Women Talking Dirty: Sex and Authenticity in the Blogosphere

A few months ago, I wrote and submitted an essay for my MA in Women's Studies entitled 'Women Talking Dirty' which explored issues of authenticity and truth in women-authored erotic blogs. I stated in the essay that I was planning to publish the essay to create a similar dynamic of community between my work and the blog community as I explored in those blogs which I analysed.

I have pasted my essay in its entirety below, please feel free to read, comment and link to similar studies or blogs of interest. I know that this essay does not fully explore its subject area, but I believe that in making it accessible to the same community it examines, it will help to create more of an understanding of the complex and shifting relationships between blogs, bloggers and readers.

Happy Reading...

Women Talking Dirty: Sex, Authenticity, Community and Privacy in the Blogosphere.

A 2007 Channel 4 documentary estimated that by the end of that year, there would be 106 million blogs on the internet and noted that amongst the millions of blogs popping up, ‘the blogs that consistently attracted massive readerships were the anonymous, confessional sex diaries written by women’ (Channel 4). However research has shown how discourses of personal narrative and autobiography such as erotic blogs, are often problematised by issues of ‘authenticity’ and ‘truth’. These issues are particularly pertinent online, due to the anonymity which is so important to many erotic bloggers. This makes it more difficult to apply traditional rules of ‘authenticity’ to blogs. But as feminist discourse has moved away from one-dimensional aspects of autobiographic truth (Cosslet et al., 9), the internet has become a space for the exploration and discovery of new and alternative ‘truths’. ‘Truth’ has been defined as ‘a fact or belief that is accepted as true’ (Oxford), illustrating that ‘truth’ is not immutable, but ‘socially organised, contextually bound, a matter for contestation’ (Plummer, 170). It is in contesting this truth that the search for ‘authenticity’ becomes more personal: a part of the complex and reflexive communities between bloggers and readers. Analysing blogs within the concept of authenticity can open up dialogues of community, acceptance and interaction and creates an opportunity for a unique perspective. In this paper I explore the extent to which erotic blogs are ‘authentic’, critically examining them in the context of the still relatively unexplored nature of blogs and blogging. I argue that blogs are a rich site of community interaction, and that discourses of authenticity can be useful for examining the place of blogs within feminist interpretations of story telling.

Initially known as a web-log, a blog has been varyingly defined as a ‘spontaneous online public journal’, a ‘hybrid diary/ biography/ community/ bulletin board’ and a ‘chronological diary descended from the personal home page’ (Taylor, 68; McKinnon, 64; Webb, 22, qtd in McNeill, 28). Today a blog is most often viewed as a place where an ‘author’ reflects on her everyday experiences, thoughts and desires, and engages in reflective and reflexive thinking through an online community which engages with her. Since Blogger, a tool for creating blogs, was created in 1999, blogging has grown exponentially (Blood, ‘Weblogs’), as it became much easier to create and maintain this form of website. Although millions of blogs exist, blogging is still a relatively new media, particularly in terms of academic research (Palmer, 38). Although blogs have been lauded as potentially significant for feminism, academic studies are still limited.[1] Research on erotic blogs is even scarcer; although there has been some work carried out on online sex and pornography (see Wolmark; Wallace) and debates around the freedom of speech associated with talking about sex online (see Faucette), almost none of the research carried out on blogging has considered the increasing proliferation of erotic blogs or their significance for blog research.[2] Because of this lack of research, particularly on blogs containing erotic material, there are certain ethical issues I feel I should clarify. My methodology focuses around textual analysis of blogs, and it is thus important to articulate whether I regard online participants as ‘subjects’ or as ‘authors’. Feminist research in autobiography has concluded that personal narratives cannot be separated from their authors: these texts are ‘embodied by breathing passionate people in the full stream of social life’ (Plummer, 16). The presence of the author is especially evident in blogs, as the blogger interacts with readers, helping to authenticate the blogger as a ‘real’ person. However whilst these blogs are indisputably in the public domain, they are not equatable to a physical public space (Palmer, 39; 42). Given the potentially intimate nature of erotic blogs, bloggers’ anonymity is very important, as this seems to enable more inhibited users to express candidly their thoughts and feelings about various sexual issues (Spinello, 244). All of the bloggers I consider here use pseudonyms, thus suggesting that they value their privacy. I will explore the role of anonymity in authenticating blogs in more detail later. Like Palmer, I find it appropriate to consider blogs as existing on a continuum of public-private, published-unpublished (43); thus it seems appropriate to think of bloggers as semi-authors and as semi-subjects, and to treat them ethically as such. I therefore contacted the authors to make them aware of my research and to request permission to use direct quotations. I gave bloggers the choice of being anonymous or being referenced and thus fully credited for their work. Of the four blogs which I analysed in this essay, two bloggers replied allowing me to quote them directly and refer to them by their pseudonyms, one of which asked me to reference her real-life name. Two bloggers did not reply, even though I attempted to contact them on several occasions. However neither states explicitly on their blog the need to ask permission to quote directly and both authors are pseudonymised. In this case I feel the best approach is to maintain the anonymity the bloggers chose in my citations and to make both bloggers aware of the essay by posting it online so they have an opportunity to read and comment on it as I have had the opportunity to read and comment on their blogs.[3]

