Digital Age and Cyberspace
Angela Alejandro
Julie Guan
Douglas Tran
ASA 144
Professor Valverde
February 29, 2020
Week 9 Outline of Presentation: Digital Age & Cyber Space
We’re going start off with Douglas who’s going to talk about the reading “Queer N’ Asian Virtual Sex” and how it discusses how identity is projected within the online space, then we’ll shift to the second reading “Social Transformations from Virtual Communities,” with Julie talking about how the internet is used to establish virtual communities and Angela will discuss its socio-political impacts and its contemporary issues.
Douglas
After reading Daniel C. Tsang’s “Notes on Queer N’ Asian Virtual Sex,” I felt like there were three big topics: the internet’s influence on sex and identity, technology and the diaspora, and their study on the Bulletin Board System (BBS). Firstly, I just wanted to discuss that in today’s society, the dating scene has completely changed. We don’t have to wait until we are 21 to go to clubs or bars to meet people, we can easily sign onto Tinder or Hinged to find a potential partner. With this, I want to lead into the internet’s influence on sex and identity and how there is a blur between Fantasy and Reality when it comes to identity and sexuality on the internet. In Tsang’s work, he says, “For once you are in total control of your sexual identity, or identities, or at least what you decide to show the outside world” (119). This basically means that we can be whoever we want to be on the internet. For example, Tsang talks about his experience on the BBS (we will get into this later) where a guy he was talking was supposedly a Taiwanese college student, but when Tsang called the college, such a student didn’t exist. It is extremely easy to change your age by a few years to make yourself look more attractive to other potential partners. With the internet, a person could almost reinvent themselves to look more attractive. This change in identity doesn’t only apply to our superficial characteristics, something as deep as one’s sexuality could also be fluid on the internet. Tsang also writes, “...despite the protestations of the latest adherent to gay ideology that they were born gay, the online environment reminds us that our sexualities are ephemeral, to be changed with a stroke of a key” (119). This quote is basically supporting the point about how everyone has the chance to change. The next big thing that Tsang talks about is the idea of coming out. Typically, a lot of queer folks have their reserves about coming out because it instantly labels you as “different.” With the internet, Tsang found that people are more willing to state their sexuality because you’re basically telling a bunch of strangers instead of your close friends and family. Another interesting point is the idea of coming out genitally, but not cerebrally. This is when a person commits homosexual acts but denies being homosexual. Tsang quotes, “Assimilated Vietnamese Americans are more ready to identify as ‘gay’ whereas those who are more recent immigrants or less assimilated do not, even if they engage in homosexual behavior” (123). This could be seen in the case of Loc Minh Troung, a man who was convicted of lewd conduct on a beach, but he denies being gay. As technology becomes more prevalent in mainstream society, it promotes Transnationalism amongst many different community members across the globe. With this new sense of connection, everything has the opportunity to become extremely transparent. As Tsang states, “treat every message as public, and every sexual partner as HIV positive.” This furthers the point that you should have some level of doubt when talking to strangers online or reading anything you find online. This leads me into the creation of the Bulletin Board System, a system where people can share information and connect with each other online. The specific board we are looking at today happens to be used by a significant amount of gay Asian Americans. Firstly, we should mention that there is a distinct difference between the standard Caucasian gay and the Asian gay male. The standard Caucasian gay male is the majority and is the “standard of beauty” within the gay community. To back this statement up, Tsang writes, “Gay society in North America, organized and commercial, is framed around the young middle-class white male. He is its customer and its product. Blacks, Asians, and Latin Americans are the oysters in this meat market. At best we’re a quaint specialty for exotic tastes. Native people aren’t even on the shelves,” (124). On the other hand, the standard Asian gay male is seen as an exotic minority through the lenses of the white male. This creates the China Doll Syndrome, where Asian males are usually seen as submissive and feminine. Lastly, I want to discuss a quote that stood out to me in the reading. The quote goes, “Although other people’s rejection (or fetishization) of us according to the established racial hierarchies may be experienced as oppressive, we are not necessarily moved to scrutinize our own desire and its relationship to the hegemonic image of the white man. With such lack of self-scrutiny, is it any wonder that some gravitate to the Great White Hope as their savior?” (124). This quote is pretty powerful in that it brings up the topic of rice queens and the White Man’s Whore. Rice queens are solely attracted to Asian men, whereas the WMW are people who are solely attracted to White men. I think Tsang brings up a good point here because we always like to point out the Asian oppression by the White male, but somehow Asians also tend to like white males (a stereotype, but there is some basis for this claim). Maybe we have subconsciously internalized this standard of beauty.
