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In an article entitled ‘Sex and the Cybergirl’ published in an online publication, Feminism and Women’s Studies, it was noted that although cyberspace has been heralded as a great equalizer where race, gender, sexual orientation and physical appearance make no difference, many women are increasingly reporting cases of subjection to sexism and harassment in internet chat rooms. Such women are made vulnerable to sexual and violent messages and there are no stringent laws to stop users of chat rooms from preying on such ones. While certain online groups have taken some steps to penalize offenders by suspending their accounts, much of cyberspace still remains open and accessible to the weirdest minds. The article concludes with the following words:
Will the promise of cyberspace fall to a few sexist cyberpigs? The only way to change the present course, as nearly everyone in cyberspace agrees, is to get more women on-line. In the meantime, it's a sty out there.
It is from this premise that this article addresses cyberspace as a gendered space, a space that magnifies or portrays in vivid terms a struggle for domination among differing brands of masculinities. Using the case of the xenophobic violence that broke out in South Africa in the months of May and June 2008, this paper intends to show the ways in which the electronic mail in particular has increasingly become an avenue for the commodification of women’s bodies and the ‘showcasing’ of contesting masculinities.
In an article entitled ‘Sex and the Cybergirl’ published in an online publication, Feminism and Women’s Studies, it was noted that although cyberspace has been heralded as a great equalizer where race, gender, sexual orientation and physical appearance make no difference, many women are increasingly reporting cases of subjection to sexism and harassment in internet chat rooms. Such women are made vulnerable to sexual and violent messages and there are no stringent laws to stop users of chat rooms from preying on such ones. While certain online groups have taken some steps to penalize offenders by suspending their accounts, much of cyberspace still remains open and accessible to the weirdest minds. The article concludes with the following words:
Will the promise of cyberspace fall to a few sexist cyberpigs? The only way to change the present course, as nearly everyone in cyberspace agrees, is to get more women on-line. In the meantime, it's a sty out there.
It is from this premise that this article addresses cyberspace as a gendered space, a space that magnifies or portrays in vivid terms a struggle for domination among differing brands of masculinities. Using the case of the xenophobic violence that broke out in South Africa in the months of May and June 2008, this paper intends to show the ways in which the electronic mail in particular has increasingly become an avenue for the commodification of women’s bodies and the ‘showcasing’ of contesting masculinities.
The series ALE is focused on researching all African literatures written in the English language, encompassing the breadth and multiplicity of their thematic, formal and socio-historical aspects. The title equally implies that the object of study is conceived as a consequence of British colonialism, thus making it into a cultural hybrid that is inscribed in the wider context of Colonial Studies including their postcolonial critique and revision. Accordingly the texts to be studied are not only understood as forming part of the symbolic system of literature and its aesthetic procedures, but in an equal measure as part of the social system where they belong with the process of societies making meaning of themselves.