Response to Tinysex and Gender Trouble

Before reading chapter 8 (entitled Tinysex and Gender Trouble) in Sherry Turkle’s book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, I did not know what a MUD was. I had not even heard of it. So, I looked it up online. Apparently a MUD stands for a Multi-User Dungeon, and “is a multi-user real-time virtual world described entirely in text. It combines elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, non-player characters, and actions performed in the virtual world.” (Wikipedia). It is very interesting to think that people actually spend hours of their time playing other characters on programs such as this. They might even cross-dress virtually, or play the role of an “it” and find just how hard it is to not play the role of one gender or the other, and also find that it is difficult to play the other gender. Indeed, Turkle points out the fact that others automatically make expectations on people through a gender-based basis. After thinking about it a bit, it is true (whether we like to admit it or not)—we do “use gender to shape our relationships” (211).

Turkle goes on to compare MUD to Shakespeare’s play As You Like it. This play is where the famous quote; “All the world’s a stage” came from. I would really like to read it to find just how Shakespeare explores the topic of gender performance and stereotypes. This radical view really puts gender differences into perspective.

It really interested me when I read that Garrett decided to play a woman on MUD simply because he “wanted to know more about women’s experiences and not just from reading about them ... [he] wanted to see what the difference felt like” (216). Now this makes me curious about what it would be like to play a male on this software, but I do not think I would ever take the time to do such a thing because—no offense—but I do not have time to play someone else—especially when I am still busy learning things about myself and figuring out what being myself actually entails.

Reading on, I found that Garrett successfully used MUD to make himself more collaborative (like a female) and less competitive (like a male). I must say, however, that from personal experience I have found that females interacting with other females also tend to be competitive with each other—especially when they are competing for a guy’s attention. So, I must say that perhaps males and females are not that terribly different after all. This could be due to the fact that more and more teenage females and 20-somethings are beginning to become more aggressive as well as competitive. For instance, I have learned in my Psychology of Understanding the Sexes course that ever since it has become a cultural norm for women to play sports, many women have developed more masculine-like traits. Also, I learned that women behave more like men after winning a game, for example. In contrast, men are more apt to hug each other and show love than that of women (after winning a game as a team).

In addition, Case also enjoys playing female roles on MUD. Turkle points out the fact that acting as a female makes it much easier to be confrontational. In fact, Case says, “I see a strong woman as admirable. I see a strong man as a problem. Potentially a bully” (219). This is also something I had not put much thought into, but I can see that it is sad but true. Turkle goes on to say, “If you are assertive as a man, it is coded as ‘being a bastard;’” while if you behave assertively as a woman, “it is coded as ‘modern and together’” (219). Before reading this, I was under the impression that women who were pushy or assertive were seen as bitchy. Then again, I suppose it could go both ways. Indeed, Zoe admits that she feels like others see her as “bitchy” when she tries to act authoritative, unless—of course—she is playing the personae of a male (220).