Question 4: Gender and Sexuality

Question four proposes that while sexuality is often ignored in ethnography, it is such an integral part of human social dynamics that it cannot be ignored. Gender and sexual desire help to build the structure and hierarchy of any given culture, and if we ignore this aspect "We are also refusing to reproduce one of the mightiest vocabularies in the human language" (pg 100).

Yet if an ethnographer is to write truthfully about her studied culture, she needs to include her own sexual attractions and experiences. This aspect of the researcher's experiences is often left out of the study, and Kendall feels that this is painting an incomplete picture. She confesses, however, that there is a difficulty, especially for a female, in being seen as unbiased and retaining objective prestige if ones own sexual feelings are put on the table. She feels that this can be balanced if the personal sexual content adds analytical and ethical gains.

She spends time analyzing what role sexuality plays in online relationships. She observes how the idealized obsession, or limerance phase of a relationship is prolonged in online textual relationships. The limited social cues in the online environment allow the imagination to build up the other longer than they would in non-digital life.

Kendall also puts forward that in starting a traditional field study, the new environment will stimulate ones senses and awareness, allowing for seeing things with fresh eyes. Yet the physicality of her field site was her own house and computer, so her sexual attraction to online informants was important for keeping her senses engaged.

She then discusses how her area of study consisted of a primary male group, with females exhibiting behaviors similar to non digital patriarchal cultures. Few females were playing into traditional feminine roles, the ones who did gaining some types of power through male sexual attention, while still remaining an object of desire rather than a key hierarchal figure. Most women would pride themselves in being one of the guys, citing interests in classically male hobbies, allowing for some of the male dominated prestige. Yet these women would often end up marrying other males from the culture, having to play this one of the guys but not one of the guys role. Anyone left in between these two ends would often fall to the bottom of the social ladder.

-gender stereotypes and second life
-digital sex workers

For the most part, Sunden's response agrees with Kendall. She disagrees however that the online experience is a mostly physical one, sitting at a desk and typing. She feels that online attractions can by "highly physical affairs" and that "if the virtual can be erotically charged" than this "highlights the fragility of the limit between body and text in online encounters" (pg 121). We need to rethink what it means to do physical work in a field that relies on "intense mediated bodies." In these moments of the ecstatic, especially in cybersex, the line between textual and corporeal are so obviously fragile.

She concedes that the gap between fingers, computer keys, and online space does distance the participant from interaction somewhat, but that this gap allows a researcher for thoughtful reflection, a clean buffer that might not be present non-digitally.

In Campbell's response he puts forward the importance of homosexual sexuality in online culture. Sexual minority members were early adopters of computer mediated communication technologies, and the fact that this has been left out of the majority of online cultural studies risks the "symbolic annihilation" of people who do not conform to the dominant sexual paradigm.

Quoting Bell and Valentine, He states that researches are never sexually objective in ethnographic studies, and to leave out sexuality puts forth a false front of objectivity. He highlights the dangers of studying a group that one has a close personal common frame of reference and shared community, and the difficulty in making the familiar strange.

All three researches in this section divulged personal information about themselves that would normally be left out of a study. Campbell recognizes the importance of this "confessional tale" as part of a larger cultural moment in which knowledge is taken as historically situated, partial, and incomplete. That these aren't narcissistic practices, but a way of maintaining an open channel of communication with the reader.

-a majority of online gamers switched gender while playing
-world of warcraft sexual subculture
-this is a little explicit, but relevant to art, gender, sexuality, cybersex, etc
-furry digital gender swap