So, in online spaces,
there are new affordances for relationality.
Not all of these relationships are positive.
And what I want to talk about for a little bit here,
is how people who do not know other people well,
whether it be racist, homophobic, anti-American,
Indian, whatever, use online spaces to disseminate what looks to most of us to be hatred,
and which at the very least is bias.
And part of this is built into the kind of
choices that everyone sees are possible online.
So, for instance, you can see in the image here,
if you're choosing an Avatar,
you have a choice of skin color,
but every one of the women in this lineup looks fairly European in feature,
just not to say that there isn't vast diversity
in everyone's facial features across races,
but simply that there's a very narrow choice for Avatars in many sites,
and within those choices are a pretty clear indication of white and European bias.
You can also see when you go through some of the,
I think more high profile cases of people acting out online,
that white people seem to find it entertaining to dress in racist ways,
and the picture on the other side,
is a Halloween party where someone
thought it was amusing to put on blackface and be the murdered Trayvon Martin,
and someone else thought it interesting to be Zimmerman.
This is a very disturbing way that people interact and connect with diversity online.
It's not the only way.
And I think one of the things that people are trying to navigate and improve,
is better images of themselves,
for instance, in entertainment areas like gaming.
So, what does an Avatar mean when you choose it?
Who do you get to be online
given what the people who have designed the games have enabled?
One of the things I think you see immediately is there is
a hyper-idealization of body sizes.
I certainly will never look like either of the people pictured,
and most of the people who are invited to game are very likely not of that body type.
It raises for us I think the issue in general,
why don't we represent more diversity?
Why must every Avatar look like a superhero?
and you can certainly see the difference in the kinds of capabilities of each body,
the woman got her hip at a slant,
her head is slanted,
her shoulders are slanted,
all of these things are our deference moves,
you know, if you read Erving Goffman about these,
that these are all moves that kind of indicate a lack of competence,
and you look at the young man,
and he certainly chest forward and looking at you straight on,
actually his head is still tilted a little bit,
but was not going into too much detail about that,
and he's well-muscled, he's clearly going to be a competent person.
And that sexism in images makes it very difficult for as
one game has recently done which is to force
everyone into you either have to be a man or a woman,
it's a 50/50 split.
You don't have a choice.
People are actually quite mad,
because they haven't quite gotten around to completely and utterly changing
in their heads whether being a female is competent or not.
And with images like the one of Kavita here,
where she's clearly doing these deference moves,
it's very hard to understand how you would begin to represent yourself as a woman,
if you were a young man who wanted to be competent,
or for that matter, if you were a woman who wanted to appear competent,
or if you're a trans person,
who's frustrated by having to make the binary choice in the first place.
When I teach classes on online learning,
I do an assignment on building Avatars.
And so, one of the first things I try to do is think
about what sense of self is reflected in Avatar building.
Research on younger people shows that if they don't see themselves reflected in the game,
especially when they are invited in to design themselves,
in other words there's an invitation create yourself,
and then the tools are not present to have you reflect yourself.
That's actually quite damaging for young people.
And it's not maybe as damaging, for me,
I'm fairly confident myself,
but I go online,
and I attempt to make something that will look like me,
and what you see at, because and I don't want to spend money,
which is another issue.
So, in many online sites,
you can do a lot of incredible customization,
but if you're a young kid,
and you don't want to spend your allowance on this,
or if you're me who's way too cheap to do it,
this is what you wind up with.
So, you can see that I'm a fairly short-haired glam woman,
although sometimes I also identify as non-binary, so you know,
I'm trying to also not be as a stereotypical woman,
I'm trying to kind of move into thinking of myself in relationship to trans identities.
It's very difficult to get something that is just sort of generic person.
And so, the first Avatar really represents my attempt to get gray hair,
and a frustrated expression.
The second, I think is actually a little bit better.
but there was no opportunity for gray hair,
I think that kind of patchiness of the face is pretty good,
couldn't change the color of my eyes,
big eyebrows are there.
So, that works for me.
But none of these of course are any representation of myself at all.
Other people just say, well,
the point of an Avatar is in fact fantasy.
It's not the one to one representation,
and that's one way to go I think.
But I think the problem is still there for kids who
are invited to represent themselves, and then unable to,
and I will tell you if you ever happen to see a big Blue Terrier in second life,
it's probably me, because I gave
up in second life trying to find an Avatar that looked like me,
and I just went for a dog.
And by the way,
I think this is partially what you're seeing in this light as
well which is professors in an online class,
who've chosen Avatars that just go into the wild realm of fantasy.
It's hard to think about how a class would go,
when you were being taught I think by gnomes and elves,
but it's an interesting I think critique of why we would be
trying to replicate the real in a space that
gives us the possibility of going into more idealized features.
Now, there's also I think a very interesting story that goes along with
the blue skin that is on these professors in Second Life,
which is that a young children's program called Yvelve,
started out only with peach skin,
and now has their default skin as blue.
One of my issues with thinking about fantasy,
and thinking about using colors that are unreal colors,
is that it defers actually,
any real conversation about the trouble I was having making an Avatar in the first place,
and it's not only my trouble,
it's a trouble with people of color,
it's a trouble of people with disabilities,
it's a trouble with trans people,
all of us find a lot of difficulty,
and certainly women as well who don't want to look like
a stereotypical wasp-waisted superhero.
We find difficulty being represented,
and if we just say, "Well,
it's a fantasy land,
let's all be blue,
" we are not having a conversation about the anxieties in the first place.
Now, I do think the argument that we could try new things is not a bad one,
but without taking care of the past,
moving too quickly into the future,
appears to get us to Utopia without really
adequately attending to the divisions that we're all experiencing anyway.
And I wonder, and I really do seriously wonder,
what kind of work on gender and race are being done by
the two avatars who are pictured here,
and I don't know what the professor's actually eventually make of what they're doing,
but it's an interesting question.
Dr William CopeProfessor
Dr Mary KalantzisProfessor
