(no subject)

[rm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/fashion/21webgirls.html

This is news?
Girls exist?
They express their identities and desires?
They can type?
OMG!

I feel irked.

Also?

“Girls are trained to make stories about themselves,” said Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From a young age they learn that they are objects, Professor Gill said, so they learn how to describe themselves. Historically, girls and women have been expected to be social, communal and skilled in decorative arts.

“This would be called the feminization of the Internet,” she said.

Last time I checked, I, and every girl and woman I know, tell stories about themselves not because of the need to be decorative objects but because we're not, because the story is longer than that, and because making sure other people know it can feel and be key to our very survival. Telling stories is about existing, not disappearing.

Also, the headline is "Sorry, Boys, this is our domain." Whenever girls surpass boys in anything there's a "sorry" in teh headline. It never works the other way. Why should we apologize, even through the words of some reporter, for what we like or what we do?

This is a petty little thing but it EXASPERATES and ENRAGES me.

Finally? The piece is in the fashion section. Because nothing girls do is real.

Comments

[theotoky.livejournal.com]

OH.MY.GOD. pathetic.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Wow. Also, note that hotlinking is bad because "it is the digital equivalent of arriving at a party wearing the same dress as another girl".

Wow.

[marcmagus]

They didn't have the word count for, "It is the digital equivalent of sneaking into another girl's house while she's out, taking her brand new custom dress out of her closet and her credit card, nipping down to have an exact duplicate made and charging it to said credit card, slipping the dress and card back where they belong, and then being so gauche as to show up at the same party wearing the same dress."

[sethg]

"Plagiarism" is only one word.

[marcmagus]

That piece is infuriating from so many different directions I don't even know where to start. The awful broad-brush strokes with which they paint females? The horrid ways in which they do the same to males? Maybe we should start with their inability to draw any distinction between children and adults. Or the sense they give that they're looking at this whole Internet thing as though it's a homogeneous foreign culture that they've been sent to do a 1900s-style ethnography about. Or the impression I get that they have no concept whatsoever of the difference between creating different sorts of computer content, even though they go ahead and get an expert to talk about it.

You've nailed it on the head, though. Fashion & Style?!

I need to go take a shower now.

[40sw.livejournal.com]

um. my stories are decorative objects. is that bad?

sometimes they're other things too.

[fragiletender.livejournal.com]

What a load of tosh.

This was the line that really annoyed me:

"Aside from depleting bandwidth, it is the digital equivalent of arriving at a party wearing the same dress as another girl, Professor Palfrey said."

Because of course girls and women can't be rightfully passionate about defending their own creative output - sheesh, complaining about someone stealing your stuff is just so shallow!

[phaenix-ash.livejournal.com]

that's ridiculous and just...gah. *shakes the journalist*

did you see this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7254523.stm ? that this is being written in 2008 is so, so depressing.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Wow. I was opening a bunch of links-in-new-tabs going through my friends lists to read later, found that one, and was like, wtf, is this is Onion, what do they mean, it's like MEN HAVE A SENSITIVE PENIS or something?

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

I saw the image used as the top illustration, and my jaw dropped. Let me see, this woman has... wings? Why the f*%^ are there wings there? Is this some kind of fantasy thing, like a Pegasus reference? Oh, wait a second, she's also got a devil tail...

She has what?!?

So, even on the Internet, even though they're being "all empowered and shit", these females are still either Madonnas or whores, is that the message? Or maybe the message is, "We're such insufferably sexist dicks, we just had to rub your nose in it"?

Message received, loud and clear.

[popfiend.livejournal.com]

It's not a petty thing.

Your feelings are fully justified.

It's just damned stupid.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

[somehow this didn't post the first time]

"“I actually really never thought about doing my own Web site,” said Zach after returning from an SAT class."

But you know, all the girls are too busy blogging about their feelings to each other to be taking college entry exams?

[sethg]

A story about young women being a 60/40-ish majority among bloggers etc. gets a headline "Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain", implying that this a domain where men are completely absent. Feh.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

"Last time I checked, I, and every girl and woman I know, tell stories about themselves not because of the need to be decorative objects but because we're not, because the story is longer than that, and because making sure other people know it can feel and be key to our very survival. Telling stories is about existing, not disappearing."

Well, and the totally stupid thing is, EVERYONE tells stories about themselves and others. It's a human thing, it transcends cultures. The stories may be different across different groups, there are different ways to communicate and different stories, etc etc, but to say that 'telling stories' is the domain of your women (??) is erasing most of human history.

The more I think about this, the more stupid and condescending it seems.

[reudaly.livejournal.com]

And it's not even WOMEN, it's teenage girls. THE WOMEN on the internet is apparently even more negligible...

don't diss teenage girls

[polteentidbits.livejournal.com]

We are people too you know. On the internet and in real life.

[tdanaher.livejournal.com]

I was going to also feel irked about this article, but then I saw the byline of Stephanie Rosenbloom, who always writes this sort of clueless article, never has anything useful to say, and is not taken seriously by anyone. Overall, the article has no impact beyond the paycheck she received for it and what she buys that contributes to the general economy of the country.

[cleverthylacine]

Oh ghu does this piss me off. (the icon is of course for the NYT not you!)

[delicatetbone.livejournal.com]

my pal lj-user vintagehandbag is doing her dissertation on masculinity and 1980s arcade games -- seems like something you could appreciate....actually I'm sure she'd hate my glib synopsis of it there, it's about quite a bit more than that, but you might be interested in checking her work out

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I tell my stories because I'm being a decorative object. Because they're such pretty stories, aren't they?

Ms. Rosenbloom will kindly fuck off now.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Also, reading my f-list from top to bottom resulted in me seeing your letter to the editor first, and I completely agree with what you said there. That sort of dismissive misogyny remains far too prevalent.

don't diss teenage girls

[polteentidbits.livejournal.com]

I just wrote about this at http://frecklescassie.wordpress.com/
I am a teenage blogger and I blog about important issues, politics, issues that relate to teenagers. I also post glittery animated gifs and there's nothing wrong with that either.

The NYT is stupid!