THE CIVIL LIBERTINE'S
SOUNDING BOARD
controversial thought pieces on contemporary culture
Copyright © 1997-1998 Stephan Zielinski, all rights reserved
I have some thoughts on the whole question of how the Net gets reported. Brace yourself, this is a long one-- originally intended for email rather than USENET, but what the hell.
Subject: The Chomsky Olympics: July 1997
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 23:40:34 -0700
Our text for today, straight from the AP newsfeed:
AP.national (07-05) 09:06:53
Mother charged with murder after hitting child with computer keyboard
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) -- A woman who admitted hitting her 4-year-old son with a computer keyboard has been charged with murder.
Eddiesenior Jones McLauchlin, 45, was charged Friday with felony child abuse as well as first-degree murder. She was jailed without bond and scheduled to appear in court Monday.
The child, Cory McLauchlin, was pronounced brain-dead Friday. His mother had told police that Cory stumbled in the middle of the night, struck his temple and then acted ``goofy.'' She later noticed he was unconscious and called for help, police said.
The mother admitted that she struck the child with a computer keyboard on Wednesday but did not believe she hit him hard enough to cause serious injury or death, Lt. Cliff Massengill said.
The child is being kept alive on a life-support system until his father, a soldier, returns from Bosnia this weekend to spend a few minutes with him. Then the life support will be turned off.
Step one when contemplating The News: ask the question, "Why is this item deemed important enough to disseminate?" The Associated Press has finite bandwidth, after all-- what their editors decide goes on the wire becomes the "national" news for every paper that doesn't maintain correspondents throughout the nation, which is nearly all of them.
So here we have a routine child-abuse-related homicide. Not every one makes the wire-- they'd have to use a daily box score format, anyway, like they did with the soldiers during the Vietnam War. So why did THIS story make it?
The detail about the husband returning from Bosnia to see the child before the life support goes off is poignant, but it didn't make the headline-- the computer keyboard did. Now, as with other violent crimes, all manner of household items are employed in child abuse. But when the weapon is a piece of computer equipment, a local story becomes a national story.
Stephan has a theory about this.
In the great Collective Unconscious, the combination of women and computers is bad luck.
Perhaps you're familiar with the old English superstition that women are bad luck for ocean vessels. (Opie & Tatum's _Dictionary of Superstitions_ cites occurrences of this one as recently as 1980 and 1985.) Workplace gender-related taboos are not uncommon; certain items and objects become strongly associated with one gender or another, and even physical contact with a gender-specific item can be disturbing. Who would have though a mere apron would come to symbolize so much?
(This isn't relevant to my argument, but it's fun. Ladies, the next time you're in the supermarket with a male SO or family member, send him down the aisle to pick up a box of Tampax. Bonus points if he unconsciously wipes his hands after handling the package.)
The pattern is for women to struggle to break down the taboos that restrict them. For example, early feminists started with clothing reforms, adopting masculine trousers for their utility value. Advertisements for Virginia Slims explicitly linked feminist progress with a particular brand of a product originally thought of as exclusively masculine-- and even today, a woman smoking a pipe or cigar will draw strange looks. (I saw something very Freudian in a bar last week. A couple sat down and pulled two identical large cigars out of a case. The man lit his; the woman cut hers in two and returned half to the case before lighting up. You may use this scene as a Rorschach test-- WHICH Freudian interpretation occurred to you first?)
Heavy industrial technology is so strongly associated with masculinity that during World War Two, the government turned to propaganda to get women into the factories. Note how feminine the figure appears-- long eyelashes, curl escaping from under bandana, full bust, no biceps despite the cocked arm-- in comparison to the Rockwell painting that gave us the name Rosie the Riveter. The obvious implication is that it *is* possible to maintain an appropriate level of femininity, even in a blue-collar setting.
(Note that for the most part, men have not responded by attempting to break down the taboos *they* face. This is because there aren't many of them, and they're not particularly restrictive. As a matter of fact, the only one I can think of that's rigidly enforced is no wearing women's outer clothing in the workplace.)
Computers have always been a primarily masculine technology. Of the Great Names in computer science, only two are women-- and both ended up associated with computer languages actively despised during the Macintosh and PC revolutions. Most industry workers are men.
As recently as 1986, the idea of involving the net in matters of the heart was not only seen as foolish, it provoked actual disgust-- an unacceptable eroticization of the machine.
Nowadays, though, more and more people-- both men and women-- are taking advantage of the reasonably mature technology of inexpensive personal computers and modems. The gender distribution of Usenet and Internet users has shifted wildly; men and women are thoroughly mixed.
