Julia Storch
DIG340
Professor Shrout
Throughout the course of this class, we have examined various technologies and sciences and how gender relates to them, both in their development and their current status. The first conclusion drawn is that technology is not inherently neutral – it is designed by people, for people, and so carries the subjectivity inherent to human nature. Many articles have concluded that technologies are gendered and exist within gendered spaces, which begs the question: where does the gendering of technology originate? Most authors do not answer this question directly, but as they discuss the gendered nature of the technology they describe, an origin of gendering can be located. There are many difference of opinion among the articles, though common threads seem to be that when technologies are male coded, it is because women have historically lacked the access to contribute to certain technologies and so men have created tech for other men. The assumed default status of scientists and other tech users being men is another reason many authors seem to be pointing towards for the creation of gendered spaces in technology. The identification of the root of gendering changes depending on the subject of the article and the history of the field the technology becomes part of.
“#Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures” by Adrienne Massanari looks at the setup of the online forum Reddit, in particular how the online phenomena of anti-woman campaigns gain traction. Massanri “emphasizes the importance of considering how non-human technological agents (algorithms, scripts, policies) can shape and are shaped by human activity” (Massanari 2). Reddit’s algorithm was designed with the implicit assumption that the user would be a straight, white male and as led to a proliferation of the hypermasculine aspects of geek culture (Massanari 4). Reddit served as a hub for information about Gamergate due to its open and largely unmodernated nature, whereas other forums, such as 4chan, banned the topic. In terms of “the Fappening,” an event where personal pictures of celebrities were stolen and leaked online, Reddit became the main source for these pictures, only taking them down when legal issues developed. Because of Reddit’s algorithm, many of these stolen pictures were featured on the front page of the site. Such designs, along with the policies and norms of the site, “encourage certain kinds of cultures and behaviors to coalesce on platforms while implicitly discouraging others” (Massanari 8). The article creates an argument that the gendering of this particular technology came from the assumption that all the user would be white and male, marginalizing all other users and making them feel unwelcome, even on the homepage.
“Making Room For Rubbers: Gender, Technology, and Birth Control Before the Pill” by Andrea Tone examines the gender dynamics surrounding birth control before the invention of the birth control pill, which relegated birth control to the female domain. Tone argues that while much of the history of birth control focuses on women, this methodology embraces the separate sphere paradigm and ignores the responsibilities and achievements of men. Condoms began as animal intestines, which were found in tanneries and meat processing, so men had the most immediate access to them, which continued as the bootleg rubber trade grew (Tone 54, 59). Tone presents letters which establish that determining birth control within a marriage was an equal venture between husband and wife and this equality was changed with the introduction of the pill (Tone 63). Margaret Sanger campaigned for the pill because “no woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body” while condoms put birth control into the hands of men (Tone 66). The article points toward the gendering of birth control being constructed by women who wanted to make it an all-female space and erase the role of men. The history of this subject has added to this separation of spheres, and Tone claims that with a more inclusive history will “inspire Americans of child-bearing age with the hope that when the next contraceptive revolution occurs, men will be given even more opportunities to assume the risks and responsibilities of pregnancy prevention” (Tone 73). While birth control started out as a male or even neutral gendered technology, in an effort to support female liberation, it has become a technology for women, creating new issues in regards to sexism and policing female sexuality.
A technology that many may associate with female sexuality is vibrators, the history of which is detailed in “The Technology of Orgasm: ‘Hysteria,’ the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction” by Rachel P. Maines. Maines follows the gendering of the vibrator as it starts as a cure to “women’s complaints” as understood by male physicians, until its current usage as an empowering aid to women and their sexuality. The article looks at the long history of men being unable to understand female sexuality, from trying to label women’s genitals using terms for men’s genitals and dubbing the female orgasm a “paroxysm,” which helped create the myth that women cannot orgasm at all. The author claims that because men did not want to acknowledge that their wives and daughters could receive sexual pleasure, so “doctors inherited the task of producing orgasm in women because it was a job nobody else wanted” (Maines 4). These male doctors would stimulate an orgasm in their patients until they too grew tired of having to manually massage the women, and thus the vibrator was born. Vibrators remained a medical instrument until the end of the 1920s, and it was not until the 1960s that they emerged as devices for pleasure, operated by and for women (Maines 20). Maines is claiming that the vibrator was coded masculinely in its conception because of androcentrism and an unwillingness to examine female sexuality in its own right which transformed when women took control of the vibrator market and used it as a tool for pleasure, not medicine.
