After the discussion we had in class regarding video games and then reading Morse's article entitled "Virtually Female: Body and Code", it made me wonder. She claims that the internet is a 'masculine domain'. And I guess that before I read this article I always believed that this was not the case. I always felt that the internet was a place for everyone. We could all sign on, interact with people and if we did not feel like it, we did not need to disclose any person information about ourselves, mainly our gender.

In the early days with AOL, you could enter a chat room, lie about who you are/where you're from/what you do, basically anything. You could take on any image that you wanted. Females could interact with all the websites that males could interact with. I felt that it was an arena of equal opportunity.

But as technology keeps advancing and computers keep getting more and more complex, I realized that the internet and technology really is domiated by masculinity. The article discusses how math and science phobia are planted in females' minds at a very young age. They are geared more toward art, writing, and history. As a redult, females will perform lower in these categories just by being told that they are not good in them, regardless if they really are good at them or not. A great example of this is the "Blue Eye, Brown Eye Experiment" that took place in the 60's. In this experiment, the teacher tells brown-eyed students one day that the are dumber than blue-eyed students and then the next day it is oppostite. She does test to each group on each day, one when they are the 'better' group and one when they are the 'lesser' group. She found that when they were told that they were dumb, they actually performed worse than when they were told that they were smart.

For boys in our society, they are told that they can handle the tough subjects like math and science. They are told that they are allowed to play on the computer and interact wht technology. I have found that it is acceptable for boys to spend all day in their basement playing video games or computer games. But if a girl tends to do this, she is looked down upon. "Wow, she doesn't have a life" they say. Girls are expected to be creative. They are expected to be nurturing and kind. While men are expected to be smart and make money.

So when Kristie said that she used to be a gamer, I was shocked as well as others in the class I'm sure. We have been taught that it is not ok for females to do that. While internet gamins is growing, I;m sure that Kristie is in a very small population of females who are consistant gamers.