Again, in the spirit of exploring writing styles on this blog, I'm going to list some ideas I'm thinking about from Ch. 4.
Issues of interest:
The idea of resistance on the Internet, especially for women. I do like that Nakamura points out how these digital communities provide spaces for resistance to prevailing medical discourses.
I also like the connection of taste culture -- I've done some work on taste cultures and resistance for my MA thesis; I examined 19th-century British women's cookbooks/domestic manuals for the places where writing on recipes, changing them, etc., offered women access into the predominant discourses of taste culture. Here, I can see an important connection.
Issues that bother me:
While Nakamura amply examines taste cultures and resistance, at the same time her analysis seems to ignore several key aspects that could actually refute her own exegeses. Here are the issues of contention for me:
-- Nakamura does not, in my view, effectively discuss the ways that avatars (though they display pregnant bodies) still remain caught in a youthful, cartoonish, and male-dominated gaze. That is, on the page where she presents these avatars, I was offended, because all of the women looked too similar to those AIM icons she discussed in Ch. 1!! Not only that, but if I were a pregnant woman, I would NOT want to be depicted online in flare jeans and revealing shirts!
--Related to this, I feel that Nakamura does not address the issue of community critically enough. Yes, women do need spaces to resist the medical discourses that are often problematic, but to emphasize their sense of "banding together" and delighting in each other's pregnancies does nothing, in my view, to de-stabilize the notion of female domesticity or pregnancy as only a feminine issue! In fact, the creation of these avatars and ridiculous "sparklies," inane and abbreviations, and the ways that these women deal with issues, only reinforces their femininity! I found all these abbreviations and sparkly pages utterly silly. Why can't these women write "intercourse" or "have sex" instead of the absolutely sophomoric "BDing"? Good GOD! How does that make them empowered, or even resist the dominant discourse of pregnancy?
In some sense, I see Nakamura's point: they're using the codes and conventions against themselves. But I didn't read them that way. I read them as silly, unintelligent, ridiculous, and just plain inane.
--Also, I take huge issue with Nakamura's assumption on p. 143 that these women are "stuck" at home. Did someone put a gun to their head and make them stay home? Can't women CHOOSE domesticity anymore? Or did feminism completely abolish that as a viable choice?
It seems to me that Nakamura's theory that this avatar culture as resistance only works if women believe they are stuck at home. If you're not stuck, it would make sense that you're not seeking advice.
--Finally, where are the men?!? Nakamura's analysis is still too focused on women, reinforcing the idea that this is still strictly a women's issue. WHy doesn't she examine men's discussions of pregnancy, and why don't the women bring it up, too? Why doesn't she at least call for it?
In short, I do like that Nakamura is exploring uncharted territory with pregnant avatars and the (feminine) discourses of pregnancy on the internet. But even as a woman who does not identify herself as a feminist (at least in current academic understandings of it), I was offended at the celebration of inane, overtly feminine, and silly depictions of the women in these communities. I'm not saying I want something "more intellectual" or "academic," per se, but I don't want to glorify vapid, girly discussions either.
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5 comments:
Resistance, in general, is a very unique concept. But, I especially find this idea just as, if not more, interesting when considered within the World WIDE Web. When I think of the Internet, I think of availability, and while I do not think that the users/creators of the Internet have quite accomplished accessibility, I think that a valid attempt is being made. But this idea of resistance... Is it the proverbial "glass ceiling" of the Internet? What kinds of questions do we need to being asking in order to overcome this resistance? What kinds of questions do we need to begin answering? Who needs to be discussing this issue? How can women step up and make the Internet really work for them (besides having sex and getting pregnant and choosing a pregnant avatar to represent their baby-carrying selves)? And, most importantly (for me), where do I sign up to choose domesticity (and I don't mean in the 'feminists are weird, sense' I mean in the 'I want to get married and have babies and love them, love them, love them, and make the food and put them to bed, and maybe, occasionally make my husband dinner! However, he will have to do his own ironing)?
hey sarah - i think that also a discussion of how these sites and avatars representing pregnancy risk (or just do, really) reinforcing the conjugal, nuclear, hetersexual, family unit that acts as a primary articulation of CAPITALISM. I've been noticing in movies lately, movies that have a female protagonist, are using pregnancy as both a tool for agency and resistance (see Juno and Waitress). Yet, not to spoil endings, but pregnancy IS kinda predictable - at the ends of these movies, giving birth to the baby solves all of the woman's problems and makes everything okay. In terms of class, I would imagine that the birthing part just opens up a whole new set of problems, continues old ones, etc. Wow, that was really cynical. Sorry.
Mike, I love your post - I can just hear you saying that in class!
Sarah & Sarah, I consider myself a feminist, and I bet you do too - feminism really, at it's core, is about believing men and women are equally capable and should enjoy equal treatment in society. Of course, there are offshoots of feminism that would say choosing "domesticity" is always wrong wrong wrong. But I think feminism is about having the freedom to make the choice yourself, and many other mainstream feminist readings and websites will say the same thing.
I took umbrage at all the assumptions Nakamura made about women in this chapter, and I think she would have had a much stronger argument had she examined the male perspective AND other baby/pregnancy websites with similar intents. Nakamura may have found that the avatars differed incredibly depending on the culture the website cultivated.
Sarah, again coming back to the idea of resistance, I think it is really problematic that you seem to define what is and isn't resistant on these websites from *your* perspective. For example, why would using the language of "intercourse" (which, BTW, sounds pretty medical to me) or "having sex" make the website more resistant than the women using the term "BDing"? Resistance, for me at least, needs to come from the ground up and needs to be defined subjectively and relationally. Otherwise, the concept of "resistance" just turns into a prescribed notion of what is an acceptable act of resistance and what isn't.
I can see how you might think that certain constructions of this website are supporting social ideology about gender/femininity/sexuality on a more macro social-analytic level. Yet, from an ethnomethodogical/phenomenological approach, we can't forget about these women's own motivations, interpretations, and intentions.
Perhaps this is where Mike's suggestion of Nakamura's reflexivity might come in...if Nakamura where to herself be critically reflexive of these women's representations, we might have a better idea on how an outsider might interpret them without flattening how they work (and are intended to work) within the community.
Jennifer: I love the term "flattening." To me it means reductive for homogeneous, normative purposes.
Alyssa: I would also call myself a feminist (or I try to practice feminism) because feminism, as I see it, or in my limited experience with it as a way of seeing, attempts to critique and deconstruct AND intervene in all systems of social injustice, oppression, and domination. I'd love to know more about the feminist perspectives within Professional Writing (as an academic discipline, which might differ from feminist perspectives in a work place, although academia is certainly a work place, am i right?)
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