Meun-Driven Identity Workshop

Response on Q1&2


By examining the signing up procedures for the Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Second Life free account service, it proves that Lisa Nakamura’s argument on internet, in fact, is a space where identities are enacted, and it is the subversion of the utopian belief that ‘cyberspace is a potential for erasing social inequalities’ true.

There are similar basic personal particulars like name/username, and password to fill in for if you want to sign up for accounts in Hotmail, Yahoo!Mail and Second Life. When choosing a username, only aphetic letter (English) is allowed to fill in, and no non-English are permitted. It is assumed that the user are all English speaking and they understand the language. However, there are also fields such as gender, race and class which are categorized into different options and are required to fill in order to complete the signing up procedure. Once again, it proves that the design of the internet interface and its content is highly categorized and revealing certain ‘categorized’ identities are criteria to join those services. The following are some of my observation in respect to the Nakamura’s argument:

With regard to the gender category, only two options are available – either male or female. It presumes that there are only two genders among the users. It singles out the possibilities of the user as a transsexual and it seems that identities are defined only by two kinds of genders and gender only (as somehow you can’t leave the gender box blank because it is stated that “Fields marked with an asterisk * are required”.) Moreover, the problem of racism and ethno-centrism is also hidden in these websites in several ways, for example, when registering a Hotmail account, the first question asked is about the country or region of the user, from which our identities is highly reduced at the first place to ‘country-based’; and “United State” is always set as the first option rather than a blank drop menu to choose from. If ever the menu is designed for the sake of ‘user-friendliness’, it’s underlying nothing but the US citizens are the expected most common users and likewise, more important than any other countries’ citizens. As for Yahoo!Mail in the ‘Preferred Content’, it puts “Yahoo!US” at the default option.

Identities in terms of gender, age, race, body shape/height and living habits, religion and ethnic background are also asked to be revealed as the ‘basics’ in Lavalife. Again, the field of country always put “U.S.A.” and “Canada” (which are white people dominant countries) onthe top followed by Australia, disregarding the alphabetical order of the country names. Besides, most of the photos shown in the website are photos of young white people, and Asian are not as popular. It is assumed that white people are the targeted users. What’s more is when you register as female, male users’ online profiles and photos will be delivered at sight. Therefore, heterosexuality is presumed among users. I hardly see signs of other sexualities like homosexuals, gay or lesbian. Furthermore, users have to identify their ethnic background in order to register. Again, the white option comes first, followed by black and Asian. All these identities are ‘menu-driven’ and there are stereotyping of identities, in particular, in terms of race and sexuality, of which are polarized into white people and their countries, heterosexual, young, as dominant on one polar (which always come first in the field of options upon choosing) and the other side as ‘colour’ people and their countries, homosexuals and old as marginal identities. There, users can select to meet certain ‘categorized identities’ while neglecting certain ‘categorized group’ of people who may also have the same quality, which indeed is a process of marginalization. Through this, identities are constructed and driven by the menu whist social inequalities still exist in cyberspace.