I spend a lot of time online. So do my friends, and so do members of my family. In fact, those I know with a couple ovaries check out what’s going online quite a lot. There are even some organizations who predict that by next year, around 72% of all females in the US will be online - blogging, shopping, Tweeting, or what have you.
I won’t bore you with the statistics, but there are a lot of women online and a lot of women on social networks. I even know a fantastic number of women who make money from the internet and run businesses online – whether it’s through blogging, video, or selling goods they’ve made on websites like Etsy.
However, in Zoe William’s opinion, women do the following online:
- We check our boyfriend/husband’s email and browser history. ("14% of wives read their husbands emails, and 10% checked their browsing history.")
- Women who are “UK housewives” spend 47% of their “leisure time” online. (“Some of this is entrepreneurial...but a lot of it is pointless messing about.")
- They have fake friendships on Mumsnet ( “Because we're women, and many of us have children, this messing about is billed as an incredibly positive, cooperative force.")
- We join Facebook groups that are full of “vigilante rage directed at child abusers”.
- We’re con-artists swindling people out of money.
- Or we’re terroritsts like Jihad Jane who are accused of “conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, and kill a person in a foreign country.”
While I don’t think anyone was under the impression that the millions of women online would all be engaging in online actives that were, as Williams phrases it, “warm and cozy”, I do think that the melodramatic nature of this article would be bitter fit in the Daily Mail rather than the Guardian.
As someone who believes in the good and the positive power of the Internet, specifically for women, I find William’s cynical if not mocking tone to be the cherry on top of the Sensationalist Sundae that is this bitter diatribe. I mean column.
Williams swiftly points out (in parenthesis, no less) that “almost half of all UK housewives make some money online – one in 20 "mousewives" makes over £200 a week”, but quickly focuses on how a lot of what those housewives are doing online is “pointless messing about”.
How dare they!
She then pshaws this “pointless messing about” because it turns out that this “messing about” is actually women connecting with other women on sites like Mumsnet.
What a bunch of jerks!
You can practically see Williams's eyes roll as she grumbles, in response to the popularity of Mumsnet, that it's as if all women do is "have warm, helpful conversations”. She also doesn’t like idea that women wasting time on such sites as being “positive” and cooperative” as she thinks that online friendships “don't carry the weight of a concrete connection in the world”.
Now, it's very easy to sit back and mock the relationships that women have with other women they've never actually met online. But while Internet-based friendships are obviously different than IRL relationships, they can still be genuine. They can still be beneficial and meaningful, and I think there are plenty of women who would argue that their online friendships are not “conditional” or “so easy to pick up and drop” as Williams says they are.
This can sometimes be the case (as it can be with IRL friendships), but if this were always true, I don’t think communities like Mumsnet, Blogher or even Dooce’s online community would be so prevalent. Or any online community for that matter.
Just as Williams quickly brushed aside the “mousewives”, Williams barrels past the fact that “there are acres of girly chat” online, without even so much as naming any other websites or suggesting that perhaps women like to talk about things that are traditionally girly. Equally quickly, Williams notes that “not very much chat-traffic is criminal or exploitative”, but then launches into a tirade about the hateful Facebook groups women join, and women who are terrorists and paedophiles online.
As for the “anti-paedophilia” rage on Facebook, does this shock anyone? Facebook just gives people, both men and women, a (sometimes pointless) outlet to rant and rave about their political views - sane, extreme, or otherwise. It’s hardly shocking that women engage in joining and creating Facebook groups of a hateful persuasion.
And I’m not sure what William’s is trying to prove by highlighting Jihad Jane and Joann Wood. Are these two criminals supposed to represent something about the “real face “of women online? I’m sorry, is this the Daily Express?
Yes, Zoe Williams, not everything women get up to online is warm and cozy. Some women check their boyfriend’s email. Some women have extreme political if not hateful views. Some are paedophiles. Some are con-artists. Some have – shock! horror! – CONDITIONAL online friendships.
This is what SOME women get up to online.
If you’re going to write a sensationalist piece of crap story about the seedy underbelly of women’s actives online, position it as such. And then pitch it to the Daily Mail or The Telegraph. Don’t give it a geeky lead photo and suggest this is “What Women Get Up To Online”.
Or, why not feature those “mousewives” who are making money online?
Just a warm and cozy thought from one of those mousewife, entrepreneurial types that likes to build hollow friendships with other women on the Internet.
Image via NotionCapital's Flickr