Laura Miller’s article “Women and Children First” really made me question many of my assumptions about gender and gender roles. After reading “A Rape in Cyberspace,” I had been strongly in favor of prosecuting the “rapist” as well as protecting women on cyberspace from virtual sexual assault. Furthermore, I had assumed that I was being thoughtful and considerate in their viewpoint. I was even a bit self satisfied for arguing it.
However, now I’m not so sure if that’s the case. I had never thought that my assumptions may have been driven by the roots of male-dominated gender relations, where a woman is inherently incapable of defense and needs males to protect her.
Miller’s article used a well thought and strong argument to make this point, which has swayed me to some extent. In her essay, she writes that “in the western mythos, civilization is necessary because women and children are victimized in conditions of freedom.” She follows that if you introduce women and children into a frontier, the law is expected to follow them so that they will be protected. This theme makes sense the context of cyberspace as an uninhabited frontier. Calls for more regulation of cyberspace do seem to come from media portrayals of “terrible” things that can happen to women and children there.
Miller argues that this want for regulation is based on the cultural tradition that “women, like children, constitute a peculiarly vulnerable class of people who require special protection from the elements of society men are expected to confront alone.” Thus, in the “cyber” society as well as the real one, “women, by their childlike vulnerability, are thought to live under the constant threat of kidnap, abuse murder, and especially rape.” These ideas are based on the notion that women are “inherently weak and incapable of self-defense” and that men are “innately predatory.” This interpretation makes sense based on what we might read in Time or watch on the local news about male online “predators.” Furthermore, the women and children in this media portrayal seem to be the same the defenseless victims that that were protected by chivalrous knights in the middle ages.
They also cannot escape their gender and age. If, in cyberspace, anyone is free from their “real” selves to be or become whatever they want, then why are traditional gender interactions showing up there? Miller answers, “I see in the relentless attempts to interpret on-line interactions as highly gendered, an intimation of just how artificial, how created, our gender system is.” She seems to think that many feel a need to assert a gender system that has been artificially created in this new and open space, possibly because the traditional system of gender and power relations seemed threatened.
All of this has changed my viewpoint, as I had never realized nor fully appreciated all these implications of a male wanting to make laws that protects women. I now still think that online sexual assault or predation is still a serious problem, as I think there definitely is a strong emotional link between the real and the “virtual.” However, I now think that different solutions to this problem might be in order. Instead of prosecuting the “rapist” by creating “laws” to protect women, it might be better to find ways to empower women to deal with cases like this one without feeling like they need help.