A central part of this study is going to be my definition of ‘authentic’ and I will attempt to tease out the meanings and implications of authenticity in online discourse through the course of this essay. Traditionally, a text is considered authentic by direct linkage to an identified author (Marcus, 263); however, as anonymity is a key element of erotic blogs, readers have to seek less traditional ways to identify a blog’s authenticity. The communities which build up around blogs play a large part in this, as do the links to and from other sites – if an erotic blog is linked with another blog which is generally perceived to be authentic, this lends authenticity to the linked blog. However, should we be insisting on authenticity online? Given that ‘cyberdiscourse revolves around notions of mobility and freedom in terms of identity and self-expression’ (Paasonen, 2-3), is it possible or even appropriate to apply ‘real-world’ rules of authenticity to Internet discourse? However examining women’s erotic blogs with reference to existing research on women’s autobiography will reveal the ways in which these blogs in particular seek authenticity; furthermore the focus of this essay is an examination of how blogs create authenticity, not whether they should or should not. I explicitly chose to examine women-authored blogs; although these bloggers are not the first women to talk about their erotic experiences, women’s personal narratives on this subject have generally not been validated in autobiographic criticism. ‘Not only were women’s autobiographies self-evidently outside the “Great Men” tradition with which many autobiographical critics operated, but generic definitions served to exclude forms of “life-writing” such as diaries, letters and journals, often adopted by women’ (Marcus, 1). But the scale and accessibility of blogs has allowed millions of women to read and identify with these narratives, moving the discourses of women’s erotic experiences into the open. This is evidenced by the emergence of web-rings such as the Adult Sex Blogs Directory (www.adultsexblogs.com), the Erotic Blog Directory (www.eroticblogdirectory.com) and increasing public awareness of erotic blogs, of which the aforementioned Channel 4 documentary is one example. Such prevalence makes it essential for feminists to examine this new, discourse and the ways in which it seeks authenticity from and in feminist discourse. Of course, the blogs I examined are not representative of all women’s erotic experiences, or even all women who blog about their erotic experiences: every woman writes from her own specific social situation (Jackson, 49). And blogs are still a privileged site as only an elite minority have the financial means to access the internet: currently, less that one percent of the world’s population is part of the ‘knowledge economy’ (Thurlow et al., 85) and in Britain, those with no formal qualifications are least likely to have an internet connection in their home at 56% (Office of National Statistics). It is also vital to consider the extent to which erotic blogs’ proximity to the norm authenticates them: whilst some of the blogs I read described experiences of polyamory and lesbian erotic experiences, the majority described only heterosexual erotic experiences. Ken Plummer identifies a ‘hierarchy of sexual stories’ and ‘those at the bottom of the hierarchy have stories that cannot easily be told’ (30-31). This is undoubtedly an area which will benefit from further study, but unfortunately I cannot explore this issue further here, other than to acknowledge how presentations of sexuality can authenticate and alienate in differing ways.

I focus on three women-authored blogs in this essay, although I do refer to others peripherally. I searched for these blogs in the same way a reader would (see Rak, 178) – through search engines such as Google Blog Search and through links on web sites and other blogs. The three blogs I selected were authentic experience (http://www.
authenticexperience.blogspot.com/) an account of a young married woman’s heterosexual erotic experiences, written pseudonymously by greenlacewing; Sex in the City - The Real Version (http://selinafire.blogspot.com/), described by its pseudonymised author Selina Fire as ‘a 48 year old New York City woman’s sexual adventures’; and Three of a Kind (http://tofak.blogspot.com/), ‘an ever-growing account of the sexual evolution of me, Krysta’, detailing her life as part of a polyamorous family. Whilst I chose these blogs mainly for their erotic content, they also significantly link to and from each other and comment regularly on each other’s blogs, highlighting the importance of community in blogging.

‘If something is defined as real it is real in its consequences’ (Thomas, quoted in Jackson and Scott, 106).

A sense of community is important for the creation of authenticity. Blogs become authentic as we read and absorb them, comparing them and applying them to our own erotic experiences: reading blogs can have a direct effect on the way we read our own lives and experiences (Blood, ‘Weblogs’). This reciprocity between reader and blogger that this sense of community evokes creates trust and helps the reader to authenticate the blog. Selina Fire often communicates with readers and other bloggers and they regularly interact on her blog page:

Evan: I had a blast. Great blog. Loved the piece about your mother.

Selina: Thank you! So cool that you noticed that post about my mom. It came to me in a flash. I was asking myself (as I often do): "Why am I like this?" ...And then that came to me. I'm glad you read the blog. Now you know something about me (Fire, ‘Dick for Two’).

Crossblog talk led to the innovation of comments (Blood, ‘Hammer, Nail’), allowing readers to leave feedback and interact with bloggers. Thus the process of reading and writing in a blog becomes much more reflexive (Rak, 171). ‘Challenging the enduring view of diary-writing as a solitary activity, online diarists have made community-building a major component of their texts’ (McNeill, 33), following the discovery that ‘issues and experiences which felt uniquely personal...were indeed very common experiences’ (Swindells, 207). Plummer has explored the extent to which our sexual stories are drawn from and influenced by culture and media, as the ‘boundaries between fiction and “reality” collapse’ (137). Erotic blogs are formed by a stream of erotic discourse created by all of us: Plummer sees stories as joint actions which people reflexively engage in (20-21). This enhances the blog’s authenticity, as whilst it may be authored by a limited number of people, the experiences described come from the surrounding culture: ‘a toolkit of resources’ (Swidler, 281). Furthermore, as readers examine these blogs, they internalise the descriptions and use them to form their own erotic authenticity, thus validating the blog’s authenticity: the moment a story is told, we come to own it (Plummer, 168). To some extent, I would argue, a blog is created by the online community surrounding it: as bloggers read other blogs and incorporate them as part of their own blogs, they are validating the authenticity of those blogs and using that validity to authenticate their own blogs. Three of a Kind quotes the postings of another erotic blogger, ChelseaGirl (pretty dumb things ) in one post, stating ‘I loved this post, and felt the need to share it with those who may not know of Chelsea and her greatness’ (Krysta, ‘Chelsea Hits a Chord’). Thus this blogger is authorising her own blog’s authenticity by ‘borrowing’ the posts of another, more popular and more authenticated blogger. Therefore these erotic blogs are authentic because they are read: ‘the meanings of stories are never fixed but emerge out of a ceaselessly changing stream of interaction between producers and readers in shifting contexts’ (Plummer, 22). Just as bloggers’ erotic experiences are informed by readers’ own erotic truths, which are socially organised, and contextually bound (170), readers authenticate erotic blogs by incorporating the blog’s truths into their own personal truths.

