Time to get a little existential once again; when running around Web 2.0 there exists new social powers of communication and potentialities to transcend stereotypes.
Once the preferred means to instigate debate were newsgroup flame wars, chatrooms and spamming (ok spamming still gets a rise out of me), but these held remote promises of anonymity and fluid identities. Instead, I want to put forward that there is a new agenda ‘when we are online’. One that matches to our offline counterpart and is derived from the actualities of the individual (or Girl Geek) that re-invoke the ‘real’ person behind the post, commentary, review etc.
Ironically these evoke other stereotypical notions of character (e.g. always the joker, flirt etc) and bodily contexts (e.g. favoured feminine and masculine traits on SNSs). My point is that even when there is potential to re-represent a whole new person and persona online the imagined construction reinscribes existing social relations and attitudes. Basically, what goes on and how we see ourselves offline matches what goes on and how we are online. From another perspective in the world of gaming this all gets a little more fantastical as contexts tend to be 1. male-led and 2. underpinned by ‘little girl’ references.
Sarah’s GuyGeekdom post drew this comment: Anonymous said…
(…) it’s the idea of having to have a special club for girls. Do girls really need it?
Well as much as GirlGeekdom is trying to transcend the social stereotypes that impact upon Girl and Guy geeks alike, the technology led world continues to function as an arbiter of closed meanings and signals of what is accepted as the norm. For now tech-enthusiasts are still taken to be ‘mostly adolescent male youth’. Of course the actuality of this is waning fast and one of the purposes of GirlGeekdom rather than as a ‘special club for girls’ is to contradict these very hypes and give hope to future technology domains that will not be so reductive and limited by the conception of gender, race, class etc.
In the meantime how We as users intend to fill our identity markers (e.g. our Faceboook and Twitter profiles) have implications for a new progressive technological culture that I hope is closer than may appear.
As for whether we ‘really need’ a GirlGeekdom club? Then, Yes, yes we do ! As a creative and credible environment for cross-posts debate and essential knowledge, I wouldn’t be without it!
Image reproduced from: http://www.jephdraw.com/random/ff.png
About Dr Mariann Hardey
I hold the position of Lecturer in Social Media Marketing at Durham Business School. I also spend too much time enjoying social technologies, media+ stuff. That'll make me a Geek then. And a gal.
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