ABSTRACT
Also assimilation, of lesbians into conventional society. The presence that is visible of when you look at the technology industry as well as in digitally mediated spaces raises a couple of questions regarding the partnership between queer identities and online technologies. This introduction to an unique problem of Journal of Lesbian Studies explores some of those questions and offers a synopsis of this articles that follow.
The Lesbians whom Tech Summit drew women—most of those tech that is queer ny City in very early September 2017. Leanne Pittsford began Lesbians whom Tech in 2012 as a result into the not enough exposure of females, and particularly lesbians, when you look at the tech industry. Lesbians whom Tech is currently a 20,000-member company with chapters in over 40 metropolitan areas throughout the world, which range from Boston to Melbourne, supplying networking and help. Pittsford, a woman that is white founded the company, makes certain that 50% regarding the Summit’s speakers are females of color, therefore the event emphasizes so it welcomes gender-non-conforming and trans females. In so doing, Lesbians whom Tech accomplishes a variety that lots of companies and seminars, from technology to academia, neglect to attain. Heralded as an antidote to your overwhelming maleness, straightness, and Whiteness on most tech conferences, one journalist proclaimed: “You wish to see intersectionality in training? Head to a Lesbians Who Tech Summit” (Rizzo, 2016 ).
But, the increase of a visibly lesbian technology company during the exact exact same governmental minute of increasing acceptance and assimilation for lesbians features a couple of questions regarding exactly just how electronic news technologies are reshaping lesbian communities that few have actually wrestled with within the literature that is scholarly. Just what does the increase associated with Internet that is popular mean lesbian identities and relationships? How can the multiplicity of queer identities encapsulated within the codes of “butch and femme” have translated to online areas being predicated upon binaries of zeroes and people? Just how do Ebony lesbians negotiate the usually aggressive and aggressively White, male, heteronormative areas of massive, multiplayer games? So how exactly does the performative artistic culture that is digital a narrative from lesbians about their intimate selves? How has dating changed for lesbians when you look at the electronic age of algorithmic matchmaking? There are lots of more concerns become raised about lesbians and electronic news technologies, however these are only a number of the concerns addressed right here.
This themed problem of Journal of Lesbian Studies centers on electronic media technologies and their effect on the resided and social experiences of lesbians, queer, and women that are gender-non-conforming.
The articles that follow result from writers composing across a wide range of procedures and about a wide selection of electronic platforms. Every one talks to a specific vector of lesbian identities and experience since they are mediated through electronic platforms.
Lesbians have actually recognized as butch and femme latin girls for longer than a century, however these identities refract through the lesbian community in complex means, more salient for many compared to other people (Rothblum, 2010 ). Today, these identities are now being articulated online in many different brand brand brand new methods, which Faithe Day assumes on in “Between Butch/Femme: From the Efficiency of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in a YouTube online Series. ” In this essay, examines two web series, “Between Women” and “The Peculiar Kind, ” created by and for queer women of color day. She analyzes the performance of masculinity and femininity therefore the part of visibility/invisibility when you look at the construction of a identity that is sexual. While femme queers could be “hidden in plain sight, ” the gender performance of masculine-presenting ladies is complicated by a type or sort of hypervisibility. Day explores the methods by which a politics of recognition plays away within the representation of queer identity in electronic news.
Every week, a projected 155 million people into the United States play online video gaming for at the least three hours, and two-thirds of households have a game system, rendering it an industry that is 13-billion-dollar.
The Microsoft game system Xbox is just about the popular (Lofgren, 2016 ). Xbox reside allows for real-time interaction that is social players, as well as in this massive, multiplayer community, an important number of personal identification is provided aesthetically (video), verbally (sound), and/or through non-verbal cues (avatar, gamertag, etc.). Kishonna Gray uses up the interplay of community and identity inside her article, “Gaming Out on line: Ebony Lesbian Identity developing and Community Building in Xbox Live. ” Through in-depth interviews with gamers, Gray discovers that Black lesbian gamers are at the mercy of day-to-day oppression including, although not restricted to, racism, sexism, heterosexism, and nativism. As a result of inequalities they encounter, they’ve segregated by themselves through the bigger video video gaming community and play through the margins that are digital. This ghettoization reveals their not enough link with the bigger Xbox community, though it simultaneously solidifies their ties that are affective one another and to supportive allies inside the area. Gray assesses the truth of the Black gaming that is lesbian in just a platform that devalues their presence.