Women's strategy in cyberspace

: More political imagination

Chang Yoekyong,

(Executive Director of Jinbonet in Korea)

I. Introduction

"They(cyberfeminists) must begin by clearly formulating cyberfeminisms' political goals and positions ... Strategic and politically savvy uses of these technologies can facilitate the work of a transnational movement that aims to infiltrate and assault the networks of power and communication ... To be effective in creating a politicized feminist environment on the Net that challenges its present gender, race, age and class structures ... Cyberfeminism must criticize utopian and mythic constructions of the Net, and strive to work with other resistant netgroups in activist coalitions. Cyberfeminists need to declare solidarity with transnational feminist and postcolonial initiatives, and work to use their access to communications technologies and electronic networks to support such initiative." (Excerpts from Faith Wilding's 'Where is Feminism in Cyberfeminism?')

To enter into cyberspace, women have to overcome seemingly endless barriers. Socio-economic inequality, lack of knowledge in computing technology caused by gender-discriminating education, very masculine design of the technology. These are some of the barriers women usually face when they attempt to go into cyberspace. Even after they succeed in logging on to cyberspace, women navigators usually end up running into another barrier. Predominantly masculine messages, implicit or explicit censorship on women's voice and frequent sexual violence in the Net are enough to frustrate women Net surfers.

Contrary to the existing position that computer-mediated communication tends to be gender-neutral, Susan Herring pointed out there are remarkable differences between styles of messages posted by female and male. Women and men also have different ethical codes in their communication.

"My basic claim has two parts: first, that women and men have recognizably different styles in posting to the Internet, contrary to the claim that CMC neutralizes distinctions of gender; and second, that women and men have different communicative ethics --- that is, they value different kinds of online interactions as appropriate and desirable." (Excerpts from Susan C. Herring's 'Gender and Democracy in Computer-Mediated Communication')

With the number of male navigators of the Net far exceeding that of female navigators, it is not surprising to find male participants usually dominating online discussions. In online discussions, predominantly male participants tend to control everything including topics and styles of expression. If female navigators attempt to unsettle such male domination by increasing the frequency of their participation in discussions, male navigators react with collective resistance to such attempts by women surfers.

As the word "hacker" usually conjures up an male image, we tend to associate the word "online" with something related with men rather than women. This indicates that cyberspace remains as predominantly male arena not only in its quantity but also in its quality. Herring calls these various barriers, faced by women in cyberspace, as indirect censorship imposed on women.

Direct censorship by governments or Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the form of deleting messages posted by women or canceling of women users' ID also causes negative influences on women navigators. For fear of losing freedom of expression in cyberspace, many feminists oppose to any online censorship by governments. Women activists have long been divided on the necessity of censorship to block pornography in cyberspace. Nevertheless most women activists share the view that political power, such as governments, should not be involved in the process of censorship. Recently we have seen many cases reported, in which women's voice, such as feminism politics or sex politics, were seriously weakened when governments stepped in the process of online censorship. This clearly indicates that political powers should not be involved in the process of online censorship. Seth Finkelstein's study showed Internet blocking software, spreading out rapidly, has also contributed to oppressing information on feminism and homosexuality by blocking the related sites. The government of Korea recently announced a plan of setting up "cyberborder" to cut off all foreign online pornography sites at the sources. We are concerned about its potential negative impacts on cyberfeminism in Korea. In 1998, when an online sexual harassment case reported to a leading Internet Service Provider in Korea, the IPS quickly responded by suspending the female victim's e-mail ID, with saying that, "Her ID is not decent."

The incident clearly showed any patriarchal institutions are destined to fail in solving online sexual harassment problems, one of the major barriers against women entering into cyberspace.

Still Anchoring Our Hope in Cyberspace as Efficient Tool

Do we still need to enter into cyberspace after all these barriers? The answer to this question is yes. Internet is a amazingly effective and efficient tool of communication. More and more women are logging on to the Internet, hoping that it will open new horizon to them. In Korea, women activists groups' interests and participation in cyberspace are simply impressive. Internet homepages of these women activists groups are playing an important role of outreaching and empowerment. The homepages fulfill various functions such as introducing organizations, encouraging public's participation, and raising public's consciousness on women's issues. These homepages are effective and efficient tools allowing local women activists groups to reach more people with much lower costs.

Internet Mailing Lists

An Internet mailing list is a list of a group of E-mail users, who share E-mail with one another and discuss specific topics among themselves via E-mail. More and more E-mail users are joining in Internet mailing lists to exchange their views in cyberspace. "Dalnaraddalsepo(Outreaching daughters of the Moon)," a feminism Webzine in Korea, offers an Internet mailing list (dalara@list.jinbo.net), in which over 240 members regularly exchange their voices on various women-related issues. In building transnational solidarity among women activists, Internet mailing lists play an important role, particularly in Asia, where their information-technology is less developed compared with their counterparts in the West.

Cyberspace as Arena of Alternative Politics: 'Dreaming Rebellion in Cyberspace'

If we accept the fact that we can't totally ignore gender gap in cyberspace, we reach to the conclusion that we need a new strategy for cyberfeminism. A leading strategy for cyberfeminism is to deconstruct the patriarchal conditions that currently produce the codes, languages, images and structures of the Net. And then start to build our own cybercommunities. Taking into account the fact that IT can never be gender-neutral, it is not so surprising to find that most homepages has different styles of expression depending on whether they are male-oriented or female-oriented, as shown in a study by Jill Arnold and Hugh Miller. (Jill Arnold & Hugh Miller, 'Gender and Web Homepages') The findings of the study give us an important clue regarding the future of cyberfeminism: The future of cyberfeminism starts from declaration of women's independence and empowerment. And then we can begin to build our own cybercommunities, where we communicate with our own codes, languages and images.

