event was condemned by many people through different social media tools in China, this feminism campaign indeed “went viral” and to some degree, it stimulated a new wave of discussion of feminism and equal rights in China. People especially university students who are savvy users of social media, like the microblog Sina Weibo and Renren, paid close attention to this feminism campaign and different levels and scales of discussion were held through the Internet. It seems that the digital infrastructure, which means the social media platforms such as Renren in this specific feminism event, enhanced the feminist community through digital engagement. #My Vagina Says event expressed its “social imaginary” of feminism, sex education, anti-sexual assault etc. through the tools provided by social media. In the light of what we have underlined in class, I believe the Internet technology particularly the development of social media could accelerate the development of China’s feminism.
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3rd Post of Tumblr Project
From Susana Loza's "Hashtag Feminism, #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, and the Other #FemFuture", I do believe that the Twitter, Tumblr or other social media platforms could be a tool, or even a weapon for women of color to fight for their equal "seats" in defining and constructing feminism. Although the hashtag campaigns have their limitations, to some degree they indeed break the feminism "safe space" in which white women are privileged while the women of color are ignored. The existence of the "safe space" actually indicates that the mainstream feminism is racialized. Feminism is identified and conceptualized with whiteness. When people connect feminism with equality, they may not notice that there is a hierarchy within this kind of feminism. Colored women are ignored, excluded and dismissed due to the racialized feminism. "The result of this ignorance is that women of color continue to be misunderstood, underrepresented, homogenized, disrespected, or subsumed under the experience of 'universal sisterhood'" (Loza, Ortega). Obviously, WOC and their voice should be valued. I think we could link the importance of WOC to the notion that "there is no singular experience of womanhood". White feminists could not be the representative of WOC feminists. I really appreciate this idea from the article: "Instead of mourning the death of the "recombinant liberal subject of feminism" (Nguyen 2003, 284), we should remember that there are and have always been other forms of feminist being (Sandoval 2000, 32)".
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2nd Post of Tumblr Project
Since we do not have class for this week, I still want to focus on the course materials from last week. We had a discussion of the definition of feminism last week. Besides generally relating feminism to gender equality, social norms subversion or social justice, it is vital for us to understand how intersectionality could play an important part in constructing the conception of “feminism”. Since there is “no such thing as women-experience”, when studying feminism, people cannot ignore the individuality and otherness happen in feminism realm. There is no singular “women experience”. The multiple and multifaceted oppressions and discrimination indicates that we should link diverse biological, social or cultural categories, like gender, sexuality, race or class together to analyze issues within feminism. For example, Rosie the Riveter is regarded as an influenced symbol to praise and encourage women workers during World War II; also, it is a symbol which represents feminism. However, it is obviously that the figure of Rosie is a white female, which to some extent ignores the existence of colored women workers in society. The example of Rosie just proves that we should pay attention on the intersectionality between gender and race of feminism.
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1st Post of Tumblr Project
It is interesting to see how Judy Wajcman analyzes the relationships and interactions between technology, masculinity and femininity. Like Wajcman demonstrates in the article: the consumption of a domestic commodity is an activity of self-expression, and a marker of gender identity, the microwave study typically displays how gender is identified in technology and the consumption or marketing related to it. From my perspective, since technology is more like a masculine enterprise in the patriarchy society, it is the male hegemony on technology that mostly determines females’ passive and submissive roles in innovation and consumption of technology. Masculinity-oriented technology culture shapes and constructs females’ social functions when technology being applied to physical production, marketing and consumption. Take the toy industry and toy commercials as an example. In fact, there is no doubt that toy products are excessively gendered almost among all toy industries. In many toy commercials, toys targeting on boys emphasize masculine characteristics like being conquering, competitive or aggressive; while for the rest of them which focus on young female consumers, “girl” products underline domestic quality (how to be a good “mother”). We could find that toy industry marketing even implicitly underlines that technology embedded in boy toys is much advanced than girls’.
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