사이버 공간의 여성 - 몸과 마음의 새로운 경험 -

• 영문명: Women in Cyberspace : New Experiences in Body and Mind
• 발행기관: 이화여자대학교 한국여성연구원
• 저자명: 윤혜린(YOON Hae-Lin)
• 간행물 정보: 『여성학논집』제18집, 49~72쪽, 전체 24쪽
• 주제분류: 사회과학 > 여성학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2001.12.01

영문 초록

This paper analyzes the new experiences in cyberspace that women are accumulating on their own body and mind. These new information and communication technologies are heralding in changes we could not conceive of yesterday, both in the way we think, in cognitive structures and in social transactions. A web of computer networks spanning the globe offers millions of users the opportunity to exchange electronic mail, transfer files, search databases, and participate in discussion groups on topics from kids' education to table cloths designs. Cyberspace might be a virtual creation, but it is a reality that is here to stay, so there exists a rather robust continuum. Despite the ideal potential of the new technologies to create a global, egalitarian community, a virtual world without barriers or divisions, the reality is strikingly different. First, there is the danger of sliding into a world divided between the info-poor and the info-rich, with women, as we know only too well, ending up on the wrong side of the gates of technology and information. Computers may exacerbate existing power monopolies rather than serve as a great equalizer. In order to narrow the informational gap, the only viable strategy is to ensure that women are not without a means of technological proficiency. Furthermore, women see macho behavior as an explicit attempt to scare women off so that men can keep the territory to themselves. When men attack women's posts (by flaming, intellectualizing, or posting lengthy line-by-line rebuttals of women's messages) women retreat easily into silence. In the context of such computational reticences, the veil of anonymity is powerless and women's body is conditioned to be unwilling. Our primary concern now should be to put human beings at the centre of computer culture; every social issue that we are familiar with in the real world will now have its counterpart in the virtual one. Everything from sexual harassment to mind crimes, from concepts of the gender biased habits to the informational inequity, will all be up for policy discussion and decision-making. However, even if present dystopian trends continue, most of the negotiations, adaptations and creative solutions to emerging problems will be dealt with in cyberspace from an optimistic perspective. Women are trying to create cyberspace somewhere, a place-based global community in which women are active agents. The main thing is that women must now be active agents in experimenting and interpreting new forms of communication that the new on-line communities offer them. I believe that the creative ethos on cyberspace is the key process that will allow us to reinvent the world. The possibilities that new forms of communication and expression have placed in our hands at the start of this millennium are enormous. It is up to us now to navigate them for our place-based knowledge and action. We are to become informational amphibians. Cyberspace will greatly accelerate our capacity to create and build new selves in the spatial orientation. This will have important effects in encouraging women to participate in designing and implementing models of cultural development, constructing stable democracies, ensuring that different cultures can exist side by side without violent conflict and providing a sense of trust, partnership and solidarity that are necessary to any community in which people cooperate for mutual well-being. I argue that cyberspace can be explored and created as a source of pleasure for and among women, as a means to share female genealogy based on embodied subjectivity.

목차

Ⅰ. 들어가는 말

Ⅱ. 사이버 공간의 성별 정치학

Ⅲ. 사이버 공간 안의 여성의 몸과 마음

Ⅳ. 새로운 공간에 대한 협상력

Ⅴ. 맺음말

참고문헌

Abstract