At the Arcade: Blame and Victims of Rape June 1, 2008

          There are many factors that contribute to the attribution of blame onto the victims of rape.  A key contributor is what has come to be know as ‘Rape Myths.’  “Rape myths are attitudes and beliefs that are generally false but are widely and persistently held, and that serve to deny and justify male sexual aggression against women” (Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1994, p.134).  Myths about rape typically include ideas like i) All women secretly want to get raped, ii) no woman can be raped against her will, iii) women who get raped were ‘asking for it’ and iv) most women lie about being raped (Brownmiller, 1975; Allison and Wrigtsman, 1993).  Because of these widely accepted, or at the very least widely acknowledged, beliefs rape victims typically are allotted more blame than is appropriate.  As Allison and Wrightsman (1993) assert, “these falsehoods create a climate hostile to rape victims, portraying them as often-willing participants in furtive sexual encounters, or even as instigators of them”(99).  One would think that most people with the capacity for rational thought would recognize that these are in fact myths and should not aid in the allocation of blame in cases of rape. Unfortunately, this is not the case.  To understand why such myths persist in our culture we must look into both attitudes toward rape as well as attitudes toward women in general.

                 What does it mean to attribute blame to the victim?  In their book Rape: The Misunderstood Crime Allison and Wrightsman talk about the difference between blame, causality, and responsibility and how the understanding (or misunderstanding) of each affects the formation of perceptions of rape victims.  These terms and their relation bring up questions like ‘Did her character or behavior cause this outcome?’ ‘Can one be victimized and responsible at the same time?’ and ‘Do observers actually believe she should be blamed for her misfortune?’  They go on to point out that these terms are often used interchangeably when they actually should not be.  To begin with, blame is when an offensive act has occurred, and the offender’s excuses for this act are found to be insufficient.  This given, in order to assign blame to someone there must first be a negative event followed by at an attempt to defend or justify it. Further, there is then the task of determining intention.  This is where the legitimacy of the term ‘blaming the victim’ comes into question. If we look at intention in a case of rape, most would not venture to say that ‘she asked for it,’ in a literal sense, thus rejecting the validity of the term.  Causality, on the other hand, can be defined as when previous circumstances are sufficient for some specific event to occur.  Since there will always be preceding events for all other events it is logical that attributions of causality might be the most common (Allison and Wrightsman, 1993).  If we apply this definition of causality to the situation of rape it is almost certain that the victim will have been engaged in some sort of behavior before being victimized, thus making it quite easy to conclude that those behaviors led to or caused the rape.  Causality is typically attributed more heavily to the victim when these antecedents consisted of behaviors such as drinking, flirting, or dressing provocatively.  Lastly, responsibility is the most complicatedly defined concept.  Allison and Wrightsman rely on the breakdown provided by Heider (1958) who outlined five different ways in which responsibility can be interpreted.  These five ways are association, commission, forseeability, intentionality, and justification.  The overall idea put forth by these different interpretations of the term boil down to the fact that intention is not required to assign responsibility, and often one can be held responsible for things that are beyond their control.  The understanding of these three terms is very important to the discussion of rape victims and why/how it is that they are so often blamed for their own victimization.  It seems that blame is not the correct term in the sense that women do not intend to get raped, regardless of their actions.  It seems however, that causality and responsibility are most commonly, and perhaps more appropriately, attributed to the victim as opposed to actual blame.

                 Nevertheless, why is it that women are found so culpable in their own victimization? It is not actually the rape myths themselves that are the problem, but perhaps something deeper. It is the perceptions that led to the existence of these myths as well as the factors that shape those perceptions that are responsible.  “Rape ideology is ubiquitous, powerful, both subtle and overt–and it has devastating effects on victims of sexual assault” (Ward, 1995).  It seems that a significant element in the attribution of responsibility to victims of sexual assault is the relationship between and roles of men and women.  It is no secret that many regard rape as a crime of power rather than as a sexual crime. This given, it is no wonder that in a patriarchal society there is a tendency to ‘blame the victim’ or make her the responsible party. It has been suggested that we live in a ‘rape culture’ in which traditional views of women and their appropriate roles seem to support and condone rape (Allison & Wrightsman, 1995).  Susan Brownmiller pointed out, “violence against women is an integral part of a patriarchal society; rape is a social tradition of male domination and female exploitation” (Ward, 1995).  Many have argued that women get the blame for their own victimization because they are seen as weak and subordinate, unable to protect themselves.  As the argument goes, women are powerless, are aware of their powerlessness, and thus should be responsible in planning and acting in such a way as to avoid rape.  This is flawed for obvious reasons, and acts to perpetuate rape myths as well as the idea that men learn to be aggressors and women to be victims.  This puts women in a position where they are the ‘guardians of morality’ while men bear insignificant responsibility for their sexual actions since sexual necessity is viewed as an innate quality in men .  The perpetuation of rape myths can perhaps be viewed as an attempt for patriarchy to maintain status and power over a subordinated female population.

