A graduate research paper done in the
Department of Communication, Simon Fraser University
by Gladys We
(Internet: we@sfu.ca)

Paper for CMNS 855
Simon Fraser University
April 3, 1993

by Gladys We (Internet: we@sfu.ca)
Copyright 1993

Permission is granted to redistribute electronically but not for profit.
This paper may NOT be (re)printed without permission.

Computer mediated communication (CMC) is rapidly turning the world into
Marshall McLuhan's "global village." It is an almost miraculous medium
where people can communicate individually with each other, mediated by
nothing more than computers and wires. The contrast with previous broadcast
media is obvious; in CMC, there are no editors or censors. The social
implications of CMC are vast, from its potential ability to overthrow
centralized control of information to its potential ability to help people,
no matter what their gender, race, or physical appearance, communicate with
each other with fewer prejudices and misunderstandings than any other
medium in existence. In many ways, the online world, named "cyberspace" by
William Gibson, has its own culture, morals, and expectations, but in just
as many ways, it replicates the biases, contradictions, and prejudices of
our society.

Many people have claimed that CMC improves communication between women and
men. Research has been done on how professionals interact in this
electronic environment. Cynthia Selfe and Paul Meyer found that high status
individuals of either gender (status was marked by their position and
number of publications) tended to send more messages than low status ones
(Selfe and Meyer, 1991). When the group gave participants a choice of
anonymous postings, the same people tended to post, although a few more low
status participants sent in questions and comments.

Research has also been done on how CMC helps women and non-native English
speakers in educational environments. Beryl Bellman, Alex Tindimubona and
Armando Arias, Jr. discuss how Latin American women, when allowed to post
anonymously in class, contributed "strong assertive remarks," even though
"they did not engage in heated debate" or critiques in their face-to-face
classes (Bellman, Tindimubona and Arias, Jr., 1993).

Research continues to be done on these more formal and task-oriented worlds
of professional and educational online interactions. However, it seems that
relatively little work has been done on how women and men communicate with
each other in online social environments. There are many places in the
Internet for women and men to socialize. In Usenet, the largest public area
of the Internet, people get together in newsgroups to duscuss subjects as
diverse as rec.pets, alt.tv.ren-and-stimpy and soc.penpals. For people who
want to role-play in another persona, or even another gender, there are
MUDs (Multi-User Domains), and MUSHes (Multi-User Shared Hallucinations).
There are mailing lists for alternative music fans, singles, and for
Tolkien addicts. In short, the Internet is full of virtual spaces where
women and men can meet and talk.

Howevre, there are several problems with the nature of cross-gender
interactions online. For example, I had noticed, in my initial forays into
Usenet, that relatively few women posted in most of the social newsgroups.
I went to the three feminist newsgroups and did a participant count,
assuming that most men wouldn't be interested in feminism, and expecting
that I would find a few more women participating. For the two unmoderated
newsgroups, I was proven wrong. Only in soc.feminism, amidst accusations of
censorship, were there comparable numbers of postings from women and men.

Alt.feminism participant count (303 responses)
11% women 83% men 6% undeterminable

Soc.women participant count (292 responses)
13% women 78% men 9% undeterminable

Soc.feminism participant count (47 responses)
53% women 40% men 7% undeterminable

Obviously, as Cheris Kramarae and Jeannie Taylor report, "In almost any
'open' network, men monopolize the talk" (Kramarae and Taylor, 1992).

But communication between women and men has always been problematic, to say
the least. Robin Lakoff wrote, in Language and Woman's Place, about the
differences between how girls and boys are taught to communicate. She found
that girls and boys literally learn different languages as they grow up.
Girls are taught a more passive voice and boys emerge from their "rough
talk" stage with a more forceful, active voice (Lakoff, 1975). More
recently, Deborah Tannen, in You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in
Conversation, finds that the cross-gender communications gap is as vast as
any cross-cultural communication gap. Simply put, women and men don't
communicate well with each other, even though they may both be speaking
English (Tannen, 1990).

Some of these communication problems and social assumptions are carried
over to social interactions in CMC. But are all of them? When I began my
research project, I wanted to find out how women and men felt about
communicating online. I wanted to hear what they thought about the
differences between communicating online and face to face. And I wanted to
hear the stories behind the statistics from the women who found that
electronic communication allowed them to speak their minds to the men who
said that it eliminated thoughts of sex from their missives.