I would extend the theory that reading and blogging are shared erotic experiences to indicate a similarity between blogging and netsex.[4] Although some researchers have drawn a distinction between erotic writing which is static and netsex which is interactive (McRae, 258), I would suggest that a blog is, to a certain extent, interactive and it is not inappropriate to regard reading and blogging as mutually reflexive acts. Whilst blogging does differ from netsex in that the blog is published as a finalised text and blogging and reading do not necessarily happen simultaneously, the interaction and community surrounding blogs move them towards online chat and netsex. Readers leave comments on blogs stating that they are sexually aroused:

Anonymous said...

I found your blog about 30 minutes ago and have been reading slowly and enjoying every word.
Is it ok to say i'm very very hard right now and pre-cum is dripping. I hope that's ok to be that honest.

And bloggers respond:

greenlacewing said...

Anonymous II, I went to your lj sexblog and enjoyed what I saw there. I'm glad you found my writing arousing. (Anonymous and greenlacewing, comments on ‘what happiness feels like’)

Thus bloggers and readers connect in their mutual sexual arousal. Yet, admittedly, there are differences between netsex and erotic blogging. Bloggers do not always engage in ‘one handed typing’: greenlacewing, responding to a comment on her blog entry writes “oh no, this is just my representation of the sex of the previous day. I don't type and fuck” (Greenlacewing, comment on ‘hearsay’). However a sense of urgency is maintained through the blog’s rapid posting, conversational tone and the blogger is constantly aware of the presence of another individual, who, through reading the blog often becomes aroused.

To gain authenticity, I am arguing, a blog has to engage with its readers and create a sense of community. This allows for the development of trust, which is of vital importance in identifying and authenticating a blog. However verifying authorship becomes problematic when the blogger is using a pseudonym; the traditional ways of verifying representations as authentic – signatures, photographs, full names (Rak, 175) – are not possible for many erotic bloggers, who feel that their anonymity is essential to enable them to write as they do. Greenlacewing claims that ‘anonymity makes my transgression safe’ (‘theory’), and Abby Lee, otherwise known as Zoe Margolis, who was famously ‘outed’ as the author of the erotic blog Girl With a One Track Mind blogged:

Take the anonymity away from a blogger who depends on it and you get a blog with no heart: true sincerity and authenticity about events, people, thoughts and feelings rely on anonymity. I'll challenge anyone who says that anonymity shouldn’t matter when someone’s writing about their own life. It does. (‘Anonymity’)

Whilst Internet researchers have claimed that virtual reality offers a certain amount of safety in pushing the boundaries of erotic experience and expression, they have also recognised that ‘the anonymity, distance and partly imaginary nature of virtual space can lead to a situation in which one person feels deceived’ (McRae, 254). Sherry Turkle says ‘life on the screen makes it very easy to present oneself as other than one is in real life’ (‘Tinysex’, 411). However bloggers do take steps to authenticate their identities and create a sense of identification with readers whilst protecting their anonymity: Selina Fire geographically situates her blog Sex in the City: the Real Version in New York, culturally references the popular TV programme in her blog’s title and regularly writes about her erotic experiences with other bloggers who then respond to her descriptions by commenting on her blog. The description of real-life people, experiences and places in her blog create a trust between reader and blogger and her frequent referencing to and by other bloggers authenticates her own blog’s validity and authority in the same way that the blogger of Three of a Kind attempted. Finally, there has been considerable research interest in the psychological properties of computers supporting a user’s experience with it as an ‘intimate machine’ (Turkle, ‘Computational Reticence’, 367) which is relevant to this study. Readers often access the internet from home, making the interaction between reader and blogger more personal, as computer use is generally a solitary activity. Transferring Turkle’s theory of net communication to readers and authors of sex blogs, using a computer to access the internet and read blogs can make the experience feel more intimate, enhancing feelings of identification and trust between reader and blogger.

Who are we when we are online? (Jones, 15)

In order to fully explore the authenticity of blogs, I next examine cultural assumptions about the authenticity of women writing, specifically women writing narratives. Plummer has identified that there is a massive gender skew in sexual story-telling (30): women’s autobiography has traditionally not been taken seriously, as women writing was equated with transgression (Gilmore, 116) or with other ‘more fugitive, because apparently trivial, forms of communication such as gossip and conversation’ (Broughton, 243). Women were seen as less suited to autobiography as they were ‘unable to objectify themselves into an absorbing whole to the extent necessary for successful autobiography’: women were more suited to the cosmetic art of fiction (Williams, quoted in Marcus, 123-24). Women were expected to conform to ‘traditional’, objective ways of writing autobiography, through an ‘authorised discourse of truth’ otherwise their authenticity was removed (Gilmore, 127-130). But feminist research has criticised these distinctions and has been hugely influential in problematising autobiography and broadening critics’ consideration of the definition of autobiography (Cosslet et al., 3). Feminist autobiographies of the past have subverted the ‘autobiographical pact’ (see Lejeune) by including problematic signals which trouble the distinction between autobiography and fiction (Marcus, 280): Ann Oakley’s Taking it Like a Woman opens with the line ‘some of these characters are real and some aren’t’ (7). Scholars challenged the notion of a universal and essential ‘truth’, instead recognising that truth is part of a cultural process (Gilmore, 110). Critics also attempted to move autobiography away from the limits of self-life-writing, concentrating on ‘outlaw genres’ of personal narrative, such as testimonial literature, oral narratives and ethnographies (Marcus, 294). Finally, feminist autobiographers attempted to diminish the ‘autobiographical pact’ of continuity of name through author, narrator and character (253-254). This challenged the central idea that autobiographical authenticity is secured through the status of the author (254). This reconsideration of autobiography is vital in exploring the specific issues of authorisation and authenticity in erotic blogs.