                 Gender roles not only have an effect on the acts themselves but also on the way in which people perceive these acts.  When it comes to the attribution of blame/responsibility, rape perceptions held by men versus those held by women are highly variable.  “The Sex Role Socialization Analysis of Rape proposes that both men and women develop expectations for normative gender-role behaviours during sexual interaction as a result of developmental processes and social prescriptions” (Simonson & Subuch, 1999).  Again this points to the social development by which rape can come to be seen as an extension of gender roles as opposed to what it really is; a violent, pathological act.   In their study in 1999 Simonson & Subuch produced data, which suggests that both men and women tend to view marital rape as a less serious offense than they did acquaintance, date, or stranger rape.  Their data shows that those who are more traditional tend to curtail the perceptions of rape as well as the effect it has on the victim.  Accordingly, they also reported that those who were less traditional in terms of beliefs regarding gender-roles tended to perceive any of the forms of rape as more serious and were less likely to blame the victim.  This considered, the idea that people tend to view marital rape as less severe seems to uphold the idea that gender-roles are significant in producing perceptions of rape victims in regards to man’s control or right to a women with which he is so intimately involved.

                 Another study conducted by Freetly and Kane (1995) looked at the male and female perceptions of non-consensual sex by observing college students in order to examine gender differences in perceptions of rape.  They conducted their study via a questionnaire that looked at reactions to scenarios that depicted non-consensual sex between people of varying degrees of prior intimacy as well as the amount of force used by the offender and the amount resistance put forth by the victim.  They also paid special attention to participant gender and whether they themselves had ever been involved in any form of sexual assault.  The main findings in this study were first, that the level of prior intimacy between victim and offender affects perception and interpretation.  Second, gender differences were obviously present in responses and women were more likely to consider a man’s actions entirely unacceptable.  Lastly, and as the authors suggest most importantly, previous exposure to a victim of sexual assault shows significant effects with gender in predicting responses to both rape and rape stereotypes (Freetly & Kane, 1995).  What this means then, in terms of blame/responsibility is that perhaps rape hits closer to home for women and thus women are less likely to condemn or blame the victim because she is more likely to relate to or see herself in the same position.  Men, on the other hand, often seem more inclined to blame the victim, especially when they have not previously been in contact with one.  Freely and Kane’s evidence points to the fact that perhaps since rape is not a part of a man’s ‘personal landscape,’ knowing a victim of sexual assault may have larger effects on them.  Thus, men who actually know a victim would blame women less than would a man who had no such contact.  If this is so, we can then see that the levels of attribution of blame onto a rape victim is definitely affected by both gender as well as personal experience or association with a victim of rape.

                 Aside from the effect that gender roles have on attribution of responsibility, it is also important to look at the different cognitive processes that are involved.  Attribution theory, for instance, is “a collection of ideas about the cognitive processes people rely upon to make sense of the world” (Ward, 1995, p.70).  Attribution theory is mainly interested in which ways, under which circumstances, and for what reason causality is inferred and applied.  Ward goes on to explain that in terms of sexual assault it has been argued that there are two ego-protective processes that are at work when attempting to understand behavior.  The first is the tendency to preserve control over one’s environment, and the second is to enhance self-esteem.  These in turn, in relationship to rape and sexual assault, are related to the ‘just world hypothesis’ and the theory of defensive attribution (Ward, 1995).

                 The ‘just world’ hypothesis then is a construct that is theoretically applicable to the ascription of responsibility onto rape victims (Learner, 1970).  This theory operates on the assumption that the attribution of responsibility is predicated on the idea that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.   “In cases where individuals suffer misfortune but appear behaviorally blameless, there is a tendency to derogate and denigrate them, suggesting that they are in some way deserving of their fates” (Ward, 1995, p.72).  It seems that when observers are not able to in some way recompense the victims for their suffering, they turn on them, adopting the mentality that if they cannot help them then they can blame them.  This belief in a just world mentality allows people to keep a certain order in their own world, making them feel safe.  Thus, in a ‘just world’ only a blameworthy girl would get raped because she must have gotten what she deserved (Allison & Wrightsman).  Ward points out that Walster (1966) came to the conclusion that “observers feel less vulnerable and more in control of their own fates if they can either generate explanations based on blameworthy behaviors or can distinguish themselves from deserving victims”(71). When the character or actions of a person doesn’t fit her outcome (being raped) then the idea of a just world is compromised.  This is a problem because people tend to feel threatened or insecure when their worldly beliefs are endangered.  In the event of such a threat there is normally an attempt to restore justice and this is why blame/responsibility is then attributed to the victim.  The idea is that if some other explanation cannot make clear why it happened, i.e. justice cannot be restored, the observer will then make inferences which lead to the belief that the victim must have acted in some way to provoke the rape (Learner, 1966).  “When the reality of rape can no longer be denied, patriarchal visions attribute blame to the women” (Ward 1995, 27).  This creates the attitude that women in some way provoke rape; her actions, appearance, or behaviour precipitated it.