Methodology:
I sent out a questionnaire (Appendix A) to several different newsgroups and
electronic mailing lists (Appendix B). The responses that I have received
have been illuminating. Most of the people who took the time to respond to
my questionnaire were helpful and supportive, sharing their experiences and
thoughts candidly. While the number of responses that I've received (25) is
not statistically significant, I feel that the respondents' voices are
representative of many people in the electronic community. In the following
pages, I have indicated whether the speaker is a man or a woman, as gender
does have some influence on the types of online experiences that people
have, and on how they have interpreted that experience. (Ironically, this
structure removes the gender-neutral feeling of most online interactions.)
I also made the editorial decision to correct spelling mistakes, unless
they added to the "charm" or the para-linguistic aspects of a reply.

THE QUESTIONNAIRE

Question 1: In your experience, do men and women communicate with each
other differently online than face to face? (Yes or No)

The "yes" and "no" answers I received from women and men were very similar
in number:

1. Women Men Total
Yes 10 (91%) 12 (86%) 22 (88%)
No 1 (9%) 2 (14%) 3 (12%)

Most people answered that men and women are able to communicate far more
easily online than face to face.

One man wrote, about his online friends: "Face to face it is possible that
I would speculate about any or all of these women from a gender oriented
perspective, but online this never occurs and I am able to relate to them
strictly as persons."

One woman wrote, "I have been involved in arguments that would not have
been possible face to face as the people I was arguing with would no doubt
have descended to male posturing early in the proceedings if they hadn't
been forced to write and think through (well, partially, anyway) their
responses." Another man added, "Women get heard more because they can
finish a thought without being interrupted. Also men tend to deal with the
content of what women say rather than dismissing it because it comes from a
woman. This is both because the culture of the net places extremely high
value on "rational" (or seemingly "rational" ) discourse and because it's
impossible to use nonverbal communication to assert dominance. This is not
to say that sexism doesn't exist; it's just harder to get away with. ... In
many discussions unrelated to sexism or women's issues I see women taken
more seriously than I think they would be if the communication were face to
face."

Both women and men felt that women had more of a "presence" online and that
it is easier for women to make their voices heard online than in a
face-to-face conversation where, as one man said, "women [are] able to
drive their point home without the familiar patronizing/trivializing
dismissal characteristic of many face-to-face encounters."

There are two sides to the freedom and anonymity found online. On the one
hand, as one woman commented, "Men are more open online than face-to-face
... Men freely give online hugs and kisses, which you don't see in
face-to-face contacts as much."

On the other hand, as one man said, in his experience on the MUDs, people
tended to "become more obnoxious because they are hiding behind anonymity."
He added, "I'd say things in public that I wouldn't say face to face
because I was hiding behind a computer screen--most of these people would
never know who I really was." Another woman felt that men "show much less
concern about the usual social constraints ... perhaps ... because online
communication feels more anonymous. ... After the first time I posted to [a
newsgroup] an individual emailed a 'welcome to the group.' After a short
conversation about a political issue, I got, out of the blue, a request
from him for an exchange of nude photos." Another woman added, "in muds if
you have a female name you immediately get jumped all over (figuratively)!"
And a man had noticed that, in Compuserve CB, "whenever a women-like handle
comes online or joins a channel, she always has more 'welcomes' than a
person with a male-type handle."

There are other anecdotal problems with CMC that my respondents did not
discuss. For instance, some women report that their suggestions are ignored
as much in online conversations as in face-to-face ones. As well,
"flaming," a CMC term for the posting of angry messages, is an online
phenomenon which tends to be associated with men. Hoai-An Truong writes:

Since women tend to use language differently than men do,
these highly aggressive language patterns may be even
more of a barrier to our participation. Styles of communication
(sometimes referred to as "debate" and "relate" styles) often
complicate messages. While debating and arguing an issue is
the normal style for some people, others understand these
debates as an attack on them, causing them to pull away
from the discussion (Truong, 1993).

Question 2: When you're communicating online, are you aware of the gender
of the person with whom you're communicating? (Yes or No)

2. Women Men Total
Yes 8 (73%) 9 (64%) 17 (68%)
No 3 (27%) 5 (36%) 8 (32%)

Roughly the same percentage of women as men were aware of gender. Several
of the respondents contextualized their answer to this question: if they
were communicating in a professional environment, they reported being less
aware of gender than if they were communicating in a social environment
such as a feminist discussion or newsgroup. Two women responded that they
were more likely to respond to a posting if it came from a woman than a
man.

Question 2a: Do you write your responses differently for women than for
men?