“The Gendered Anniversary: The Story of America’s Women Astronauts” by Amy Foster details the journey of women entering space and their role in NASA. The first female astronaut entered orbit in 1978, although there was a push at the beginning of the space program to put women into space, since they made more practical sense than their heavier male counterparts. The argument for not utilizing women in the beginning stages was that they did not meet the very specific qualifications put into place for astronauts. The first astronauts also had to be jet test pilots, something not very many women were at the time. There was also the belief that “forty percent of the women selected for the space program would drop out due to marriage and pregnancy” (Foster 155). NASA eventually implemented a program of affirmative action to get women and other minority populations into the program, but once women were ready to train, there were many technological obstacles that needed to be solved before women could go into space. Because only men were originally permitted to be astronauts, all the equipment was outfitted specifically for men and major adjustments had to be made for the women (Foster 160). The article argues that this technology became gendered because of the implicit assumption that only men would ever use it, and that was born of a society which only allowed men to be the qualified astronauts.
In a chapter entitled “Making Science Domestic and Domesticity Scientific: The Ambiguous Life and Ambidextrous Work of Lillian Gilbreth” in The Madame Curie Complex by Julie Des Jardins, the author chronicles Lillian Gilbreth’s life as a homemaker and industrial consultant. This chapter follows a different path than the other articles mentioned; rather than looking at the history of a technological too, this narrative follows one woman as she treads the line between domestic technology and the male gendered “public sphere,” and in doing so, sheds light on the emergence of domestic technology as a woman’s science. As Lillian studied scientific management, she paid special attention to the “human element,” which threatened the capital industrialists and managers she worked for (Des Jardins 65). While her husband lived, Lillian enjoyed relatively easy access to her field of efficiency science, but after his death was relegated to using her knowledge in the social work sphere, domestic efficiency, and other female coded spaces. Lillian created a kitchen practical, perhaps the prime example of the application of separate spheres Des Jardins pinpoints as the origin of gendered technology. Domestic technology is often the background and mundane technology that appears in the home life, which for much of history is a female coded space. Lillian was forced by her peers and society to work in domestic technology, which Des Jardins uses to imply the existence of separate spheres which also places domestic technology within the women’s sphere.
Especially the more recent articles seem to find importance in the assumption that the technology created will be for men. The Reddit article and the article about astronauts find a similar reason for the space and technology being hostile and unaccommodating to women: both fields had a history of being dominated by men, and both technologies were designed for men because they were seen as the default user. It makes sense that the two articles which look at the technologies behind birth control and female sexuality find a similar origin of the gendering of these fields. Condoms continue to be a “male technology,” yet the article claims that condoms emerged as a more neutral technology and was more divisively gendered after the introduction of the pill. Vibrators, in a slightly different trajectory, were originally “male” simply because they were invented by men and used by men on women because so little was known about female sexuality, yet now are decidedly female gendered. Birth control as a whole is considered a female realm, and still there is overwhelming societal ignorance in regards to female sexual pleasure. The final article delves into the separate spheres model as an originator of the gendering of domestic technology. Since women were expected to be experts in the private domain, the technology and science used and developed for home life were female coded. The authors of these articles hold different opinions on where the gendering of these various technologies come from, yet similarities emerge within similar fields and subject matters.
Works Cited
Des Jardins, Julie. The Madame Curie Complex. New York: the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2010. 53-87. Print.
Foster, Amy. “The Gendered Anniversary: The Story of America’s Women Astronauts”. The Florida Historical Quarterly 87.2 (2008): 150–173. Web.
Maines, Rachel P. The technology of orgasm:” Hysteria,” the vibrator, and women’s sexual satisfaction. JHU Press, 2001 1-47. Print.
Massanari, Adrienne. “#Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures.” New Media & Society (2015): nms.sagepub.com. Web.
Tone, Andrea. “Making Room for Rubbers: Gender, Technology, and Birth Control before the Pill.” History and Technology 18.1 (2002): 51–76. Taylor and Francis+NEJM. Web.