Julie
The chapter, “Social Transformations from Virtual Communities” by Professor Valverde, highlights the importance of information communication technology, specifically the internet. The advancement of technology and “internet communication has benefited from and facilitated the social transformation of work and community, from groups in little boxes to globalized, ramified, branching social networks (66). Moreover, the internet gave rise to the term “network society” or social networks within the digital space that are shaped by factors such as religion, upbringing political organizations, and social status. This reading conveys the importance of virtual communities and communication to a diaspora population and their home country, by using the Vietnamese diaspora as an example. Valverde conveys that the expansion of ICT which allowed the Vietnamese diaspora to communication with those that were in Vietnam, establishing a transnational identity and a connection to the homeland, which reiterates the notion that the diaspora participates in homeland politics, through the use of platforms, such as VNForum, VNBiz, and đọt chuối non, which provided an avenue for transnational communication through virtual communities by targeting three major sources of influence overseas Vietnamese, government officials and citizens. Due to the underlying impacts of the Vietnam War and the fall of Saigon where families were split and many fled, meaning that they had to utilize earlier methods of communication, such as snail mail. These methods were slow, and the advancement of technology, enabled almost instant communication, allowing for faster messages and more relevant information to be passed along. The key term “network individualism” is introduced which is both “the acts of individuals fully participating in the many uses of computers, from commerce to entertainment to business” and “the individual rising from the community”. This is important because it shows that the internet has the power to create a community. Going into VNForum, founded by Hoanh Tran and Tin Le, that consisted of mostly overseas Vietnamese intellectuals and professionals and had “subscribers in over fifty countries… list of a wide distribution of members and has been running continuously over ten years” (76). Furthermore, this platform also had sociopolitical qualities which promoted real-world social and political issues in Vietnam to the world. This made it possible for everyone to engage in open dialogue and bring change through pressure from the people. In other words, the VNForum community provided a virtual space to organize for certain issues, such as the Vietnamese American Educational Foundation that worked to improve Vietnamese-US issues or the No Nike campaign that addressed the labor violations of Nike in Vietnam. Going into depth regarding the No Nike movement, which reiterates the concept of “network individualism” in relation to commerce. Thuyen Nguyen expressed his concerns on VNForum about Nike’s labor practices in their Vietnamese Factories: substandard working conditions, sexual harassment, corporal punishment (80). This led to the formation of groups like the Vietnam Labor Watch after members of the forum urged that more needed to be done to improve working conditions, as well as, transnational support by the Vietnamese Diaspora in the US including, students at the University of California Irvine (the Vietnamese American Coalition) and the University of California Berkeley (Vietnamese Student Association organization) by boycotting Nike. Other members of the diaspora also provided support by picketing at the opening of Nike’s New York megastore. The events that took place were unprecedented, it was the first time where Vietnamese American groups took political action to provide solidarity due to an issue that was raised on the internet. It was also where Vietnamese Americans, the Vietnamese government, and mainstream America came together to bring change to the lives of those that worked for Nike in Vietnam. Additionally, the virtual community of VNForum united the anti-communist sentiment with sectors of the Vietnamese American community (84). However, this movement also received hate by those that were anti-communist since some saw it as working with the communist Vietnamese government while others saw it as an indirect attack on the Vietnamese government through Nike since the factories provide many jobs. This relates to the communist and anti-communist tensions within the Vietnamese community that we learned about. This example demonstrates that the internet increased the possibilities for political activism and provides for “a swift and inexpensive means of communication with global capillarity and data availability that multiplies the opportunities for individuals and groups to denounce, articulate, and campaign” (84). This reaffirms that the “virtual community that networks [are] a powerful weapon for generating transnational solidarity” (84). The VNForum expanded the global reach of this issue, allowing for communication between the Vietnamese government, transnational Human Rights groups, as well as, directed the center of three major influences: American society which was represented by Nike, the Vietnamese government, and the anti-communist Vietnamese diaspora. The networks of VNBiz and đọt chuối non expanded the effects that came out of VNForum. Overall these virtual communities provided many benefits that made the internet a significant resource. The Vietnamese government saw ICT as a threat in the beginning, why did they feel the need to censor what was being posted on the internet?
