[iDC] On Silence / Off Silence

[Margaret Morse]

Dear Anne,
Thanks for your post and welcome to daylight! I too was flamed under  
rather bizarre circumstances many years ago and it made me leery of  
posting as well.   I agree that successfully working collaboratively  
requires exchanges between peers /full subjects--and that entails  
going beyond traditional gender roles in discourse.  I post, but not  
often, waiting until I have an investment in the topic or some  
expertise or at least a question.  I often admire the expertise and  
experience of others and benefit from reading without posting.  I  
don't feel guilty about lurking unless I have something to say and  
don't say it.  I can count on IDC for civil exchange from many  
different points of view that develop over time.  There could be more  
women involved, of course, so please tell us more about your ideas on  
collaboration or at least give us a url.

All the best,

Maggie Morse
University of California Santa Cruz


On Nov 17, 2010, at 7:38 PM, Anne Balsamo wrote:

> Meeting Trebor f2f last week at the DIY Citizenship conference in  
> Toronto
> provided the occasion for me to tell him how much I appreciate the  
> iDC list.
> I explained why I read only and don¹t post. In response, he  
> suggested that I
> write a short note documenting my silent presence in case it might  
> encourage
> others to write as well.  That¹s the context for this message.
>
> Wayback in the early days of the wild, wild usenet west, I got flamed
> viciously in the course of a discussion about women on the net.   
> This was
> part of the phenomenon in the daySbeing able to survive verbal  
> bullying was
> the cost of admission to participate in online conversations on  
> cyberpunk,
> hacker culture, futurenet, vr. What made it particularly  
> uncomfortable for
> me was that I had made a decision not to be anonymous in my internet
> contributions, believing (maybe naively) that signing my name was a  
> way of
> being ethically responsible and accountable for my intrusions into  
> public
> discourse.  So it wasn¹t just the bullying that put me off of posting
> publicly, it was also that the risk of exposure and accountability was
> unbalanced.
>
> In the decade or so since that initial foray, I simply did not care  
> enough
> or trust enough to post. Coward that I may beSI rarely update my  
> status on
> FB not because I¹m an excessively private person, but because I¹m  
> just not
> as witty or fascinating as those in my friendship network. <grin>
>
> But now I¹m facing an interesting dilemma.  In a forthcoming book I  
> write
> about the ³ethics of multi-disciplinary² collaboration.  One of the  
> ethical
> commitments I argue for is the notion of ³intellectual  
> confidence²Swhich is
> a companion to another commitment that I describe as ³intellectual
> humility.² Scholars who study language and power might recognize the
> gendered logic of these statements, and indeed this is one subtext  
> of my
> discussion of the ethical commitments that structure (or should)  
> successful
> cross-disciplinary collaborations (involving humanists, scientists,  
> artists,
> designers, and engineers).  While there are many instances that  
> contest this
> assertion<the Amazons, Riotgrrls, and "third-wave feminists"
> notwithstanding<I still see a gendered dynamic playing out in girls/ 
> women¹s
> engagement around technology: girls still hang back.
>
> (This was evident as recent as two weeks ago in the raucous  
> exchanges that
> unfolded at the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival in Barcelona.)
>
> Indeed as was discussed at last week¹s DIY Citizenship conference in  
> Toronto
> there are many who attest to the fact that ³gender² remains a  
> barrier to
> technological participation.  The thing that disturbs me about this
> assertion is that gender = girls/women. This assumption leads to the  
> subtle
> suggestion that there is something wrong with them that needs to be  
> fixed.
> I think it is important to figure out how to analyze and talk about  
> this
> phenomenon without making the problem ONLY about girls/women¹s ³lack  
> of
> confidence.²  This was my intent in elaborating an ethics of  
> collaboration.
> Without being sweepingly essentialist, I wanted to outline the kind of
> behaviors that I believe are useful to develop in the service of  
> creating
> successful collaborations.
>
> I¹m wondering what other people might have to say about this, which  
> is why
> I¹m off silence now.  ;-)
>
> Anne Balsamo
> University of Southern California
>
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