This page hosted by
Get your own Free Home Page
On getting home, i thought that it is a bit weird for one person to write a book about gender, and that even if i drew out the main arguments people had had about gender on Cybermind, and gave examples of gender in use, it still would not entirely get by this problem. And i wondered if it might be possible to do some kind of list collaborative book - because it would, in some way, be a list collaborative book, even if the list was not formally involved.
It could also be an experiment, to see whether the Internet did lend itself to a new kind of open collaboration - and should, much more than a book by one person, lead to the display of the multiplicities and complexities of culture in action - and get rid of the chronic vagueness about the location and variety of gender issues.
But, you might think - is this just jon marshall persuading us to write a book for him? The answer is, in some ways yes but....
This problem of 'credit' for the book, is a problem - it would be much more like a collection of essays than a book by a single author - maybe instead of 'edited by jon marshall', it should be 'written by jon marshall and cybermind' - I wouldn't like to give up the 'name on the cover' bit entirely, because i suspect that I would do most of the work, and the coordination might be pretty overwhelming - Internet collaborations seem to take a lot of work by one person.
The benefits of helping with the book might be a bit diffuse - you would obviously have your name in print, and be able to say what you want, and to quote work in it, as a publication.
Given it is a small publisher, it is well conceivable that I might not even be able to give copies of the book to all the contributors, but i'd try and give copies to major contributors. Royalties, as you may know, will not be huge whatever the book's success, but these could either be spent distributing more copies to contributors, or paid to some charity.
Let's assume this issue can be solved, then what kinds of things do I think might actually go into the book?
First of all I'd ask some of the people who have already written on this at length to prepare something for publication - This would include asking say Lynne Bennett (now Lynne Harding) to revise her article for the book - perhaps adding some more personal stuff about CM, the same with Amy Fletcher, Deirdre, maybe David Hoberman (if he can ever be found again), maybe I could persuade Morning Glory to do something with her offline behaviour survey, and perhaps include something by Angela Thomas on her work with kids and video games (this latter is not entirely on-topic but it's very good observational work, and might start some discussion).
Obviously i'm also asking other people on the list currently to think about the issue of gender online - and propose short essays, or even just make emails (even though I know 'debate to order' is difficult). I would also be grabbing emails, raiding the 'internet txt' and my files and archives of people's mail, and asking people directly for stuff.
I'd also write to past list members and see if they would be prepared to contribute remarks or essays (perhaps Laurie, Caitlin, Pip, Jerry - i'm sure more will come to mind or be suggested by current list members).
I'd also keep a set of files on the book on my Internet site, so that people could see how the book was developing and maybe make comments which might then be included, so that the book develops through feedback. However, like any editor, I'd ask people to grant me final say over what goes in the book - though people would be free to withdraw from the book, or to demand anonymity for their contributions (uptil a certain point in the publication process - you obviously can't withdraw after the book is printed and probably sooner).
So what might the book look like?
Essentially the book structure would be....
Short Intro perhaps outlining some of the issues involved in construction of the book
Chapter 1: outline of theories of gender online in other publications: Zoe Sophia, Susan Hering, Dale Spender, Sadie Plant etc. Most of the books and articles on online gender issues have focused on women. Hopefully we could broaden this. There might be room for some discussion of the whole gender and technology issue, but that is probably a book in itself - perhaps someone else might be better able to do this than myself?
Chapter 2: My takes on gender as resolver of communicative ambiguity, marker of intimacy, the relation between gender and different realms of the net (onlist, offlist, on-moo etc), the relation between gender and authenticity, the difficulties of exaggerative gender in netsex, different types of net feminisms, gender as interactive process etc...
This is the kind of thing that I would write anyway, even if the book is not even vaguely collaborative. If the book is collaborative hopefully these chapters would be followed by people's mails pointing out where they were wrong or inadequate.
Longer essays by other people might come next - these would have separate entries in the table of contents.
Then I'd include some documents from the list, with comments and introductions - hopefully not just by myself. These would be interspersed with the arguments and emails hopefully provoked by the book and these documents:
say perhaps the long arguments between Dorrie, myself and dobie about gender and ritual,
The what sex is dobie, or amethyst, discussions
The long debate between cubiccomputer and most of the female members of the list on whether there were male and female patterns of discussion, and whether male patterns tended to supress female communication - this discussion has already been instanced by Amy in her article.
The few examples of sexual harassment - perhaps its even distant enough for us to discuss the big one (whether or not it happened, because the issues of trust and risk are really at stake here), with all names disguised of course and no dates.
I'm sure going through the archives more discussions will be found.
Finally we'd have the conclusion pointing to the varieties of interpretation, and the complexities of actual online life.
Please remember, that though I may go ahead and do this, whatever the response, the book is currently vapourware. However I would like to have some idea as to whether people might participate or not, so that I can include this factor in the book proposal.
The Web address where everything will be stored is:
http://geocities.datacellar.net/jpmarshall.geo/cybermind/gender/index.html