Day one of HDCC106: Gender, Race, and Labor in the Digital World. Once we finished discussing the structural and logistical aspects of the course, I found our first class period very interesting and fun. I really enjoy talking about issues of gender and race, which were the predominant themes today, as well as other aspects that create rifts and inequalities between people.
I found the comparison of these aspects to operating systems, while a little muddy do to a lack of total understanding of operating systems, very useful as a means of transforming the idea of these aspects from just attributes to ways we experience the world.
As far as most memorable element from the material, I actually really appreciated John Scalzi’s piece Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting That There Is, although flawed as pointed out by Lisa Nakamura. I think it is written very appropriately for the audience, which I assume is straight white males who are fairly unaware or unwilling to acknowledge their privilege. His long metaphor of life experience based on these attributes to a loaded video game is imperfect in ways such as making it all very mechanical and without fault, but it is a great, very simplified and understandable introduction to the topic. And its non-aggression is very good for the audience, who would most likely be unreceptive and dismissive if faced with the opposite. I know that junior year I had an occurrence with a close male friend that led me to get more aggressive with the feminism that I was starting to explore, and since he was not ready to acknowledge any of the sexism or racism around us that I kept arguing about, and he only got angry and annoyed. I think if he had seen something along these lines, more gentle and from someone like himself, he would have been more receptive.
The only questions that I had during the class came up while reading Nakamura’s piece, and were about how to integrate her points, which begin to enter the far more complex and nuanced of the reality of inequality, into a comparison that is still simple and intuitive enough to be clear. That’s also what I would like to explore, more and even more accurate ways to effectively inform and educate people about these gaps in treatment and opportunity.
Great points about the tension between making an argument accessible and non-threatening and highlighting nuance. I’m sure you will agree that we need to have space for both approaches – the trouble can come when thinkers like Nakamura, or feminists in high school for that matter, get attacked because they’re interested in exploring social justice questions without keeping things focused on the simplest/most privileged perspectives. Yet developing our understanding of the nuances also means, hopefully, that we can incorporate more nuance when we develop our straightforward explanations. That’s one of the things I hope students will get out of this class.