Re: response to "power and chat rooms"

mitch wilson wrote:
.... if you want talk about e-list politics, why is it that on
>some lists there are people like na.devine who insist on being smug to new
>members who ask "the wrong questions"?
>
>What's the point of na.devine saying "Read the archives" without telling me
>where they are, unless he was being dismissive? And what was the point of
>his writing "How many women last the distance . . . ?," unless he was
>insulting me?
>
>Also, what was the point of you, Matthew, writing "I'd've thought that
>someone who advertises their own webpage in their posts wouldn't have too
>much trouble finding them [the archives]" ? Well, excuse me for including
my
>web page address in my email program's signiture file.


Well actually i think this "bickering" all fits in very well with the
discussion of power :)

Mitch - I found:
"wired_women: gender and new realities in cyberspace." eds Lynn Cherny and
Elizabeth Reba Weise (Seattle: Seal Press, 1996)
useful in my research on the operation of gender in online interactions - it
doesn't go into _a lot_ of theory but there is plenty there to extend within
a theoretical framework.

Both these postings quoted above demonstrate _exactly_ the kind of "in-group
superiority" that many women in this book complain of feeling intimidated
and excluded by when approaching online culture .

Ummm - and isn't academia meant to be about _learning_ and _teaching_ and
not just showing off what you know and exercising power by constructing
forms of superiority over others by knowing more than them? Please....

Perhaps it's this sort of egotistical behaviour (from males or females) that
leads some people (males or females) to decide that it's not worth "going
the distance" on lists such as this..

cheers
sue


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