When surfing the Net, we can find various homepages declaring cybergrrl-ism. These homepages, such as <GeekGirl> (http://www.geekgirl.com.au/) <guerrillagirls> (http://www.guerrillagirls.com/)<riotgirls> (http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~annaleen/riot.grrls.html), lash out their anger sometimes with humor and sometimes with aggressive languages. These cybergrrl-ism sites declare independence and empowerment of women in totally different ways from those of the established women activists groups, which usually focus on 'campaigns.' Though it is not easy to find any consistent political consciousness going through in cybergirl-ism, cybergirl-ists express themselves in their own codes, languages and images. They prefer cyberperformances, such as cyberpunk literature, arts and music rather than 'campaigns'. Through these various cyberperfomrances, cybergrrl-ists declare splitting themselves from anything that is related with the Establishment. Such strategy, radically breaking away from the preoccupation with "enlightenment" or "explanation," shows us that separated, women-only sites in cyberspace can be a successful alternative in cyberfeminism.

Many feminism mailing lists and women chatting sites are women-only. The first and foremost raison d'etre of women-only sites in cyberspace comes from the need to protect women's communication from being invaded by males. Without such measure of protection, women's communication even on women-related issues is frequently interrupted by male invaders. To most women Internet users, visiting women-only sties, where women can speak freely with their own languages, is an amazing experience. Once settled in their own place, women, relieved from self-censorship, can spit out what they have kept in their hearts. Anita Borg, the founder of the women-only online forum, SYSTERS, said making women-only sites truly women-only, which are free from any verbal attack on women, is practice of political activism. (Anita Borg, 'Why SYSTERS?' 1993. http://cec.wustl.edu/~cs142/articles/GENDER_ISSUES/Why_systers-borg)

As many successful women's web sites illustrate, there is a great possibility that cyberspace will become a powerful alternative media and political arena, through which we can infuse new radical voice into feminism. Especially anonymity, a unique feature of online communication, is expected to spur open and honest discussions among women participants. Such open and honest communication is the starting point for building strong solidarity among women. To encourage free and honest communication, some women-only sites are offering bulletin boards, in which women can join without revealing their identification. In such bulletin boards, women users easily open their hearts to each other and build solidarity. This can be the first step toward forming women's cybercommunities.

More Politics to Cyberspace

While fully acknowledging merits of various experiments on "cyberseparatism," I still have to point out whether these experiments will bring forth any fruits in changing the Establishment. As long as we have great expectations in cyberseparatism, seeking answer to the question is important. Since online sexual harassment reflects gender discriminating society, which created cyberspace, the ultimate goal of fighting in cyberspace should be focused in changing such discriminating society.

One of problems we can find in cybergrrl-ism is that it is related with techno-utopianism, which says implicitly "anything you wanna be and do in cyberspace is cool" and possible. However the techno-utopianism is just another political ideology, alienating technology from society to make it apolitical. We have to fight against any attempt to make cyberspace apolitical. Let's not forget that any possibility in cyberspace can not be separated from the society itself. Only then, in male-oriented cyberspace, our action can have its meaning. Thus the strategy of just following "their technology" "just for application," is apolitical and undesirable. Rather our strategy should be focused on overcoming barriers to cyberspace and making it a powerful tool for our solidarity.

This means that political activities in cyberspace should not be limited to "publishing" of messages. Rather online political activities should be extended to include interactive communication, which is the starting point in building our communities in cyberspace. Let me introduce you several successful attempts in overcoming barriers faced by women when entering into cyberspace. These cases show us how to build transnational women's solidarity and communities via communication in cyberspace. <SISTAHSPACE> (http://www.sistahspace.com), a web site exclusively for black women's rights movements, did magnificent jobs in encouraging interests and participation in black women's issues. It offers cultural events, information, a mailing list, a web ring, which links related web sites for navigators to log on to each web site without further navigating the Internet. Such strategy is powerful way of building a net community and inducing political actions from navigators. <WHOA> (http://whoa.femail.com/), the homepage of the Women Halting Online Abuse, a web site concentrating on online sexual harassment, connects women via a powerful mailing list. The mailing list performs the role of an online community. When sexual harassment occurs, members of the community collectively act for investigation and subsequent necessary steps to stop such violence repeated.

In Korea, many online communities are emerging. A leading online community is <Niagga> (http://niagga.com.ne.kr/), an online homosexual community. However we need more such online communities in Korea. For the past 10 years, the Internet has emerged as a powerful communication tool. Nevertheless women still have not enough political arena in the Net. I think it is primarily due to our improper IT strategy. Though we have long stressed as our main goal in cyberspace effectiveness and efficiency, we even failed to achieve the goal. Our hastiness caused by the fear of being behind in competition seem to a major reason for our failure. I think our priority in cyberspace should be placed in building solidarity. To make cyberspace to our own, we have to think differently.

Don't just follow competition in cyberspace.

Instead let's pay our attention to building solidarity in cyberspace. When neoliberalism causes deep pain across the world, let's discard the logic of efficiency and start our cyberjourney to meet our women-friends from other provinces, countries, and continents. When meeting with our women-friends in cyberspace, let's open our hearts but never forget to keep our ears wide open and be ready to listen of their stories.