feature image via Corbis (AP PHOTO/Visar Kryeziu)
The most popular form of internet access when this book was published
I picked up this 1996 book Assaults on Convention: Essays on Lesbian Transgressors from the library last week. It’s an essay collection that “explores lesbian misbehavior of many kinds,” with essays about lesbians who “break unspoken rules of the lesbian community” by doing things like being obsessive k.d. lang fans, boxing, being or patronizing sex workers or um, being serial killers (the rule against murder has been spoken for, however, I believe). It’s a pretty interesting book written at a really transitional time with respect to lesbian culture and internet culture.
One chapter, called “cyberdykes: tales from the internet,” by Lisa Haskell, attempts to discover the fears and hopes and dreams of lesbians who use that crazy thing called The Internet. She did her ‘research’ in 1994, the year I turned 13 and two years before America Online changed its price from $2.95 an hour to $19.95 a month, which was a very transformational situation. Sometimes I think the craziest thing about that time was that nobody had a photo of themselves on their computer — it was difficult-to-impossible to get one, which meant you’d probably never know what the people you chatted with looked like. Plus, there was no such thing as ‘googling’ someone or looking them up on a social networking site, so the internet felt really strongly separate from real life. Unsurprisingly, from the get-go, LGBT people took to the internet like moths to a flame.
Which brings us back to this article and this listling. After explaining what The Internet is, Haskell publishes a series of e-mails she received in response to the following usenet posting she made:
I’m looking to connect dykes who love the net: girls who use their computers for work, rest and play. Tell me what you love and what you hate about the net, let me into your most intimate moments with your computer.
Do you think the net is changing the ideas of what it is to be a dyke? Are we blazing trails for the future, or are we just a sad bunch of lesbo-geeks?
Now, I present to you 22 excerpts from those e-mail responses, written to Haskell by passionate internet-using lesbians and ripped mercilessly out of context for the purposes of this listling. Are you ready, CYBERDYKES?
22 Things Lesbians Had To Say About the Internet in 1994
1. “It’s my computer that puts me in contact with her and I love it for that. But I hate it too because it withholds her from me.”
2. “Somehow, people on the net are less intimidating because I view them as a part of Zorro [the computer].”
3. “I’m looking forward to computer-controlled silicon implanted sex toys.”
4. “Generally, you can tell a man on the net, not least because they will usually tell you pretty quickly. The allure of being a woman doesn’t last long.”
5. “…I think of my computer as being half-way between human and machine… I think of it the same way some people think of their pets.”
6. “I spend as much time as possible on the net: up to three hours.”
7. “The net is, in my opinion, a good place to be an activist to a tolerable degree.”
8. “What I like best about the net is that I don’t feel so isolated here. I hate the net when it is down or being fixed.”
9. “I think that meeting people on the net is about 100% cooler than any type of personals and computer dating.”
10. “The internet is said to be a transnational anarchy… [if it is], it is an anarchy of the privileged: everybody I meet here is from a university or a software developer.”
11. “There’s often an intense excitement involved. Your screen becomes electric in a very real way. Her name becomes magic, your days are spent in fingering her, talking with her, writing/reading email to/from her. And the intensity builds until the words on your screen become flesh and sound when she reaches over the distance to touch you.”
12. “We don’t transcend physical distance, it just changes the nature of that distance.”
13. “Are we blazing a trail? Or just shy and socially inept?”
14. “Sometimes there’s too much ‘showing off’, messages with words I’m not used to, subjects I cannot follow.”
15. “We think in words, so this is like a direct connection line to their thoughts. Pure imagination, a pure connection.”
16. “Here, I get a ‘choice’ of so many interesting women. I could never meet so many lovely dykes physically.”
17. “Political networks exist, and will be on the increase. However, it will still happen on many levels — from local, smaller networks to bigger ones binding them. I just hope there won’t be a hierarchy to these connections, ever.”
18. “It’s not that we’ll always be playing in this primitive environment; in [some] years’ time we [will be able to] easily see and hear each other and we’ll laugh at ourselves for taking these clunky lines of text so seriously.”
19. “Is breaking up [with an internet girlfriend] just as in real life? No, there are differences. When the contact comes to an end, the emptiness is much more hollow… it’s difficult to convince others that something *really* happened to you.”
20. “Yes, we are pioneers. We’re using technology to mutate ourselves according to our own design. In a fully diverse world, gender will become meaningless, the idea of the lesbian confined to history.”
21. “I am more intensely dyke because I am touched by the Sappho conversation every work day. Also, I know more about dyke cultures by being net-connected. It expands my world. We are definitely trail-blazing and cutting edge.”
22. “…I think the net is something special for dykes: it’s like life, but you can afford to play.”
man, remember when we called it the NET?
It’s so endearing!
Remember when we actually used to type “WWW.”?
would we have still done this
if we knew how it would trap us
I ALSO HATE IT WHEN THE NET IS DOWN OR BEING FIXED. SOLIDARITY.