Further, our culture seems to be assuming that the next generation of children will have computer skills as routinely as they once had typing or woodworking skills. (For example, during the pilot of the television series, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," there's a scene where the school's most popular girl is unhappily struggling to complete a programming assignment-- implying that basic computer literacy is an essential part of a genteel secondary education.)
However, I claim that people still think of computer skills as masculine-- and the news media reflects the vague dread that people feel when they contemplate the potential disasters entailed in allowing women to work with them.
Specifically, the text about Eddiesenior Jones McLauchlin is the third news story I've seen involving women and computers that would seem to be of mere local interest, but were unaccountably elevated to national stature.
On June 16, 1997, this article appeared in the AP feed:
Woman diagnosed with Net addiction disorder
CINCINNATI - An old story of abuse with a new, high-tech twist.
Cincinnati woman Sandra Hacker allegedly locked her three children in a room with broken glass, debris and child handprints of human feces on the wall.
The reason? Police say she was so addicted to cruising the Internet that she didn't want to be disturbed.
Hacker faces a court appearance Monday on three counts of child endangering. Her estranged husband turned her in Saturday. The children - ages two, three and five - are in police custody.
Experts already have a name for Hacker's problem: Internet addiction disorder. Just like any other addiction, they say it can displace the drive to eat, sleep or earn a living.
Of course, nobody would think to make national news of a woman who neglected her children as a result of a cocaine addiction.
Finally, back in October 1996, there was the case of Sharon Lopatka, who apparently died at the hands of a man she met through the net. (It's still not clear whether the case is murder, death by misadventure during rough sex, or a bizarre form of assisted suicide.)
To demonstrate that the theme is also found outside the news media, allow me to present two (popular) fictional examples of women and computers. First, the X-Files episode "2Shy" puts a mild spin on the traditional vampire tale: the monster stalks overweight women by chatting with them over the net.
More significant is the Dave Barry short story "MsPtato and RayAdverb," found in his book DAVE BARRY IN CYBERSPACE. Barry depicts a housewife whose husband brings home a computer. Repelled at first, she gradually becomes familiar with it, learns the terminology, and becomes mildly addicted to chatting over the net. She then meets a particularly literate and humorous man, and begins to fall in love with him-- much to her distress. As the tale closes, they've exchanged photographs, confessed their powerful mutual attraction, and are about to speak to each other over the telephone for the first time. Barry carefully does not imply where the relationship is going to go; both constructive disengagement and adultery are possible outcomes.
Finally, there's a folktale on the net itself about the dangers of chat rooms. A computer science major pseudonymed "Jen" breaks up with her boyfriend, and "decided to get onto a chat line, being the wild psycho she is she decided to get onto a sex line." She meets a fellow pseudonymed "Jeremy," and they have cybersex. (That is, they type first-person erotica to each other in real time, possibly while masturbating. [Incidently, it really pains me to even SEE the word `cybersex', let alone use it myself, but I know of no dignified alternative.]) The relationship lasts about a year, and they decide they're in love; Jeremy is so smitten as to suggest marriage. Although they've never so much as spoken on the phone, they decide to meet in a hotel room in Colorado. Jen arrives first, undresses, and climbs into bed. The tale ends:
The time soon came. The lights were out, the mood was right, and she heard a key in the door, she heard someone walk in and around the corner, and she whispered, "Jeremy", Jeremy said, "Katie?" (this was the false name she had given him.) Yes she said, so he fumbled for the light, and turned it on to see Jen on the bed naked before him. Then next thing heard around the world were two blood curling screams. Jen covered herself up, and with her most humiliated voice said, "Dad?" and Jeremy said, "JEN!!!"
Think of what you would do in this situation. Now realize this really did happen. Their lives will never be the same.
Note that "Jen" is specifically identified as a computer science major. This makes little logical sense-- computer science students understand the net better than anybody else, and are the LEAST likely to get into such a mess. Bolsters my thesis nicely, though.
If you reflect on all six of these tales, you'll note that in all of them, there is an implied causal relationship between women working with computers and Bad Things happening. (That is: child abuse, bizarre sex, marriage trouble, virtual incest, and/or death.)
Consider the Hindu diety Kali. Bozos who get their anthropology from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," know only of the negative aspect of Kali: the destroyer, the mother who eats her own young. But Kali is also a fertility diety, and can take on an aspect that is soothing and maternal as well. Assuming Joseph Cambell is onto something, the ambiguity people (particularly men) feel about the nature of women should be something similar.