                 More often than not in the event of rape, the burden of proving who is at fault falls on the victim.  Rape is one of the only crimes with which it is normally the case that the victim has to prove that she is truthful as opposed to the accused being expected to prove his innocence.  Since this is normally the case, there are many factors that are looked at when a one alleges rape against another.  Characteristics of the victim are looked at scrupulously such as level of respectability, victim-rapist relationship, amount of resistance, pre-rape behavior, and attractiveness. 

                 In terms of the relationship of the victim to the rapist, studies provide mixed outcomes as to whether the level of relationship affects the extent to which the victim is blamed.  The previously mentioned study conducted by Freetly and Kane (1995) provides data which points to the tendency for the level of acceptability of a man’s actions to go up as the level of intimacy goes up.  In table one of their study they report the percentages of respondents who reported that the behavior of a man in a provided scenario of non-consensual sex was totally unacceptable.  Men and women rated the man’s behaviour in the scenario that included non-consensual sex between acquaintances as 95.3% and 99.2% unacceptable, but only 23.3% and 45.0% unacceptable for those who were married, respectively (Freetly & Kane 1995).  This implies that both men and women tend to see non-consensual sex as more acceptable the more developed the relationship was.  Accordingly, this can perhaps reinforce the rape myth that ‘women lie about being raped’ or ‘women can’t be raped if they don’t want to be.’  The fact that people tend to view marital rape as less severe or not actually rape, suggests that either women owe sex to men with whom they have intimate relationships with, or that they are able to stop it if necessary, again putting responsibility into the hands of the woman.

                 Respectability and pre-rape behaviour of the victim are also heavily weighed factors in the attribution of blame.  Factors include: promiscuity, cohabitation, chronic alcohol or drug use, going home with a man, asking a man out, letting the man pay for the date, not protesting/resisting his advances early enough, leading him on, and being sexually attracted to the perpetrator. This upholds the idea that women are supposed to adhere to their traditional gender roles and act accordingly, maintaining a certain level of prudence, caution, and respectability (Ward, 1995). It then follows that when women set out beyond these prescribed roles, whatever fate befalls them, such as being raped, is then their own fault.  If this in fact the case, women are then being denied their basic right to live freely and instead being asked/forced to live in a state of constant apprehension.

                 A study conducted by Beverly Kopper (1996) looked at how the time of initial resistance effected the perception of acquaintance rape blame and avoidability.  In her study Kopper hypothesized that those with low rape myth acceptance would be less likely to blame the victim and that early resistance would be related to less victim blame.  Participants (355 women and 179 men) in the study were college students at a large midwestern university, mostly white, and most were under the age of 25.  They were given an acquaintance rape scenario, a questionnaire about those scenarios, the Rape Myth Acceptance Scale, and the Bem Sex-role Inventory.  Women achieved a lower mean rape myth acceptance score of 37.57 compared to men who received a score of 42.63 with a mean of 37.98 for the entire sample.  It can be seen in Table I provided in Kopper’s paper that those with lower rape myth acceptance were less likely to blame the victim with a mean of 5.62 opposed to the mean of 11.84 for those with a high rape myth acceptance.  Also, Participants were less likely to blame the victim the earlier she resisted with a mean of 4.1 for early resistance and 11.82 for late resistance. Also, those with low rape myth acceptance tended to blame the perpetrator more with a mean of 83.62, different from those with high rape myth acceptance who had a mean of 68.68.  Generally, Kopper provided sufficient evidence for her hypotheses, which in turn provide insight into how people interpret the different aspects of rape and attribute blame.  Perhaps for the purposes of this paper the most significant point here is that both men and women tend to hold the victim responsible more often when she shows resistance at a later point, suggesting that victims of rape are in fact blamed at times for not fighting hard enough or early enough, when ‘no’ should be sufficient at any point.