Angela
Despite being a platform for Vietnamese professionals and scholars to discuss their contemporary issues and concerns, the lack of accountability provided in these forums became a problematic feature. The founders of VNForum Tin and Hoang eventually close down VNForum because it getting “too large and costly to maintain (pg.73)” and eventually opened soc.cult.vietnam (SCV) with the intention that it would be a free and open space for people to talk and post poetry or testimonials. The forum was relatively anonymous, with people being able to use fake names. What started off as friendly discussions between students and tech industry workers eventually lead to name-calling and slanderous accusations specifically with debates between communists and anticommunists. With this unexpected outcome, the founders sought to establish order by creating a code of conduct that included giving out sanctions to those who would violate the regulations. Despite these attempts to create a safe space for virtual communities to share their opinions and views, the Vietnamese government saw these forums as a threat to the communist ideology that they were trying to uphold.
Valverde writes, “When Vietnam plunged into the information age, the government restricted websites that presented information deemed dangerous to the Vietnamese state… Fearing open access to information by its citizens, the Social Republic of Vietnam (SRV) initially tried to stifle ICT development and then tried to control its rise (pg.68).” They began to limit internet access to only government officials, educational agencies, and eventually to just a few homes and Internet cafes. Threatened by their influence, the government further limited the rights of dissenters by actively targeting them and creating tangible consequences. Specifically, in 2008, the Vietnamese government began to systematically harass bloggers who were deemed nonconformists, many of which lost their jobs or were arrested for sharing their criticisms of the government.
Discussions of internet censorship would be incomplete without talking about China and its system of website monitoring. Known as the Great Firewall, the Chinese government passed a number of laws that restrict the internet by cutting off access to foreign information sources, thereby limiting their scope to domestic channels. This is done so that western ideologies that oppose communism would not be accessible to the public. This is similar to the Vietnamese government who fear that anti-communist sentiments result in conflict among the community. Also similar to Vietnam’s internet censorship, which frequently enacts harsh punishments to dissenters, the Chinese government has infamously been cruel to those who resist their principles. An infamous tweet compared Chairman Xi Jinping and President Obama to Winnie the Pooh and Tiger. The meme went viral and sparked many copies, eventually, the government began censoring and taking down images and mentions of Winnie the Pooh. Although humorous, the ban symbolized the government’s control over the citizen’s freedom of speech, and the yellow bear became an icon amongst those opposing the regime.
Consequently, those who oppose the Vietnamese government’s authoritarian hold on the internet also continue to fight in their ways. Valverde writes “[anti-communist organization Viet Tan] launched its Internet Freedom Campaign. It pushed for companies like Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft to resist giving the Vietnamese government information that could hurt dissident bloggers and urged the U.S. government to call for the release of the arrested bloggers (pg.87).” This example correlates with one of Valverde’s main arguments of the reading, despite the growth of control and censorship by the government in order to limit oppositional views, solidarity among communities will continue to develop.
Lastly, the advancement of technology continually creates easier forms of communication among groups living in different spaces. A contemporary example we will use relates to the on-going protests regards the Cost of Living Adjustments within the UCs. Similar to the forums discussed by Valverde, social media is used to establish different viewpoints and arguments made by those participating in the social movements. For instance, the organizers for the COLA movement alert their followers on upcoming protests and meetings, making it easier for people to be aware of the current situations. In one protest, the organizers in Davis spoke directly to the organizers in Santa Cruz to share their words of encouragement. Lastly, politicians use the internet to communicate with their supporters and align themselves with issues in order to stand in solidarity with groups. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders tweeted in support of the COLA movement, condemning the academic institution for their lack of financial resources for their workers.
Works Cited:
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-nike-solved-its-sweatshop-problem-2013-5 (picture)
Haas, Benjamin. “China bans Winnie the Pooh film after comparisons to President Xi.” The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-winnie-the-pooh-film-to-stop-comparisons-to-president-x
Daniel Tsang. “Notes on Queer ‘N’ Asian Virtual Sex.”
Kieu-Linh Valverde. “Social Transformations from Virtual Communities.” Transnationalizing
Viet Nam.
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