ABSTRACT
Also assimilation, of lesbians into main-stream society. The presence that is visible of within the technology industry as well as in digitally mediated spaces raises a collection of questions regarding the partnership between queer identities and Web technologies. This introduction up to a unique dilemma of Journal of Lesbian Studies explores a few of these concerns and offers a summary of this articles that follow.
The Lesbians whom Tech Summit drew women—most of these queer technology workers—to ny City in very early September 2017. Leanne Pittsford began Lesbians whom Tech in 2012 as a result into the not enough exposure of females, and particularly lesbians, when you look at the technology industry. Lesbians whom Tech has become a 20,000-member company with chapters in over 40 metropolitan areas around the globe, which range from Boston to Melbourne, supplying networking and help. Pittsford, A white girl whom founded the corporation, makes certain that 50% regarding the Summit’s speakers are females of color, while the occasion emphasizes it welcomes gender-non-conforming and trans ladies. In so doing, Lesbians whom Tech accomplishes a variety that numerous companies and seminars, from technology to academia, are not able to attain. Heralded being an antidote to your maleness that is overwhelming straightness, and Whiteness of all tech conferences, one author proclaimed: “You would you like to see intersectionality in training? Head to a Lesbians Who Tech Summit” (Rizzo, 2016 ).
Nevertheless, the increase of the visibly lesbian technology company in the exact exact exact same governmental minute of increasing acceptance and assimilation for lesbians features a couple of questions regarding exactly just how electronic news technologies are reshaping lesbian communities that few have actually wrestled with into the scholarly literary works. Just what does the increase of this popular Web mean for lesbian identities and relationships? How can the multiplicity of queer identities encapsulated within the codes of “butch and femme” have translated to online areas being predicated upon binaries of zeroes and people? Just how do Ebony lesbians negotiate the usually aggressive and aggressively White, male, heteronormative areas of massive, multiplayer games? So how exactly does the performative artistic culture that is digital a narrative from lesbians about their intimate selves? How has dating changed for lesbians when you look at the electronic age of algorithmic matchmaking? There are lots of more concerns become raised about lesbians and media that are digital, however these are only a few of the concerns addressed right here.
This themed dilemma of Journal of Lesbian Studies centers around electronic news technologies and their effect on the resided and social experiences of lesbians, queer, and women that are gender-non-conforming.
The articles that follow originate from writers composing across a quantity of procedures and of a range that is wide of platforms. Every one talks up to a specific vector of lesbian identities and experience since they are mediated through electronic platforms.
Lesbians have actually defined as butch and femme for over a century, however these identities refract through the community that is lesbian complex means, more salient for a few compared to other people (Rothblum, 2010 ). Today, these identities are now being articulated online in many different brand brand new means, which Faithe Day assumes on in “Between Butch/Femme: From the Efficiency of Race, Gender, and sex in a YouTube internet Series. ” In this specific article, Day examines two internet show, “Between Women” and “The Peculiar type, ” produced by as well as for queer females of color. She analyzes the performance of masculinity and femininity while the part of visibility/invisibility into the construction of a intimate identification. While femme queers could be “hidden in plain sight, ” the gender performance of masculine-presenting females is complicated by sort of hypervisibility. Explores the ways in which a politics of recognition plays out in the representation of queer identity in digital media day.
Every week, a projected 155 million people within the United States play online video gaming for at the least three hours, and two-thirds of households possess a game system, which makes it an industry that is 13-billion-dollar.
The Microsoft game system Xbox is one of the popular (Lofgren, 2016 ). Xbox reside allows for real-time interaction that is social sex toys videos players, as well as in this massive, multiplayer community, an important quantity of individual identification is provided aesthetically (video), verbally (sound), and/or through non-verbal cues (avatar, gamertag, etc.). Kishonna Gray uses up the interplay of identification and community inside her article, “Gaming Out on line: Ebony Lesbian Identity developing and Community Building in Xbox Live. ” Through in-depth interviews with gamers, Gray discovers that Black lesbian gamers are at the mercy of oppression that is daily, however restricted to, racism, sexism, heterosexism, and nativism. As a result of inequalities they encounter, they will have segregated by themselves through the bigger video video video video gaming community and play through the margins that are digital. This ghettoization reveals their not enough link with the more expensive Xbox community, though it simultaneously solidifies their ties that are affective one another and to supportive allies inside the room. Gray assesses the fact of a Black lesbian video gaming community inside a platform that devalues their presence.