                 A similar study by Barbara Krahe (1988) focused also on the amount of rape myth acceptance but also took into account pre-rape behavior of the victim.  Krahe performed two separate studies.  In the first one 35 male and 37 female volunteers with and average age of 25.2 years were given the 19-item Rape Myth Acceptance Scale and shown a brief rape scenario.  After the vignette, each participant was asked to rate on a 0-100% scale the responsibility of both the victim and the assailant.  Of the 72 participants, 58 attributed no blame to the victim.  Krahe points out that the results of a factorial analysis of variance with rape myth acceptance and gender as independent variables showed that there was a significant effect of rape myth acceptance on attribution of victim responsibility with F(1,68)=6.02 where p<.02 (Krahe 1988).  Similarly, the ratings for assailant responsibility produced a significant main effect for rape myth acceptance, F(1,68)=13.2 where p<.001, supporting the hypothesis that rape myth acceptance also has a strong influence on attribution of responsibility to the assailant as well as the victim (Krahe 1988).  In the second study Krahe looked at both rape myth acceptance as well as pre-rape behavior of the victim and how these factors contributed to that attribution of blame.  Her two hypotheses for this part of the study were first, that a victim who is engaged in pre-rape behavior that is ‘role discrepant’ will be attributed more blame than will a victim which had engaged in ‘role conforming’ pre-rape behavior. Secondly she hypothesizes that the higher one’s rape myth acceptance, the more likely he/she is to attribute blame to the victim (Krahe 1988).  This part of the study included 36 male and 37 female volunteers of the average age of 26.4.  Participants were given a rape scenario which either included ‘role discrepant’ or ‘role conforming’ behavior on the part of the victim and then were asked to attribute blame on the same 0-100% scale.  The results for this part of the study did not provide support for the first hypothesis but did strongly support the second upholding the theory that there is a connection between the victims ‘role conformity’ and the level of rape myth acceptance held by the subject.  Generally this study concluded that “People who accept stereotypic ideas about rape appear more ready to take victim’s behavior into account as an aggravating or attenuating factor in assessing both victim and assailant responsibility” (Krahe, 1988, pp.56)

                 It is not only observers who often have a tendency to attribute responsibility to the victim, but also the victims who often attribute responsibility to themselves.  If most women who actually experience sexual assault tend to blame themselves for one reason or another, is it hard to understand why those who pass judgment might also come to the same conclusion?

“In most cases the woman involved blames herself either because she got too drunk, or because she stayed too late at a party, or for some other reason.  The men involved seem too feel no such confusion.  They brag about the act among their male friends and revel in a sense of enhanced masculinity that comes from a feeling of sexual power and dominance over women” (Sanday, 1990 p.60) 

In Peggy Sanday’s book Fraternity Gang Rape she thoroughly addresses the differences in perception of gang rape in a college environment both of male and female students, as well as administration.  The above quotation is in reference to a situation in which a young college girl was gang raped by a group of frat members at one of their parties.  Both the victim as well as the perpetrators were drunk, the victim to an incapacitating extent, and the interpretations of the event that transpired were markedly different.  The victim, Laurel, had a reputation of being ‘easy’ and for drinking and doing a considerable amount of drugs.  Laurel’s side of the story was that she did not consent and was taken advantage of in a very drunken state.  The perpetrators were also drunk and in their defense claimed “she wanted it” and that “We were drunk. What did you expect us to do, carry her home?”  These perceptions obviously laid blame very differently, and Sanday makes a good point when she makes the assertion “If the brothers admit that they were beyond ‘premeditation’ because they were drunk, then Laurel was beyond the premeditation necessary for consent” (58).   In such a situation, to hold the victim entirely responsible, drunk or sober, results in the support of the rape myth that ‘she was asking for it’ or “she wanted to be raped,’ when that is clearly erroneous.  It also places women in an unfair role of propriety, pardoning or even condoning the actions of men while penalizing women for the same behavior.  This goes back to the traditional gender roles and expectations that put women at a disadvantage when people pass judgment on occurrences such as rape.

References

Allison and Wrightsman. Rape: The Misunderstood Crime.  Newbury Park: SAGE

                 Publications Ltd, 1993.

Anderson, Kathryn et. al.  Individual Differences and Attitudes Toward Rape: A Meta-

                 Analytic Review.  PSPB, Vol. 3, pp. 295-315, March 1997.

Freely, Angela and Emily Kane.  Men’s and Women’s Perceptions of Non-Consensual

                 Sexual Intercourse.  Sex Roles, Vol. 33, Nos. 11/12, 1995.

Kopper, Beverly.  Gender, Gender Identity, Rape Myth Acceptance, and the Time of Initial

Resistance on the Perception of Aquantance Rape Blame Avoidability.  Sex Roles, Vol. 34, Nos. ½, 1996.

Krahe, Barbara.  Victim and Observer Characteristics as Determinants or Responsibility

Attributions to Victims of Rape.  Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 18, pp.50-58, 1988.

Lonsway, K. A., & Fitzgerald, L. F.  Rape Myths: In Review.  Psychology of Women

                 Quarterly, Vol. 18, pp. 133-164.

Ward, Colleen.  Attitudes Toward Rape: Feminist and Social Psychological Prospectives. 

                 SAGE Publications Ltd., 1995.

Sanday, Peggy.  Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus.  New

                 York UPD, 1990.

