Holeton, Composing Cyberspace Discussion Threads Chapter 2

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1. re: Spender and Kornbluth
2. re: Kornbluth and Ehrenreich
3. re: Kornbluth, Ehrenreich, Dibbell, and Miller
4. re: Dibbell and Miller
5. re: Gender Online
New Threads for CC Online:
6. re: Kornbluth, Borsook, and Ullman
7. re: DeLoach and Grrrls

re: Spender and Kornbluth
1. Jesse Kornbluth says, "I didn't need to do anything special to become a believable woman, I just had to be intellgient, open, attentive and emphathetic -- gender differences really didn't matter" (¶ 16). How do you think Dale Spender would analyze the motivations, actions, and results of Kornbluth's chat-room adventure?

re: Kornbluth and Ehrenreich
2. Compare and contrast the chat-room experiences of Jesse Kornbluth and Barbara Ehrenreich, two "newbies" or newcomers to cyberspace. How would you compare the depth or shallowness of their experiences? In what other ways do you think their motivations, goals, and conclusions are similar and different? How so?

re: Kornbluth, Ehrenreich, Dibbell, and Miller
3. To what extent do you think the "electronic frontier" metaphor criticized by Laura Miller is manifested or promoted in the essays by Jesse Kornbluth, Barbara Ehrenreich, or Julian Dibbell?

re: Dibbell and Miller
4. Julian Dibbell writes that he came to take virtual rape seriously because "rape can occur without any physical pain or damage ... [so] it must be classed as a crime against the mind" (¶ 50). That passage is cited by Laura Miller when she argues the opposite conclusion: "on line -- where I have no body and neither does anyone else -- I consider rape to be impossible" (¶ 20). Based on Dibbell's and Miller's essays and your own experience, with whom do you agree more, and why?

re: Gender Online
5. Laura Miller suggests that "perhaps what we should be examining is not the triumph of gender differences on the Net, but their potential blurring" (¶ 24). Based on the selections in this chapter and your own experience, how desirable and how likely do you think it is that gender relations online can improve upon gender relations in "real life"?

re: Kornbluth, Borsook, and Ullman
6. Compare and contrast the online relationships portrayed in the pieces by Jesse Kornbluth, Paulina Borsook, and Ellen Ullman. Consider the narrator's and other characters' purposes and motivations as well as how electronic communication affects the relationships.

re: DeLoach and Grrrls
7. After reading Amy DeLoach's article and associated links, which women from the articles and stories in this chapter do you think qualify as NetGrrls or WebChicks and to what extent?