2a. Women Men Total
Yes 5 (45%) 4 (29%) 9 (36%)
No 5 (45%) 10 (71%) 15 (60%)
no answ. 1 (9%) - 1 (4%)

Two women found that they were more at ease when talking with other women.
The first wrote, "If I'm talking to a woman ... I'm freer about expressing
my feelings and talking about my own life experiences. In responding to men
I tend to confine myself to a debating mode." The second wrote, "I'm still
more guarded with men than with women, for very simple reasons - I'm more
at home with women, and the things that women choose to talk about. I may
share some interests with men and we can chatter away about them, but I
share a *reality* with women."

One man wrote, "I tend to 'pull my punches' more with women than with men.
(Which I don't see as being more personally condescending, it simply
represents how I see women will interpret such, i.e., I assume that women
will take criticisms more personally than men will and that, for example,
making a fool of some women on the NET will result in more negative
responses by third parties than doing the same to a man.)"

Most of the men (71%) responded that they replied similarly to postings,
whether replying to women or to men. A higher percentage of women (45%)
than men (29%) felt that they wrote differently for women than for men. One
man reported that, even in a more formal classroom setting, many women
adopted male aliases to give feedback about the class. He wrote, "This use
of male names in order to be heard demonstrates that women are more aware
of gender in electronic communication to the point where they will hide
their gender for fear that it will interfere with the effectiveness of
their communication."

There are probably several other reasons for women to be more cautious
about what they write to men. Online sexual harassment continues to take
place, and CMC, stripped of most other communication cues, can very easily
be misconstrued; a joke, misinterpreted, taken as a come-on. One woman
commented about a certain amount of "worry about being attacked and/or hit
on by the men."

Question 3: Do you think that women communicate differently online than
face-to-face?

3. Women Men Total
Yes 6 (55%) 8 (57%) 14 (56%)
No 4 (36%) 4 (29%) 8 (32%)
Unsure 1 (9%) 2 (14%) 3 (12%)

A woman wrote that women "are more likely to have that feeling of
intimidation [about the computer world] but they are more likely to express
that feeling of intimidation rather than just sitting quietly and feeling
bad. The whole thing, I feel, is healthy and cathartic." A man felt that "A
shy woman *might* be a bit more inclined to talk more when she cannot see
an actual face, only typed characters on the screen." Another woman thought
that women "get to be more active when communicating online. Because they
don't have to act 'feminine' as expected in daily life."

One woman found that women's interactions with each other online is very
similar to face to face experiences. "It's such a delight to realize that
the online nature of the communication is VERY SIMILAR to the very familiar
experience of communicating with women face2face. ... Women tend to talk
about very personal things. Periods, cramps, labor pains, etc. ... very
personal issues are constantly being broached, and women of all types
eagerly contribute their own experiences and opinions. It is very similar
to the coffee clatch, or my own experiences with my girlfriends."

One man found it easier to talk to women online than face-to- face.
"Face-to-face, women tend to be more chatty and loquacious. They tend to be
shorter, so one is 'talking down' to them (literally, even if one tries not
to have that be a factor). There could be mild sexual overtones that
complicate communication or at least are distracting."

Another man pointed out "I think that all people communicate differently
online than face-to-face." Several people agreed, saying that people with
speech impediments or obvious physical handicaps find online communication
easier than face to face communication.

Not knowing anything about someone allows people to have conversations
based on intellect alone (and English skills), without being influenced by
whether the other person is attractive, or not; too old or too young; has
purple hair, or none; is in a wheelchair, or is obese. Some people who have
been prejudiced against because of the way they look, or their gender, find
the physical anonymity of computer mediated communication (CMC) liberating,
and would not want their correspondents to find out more about them beyond
their sparkling wit.

Question 4: Communication face-to-face, and even by telephone, is gendered
because of physical cues such as dress, age, voice, etc. These cues are not
transmitted online. How does the absence of these cues affect you?

One woman, who had described herself as small and "cute," answered, "If
someone sees me saying something 'macho' or using profanity, the contrast
with my appearance lets me sometimes use these to good effect. There have
been several times, though, when I've gotten dressings down for these on
the net or in email. Not that this was necessarily undeserved, it's just
that it wouldn't happen face to face."

Another woman finds that "women may communicate differently because this
type of communications allows them to be as direct as possible without
running such a high risk of sexual discrimination, particularly if her
gender is not clear until the end. ... The lack of the gendering of
communication can allow me to make bold statements without having to worry
about how my gestures or voice might falsely render them."