Simonson, Kelly and Mezydlo Subich.  Rape Perceptions as a Function of Gender Role

Traditionality and Victim Perpetrator Association.  Sex Roles, Vol. 40, Nos. 7/8, 1999.

 

Digital Report Cards May 27, 2008

I suppose it is necessary, since we are all about technology and its role in education in this class, to begin by saying that I think that moving to computerized report cards is a good thing.  Though it may not be quite what the article is talking about, I know quite a few teachers that utilize computers and the internet in order to more efficiently record and maintain grades as well as to make them more available to parents and students.  For example, I know many teachers who use a website called gradebook.com to keep current grades accessible (confidentially) to their students and their parents.

That being said, I also find it necessary to comment on another aspect of this proposed change in the reporting of grades.  This article explains that one of the main differences between the old and the new report cards is that the new ones will be more detailed and descriptive of how each student is mastering (or not mastering) the grade appropriate state and federal standards. While this may sound like a good thing, I have to agree with the teachers who spoke about how much more time consuming this form of grading will be. Especially in the upper grades where each teacher has upwards of 160 students, a more time consuming way of grading is a big deal. I know many people will read such comments and think ‘but that’s your job,’ and yes it is.  But what about actually teaching the content of the standards?  Is that not the more pressing element of a teacher’s job?  The point is that these new grades will be more telling of actual progress in terms of standards.  But we are all so concerned with the making and testing of standards that I think the actual learning and teaching of standards content gets neglected.  That is to say, the more I learn about how things have been changing in education, the more it seems like new goals are implemented without any thought given to how to achieve these new goals.  I seems as though when there is some perceived deficiency in how public education is being conducted or the outcome being produced that instead of, say, providing funding or staff development training  all that we get is some new end for which no new means are being provided.

Hopefully that makes sense and I’m not just rambling incoherently.  I suppose my point is that it is certainly good to make use of technology and the internet to make grades more accessible and grading more efficient, but we need to be carefully about what we measuring and most importantly we need to take care to actually find better ways to teach kids before we worry about finding better ways to prove that we’ve taught them.

Keedy and Helfand May 20, 2008

I just thought I would respond generally to these two essays on typography and the importance of design in text use.  To be honest, after I got the end of Helfand’s essay where she quoted a post response, I really thought to myself, ‘yeah, I’m not all that concerned either.’  Reading these articles, and perhaps I am missing the point, I really just keep thinking that all of these visual elements are not that important, not needed rather, but instead just one more option people have for making things more visually appealing, but no more meaningful.  I especially thought this when Helfand discussed the need for change when it comes to e-mail.  She said that in e-mail we all speak in Monaco (which I am assuming is a commonly used font for e-mail).  In my mind, e-mail is a practical tool.  It is meant for quick and easy communication, and it is extremely capable of this despite whether the type is varied or the words are animated in some way.  I mean we do have hyperlinks in e-mail, which is convenient and useful, but beyond that why is anything more at all necessary?  Don’t get me wrong.  I see how manipulating type can have impact and alter meaning; I just don’t see it as a pressing issue.  It seems funny to me that designers would not want to be associated with certain typefaces or have a specific opinion about them.  

Box Logic May 12, 2008

Sirc’s essay on box logic basically addresses the issues in composition pedagogy pertaining to its tendency to focus on written academic text, failing to make use of new forms of text/media (often for lack of know how).  He talks of box logic and its use, as far as I can discern it, as a form of collecting objects and information as a means of research to produce a finished product which expresses some deeply felt or interesting topic/message. Sirc made reference to something Elbow said, “life is long, college is short; do we teach to life or college?”saying that he preferred to teach more on the side of life.  I thought this was interesting and quite appropriate.  The use of new media really is geared more towards real life than say, the use of academic prose (for most of us anyway).  Thus, it seems only appropriate that we make use of a variety of forms to allow students to express themselves, just as Sirc’s example of Greg White provides.

Something else that struck me in the reading was a passage where Sirc says, “The challenge for the composer, then, is to capture that memory-laden thrill for the viewer, inventing a uniquely visionary world from the carefully chosen fragments of the existing one”(117).  This struck me for two reasons.  First, this is the challenge that a lot of us have (or at least I do).  To produce something that is an amalgamation of text, visuals, objects, music, etc., is one thing—to actually do it in such a way as to convey some specific message, memory, or feeling is an entirely different story. I’m having some trouble with this as I am working on my visual essay.  It is so difficult to know who others will interpret something that is so clear and specific in your own eyes. Secondly, shortly after this passage Sirc mentions that Cornell has often included things like maps, poetry, or even music that he was listening to at the time.  This then makes me feel like it’s not such a foreign endeavor creating these ‘boxes’ because these are the sorts of things I include in the blogs that I write outside of class.  I guess I just feel like I haven’t quite got a clear picture of what these boxes are supposed to look like. 

