Cyberfeminisms

I found the Artsy editorial and the Claire Evans article to be the most interesting out of those that I read for this week, and I also found the "Virtual Groping" article to be both interesting and infuriating. What I love most about the first two articles is what I learned about Cyberfeminism being about a large community of accepting individuals who just want to do their thing...code, game, whatever, while being all-inclusive and establishing safe, friendly internet communities. A good friend and roommate of mine is a female computer science engineer (who is also involved in the same organization as me at UConn, Her Campus) and once I showed her the article she wanted the link and I sent her the entire ARTH3570 blog site so she could access all of them. She (and I) love that there is an international conference for cyberfeminists to gather, also. I think it's also important to note that even cyberfeminists have to add the disclaimer that they aren't "anti-men" or any of the other misconceptions that many people have about feminists, just a welcoming group of people who like to hang out on the internet and do computer things (I know nothing about computers/programming if you can't tell). The fact that this community exists, as well as the net art we recently discussed, just goes to show that most people enjoy similar things, but what changes among them is the environment and therefore the level of comfort. Cyberfeminists and net artists are just like me - we enjoy art, promoting accepting and equal communities, and hanging out with people - I just prefer to do it in person, while they prefer to do so online.

As for the virtual reality article, I was absolutely appalled. What this tells me is that there really exists NO guaranteed safe place for women. If someone can't even enter a virtual world by herself without being harassed, there is clearly something wrong (we already knew something was wrong but still). I almost laughed, though, at the fact that this harassing player would have never attempted this (I assume) had he never heard a woman's voice coming through his earpiece. I also didn't appreciate that the brother in-law and husband didn't react more strongly to this woman's harassment.  Just goes to show that the internet/virtual reality isn't any kind of escape from real world jerks!