Autobiography has traditionally been authorised by the verification of its author’s identity. As I have shown, this is not always possible for women-authored erotic blogs, due to the anonymity required for the description of personal and intimate experiences. Therefore readers have had to find alternative ways to authenticate bloggers, such as status in the online community, reputation with other bloggers and readers and identification with ‘real-life’ places or people in the blog itself However I have also examined the extent to which sexual narratives are collaboratively formed by the cultural and social discourses to which we all draw on and contribute. Some current cyberculture research has suggested that cyberspace will become a place where individuals will cease to be identified by real-life physical markers, such as age, gender and race (O’Brien, 77). However given that the ‘social significance of gender rests in the way in which we experience and understand our ‘selves’ in relation to communication with other human beings’, gender online is an act of subjective interpretation using available cultural scripts (78). Thus gender online is reciprocally authentic – it is true because it is defined and accepted in relation to others. Marjorie Kibby has asserted that ‘the Web is not a new world, but an electronic reflection of the world we currently inhabit’ (Kibby). It is therefore appropriate to suggest that the erotic experiences described in these blogs, whilst authenticated to some extent through their online contexts, are further authenticated and validated by their integration into ‘real-life’ social scripts and sexual scripts by their readers. Sexual scripting is the idea that ‘sexual behaviour is a product of ‘scripts’ learnt and negotiated through interaction’ (Jackson, 59). ‘The term script might be invoked to describe virtually all human behaviour in the sense that there is very little that can in a full measure be called spontaneous (Gagnon and Simon, 19). Thus the erotic experiences described in blogs are indicative of a learned social and sexual identity and conform to the ‘elements of what a culture agrees is sexual’ (21). Though it may seem that the Net is the place where we can really be real, we live online in the context of our offline lives (Rak, 174). I have already explored the way readers internalise and thus authenticate blogs, thus erotic narratives in blogs are further authenticated by their relevance to our real-life lives; if an experience relates to a reader’s own erotic experiences, they will consider it to be more authentic, as it corresponds with their had similar experiences. Wistful Vista, a reader on greenlacewing’s blog comments ‘it reminds me so much of my spouse, with whom I had many wonderful intimate moments -- ending just as yours do’ (comment on ‘how good it can feel’). Blogs gain further authentication in their creation of new sexual scripts which, evoking Jackson and Scott’s work on social scripts, ‘while always socially situated, are active compositions, not merely pre-defined guides for action’ (111). Thus blogs, given the contributory and reciprocal nature of their composition, have become a new way to conceive of sexual interaction, thus creating new and authentic sexual scripts of their own.

Finally I examine the extent to which erotic blogs can be perceived as an authentic feminist resource for re-examining women’s erotic personal narratives. Selina Fire blogs about a conversation she had with other female erotic bloggers, who stated that ‘their reason for blogging [was] to empower women, to let women know what they are not alone, and to bring sex-positive consciousness to women’ (‘Swinging London’). The majority of the blogs I read discussed, at one time or another, their positions as (erotic) women in their real-life and virtual worlds and the discrimination they encountered. Although the Internet has traditionally been seen as a male domain – although two out of three on-the-job computer users are women (Coyle, 42) and as many as thirty percent of Internet accounts are held by women, this does not necessarily mean they are taking up a third of the bandwidth (Evard, 188) – most online diarists and bloggers are women (Sorapure, 20, n6). This potentially marks a reversal of the idea that women are more reticent computer users, as women bloggers are actively dominant and authoritative, thereby gaining an authenticity and autobiographical validation which was previously denied to women. Whilst the emergence of easy-to-use, free blogging tools undoubtedly had an influence on the numbers of women blogging (Blood, ‘Weblogs’), this does not detract from the ability or impact of these erotic narratives to finally speak with the authority and authenticity previously denied to women. It is therefore not audacious to assert that blogs are, in this sense, a new way of telling our sexual stories. There is a further aspect of blogging which has significance for feminism. The anonymity that is so essential to women erotic bloggers suggests the possibility for safe interaction online, similar to women’s ‘safe spaces’ in real-life (Youngs, 64-65). Online interaction offers new possibilities for communications between women, defined by them, away from wider social gazes under which breaking boundaries and testing norms may be more difficult (65). This potentially identifies the Net as a unique and flexible sphere of woman-to-woman cross-boundary identification (66), most clearly exemplified by the supportive and active communities surrounding blogs. This interaction undoubtedly plays a significant part in the authorisation of women-authored erotic blogs as an authentic feminist medium.