A third woman wrote, "the absence of those cues means, for women, the
freedom to express ideas outside of the prison of appearance." Another
woman agreed: "I feel freer to express ideas and consider new and different
points of view. I feel that I have more control over my communication
environment, online, and yet without being denied access to the resources
and opportunities. Historically, for women to feel safe or comfortable,
they have been cloistered. In the networld, we have access to all the same
resources that the men do."

CMC allows people to experiment with different personas and "presentation
of self" (Goffman, 1959) in relative anonymity and safety. One man thought
that "women feel more free to engage in persona creation. ... A friend in
Texas is normally a very quiet, almost painfully shy person. On the net she
becomes confessional, prolific, acerbic, but especially very very vocal."
One woman related how one of her male friends, "also very shy around women
... eventually went into acting."

Two fascinating stories came from women who met their (eventual) husbands
online. It does seem paradoxical that text-based communication, through a
computer screen and telephone lines, can be incredibly intimate, but people
can become acquainted faster online than in face to face contacts. As one
woman said, "it is like making a friend in hyper-drive. One advances beyond
small talk very quickly. Communication can be when it is convenient for
each of you and more often (than say, someone you meet only once in a
while)."

Question 5: How important is gender to you in the presentation of yourself
online? (On a scale of 1-5 where 1 is not important and 5 is very
important)

5. Women Men Total
(1) 1 (9%) 7 (50%) 8 (32%)
(2) 2 (18%) 1 (7%) 3 (12%)
(3) 4 (36%) 3 (21%) 7 (28%)
(4) 1 (9%) 1 (7%) 2 (8%)
(5) 3 (27%) 2 (14%) 5 (20%)

Women tended to feel that their gender was somewhat important to very
important in how they presented themselves online (36% rated it 4 or
higher). For most of the men, their gender was relatively unimportant (57%
rated it 2 or lower).

Question 5a: How important is gender to you in the presentation of others
online? (On a scale of 1-5 where 1 is not important and 5 is very
important)

5a. Women Men Total
(1) 3 (27%) 5 (36%) 8 (32%)
(2) 3 (27%) - 3 (12%)
(3) 1 (9%) 4 (29%) 5 (20%)
(4) 1 (9%) 1 (7%) 2 (8%)
(5) 3 (27%) 3 (21%) 6 (24%)
n/a - 1 (7%) 1 (4%)

Most of the respondents, whether male or female, found that gender was
relatively unimportant in how others presented themselves online (64% rated
it at 3 or lower).

The results from questions 5 and 5a are unclear. The question was, as one
correspondent pointed out, "verrry broad," and probably confusing. Even
though I am unable to draw any general conclusions from these replies, I
include them to maintain a sense of continuity in this report.

Question 5b: How are your online experiences of gender different from your
face-to-face experiences?

One man wrote, "I can't view on-line women as potential dates/sex partners.
... When I talk to a new person on the net, I don't care who they are or
what they are like. But when I meet a new person in real life, I think
about whether they are a nice person, will they like me, and could we
become friends.

Another man wrote, "the absence of these cues allows me to eliminate gender
considerations more easily. I can block them out with effort when they
interfere, as they do in my interaction with some women, but online it is
much easier to do."

Analysis
Many different types of interactions take place online. When the contact is
professional, as several respondents noted, communication is seen as
relatively free of gender cues. When the contact is social, however, there
are may be as many ways of communicating as there are individuals. Some
women prefer flirting with men; others prefer the company and emotional
support of other women. Some men felt that it was easier to get to know
women online; others distrusted the shifting nature of online personas.

On the surface, it would seem that most people feel that cyberspace tends
to be friendly to women. It allows women to adopt more active personas, and
to speak on a "level playing field" reduced of gender cues. However, as one
man said, "try using a woman's handle online someday and see how many
'hello's you get as compared to your regular handle (if you're a male, of
course!)." As Hoai-An Truong writes, women often have "the sensation of
being the first female to have arrived at a frontier since pay dirt was
struck" (Truong, 1993). I have also observed that sexist comments and
jokes, and the use of the universals "man" and "he" exclude women from
participation. And when women speak up, they may be actively harassed. One
woman reported, "In responses to my postings he sent email calling me
'hairy-legged feminazi' ... and did lots of innuendos about the probable
deficits in my personal life." It is obvious that face-to-face patterns of
thought and interaction are replicating themselves in cyberspace, despite
the many advantages that CMC offers for equal speech.

