Cyberspace as a weave?

Blog 5

Mary Daly in Gyn/Ecology in 1978 first used the image of weaving to describe and define female creativity. Women and nature are themselves linked through webs. Daly suggests that weaving is an alternative, female mode of thinking, epistemology, and creativity.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-BdSYUWIpH5F1ZBzopRjpkgnYP79Oc-6AKt1sWLKAilP6l8FQFgHQucgbSBlTwO7sqj4UYLEuu1Ta94bY6G9cxX6JFfjPfIe396nlHPuXOXRIe9FcuXoZYlboBpDEl8UyTb8W0o7IW40/s1600/design-fetish-internet-browsers-fashion-1.jpg

So how can we think about weaving and how we use it in our everyday lives? What comes to my mind is the World Wide Web. The web has built a cyberspace of webs that connect many www sites that we can use to quickly access information. Before the web there was no way to Google the answer on a test or to quickly find the address to your favorite shoe store out in the rural area of North Carolina.

http://www.barrattsblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Shoes-Online.jpg

Today, I find it fascinating that the web allows me to manage and plan so much of my life with just a few clicks. As we discuss gender and sexuality in Nayar’s New Media and Cybercultures book, we find that chapter five is comparing women and cyberspace. Women have influenced technology through design, and of course as referred to previously the idea of weaving. For women the hopes of potential “freedoms” and the ability to form new identities has fascinated and also repelled some women who feared they may become victims of cyber stalking. New technology brings both joy and fear to those who were not born into the smartphone generation. In my opinion, I see no fear in younger children who have been birthed into a world were cell phones are attached to everyone’s ear. For the generations who at one point had no land line phone, it is quite a shock to be pushed into a cyberworld were everyone works, and basically lives out of their smartphone.

http://www.rottenecards.com/ecards/rottenecard_82977923_6mpgym9yzv.png

Nayar, brings up many different ideas on whether or not it is easier or harder for women to come accustomed to the new cyberworld. She proposes a good question on whether or not cyberspace can free women from their bodies. Before reading chapter five I can say that gender and sexuality within cyberspace had never really crossed my mind. However, now I am pondering on how as a woman I feel when I browse around in cyberspace. In my opinion I could see where both men and women could use cyberspace for personal freedom. I know that Facebook is one way of showing our passions and expressing to our audience who we are, but it is just one of the many ways people use the internet to escape from reality.

In life it is not easy to face the public as a cross-dresser or as someone whose ideas do not conform to the norm of society. However, if say Bob goes onto a forum where others are cross-dressing he can feel loved and included by the bond of cross-dressing that he has found with complete strangers. I like the term Nayar uses to reference change in cyberspace it is, “transcendence-of-the-body”. Traditionally, women have been equated with matter and body, while men are all mind/rationality. Body-identity assumes that a person is defined by the stuff of which a human body is made, such as pattern-identity, conversely, defines the essence of a person. However, in cyberspace this is not so, because the process of the machinery is preserved, what humans say is preserved and the rest of the human is mere jelly as stated by, Moravec in 1988.  

http://barbaracarrellas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Meeting-Inner-Lover-Cover-Web.jpg

Additionally, when we debate female and male views on the internet along with that comes  the topic sexuality. Everyone has heard the saying “sex sells”, and today the internet searches are most frequently subjects having to do with sex.  Sexualized images are placed everywhere to sell products and to place people into an alternate fantasy where they feel wanted. A crazy fact is that 50 percent of the money spent on the Internet is related to sexual activity. The “sexual Internet” is not just about cybersex. Sometimes it is for educational purposes, sex therapist, and material for activities such as escort services.

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5086f73fecad04c07b000004/sex-lies-and-photoshop-these-ads-were-all-banned-in-2012.jpg

The Internet has forms of sexual role- playing and what is sadly a term “cyberaffairs”. Cyberaffairs do happen and there are actually websites were people wanting to have a fling with someone online can sign up and start their unknown romance. Having an internet relationship allows for people to tell dirty secrets and to open up to strangers they feel more comfortable with. It is obvious that people have things they want to escape from in their real life so they create new personas that don’t have the pressure of a job, a failed marriage, or bills that they can’t pay.

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/5319827968/h898A7B3E/

To conclude on chapter five I would like to point out that most of what is discussed here is weaved together in some way. Let’s think about women, the web’s interface design that invites you in to start searching and finding people who have similar interest, men and women who are searching on the web for sexual pleasure as well as serious relationships too. Everything in cyberspace seems to fit and flow and work together to satisfy the needs of a “cybersociety”. Are you starting to feel more welcomed in “cybersociety” than real society? Most people today would probably say they would rather stay weaved into a cyberworld than to face the reality of the real world.