Overall I liked that Sirc made it a point to mention that forms of media such as this are necessarily playful and open-ended.  This gives a sense of freedom that is often lacking in traditional academic composition.  Anything we research and really care about is never a finished work.  We finish things to submit them, not because we have finally read and discovered everything we think we need.  I remember the last paper I wrote, my professor asked me how I thought it came out.  My response was “well, I’m not in love with it but it’s as done as it’s going to be since I have to turn it in today.”So I guess all I’m saying is that I appreciate the recognition of the fact that these things we care and think about are never really finished.

Aside from that, some questions about our final project.  Do we know what the topic of our Arcade project?  Are we doing it in preparation for a paper afterwards as the text suggests?  Are we doing this in a physical form in a digital form?

 

McCloud’s The Vocabulary of Comics May 8, 2008

First of all, sorry this week’s posts are so late.  Midterm in another class, baby shower, blah, blah, blah…its nothing compared to those of you working on your comprehensive exams right now, so I will spare you.

So this piece we read, a visual essay I presume, is basically a mix of a comic strip and other visual elements through which McCloud describes comics/cartoons as ‘another way of seeing’ (202).  He makes it a point to call these images icons (as opposed to symbols, which he says is too loaded a term for him) and  questions why it is that people respond to these images as they do, even and especially when they are far from realistic.  He points to things like their universality and their ability to amplify through simplification as answers to this question.

What I found most interesting about this piece (besides that it was entirely visual and a nice change from all the text I’m used to) was what it said about how the more generic things are the more we see ourselves in them or the more we are able to read into them in general.  To make this point McCloud gave many examples of things we are able to see human faces in despite the fact that they are far from human things. Is this a phenomenon that we are able to achieve through text or is it confined to visual expression?  Obviously some texts have elements of ambiguity, but is it normally intentional?  Surely the author meant something specific when it was composed.  Perhaps this is the beauty of visual literacy—it provides a more flexible means of expression, more open to interpretation, while also having the power to be specific and convey a great deal  of meaning through less ‘text’?

So then,  is this the beauty of visual text?  Is the fact that it is more relatable to more people a prime reason for the current trend toward digital media?

Birdsell and Groarke * Toward a Theory of Visual Argument April 29, 2008

Birdsell and Groarke address the issue of “proficiency in assessing visual modes of reasoning and persuasion” (309). Their chief concern is that when making or analyzing argument, scholars, and in turn students, most often fail to realize the utility of the visual, looking only at the effectiveness of verbal/written forms of communication. So, in their essay they look at arguments made by others (David Fleming) that argue against the ability of visuals to make/represent an argument in order to point out where they believe such views are faulted. They argue that:
• Visual images are not inherently “arbitrary, vague and ambiguous,” despite common views that disagree (310). They make it a point to say that, yes; images can be all of these things but no more so than written text. Example—the fish picture, and even more compelling, the “The Model and the Painting”
• Context is supremely important to convey meaning for both text and visuals. I thought that this was very well put, because as they said not even all (most) words have a static or singular meaning. Thus, why should images be degraded as forms of argument for having the same characteristics as the preferred method?
• Three kinds of context are important when evaluating visual context (314-315)
o Immediate visual context
o Immediate verbal context
o Visual Culture
I feel like I keep saying and thinking the same things, but again I think that any failure to regard visual modes as relevant forms of argument and persuasion is likely the result of an unwillingness to move beyond what is ‘normal’ and comfortable. Honestly, if someone asked most of us to persuade someone to believe something or argue for/against something, we would either start talking or start writing. So while the arguments presented in this essay are logical and make sense to me, how do you chance people’s thinking to get them to think in terms of the visual and how useful and powerful it can be? And what’s more, how do we learn to use visual modes effectively?

Selfe’s Toward New Media Texts April 29, 2008

This is the piece that explains the midterm assignment.  Self basically discusses the difficulty that many teachers face when attempting to bring newer, non-textual forms of literacy into the classroom.  She then goes on to explain and provide lesson plans for 4 different assignments, the first of which is the one we are doing.

There were things in the article that resonated with me.  First, Selfe made the point that teachers often fail to make use of forms of media that they feel have a place in composition, simply because they “lack familiarity with a range of new media texts” (67).  When I read this I thought, well of course they do, few people would attempt to teach something that they weren’t fluent in (I hope).  So Selfe proposes a means of getting educators themselves more fluent and more capable not only of assisting in analysis of visual texts but also in assisting in their production.  When considering such a move, I can’t help but think about what this costs us in terms of traditional forms of literacy.  When we talk about new media and the fact that kids tend to be much more technology savvy and tend to have minds more open to these new forms, I often wonder if an emphasis on technology has a crippling effect on old forms of text.  Thinking like this would clearly make me one of the teachers the Selfe refers to who tends to label visuals as the dumbed-down, second class texts (71).  Why is it that I think like this?  It obviously needn’t be a choice between one or the other, yet I have a hard time not thinking of visual forms of literacy being secondary to textual forms.  I think it has something to do with the fact that visuals are so much more fluid than traditional text.

