About Women, Macs and Microsoft….an answer
Writing about Why everyone should have a Mac from Secret Plans and Clever Tricks
I stand by all three assertions.
"[rolls eyes]" "wooly-minded" – Silly girl, what are you talking about?
"Slightly anti-feminist" refers more to the piece's effect as a whole rather than any of its "bits," even though this text clearly dismembers the female form and assigns its different "bits" as attributes of the machine (definitions of hardware and software aside). Face, "wide" mouth, heart, posture all combine to form the dirty little "act" that implicates both the writer and reader in a sort of cybernetic voyeurism. The female form is laid over both Microsoft and Apple which serve as examples of two impossible feminine archetypes, that of the whore and the angel. One is "cheap" and "painted" while the other is a "lover" who "wants you to be happy." Both are definitions of female subservience and servitude. The third feminine archetype of the monster is clearly represented by Linux as the "psycho ex." Why does this matter? It matters because all three are negative definitions of femininity against which all women are measured and assessed in a patriarchal society.
To answer your second larger question, yes, (in relation to this example and others like it) I am asserting that when someone anthropomorphises an object that they implicitly (or explicitly as here) reverse the relationship and objectify the person/people to whom the comparison is being made. It has long been observed that machines like computers, cars, boats, motorcycles etc. have been assigned feminine qualities and been likened to the female form in order to appeal to the male market's (hetero)sexual ego. The fact that machines are marketed in a way as to suggest that they are feminine and exist to give pleasure to and be "owned" or "bought" by men is not a new critical perspective.
An "elegant metaphor" this piece of text is not. Frankly, "anti-feminist" was a polite, understated description of a piece of text which embodies everything many women strive to eradicate from modern gender relations.
A good book to have a look at is The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader by Gill Kirkup et al., which has a few good cultural articles about Blade Runner (in my all-time-top-ten list of films ever made list) and the Alien series. Cracking book.
The next short lecture in feminist critical theory will be: TBA….
Boy, this whole "community dialogue" bit of blogging is fun :-)
Joanna Jameson
28 May 2004 09:14
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[Skip to the latest comment]Chris May
"I stand by all three assertions." – Stupid man, what are you talking about? (or possibly, and I can't quite decide which is most appropriate) Poorly-read geek, what are you talking about?
But, you haven't answered my "larger question".
It was, you may recall, in two parts: firstly, are you asserting that anthropomorphisation implies objectification (To which you reply "yes" – fair enough, that's your opinion) – and secondly (and far more importantly), where's your evidence? I'm not interested in or impressed by appeals to authority – show me a proper, repeatable, refutable study that showed this effect actually happening, and then we can talk about whether it's applicable in this case.
28 May 2004, 09:45
Joanna Jameson
UMMMM….. I did construct a well evidenced answer and the suggested book was not an appeal to authority. I don't need one. You know I'm right. :-)
28 May 2004, 11:35
Chris May
I think this horse is not only dead now, but starting to smell a bit. AFAICS our styles of debate are too different to reach a common viewpopint, or maybe our starting premises are too far apart. So I'm going to give said horse one last prod in the hope of salvaging some useful insight:
Would the metaphor have been more acceptable to you if instead of saying "microsoft is like a cheap whore…" it said "microsoft is like the sexist stereotype of a cheap whore…" (insert extra qualifiers to suit), and something similar for the mac?
How about if it said "microsoft is like a cheap rent-boy…"? ( would need a bit of tweaking of the cultural references but could be done by someone who watches more films than me I'm sure.
28 May 2004, 21:03
Charles Miller
Deconstructing humour in this way robs it of its essence, which is that it isn't supposed to be taken seriously on any level. The further you deconstruct it, the further you take it away from what it actually means or represents.
Even then, the post contained a core of truth, but that core was quite simply non-gendered. Reading gender into it is a reflection on the reader, not the author: the text itself is innocent of such crimes.