Whilst I have found this study fascinating, I am aware of its limitations. I have only been able to read a tiny proportion of women-authored erotic blogs and thus the information I gained from these blogs will necessarily not be representative of all women’s erotic experiences. I have also not been able to explore in detail women’s erotic narratives in other places on the web, for example on personal web pages, or as part of discussion forums. However the questions that this study have raised have been valuable for a feminist interpretation of erotic blogging and may help to prompt an expansion of this discussion of authenticity to other internet genres. It is very important that I do not forget that my reading and use of these blogs has given me a position as part of the blog community. In reading these blogs, I have accepted the bloggers’ and readers’ truths and I am founding this study on that truth. Therefore, in a way, this study can be said to further authenticate the blogs in its acceptance of their authenticity. As I have used the information that the blog communities have made available, it seems appropriate to publish this study online and allow bloggers and readers to examine it and reciprocally engage with and challenge my interpretation of their blogs’ authenticity and thus my own authenticity as a researcher.[5] Perhaps this sharing of authenticity is one of the most significant aspects of the Web for feminism – an opportunity to access and contribute to a collective ‘truth’.

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Wistful Vista. ‘Thanks for this post...’. blog comment. greenlacewing. ‘how good it can feel’. authenticexperience. 1 Feb 2007. comment.g?blogID=25207709&postID=7878135344204315867>. Accessed 10 January 2008.

WMST-L. Feminist Bloggers. blogfem.html>. Accessed 17 Jan 2008.

Wolmark, Jenny (ed.). Cybersexualities: A Reader on Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and Cyberspace. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.

Youngs, Gillian. ‘Virtual Voices: Real Lives’. Women@Internet: Creating New Cultures in Cyberspace. Ed. Wendy Harcourt. London: Zed Books, 1999. 55-68.

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[1] Some notable recent exceptions are WMST-L’s valuable collection of links to feminist blogs and articles, Gaden’s ‘Carnival of Feminists’, work by Hewitt and Kline and Burnstein.

[2] One exception is Serfaty’s The Mirror and the Veil which contains a short consideration of the content and audience of erotic blogs.

[3] For an extensive account of blog research ethics, see Palmer, The Visible Techno-foetus. One aspect of erotic blogging which I will not explore in detail here is to do with the issue of free speech and erotic content on the Internet. There has long been a concern with children being able to access pornographic material on the Internet (see Spinello, 246) and several of the blogs I examined contained disclaimers stating that their blog was for those over 18 or 21 only. Whilst it is true that most erotic blogs contain strong sexual imagery and description which is often indistinguishable from the content of pornographic sites, I feel it is not useful to automatically codify these blogs as pornography as this may place a particular intent onto the blogs which might not be there – a commercial intent, for example. Women-authored blogs tend to move away from traditional pornography towards a more woman-centred depiction of sex; by even writing about their erotic experiences from their own perspectives, women bloggers can be seen as re-appropriating erotic discourse from male-centred pornography, placing it firmly within a women-dominant community.

[4] ‘Netsex’ has been defined as ‘a form of co-authored interactive erotica’, Reid, 114.

[5] I have published this essay on my research blog Nearly Theory, (http://www.nearlytheory.
blogspot.com/), which will hopefully allow for a similar dynamic of authenticity to emerge, as I have observed in the other blogs I have read.

Debates in Feminist Research – week 9 (Monday 3rd March)

The following series of posts will relate to a course I am currently taking as part of my Women's Studies degree. The aim of the course is to explore the key issues and debates in women's studies research.

For my assessment as part of this course, I am producing a critical journal, detailing my assumptions and realisations about women's studies research and about myself as a researcher. It will include some preparation work for classes and reflections on this preparation, as I discover new ways of researching.

NOTE: Please feel free to read this blog and comment freely. I am not presenting facts, this is a record of my thoughts and processes. However I will ask, given that this will form part of my assessed degree course, that you ask me before using any of this material yourself.


Constructions of the Self and Reflexivity

This session, we concentrated on our roles as researchers and the benefits and limitations of locating the ‘self’ in research. I found this session especially valuable in thinking about locating the ‘self’ within textual analysis – a part of this discourse of which I was less aware.

We focused on three key texts which presented differing methods for deploying the researcher-self:

Hennegan, Alison. "On Becoming a Lesbian Reader". Sweet Dreams: Sexuality and Popular Fiction. Ed. Susannah Radstone. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988. 165-90.

Taylor, Verta and Rupp, Leila J. "When the Girls are Men: Negotiating Gender and Sexual Dynamics in a Study of Drag Queens". Signs 30/4 (2005): 2115-2140.

Ward Jouve, Nicole. "Criticism as Autobiography". White Woman Speaks with Forked Tongue: Criticism as Autobiography. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. 1-13.

Following our reading of these texts we were required to write about our own researcher-selves. I chose to focus on my researcher-self in textual research, as this is likely to be the research area I will focus on in later work. Following my writing is a series of related questions which I will answer with a focus on the Hennegan text, as I did in the class discussions, but with elaborated thoughts relating to the other two texts, which I feel will benefit the work we did in group work during the seminar.

My researcher-self

Since beginning my MA in October I have become increasingly fascinated with the relationships which arise between researchers and subjects of research, whether that subject is a person, a text or another artefact.

My research background is in textual analysis and cultural research. Although this may seem rather limited, such research has brought me into contact with texts as varied as music, blogs, online chat, images and magazines. Although a lot of awareness has been raised about the influence a researcher can have on the research process through interviews or direct contact with the subject, I get the impression that there has been less awareness of the influence a researcher can bring to a textual analysis. I would like to outline the influences (and changes in influence) that I brought to a specific text - Jane Eyre - and what consequences this might have on any further research which I conduct on this text.

