I'm glad you specified -- it makes the question easier to address more simply! I used to run a chatroom for women on IRC Chatnet -- had massive problems with diversity there, including a North American-owned network g-lining all Turkish masks at one point. The misunderstandings between North American women and Turkish men were particularly catastrophic - and I don't use that word lightly! I've often thought about writing it up but the chat transcripts could not be used in support as I should think all concerned would want the ground to open up and swallow them . . . The problems were actually pretty easy to work out in a talking shop (explaining the purpose of women-only spaces to men from Islamic cultures is actually pretty easy cos it's a familiar concept) -- and should never have got to boiling point. It did boil over precisely because both sides *universalised* their own values and did not enquire into the value systems of the other parties. North American female users frequently automatically stigmatised the Asian users as totally sexist male perverts (without attempting to talk to them), whilst the Asian male users had often got completely misleading constructs of Western sexual ethics from MTV and Dynasty which led them to assume that Western women had no sexual morality at all (without checking this against real conditions) -- so they experienced North American women's outraged rejection to sexual advances as purely racist. These really weren't meant to be insulting, however. I found most of the men from Islamic cultures articulated a positive value for a perceived sexual freedom in the West from which they thought the women were excluding them for racist reasons. So I made it a policy for operators always to open a query window and explain the purpose of the women-only chat space to each individual male visitor -- this was a bit tiring, but I found that the overwhelming majority of men were perfectly willing to respect the space and leave without fuss. If anything, the men from Islamic cultures accepted the idea *more* readily than those from North American or European backgrounds -- where the concept was a political "hot potato" at the time. It also has to be said that I have been kicked from a lot of women-only rooms myself -- because my European attitudes are unfamiliar to North American women and they have a tendency to assume that this means I'm male. And, on top of that, when Turkish users opened up rooms whose avowed purpose was the mutual pursuit of their own idea of sexual freedom, a posse of the North American ops attempted to lock-out the rooms and launched a campaign of harassment. This was because they universalised a radical feminist assumption that male sexuality is always exploitative and it's presence in the "neighbourhood" of their network would lead to increased harassment in the women's rooms. My feeling is that if a bunch of men and/or M/F transsexuals want to have sex (frequently with each other, as it usually happened!) that's their business -- but I do recognise that if a highly sexualised culture flourishes, that does tend to attract men who may also harass women who don't wish to participate. But still I think these issues could probably mostly be ironed out by *talking* and agreeing ground rules. Kicking and banning as first recourse just inflames conflict. There were women's rooms on Chatnet which had looser policies, but the majority of women's rooms used kick-ban with obvious relish (and frequently also with insulting language) and would enter into vociferous wars of attrition with ban-jumpers (who were jumping the ban because they thought it was unfair and exclusive). Things got extremely acrimonious resulting in DoS attacks against the network by some Turkish users and a g-line in response from the network. A meeting was rapidly held and the g-line removed with recommendations to encourage participation of more Turkish IRCops (which didn't really materialise being unaccompanied by a programme for ensuring it). I ceased to use Chatnet a few months after that and moved to a quieter network with a value system a bit less unlike my own and with a preponderance of European users, though the network is American-owned. On a recent visit to Chatnet, I was unceremoniously kicked on entry to women-only rooms without enquiry -- probably because I had a gender-neutral nick (I find it cuts harassment without causing fuss) and obviously say "hello" all wrong! So it seems fair to infer that things have not improved much. I also chat a lot to a Turkish woman (whom I *know* is a woman because I've met her several times in real-life) who was constantly thrown out of women-only chatrooms because her mask identified her as Turkish which, to the American ops, automatically meant she must be a "sexist male pervert". This caused her an enormous amount of distress. This was 10 years ago, but I still observe this kind of stuff going on on the larger IRC networks. It's this kind of experience which underpins my concern that values should never be universalised but negotiated contextually on the assumption that we're most of us basically decent people (globally speaking) and agreements about what is considered appropriate in "local" virtual spaces can be reached with a little work. Please don't give me gyp about generalising about North Americans or anyone else -- I *did* meet a handful of North American women struggling to cope appropriately with cultural difference. There were also North American IRCops active in getting the g-line on Chatnet lifted quickly so I'm not trying to "diss" North Americans. Turkish men were also often at fault because they failed to read genuine distress on the part of the women and assumed the problem was simply one of racism rather than resulting also from their own sexist assumptions or misapprehensions about Western values. I've also seen European and Asian women using anti-American invective in arguments with North American women as well as North American women aggressively dismissing Asian and European values. I want to emphasise that this is not a problem of specific nationalities, but of making universalising assumptions such as "all Moslems are sexist" and "all North Americans are racist" or "I don't understand this person's attitudes and therefore they're hostile" . . . Or, with more obvious relevance to universal ethics: it is clearly problematic to universalise assumptions about "liberty" such as that freedom of sexual expression (speech) is universally desirably or universalising constructs of "public" and "private" spaces. Paula Radhika Gajjala wrote:
Hi all, I have had time to read the replies and thanks for brushing up my ethics and legal studies with your comments.
My point needs explaining. I chat at yahoo. Recently more chatters are from Pakistan. Sometimes people do not tolerate them based on their foreign origin. I started chatting with one particular person. He always bless's me. I assume in his culture which I know very little about this is a norm much like we in Canada might ask "how's it going?" or "how are you today?" as a conversational norm. Just a little detail.
when I was in Catholic school - we constantly blessed each other too.
We learned this cultural code from each other and from the nuns and teachers in the school.
We didnt have to.
I agree - this is more an issue of intercultural, contextual exploration (n)ettiquette - mutually negotiated - than of ethics.
I should not have put my question as universal ethics (blame my past computer ethics course with Diane Dubrule) but rather intercultural exploration.
There are still so many people to meet on the Internet. Unicode and XML as Larry Wall suggests will make it even easier to talk with others. What was once an unrealistic hope of cross culturalism via Internet is I think becoming easier to access and more realistic. Mostly because more of the world in "other" places is getting on-line now. Lucky for me they know a little English. ;)
luckily for you indeed.
r
Peter Timusk B.Math Just trying to stay linear www.crystalcomputing.net >blog> http://logbook.crystalcomputing.net www.webpagex.org >blog> http://notebook.webpagex.org eof
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