Number 7 :(
Still such a problem today. Sometimes it’s sad to think that posting articles for CR is my only activism (and then I realize I sign petitions, go to rallys, and volunteer). But still, being on “the net” is my primary form of activism, perhaps because it seems safe and “tolerable.”
THREE HOURS?!?!
In other news, I’m adopting cyberdyke into my vocabulary.
what if the net only let you be on it for three hours at a time? WHAT IF??
Those old-timers had it tough.
#2 is my favourite.
13… oh 13.
#3, thank God. And #19 was so often echoed before POF existed, let alone something you could admit to.
Nothing calm about the dotcom.
Maybe they could make a sequel about the founder of Google making sure this never happens again
I think you’ve won the net today.
This was a great movie…just fyi those of you who haven’t seen it…
“your days are spent in fingering her…”
I’m sorry, what type of computers were these lesbians using??? I STILL can’t finger someone through the net.
And if you ask me, that’s one of the real tragedies of the twenty first century.
Yes and what about the “computer-controlled silicon implanted sex toys”?!
#12 … whoaaaah, duuude. Far out.
“Are we blazing a trail? Or just shy and socially inept?”
If someone ever makes a movie out of my life, that will be the tagline.
Same here. I’d like to think the answers would be yes and yes. :)
#8 is so true. Without the Internet, I have almost no way of connecting with other queer people and that’s one of the most frustrating things about Internet failure or inadequate access.
This happened the year before I was born…
Weird. I feel like kind of a baby now.
Dear 1994 Internet,
Please come back so we can experience this all of the time.
Love,
Heidi
Let’s talk about how #2 named her computer “Zorro”
“messages with words I’m not used to, subjects I cannot follow.”
how i feel when i read n+1
“Sometimes there’s too much ‘showing off’, messages with words I’m not used to, subjects I cannot follow.”
Aaargh. This brought my whole childhood back!
I wonder who I’d be now if I hadn’t been exposed to so much defensive vocabulary- and curiousity-shaming when I was a kid. :(
I wish we were all more comfortable saying, “what does that word you just used mean?” and “I’m not sure what you’re talking about–would you explain it to me?”
CYBERDYKES!
#1 sounds like an excerpt from Sappho. Just replace “computer” with “papyrus scroll” and you’re golden.
I participated in the Sappho listserv back in 1994 — lord that dates me! Sappho wasn’t quite the full internet, although some techie dykes were talking about this mysterious thing called Mosaic that you could “browse” the internet with. I couldn’t really visualize what they meant. Sappho was the computer-geek’s answer to the older paper lesbian newsletter called Lesbian Connections. It was fabulous to have immediate conversations with dykes all over the country, but it also sometimes seemed to just speed up the worst tendencies of the community. That’s where I learned about flame wars; we were all trying to figure out how to communicate through this new medium, and we did it the hard way!
When you said “flame wars,” I thought you must be talking about online arguments between LGBTQ folks. Get it? Flame? Flame wars?
I’ll leave now.
i just want to chime in and say i remember lesbian connections, and “elsie” publishing. it was pretty awesome.
Damn, AOL daily was EXPENSIVE!
Speaking of women talking about technology during transitional periods…
Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto part 1.
Published in 1991, not the easiest read, but a totally awesome one. Also, how about that rad chain link fence background, eh?
http://people.emich.edu/acoykenda/cyborg1.htm
Oh, and number 12! Dang!
There is a now-hilarious moment in season 7 (or maybe 6?) Buffy where Willow says something along the lines of, “Guys, we can just google it!” and Xander or someone responds, “Willow, we don’t want to know about your dirty kinks!” Willow then laughs and replies, “It’s a search engine!” That’s a joke that will never work again.
“It’s my computer that puts me in contact with her and I love it for that. But I hate it too because it withholds her from me.”
-Somehow, 20 years later, this is relevant in my life.
TWENTY YEARS!! Wow. ’94 was TWENTY years ago….Every time someone goes 10 years ago I still say the 90s but it’s really the 2000s. AAAAHHHH
1994 was the year I was born oh no I am totally weirded out by that
I dunno if people don’t actually know or were just giggling (because hey, I mean, yeah) but ‘finger’ was a word for looking up someone’s profile/last online time etc sorta thing back then.
… maybe she didn’t mean that, but I kinda thought so since it was the first word in the list and the rest were tame. Otherwise she started out awfully strong… :D
Other than that, these are pretty remarkable in their relevance and/or perspective. Great find.
The good old 90s and the net haha. These quotes show that even tho “the net” has changed over time, lesbians have mostly not changed.
God, I feel so young now since I really didn’t have the internet till I was in elementary school so 98
Well damn number 4
“It’s not that we’ll always be playing in this primitive environment; in [some] years’ time we [will be able to] easily see and hear each other and we’ll laugh at ourselves for taking these clunky lines of text so seriously.”
So meta… :) Love this whole article/ list!
I love how relevant almost all of these excerpts still are. Also, if people thought of their computers like pets in 1994, imagine how they would describe their devices now. “I think of them somewhere between my greatest loves and vital organs I couldn’t possibly survive without.”