I first encountered Jane Eyre when I was 11 or 12; it was the first 'classic' I had ever read and I remember sitting on the roof of our garden shed in Scotland reading it in the sunshine. Although I had only 6 or 7 years of reading experience, I already had some awareness of the 'classic' genre, and as such I was aware that this book was different from other books I was reading at the time. It made me feel 'grown-up' to be reading what I considered to be an 'adult' book and I felt proud of myself for reading (and understanding!) a 'difficult' novel. The fact that I remember exact details about where I used to sit and read on those late summer evenings indicates that the experience of reading this novel was significant. As this was the first text I had read from that era (Jane Eyre was first published in 1847) I did not have any contemporary references, but in its portrayal of Jane's school-life, friends and love for Rochester, I found myself relating to the text in the context of my own modern-day experiences - although there were 150 years between myself and Jane, I identified with her experiences of bullying, unrequited love and ambition.

This experience stayed with me and almost four years later, when I came to studying Jane Eyre academically for the first time, it influenced the way I tried to academically understand the novel. I attempted to rationalise and explain Jane's actions by stating that 'Jane felt this way because that is the way I felt when I imagined myself in her situation' or 'she reacted understandably - that's the way I would have reacted to a similar situation in my own life'. My deep identification with Jane as a character also understandably influenced the way I interpreted the novel - if anyone in the class attempted to criticise her, saying she was 'weak', 'drippy' or 'dull', I felt obliged to defend her - almost as if defending Jane was defending my right to identify with her: it felt like I was defending myself. This academic reading explained the contemporary influences and references in the novel that I had, in all likelihood, misunderstood the first time I read the novel: I learned who the author was, the circumstances around the book's release and contemporary first impressions and reactions to the novel. Thus I probably gained a fuller reading of Jane Eyre, but again, these factors were explained to me by a teacher, who would have been taught by another person who would have studied and read critics who were informed by other critics, creating a chain of passed on knowledge. At the time though, the views of teachers were never 'wrong', so I accepted this authoritative information in order to then regurgitate it myself. Furthermore, there was a marked difference in the way I read Jane Eyre for pleasure and the way I read it for academic examination. Thus the knowledge I had about Jane Eyre at this point in my life was influenced not only by my own identification and wider reading, but by the influence of others' reading and (non)identification.

Recently, I have studied Jane Eyre academically for a second time, in conjunction with a reading of Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. I re-read Jane Eyre rather nostalgically, re-living previous reading experiences however fleshing this out with the feminist knowledge that I had since gained through further education and wider influences (newspapers, TV, opinions of friends and relative). Because Jane Eyre is a very widely known and celebrated text, its cultural influences are widely available and accessible - I watched TV and film adaptations, caught references in more modern 'chick-lit' novels and I had a much greater historical knowledge of the time period (See image, from [acessed 3 March]). So my reading of Jane Eyre was now much more complex, as whilst reading I would catch signposts to this knowledge which would open another interpretation of the novel (e.g. the first line of the last chapter - 'Reader, I married him' - is the title of Patricia Beer's study and has also been used as the title for Michele Roberts' 2006 novel and a BBC documentary). However the biggest and most pervading influence was that of reading Wide Sargasso Sea. I had never encountered this novel before, but I was aware that it was a re-interpretation of Jane Eyre from the viewpoint of the first Mrs. Rochester - Bertha Mason. I had not placed much significance on her character in Jane Eyre during previous readings, but Wide Sargasso Sea opened my eyes to the racist and unfair way Bertha Mason was portrayed. It also radically altered my view of Rochester from that of a stern but admirable character (because he loves Jane really) to that of a patriarchal, controlling, racist man who mistreats his wife and drives her mad.

Going back to Jane Eyre after reading Wide Sargasso Sea I found I could not read it with the same identification I once had - I now found Jane to be a selfish and weak character and no longer wanted to identify myself and my experiences with her own. I also felt a bit foolish - surprised that I hadn't picked up on these markers of racism and discrimination before. However this new understanding and reading of Jane Eyre was ultimately borne out of my recent learning of nineteenth century racism and colonial contexts, knowledge which I had not had available before.

So reading Jane Eyre now, I cannot approach the text in an objective manner. All the history and knowledge that I have with the text cannot be unlearned and cannot be ignored. So an acknowledgement of the place of Jane Eyre in my own cultural learning and of myself within my reading of Jane Eyre, although it may not be objective, will allow for a recognition of multiple interpretations and will seek to avoid privileging one viewpoint over another. I occupy a unique position in relation to Jane Eyre and, for that matter, in relation to every text I have encountered. Thus I should always indicate an awareness of the multiplicity of interpretation and be aware of the potential influences in my own learning which will affect what I understand in what I read.

Some questions

1. How was the researcher-self presented and deployed in each of the three key texts?

Hennegan appears to have assimilated her whole life’s reading into her research – her article does not distinguish between reading she did as a teenager and reading she carried out for research purposes. In this sense her article differs from Taylor and Rupp’s. However this stance (also shared, to a certain extent, by Ward Jouve) does draw attention to the effect of cultural learning in research; Hennegan draws a clear comparison between her reading experiences and her research choices. I found this aspect of Hennegan’s article very useful in writing about my own researcher-self and the effect of my cultural learning on my research choices, i.e. subject, methodology, potential consequences of the research.

What did you learn from each text, and to what extent was this dependent on the self-conscious use of the researcher-self?

Hennegan is vociferous about the potential for multiple and resistant readings and this is clearly a skill which she inherits and develops through her ‘personal’ reading experiences. Furthermore the research which Hennegan and Taylor and Rupp go on to explore is (in their own words) almost directly related to their sexuality and their experiences of living as lesbians: Hennegan draws links between generations of confused adolescents to show how, just as her own memories can be re-interpreted in light of her contemporary knowledge and awareness, the meaning of ‘gay identity’ can also be re-interpreted; Taylor and Rupp pay particular attention to the interaction of themselves as lesbians with their subjects, although they also acknowledge interactions of class and educational differences.

What might have been obscured by the subjective voice?