In this summary, I have only included the more representative thoughts of
my respondents. Several respondents sent me anecdotes and examples taken
from their experiences with the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) or with
gender-switching on MUDs. I also heard from people who had made met
girlfriends, or eventual husbands, online. Many of their answers were,
unfortunately, only tangentially relevant to my research, so they have not
been included in the questionnaire results. The answers do, however, point
to a phenomenon which does need further investigation. CMC, originally
considered cold and alienating (Walther, 1992), has become, in Marshall
McLuhan's terms, a "cool" medium, one which is "high in participation or
completion by the audience" (McLuhan, 1964). People become highly
emotionally involved in their online interactions. Some people meet and
fall in love online. Participants in "flame wars" (exchanges of angry
postings) report, anecdotally, that their adrenaline levels increase as if
they'r preparing for a physical battle.

Questions also arise about the effects that CMC will have on face-to-face
interactions. Will the directness of online communication help people in
their face-to-face interactions? Gerard van der Leun, in the premier issue
of Wired, describes how a previously "shy and retiring" woman, after
flirting as "This is a naked lady" online, gradually became "her online
personality lewd, bawdy, sexy" (van der Leun, 1993). Many other net
anecdotes relate how shy people have experimented with different personas,
and then incorporated them into the presentation of themselves in everyday
life (Goffman, 1959).

Computer mediated communication is a fascinating extension of the ways in
which human beings already communicate. It has the potential to be
liberating, and it has the potential to duplicate all the misunderstandings
and confusion which currently take place in interactions between women and
men in everyday life. The choice of directions is not being made
deliberately, but is being made in the thousands of daily online
interactions, the choices of ways of speaking, and of subjects, which are
gradually shaping, as a river slowly carves a canyon, the culture of
cyberspace.

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Appendix A: RESEARCH QUESTION: Gender communications questionnaire

I'm a graduate student at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada),
studying online communication. The question that I'm researching is the
impact of computer networks on communication between the sexes.
Specifically, I'm looking into how relations between men and women are
affected by computer-mediated-communications. I'd appreciate hearing
from you (women and men) on these questions:

1. In your experience, do men and women communicate with each other
differently online than face-to-face? (Yes or No)
a. If yes, then in what ways? If no, then why not?
b. Please give an example or examples from your own
experience, including a description of the circumstances
in which your example(s) occurred. (ie. usenet, email, muds, etc.)

2. When you're communicating online, are you aware of the
gender of the person with whom you're communicating?
(Yes or No)
a. Do you write your responses differently for women
than for men?
b. Please give an example or examples from your own
experience, including a description of the circumstances
in which your example(s) occurred. (ie. usenet, email, muds, etc.)

3. Do you think that women communicate differently online than
face-to-face? If so, in what ways? (ie. more or less active?)
a. Please give an example or examples from your own
experience, including a description of the circumstances
in which your example(s) occurred. (ie. usenet, email, muds, etc.)

4. Communication face-to-face, and even by telephone, is gendered because
of physical cues such as dress, age, voice, etc. These cues are not
transmitted online. How does the absence of these cues affect you?
a. Please give an example or examples from your own
experience, including a description of the circumstances
in which your example(s) occurred. (ie. usenet, email, muds, etc.)

5. How important is gender to you in the presentation of
yourself online? (On a scale of 1-5 where 1 is not important
and 5 is very important)
a. How important is gender to you in the presentation of others online?
(On a scale of 1-5 where 1 is not important and 5 is very
important)
b. How are your online experiences of gender different from your
face-to-face experiences?
c. Please give an example or examples from your own
experience.

Thanks for getting this far! Now there are only two easy questions:
1. Are you male or female?
2. In which newsgroup or mailing list did you see
this questionnaire?

Appendix B: List of newsgroups and mailing lists for this questionnaire

Usenet Newsgroups

alt.feminism: Unmoderated newsgroup on women and feminism.

soc.women: Unmoderated newsgroup on women and feminism. Content is very
similar to alt.feminism, and many messages are cross-posted to both
newsgroups.

soc.feminism: Moderated newsgroup on feminism. Only messages which are
approved by the moderators are posted.

Mailing lists:

Comgrads: List for discussion of issues relevant to communication graduate
students.

IAMCRnet: A service of the International Association for Mass
Communication Research. Members are professionals in communications.

Peter Gabriel: mailing list for discussion of the music of Peter Gabriel.

Sappho: mailing list for lesbian and bisexual women. No men may join.

Tomi Amos: mailing list for discussion of the music of Tori Amos.

Usenet.hist: private mailing list for the discussion of the history of
usenet.