So, apparently men are far more likely to be willing to dedicate hours on end towards acquiring the skills to enable them to successfully compete in complex online strategy games...compared to girls, who incidentally just want to feed a virtual dog and post an update of its well-being every hour.
Now, surely in the 21st century you all find this type of comment that devalues the efforts of women in our society completely offensive and down right unnecessary - right? We shouldn't be putting women down when it is so clearly not their fault - when it is merely a reflection on the way society has always been. Since time immemorial, the woman's role has been confined to washing, cooking and having a baby now and then; it is the man who was given the more complex role in life having been dealt the 'sole responsibility for his family's survival' card. In his effort to satisfy societies expectations of him - tilling the fields everyday to ensure the daily bread, trying to maintain friendships with other men whilst also trying to be more successful than them, constantly negotiating the line between strong bloke/ sensitive husband etc, he has been given the upper hand in developing the necessary skills and patience to allow him to do better than a women could at complex online games.
Men, be aware however. As Judith Butler says, gender is performative and new media has given women the perfect vehicle through which to mask their identity and adapt their performance to enable them to compete in the masculine domain of both real and online societies. Though it may not be happening immediately, these experiences that new media affords them will only aid, through opportunity, in educating women on masculine roles. The result - a new dominant woman figure able to match it with and defeat man at complex online games *big gasp* ... oh, and in every other facet of society as well by the way... muhuhahahaha
Sunday, August 15, 2010
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I can see where you're coming from... but I would also hesitate to suggest that all talk of gender differences necessarily devalues any group (often it does, of course, but that shouldn't preclude us debating differences in such a way as to avoid making those kinds of value judgments). I'm not too sure how much of your post is tongue-in-cheek. But to say that the 'traditional' male gender role is intrinsically more complex that that of the traditional female gender role is definitely questionable (and verges on the demeaning, I think). In fact, rightly or wrongly, the traditional female role is stereotypically conceived as more multimodal, requiring the juggling of many tasks simultaneously (as opposed to the single point of focus one associates with the male hunter/breadwinner figure). This is why it is often claimed that women are likely to be better multitaskers than men. I'm not saying that view is right - just that it complicates what you're saying here.
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