It was suggested that Hennegan’s privileging of her sexuality as the primary marker of her researcher-self presents her sexuality as latent – she never challenges her sexuality, but accepts it as something which was always present and of which she had ‘inklings’ (167). This may prevent her from acknowledging how her reading may have shaped her and thus affected her researcher-self.

This led to a discussion of the problems surrounding using aspects of identity in research, and the potential effects this may have. When researchers are attempting to match aspects of identity, what is an important part of a researcher’s identity (i.e. what may affect the research) and what is not important (e.g. height)? Why do we privilege certain attributes over others? (e.g. Hennegan and Taylor and Rupp both privilege their sexualities as the primary aspect of their researcher-selves)

What different kinds of researcher-self did you wish to write into your own text?

I chose to focus on my relationship to one particular text as I felt it might be easier to illustrate my researcher-self in relation to one particular text. Thus I highlighted previous reading experiences and the ways they had altered my relationship to the text.

However the most significant aspect of my relationship to this text was, I realised, the fact that even upon my first encounter with this text, I was not approaching it outside of cultural knowledge or learning. I knew what genre of novel it was, the cover told me when it was written, I knew my mother and grandmother had both read it (but my father and grandfather had not) so even if I am only now able to vocalise this learning, I am profoundly aware of the impossibility of ever reading anything outside of a prior cultural (and perhaps social) teaching and learning. This realisation has altered the way I consider my relation to texts I encounter for the first time – e.g. who recommended them? Why did I choose to read this text? What is the text’s genre and what do I know about the genre?

5. What were the specific challenges you faced when reading and writing these subjective texts?

As with any self-analytical writing, it is difficult to articulate your relationship with research, as it is often challenging to turn an analytical gaze inwards. Although I did find it difficult to acknowledge the extent to which my research is affected by my knowledge and learning (perhaps it is entirely affected), I also found it very liberating to trace the strands of my knowledge back and to accept their effect on me and my research. I also found it almost comforting, reading Hennegan’s enmeshing of her reading knowledge and her research, to be able to draw on personal reading within research and to fully appreciate the fluidity of my researcher-self and my more general ‘self’. In the end, it is not possible to extract my researcher-self, from my wider ‘self’, thus my research will necessarily inform me, just as my ‘self’ informs my research– it is not always possible to say where ‘me’ ends and my ‘research’ begins.

Reflections

Having already encountered Hennegan’s article in the first Debates session, I found it very useful to return to it in a slightly different way and to compare and contrast what I gleaned from the article then and the way I regard it now. Ironically, it is likely, but almost impossible to quantify, the influence that my first reading of Hennegan had upon this subsequent reading and interpretation.

However as I said in the first session, it is ‘useful to examine the way we change our minds about the texts through further education and change of context of reading and time’. This course has made me think much more critically about my own position in relation to my research and having gone through several more classes, I would refute the assertion I initially made that there may be a ‘potential for universal reading’. I would now argue that as our learning and experience is so central to our research and our selves, that there is no such thing as ‘universal’ reading and this, in fact, may be more harmful in our approach to literature. Recalling being taught the ‘right’ interpretation to texts by school teachers in light of my new knowledge of the impossibility of objective knowledge, I am more determined than ever not to replicate this universalising of knowledge in my own research by continuing to be sensitive and aware of my researcher-self.

Debates in Feminist Research - week 8 (Monday 25th February)

This series of posts relate to a course I am currently taking as part of my Women's Studies degree. The aim of the course is to explore the key issues and debates in women's studies research.

For my assessment as part of this course, I am producing a critical journal, detailing my assumptions and realisations about women's studies research and about myself as a researcher. It will include some preparation work for classes and reflections on this preparation, as I discover new ways of researching.

NOTE: Please feel free to read this blog and comment freely. I am not presenting facts, this is a record of my thoughts and processes. However I will ask, given that this will form part of my assessed degree course, that you please seek my permission before citing any of this material yourself.

Negotiating person-centred research

This week we considered the potential uses of and potential problems which arise through person-centred research. We took Penny Summerfield's "Oral History as a Research Method" as a starting point from which to examine this in relation to our own person-centred projects.

So what is person-centred research? Put simply, it is research which focuses on a person and their experiences. Usually facilitated through interviewing, this research attempts to locate a person's significance in relation to others and to examine their place and their contribution to the world. It is distinct from text-centred and process-centred research in that it takes the person as the central aspect of the research as opposed to a text or a research process.

Where do we find sources of knowledge to conduct person-centred research?

There are many different sources available which can be used in person-centred research, interviewing being just one of them. These can include:

• Official documents (including birth and death certificates, marriage and divorce licenses, medical certificates, criminal records, the census). These sources are generally readily available from local records offices and national archives.
  
• Private documents (including letters, diaries, autobiographies, e-mails). However isues were raised in terms of both the accessibility of these artefacts - they would either have to be gifted by relatives or friends of the person being researched, or by the person themselves - and the likely class and status of a person who has extensive and accessible private documents. If these have been made publicly available, the person being researched is likely to be high-status. Thus the use of private sources for research is a preselection of who has been recorded in this way.
  
• Mass Observation Archive: This can be useful for providing accessible information about people's everyday lives.
  

It is also becoming increasingly common for researchers to deposit collected interviews in research libraries for use by others. There is a real need to record people's 'ordinary' everyday activites as these will not otherwise survive. The literature, art and other artefacts which may survive through into later periods is usually not representative of everyday lives and activites. Thus it is vital to continue to foster the increasing post-war interest in the 'ordinary person', offering a bottom-up view as opposed to the official top-down one.

How do we find respondents?