On the one hand, the patriarchal view of the ideal woman would have her making love monogamously, bearing and raising children, limiting her social interactions to family (nuclear or extended,) and staying sane and cooperative throughout the process. The corresponding fear is that she'll refuse sexual relations with her husband, neglect or murder the children, socialize widely and have a variety of sexual contacts, and possibly go mad (thus becoming an embarrassing and expensive burden.)
Thus men are always watching for signs that the women in their lives are about to turn down the path of evil.
Along comes the computer. When computers were the size of refrigerators and cost millions of dollars, society's fear about their impact on our lives emphasized their inhumanity and our resultant dehumanization. But now, everybody has one-- and they're not using them to do their taxes or play Donkey Kong. They're using them to flirt.
Hence-- and for those of you who are dozing off, wake up, here comes the thesis-- I claim that men are afraid that women, particularly women in their families, are going to use the computers to make acquaintances all over the world and consummate them, resulting in total disintegration of individual mens' personal lives.
And now a bonus: the feedback loop between the media and superstition.
Editors learn very quickly what sells. A routine atrocity-- child neglect or abuse in the underclass-- doesn't sell *because* it's routine. But involve computers, and the story suddenly becomes gossip. When people think of computers, they still think of white, middle-class people; while everybody drones on about the incredible diversity of the net, everybody also knows that to become part of this "diversity," you have to blow three grand of hard currency on a machine that'll be a boat anchor in five years.
Now consider the view of the world this engenders. People know that child abuse is occurring, but they tend to ignore it. But when they trip over one of these gossipy tales they will read it-- gossip is fun. The problem is, they then associate details of the case with the category of the atrocity itself. That is, they hear, "My wife was talking in a chat room the other day," and they remember, "I read a story about a woman who got into that and ended up neglecting her kids." (Fellow pedants will recognize this as a common error in logic technically known as "category error.")
Feedback sets in when editors work to address the specific concerns of their readers. Their readers are worried about what computers could do to family life, so the editors watch out for stories about the combination-- and since no AP stringer ever submits an article headlined "LOCAL FAMILY PURCHASES COMPUTER, PLAYS SIM CITY," the only articles the editor has to choose from all focus on atrocities. This completes a positive feedback loop, and so things get progressively worse.
(Historically, such loops only go away when they're superceded by others. Seen a piece about the dangers afternoon coffee klatches pose to family stability lately? [No, I'm not kidding. They caused lesbianism or something. If tomorrow morning the women of America all decided to get together with their friends and paint smiley faces on each others noses with clam juice, by sunset some damned fool or another would thunder from the pulpit that "Clam Juice Nose Smileys Are Destroying The Family!"])
The superstition that computers are bad for women or their families is chilling. Consider the fishing village I mentioned earlier. If it's bad luck for women to be on fishing boats, the only people who can fish are men. This gives them control of the wages and the profits from the sale of the fish. Women are frozen out of an important sector of the economy, and their dependence on men increases.
If it's bad luck for women to play with computers, disapproval and outright intrafamilial bans on the activity will fall the hardest on female children and adolescents. This cuts back on the number of women entering college with good computer skills-- and nowadays, practitioners in EVERY FIELD use computers.
Tales of fishing boats that sank because a woman touched it kept women down in previous eras; tales of madness and death that result from a woman using a computer keep women down in this era.
The Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban tracks modern folklore. The consensus of the group is that most urban legends are harmless, and there's no reason to forcibly debunk them. If somebody wants to believe that a ghostly hitchhiker vanished from their aunt's hairdresser's car, let them. But a small subset are deemed harmful. Perhaps you've heard tales of Vegas travelers waking in hotel rooms with kidneys missing and "CALL 911" in lipstick on the mirror. The folks who handle organ donations say that such stories hurt donations-- and when organ donations drop, people die. Hence, members of alt.folklore.urban are enjoined to debunk the tale when they hear it-- even if it means being a little rude.
Hence, please consider this a preemptive debunk of a harmful superstition I see forming on the horizon. And if you happen to be at a party and somebody says, "I'd never let my daughter on that Internet thing; there are some real psychos out there," you might want to consider saying, "Oh, I read a thing by an Internet expert that said the press is blowing that all out of proportion because it makes a good story." If you've gotten this far, it's even true.
The Civil Libertine's Sounding Board is devoted to opinions, rants, gripes, and even articulate essays on social and political issues. If you have a burning desire to speak your mind about our world at the verge of a new millenium--and if you can say it passionately, thoughtfully, and even humorously--send your contribution to the gloria brame mailbox.. You don't have to be a professional writer, just an intelligent individual with something worth saying. All points of view are tolerated as long as you don't advocate violating the rights of the people with whom you disagree.
Copyright © 1997-1998
Gloria Glickstein
Brame