Maybe I am entirely off base here, but I always find myself thinking about high school students and how such a large number of them are not proficient in written text.  In my mind they need to be good at that before attempting to teach them about or through the means of new media.  Or is that just the point?  New ways of teaching old things? 

 

So here are some questions about the assignment then. 

·         Are we following the specific instructions about citations that Selfe provides, i.e. numbering and providing sources for the images we use?

·         What kinds of things are you all using (or thinking or using)?  I am having a hard time thinking of how my literacy has developed and in turn how to represent it visually.

 

Self’s Students Who Teach Us April 21, 2008

In Selfe’s piece, “Students Who Teach Us: A Case Study of A New Media Text Designer, Selfe basically discusses the value of new media in composition teaching as a result of its prevalence in real world interactions.  She discusses the tendency of composition curricula to fail to fully utilize and systematically integrate the use of new media into the composition classroom.  Despite the dominance of the resistance to new media forms as alternatives to standard literacies, Selfe goes on to describe reasons why many composition teachers are becoming more interested in the use of new media texts, including:

o   New media now encompasses a variety of content, from pop culture to classic works of literature

o   They are more pleasing to the eye/ear

o   More teachers now have access to them and the power/knowledge to create them

o   Students are highly interested and highly literate in forms of new media

In the text she makes an example of a former student, David Damon, in order to illustrate the negative and unfair outcomes that result from the exclusion of new media as valid forms of literacy.  David was a kid who basically had a deep love for language and although he wasn’t proficient in traditional forms of literacy, the excelled as many forms of new media.  This example was used to evidence the fact that limiting the use of literacies in such a way as to make only standard versions acceptable works to discount the creativity of other forms and impede change that is deemed appropriate by context and time.

The question that I have then, is to what extent we must or we can let go of standard forms of literacy in order to make room for the usage/integration of newer forms?  To switch to an emphasis on only new media, I believe, would not only be impractical but perhaps impossible also.  This goes along with what I said in class the other day about having a marriage between old and new to create the most functional forms of literacy.  Obviously it is important to know how to write in standard form, but as things become increasingly more media driven and based in technology it is becoming equally important that these new forms of literacy are incorporated and afforded more legitimacy.

Greg Niemeyer’s Podcasts: “The Cybercultural Imaginary: From Login to Disembodiment” April 13, 2008

I thought that Prof. Niemeyer’s lectures were interesting, though I wish I had been able to see the video clips because I’m certain I missed what was going on there.  So I’ve just posted my notes on the two lectures, followed by a response or two to a few parts of the lecture I found particularly salient.

Lecture 1—American Cyber Culture

·         Power plants…these are how we are able have technology…remember that.  Powers computers

·         Cyber cultural –social and power components intersect to give use cyber culture.  What feeds what however? 

·         New Media Literacy—means you know how to program, or how important it is to know/use programming.

·         Critically interpret New Media Culture—sophisticated views about MySpace, piracy, hate mail, stealing music, new media art/what it means for communication.

·         Performance of race and gender—fabricated/designed/programmed—new media plays a role in how we construct ourselves

·         Impact of NM on human body and human experience

·         Interpersonal and societal behavior; does it let us explore new patterns of being male? Female? Etc.

·         Experiment-hand holding and passing a message

·         We work at 10 ft per sec—light is way faster

·         Media is what is in between—the stuff being transmitted, like in the holding hands and passing a message experiment only we do it slowly.

·         Cyber—meaning in control, so cyber culture is about being in control.  In control of what? Your shopping habits, medical history, etc. Tthe computer holds all of these things.  You tell it, it tells you.  All about control.

·         Culture—The way that Humans adapt to their environment, stories they tell themselves to feel at home, raise their children

o    Very fluid

o    Post-biological vision (period that we are in)

o    Levy (1992) Post-biological vision begins with the premise that genetic evolution has been outstripped by cultural evolution. 

§  Culture affects us more than anything else, we make no longer on our biological needs but on our imaginary, communicative and control needs.

·         Assignments

o    Making of Web pages for someone else

o    Setting up a homepage (personal web site)

·         Class Elements

o    Lectures available on-line

o    Coarse books

o    Anonymity unless voluntary

o    Lectures are pod casts

·         Like freshmen comp…but a new, technology focused version?

Lecture 2—Analog to digital conversion and vise versa

·         Key term here is the cyborg.  Human who is part analog and part digital

·         How will we communicate with computers?

·         TOPIC: How will we translate our VOICE from analog to digital and vise versa?