As I said elsewhere, the original audience for that post was a woman. She got the joke. It would, perhaps, help that said recipient was a lesbian, and thus my perspective (of relationships with women) was aligned with hers.
I am a heterosexual male, thus any prostitute I would hire would be female, any lover be female, and any psychotic ex also be female. Any metaphor of a relationship I make will also necessarily be written from that perspective. To assign "misogyny" to that, is to emasculate me: to say that any commentary I make about relationships must be carefully gender-neutral, because to assign gender is to assign sexism.
This standard, of course, is never applied to feminist comedy. Mysandrony is just payback, you know?
The first metaphor, Apple vs Microsoft works because it plays on stereotypes. But the stereotype is only gendered if that's what you are looking for. The difference between sex as a monetary transaction and sex as a part of a deeper relationship, I would hope, transcends gender. (The "too-wide mouth" comment being a reference to the author's personal reaction to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. and that movie's representation of the stereotyped "whore with the heart of gold").
The second, the "psycho ex" comes from several of the author's own relationships, and he challenges anyone to assert they didn't happen, or to assert that they couldn't happen to members of any gender.
02 Jun 2004, 14:57
Charles Miller
(posting this as one comment hit the 2000 character limit)
"It has long been observed that machines like computers, cars, boats, motorcycles etc. have been assigned feminine qualities and been likened to the female form in order to appeal to the male market‘s (hetero)sexual ego. The fact that machines are marketed in a way as to suggest that they are feminine and exist to give pleasure to and be "owned" or "bought" by men is not a new critical perspective"
Bollocks. (Oh dear, is that sexist?)
The application of feminine roles to these things is not objectification of the feminine, but anthropormorphication of the object. Men do this because they personalise their ships, cars and computers, developing relationships with them that bypass ownership. It is admitting that they don't really have control. A ship's captain that refers to the ship as "she" is admitting that ultimately he does not have complete control, and that he needs her help to get to his destination safely.
02 Jun 2004, 14:58
Need to briefly take issue with your use of the term 'deconstruction' at the start of the last post-but-one:
'Deconstructing humour in this way robs it of its essence, which is that it isn‘t supposed to be taken seriously on any level. The further you deconstruct it, the further you take it away from what it actually means or represents.'
The movement of deconstruction as I understand it is not concerned with the abolition of essence, but with demonstrating that the notion of essence, of what something "actually means or represents", is illusory in the first place – there is no absolute meaning! (Sorry, I can never write that phrase without adding an exclamatory flourish – imagine trumpets sounding..). You may or may not agree with this idea, but I just wanted to leap to the defence of a much-maligned philosophical term.
And having done so, I can also add that I enjoyed the original joke, subject of such controversy… the undermining of phallocentric / phallogocentric society is important, but not nearly as important as taking every possible chance to pour scorn upon microsoft. :-)
03 Jun 2004, 10:38
Joanna Jameson
To respond to Chris:
Whether the metaphor is acceptable to me is not the issue. I was merely stating the fact that it IS reliant upon negative stereoptypes of women and because of that, it reinforces those stereotypes in our culture (whether or not Charles Miller wants to say "it's only a joke" or not, the effect remains).
Second, no, it would not be as effective if the metaphor of a cheap rent-boy was used. This metaphor would not rely on well known archetypes to deliver its message (partly because there are non of men). However, if one looks from a masculinist viewpoint, one can make the argument that the inversion of genders in a piece like this may actually contribute to the construction of negative male stereotypes and that actually, it does do this on a deeper level when one thinks of its heterosexist assumptions.
03 Jun 2004, 10:56
Joanna Jameson
I've entered my response to Chris Miller as a whole new entry, due to its length…
03 Jun 2004, 12:44
Joanna Jameson
Pardon me…Charles Miller. Apologies.
03 Jun 2004, 13:00
Jeremy Ireland
How can computers be sold as female? They are logical and do what you say!
Weirdo
19 Nov 2004, 10:22
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