Penny Summerfield outlined several ways of locating respondents in her article, including advertising in national magazines, however the most successful method was snowballing. But using snowballing to locate research respondents can be problematic. As the respondents will usually be friends or family members, or will know each other through a group or organisation, snowballed respondents are usually similarly diverse and do not form a representative sample in terms of ethnicity, age, sexuality or class.

However whilst snowballing may be the most overt about potential skewings of data, it is important to realise that all forms of selection produce skewed data. By the necessary process of selection a researcher is leaving someone out, thus skewing the data. For example, content analysis, which appears to be more representative and less skewed than snowballing, still skews its data, even though it is less overt about it. A researcher must be explicit about the nature of the skewing which occurs, always set clear parameters and be aware of the limitations of the research.

Feminist Activism in York 1880-1960 - a methodological example

We were asked to bring along an example of a possible person-centred research project to facilitate thinking about some of the methodological issues discussed above.

My Project

Researching feminist activist groups in York, UK, 1880-1960. I would like to explore the kinds of women's or feminist groups which were actively campaigning for women's liberation and emancipation and the sorts of activities they were involved in. I would interview respondents exploring their own memories of their involvement in feminist activism and their memories of their mothers', grandmothers' and other family members' involvement. I would like to explore these memories in relation to reflections of what the respondents think of feminist activism in York now and how it has changed over the years and to allow modern-day feminist activists to (hopefully) look back at our 'first-wave' sisters and discover what day-to-day activities were really like for these women.

The immediate issue which was raised about this project was the huge time span. The period covered witnessed many changes in society, government and culture and thus the concept of activism may have altered over the years. I should therefore set more realistic parameters for this research.

Locating respondents

I would seek respondents who were active in feminist groups during the period, or women who have memories of other family members' involvement. I acknowledge that it may be difficult to locate a representative sample of respondents for this project, given that the period I am researching is quite far in the past thus I may need to confront the 'problem of survival' (Summerfield, 49). My main method for locating respondents is likely to be snowballing, with an awareness of the data skewing issues for this method. A valuable starting point for this could be current feminist activist groups who have kept in touch with former members or with women who have been involved in feminist activism in the past. Given that this research is geographically specific, it is possible that respondents are either themselves current residents of York or may have family or friends who are local residents. Therefore advertising in local newspapers, shops, cafes, Post Offices and on local radio would be useful. Current local feminist groups' own historical sources might also prove useful.

I was encouraged to begin to look at local archives, such as the Feminist Archive North and council archives for local organisations. Another valuable resource was pointed out to me - residential homes and sheltered housing. However the ethical and practical considerations for this were stressed. In order to interview residents, I would need to contact a manager. Whilst I first considered that this would be most appropriate in writing, it was suggested that this could be ineffective without any previous personal contact: people are much mroe likely to respond if they are approached directly. Thus a personal face to face visit or a phone call may be more appropriate.

Transcribing

Most researchers end up working from a transcript of their interviews, as this is generally easier. However doing this makes this research into a form of textual analysis. Some critics, notably Alessandro Portelli have warned of the danger of losing the interviewee's 'voice' in the transcript by ignoring nuances of tone, inflection and volume in the recorded voice (Summerfield, 51). Sometimes issues of translation cause problems, as there is not always a direct translation from one language to another.

The linguistic conventions in the way we talk are culturaly specific - certain types of narratives produce certain stories and follow a particular narrative structure. Thus there are underlying assumptions which a researcher and a respondent will make about the interview and the questions an interviewer asks can influence the respondent's answers. In selecting a criterion on which to base a research project, you are asking respondents to rearrange how they form their lives around this criterion, for example sexuality. This may give a false dominance to this criterion or this aspect of their lives as it may not be the way they would interpret their own lives.

The interaction between interviewer and interviewee is also significant in that age and outward appearance can make a profound difference to the dynamic of the interview and thus to the interviewee's responses. Even in a text-based interview, for example via e-mail or through a chat room, your positionality is still visible in the language you use and don't use (slang, technical terms, abbreviations).

Interviewers can project their own norms through their questioning, forcing people into telling a certain story.So researchers must seek neutrality as much as possible, so as not to lead the respondent astray or to restructure their response and mould it into something it is not. However the source materials themselves also produce norms, in that they are informed by normativity and this affects the stories they can tell. There are multi-layers of norms which affect person-centred research and these norms of narrative will be unspoken and implicit.

Reflections

I found this class interesting and useful in terms of thinking about my research proposal. By pointing out the potential problems I might encounter, I could alter my research proposal and methodology to make the most out of this research. In light of this class I would like to reformulate my research proposal as follows:

Researching feminist groups in York, UK 1939-1945

Altering the proposed period of research is a way of recognising the limitations of research and also an attempt to locate a purpose for the project. By locating the research period firmly within the parameters of the Second World War, this research project will provide valuable evidence about York residents' experiences during the war and how this affected feminist activites, an area where (as far as I know) there has been little research.

I will try to identify feminist groups which were active at the time through various sources including (but not limited to):

• newspaper archives
• Council archives
• local archives (the Feminist Archive North)
• current feminist groups' own source materials

Hopefully these sources will indicate the number, size, main activites and geographic location of these groups. Using this information, I can attempt to locate respondents for interview, and their interviews will hopefully furnish my factual research with valuable details.

I will use snowballing techniques for my research, beginning with current local feminist organisations, personal contacts and further contacts through my first few respondents (hopefully). I will also advertise this research in Post Offices, shops and on local radio. I will use the valuable resource of residential care homes and will approach these directly to seek respondents.

Hopefully, this project would be completed within nine months to a year, so I would estimate that I could conduct 10-15 interviews within this period, with suitable time for writing up and analysing data.

If anyone would be interested in this project I think it is a valuable one which I would be very happy to do!