·         Story of First communication via railroad and tapping.

o    Notes how we can communicate much through only sound—Mood, gender, etc.

o    We are used to interfacing with each other and inferring much from what we see.

o    But without the body we would do the same thing.  Because we are used to acquiring knowledge in such a way we map expectations of human body onto whatever form of technology as well as the info it is giving…and there begins the Cyborg

o    Discovering a mixed body…partially digital.

o    Key Question then—Has the technology colonized the body, making the human different or have we seen the machines in a human way?

o    Machines transmit human presence but it becomes disembodied.

o    Problematic—men design technology, one-sided

o    Envious b/c women can bear children, and men use technology to create similar things—womb envy.

o    B/c of this we can see who men tend to regard the interface of computers as a female entity.   “Take me, I am yours.”

o    Assignment—converse with artificial consciousness—chat with comps designed to respond like humans.  Monitor the point at which we start projecting human like characteristics onto it and at which point it starts telling us what to do.

§  Chat bots make people angry, yet they are not real.

o    Visual culture of imagining—what these cyborgs (interfaces to tech) look like:

§  Movies

§  Watches

§  Cell Phones

§  Surgeries

§  IPod

§  Transportation

In terms of the usefulness of offering/taking a class like this, in my mind I likened it to a new, technology based form of Freshman composition (at least to the extent that Freshman Comp is seen as a skill-providing introductory class).  It seems to me that classes whose purpose it to inform and explore ways of communication through new media are serving some of the same purposes as composition courses but instead of focusing on literature or or textual communication, they focus on more technology-inclined forms of communication and representation.   This goes hand in hand with the reading we have been doing and the idea that written text will never be obsolete, but only used, created, and interpreted in new ways.  I think Niemeyer’s class would be fun, and I certainly see the usefulness of offering classes with web-based assignments.

Secondly, like a few others who have already posted, I thought Niemeyer’s likening of technology and its interfaces to a man’s version/attempt at giving birth was interesting.  This idea, what Niemeyer calls  the result ’womb envy,’ struck me as strange to be honest.  For one, I didn’t realize that computers and other technology were conceptualized as female entities.  Ships and sports cars, yes.  But technology?  I guess I was out of the know on that one. 

One last thing.  I found it very interesting to think about how we do actually project human images or characteristics onto ‘people’ that we only know in a digital sense.  I have quite a few friends that I know only on-line through blog communities or MySpace and that I ‘talk’ to only through on-line messaging, yet I still feel like I know them.  I had never thought about it before, but we really do project onto people and perceive them in certain ways despite the fact that we might have never come face to face with them.  The on-line friends then, I suppose, are actually the cyborgs Niemeyer speaks of.

 

The Implications of Electronic Information for the Sociology of Knowledge April 7, 2008

Lanham’s piece looks at the effects of the shift from an ‘operating system for humanistic knowledge’ based in books/printed text to one based on visual/electronic text.  He considers what the outcome has been as a result of such a shift.  First, and perhaps most interestingly, Lanham points out that this shift has created opportunity to ‘quarrel with text’ (456).  By this he meant that along with this move toward electronic media comes a lack of stability in texts which allows its readers to question or converse with the text more immediately than in the past. This makes room for anyone to be a critic of a piece of work and I think questions the legitimacy given to ‘published’ work.

  Lanham also provides a list of affects that electronic organization has had on humanistic knowledge, which includes (457):

·         It changes the ‘humanistic artifact’ from a book to a digital form.

·         It changes what it means to be an author, i.e. one needn’t be published to become an author

·         It changes what we mean by text, i.e. there is a new form of text beyond books, newspapers, etc.

·         It compromises the cultural authority of the text.

Overall, Lanham looks at the consequences and outcomes produced by society’s movement towards digital media and forms of communication, looking at cultural as well as practical changes including changes in the meaning and function of certain things like textbooks, classrooms, literacy, talent, and intellectual property (472).  I thought that the conversation about these changes in meaning was particularly salient in that it is something that I have noticed but have never quite been able to explain, yet here we are.  Take for example singer Brittany Spears (if you want to be so kind as to call her one).  She is by no means the type of person that could have become a success without the benefit of digital media, there to alter her voice and project images of her around the world.  As Lanham points out, music is disseminated and altered through the sharing, sampling, and reproduction made possible by digital media.  This makes talent and originality somewhat marginalized and changes the way we perceive such attributes.

 Lanham also discusses specifically the effects of digital media and new forms of technology in the classroom.  Though this information wasn’t really new to me as I have had many professors utilize some of these newer forms of technology in order to create more effective teaching as well as learning, I thought it was interesting how he explained it in terms of how it changes the fundamental meaning of so many aspects of education.  The ease of sharing information, though not without its flaws, has certainly lead to an increased availability of information and opportunity for learning and expression and has worked to de-privatize or de-privilege various forms of information and access.