By: Stephan Zielinski
Our text for today, straight from the AP newsfeed:
Mother charged with murder after hitting child with computer keyboard
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) -- A woman who admitted hitting her 4-year-old
son with a computer keyboard has been charged with murder.
Eddiesenior Jones McLauchlin, 45, was charged Friday with felony child
abuse as well as first-degree murder. She was jailed without bond and
scheduled to appear in court Monday.
The child, Cory McLauchlin, was pronounced brain-dead Friday. His
mother had told police that Cory stumbled in the middle of the night,
struck his temple and then acted ``goofy.'' She later noticed he was
unconscious and called for help, police said.
The mother admitted that she struck the child with a computer keyboard
on Wednesday but did not believe she hit him hard enough to cause
serious injury or death, Lt. Cliff Massengill said.
The child is being kept alive on a life-support system until his
father, a soldier, returns from Bosnia this weekend to spend a few
minutes with him. Then the life support will be turned off.
Step one when contemplating The News: ask the question, "Why is this
item deemed important enough to disseminate?" The Associated Press
has finite bandwidth, after all-- what their editors decide goes on
the wire becomes the "national" news for every paper that doesn't
maintain correspondents throughout the nation, which is nearly all of
them.
So here we have a routine child-abuse-related homicide. Not every one
makes the wire-- they'd have to use a daily box score format, anyway,
like they did with the soldiers during the Vietnam War. So why did
THIS story make it?
The detail about the husband returning from Bosnia to see the child
before the life support goes off is poignant, but it didn't make the
headline-- the computer keyboard did. Now, as with other violent
crimes, all manner of household items are employed in child abuse.
But when the weapon is a piece of computer equipment, a local story
becomes a national story.
Stephan has a theory about this.
In the great Collective Unconscious, the combination of women and
computers is bad luck.
Perhaps you're familiar with the old English superstition that women
are bad luck for ocean vessels. (Opie & Tatum's _Dictionary of
Superstitions_ cites occurrences of this one as recently as 1980 and
1985.) Workplace gender-related taboos are not uncommon; certain
items and objects become strongly associated with one gender or
another, and even physical contact with a gender-specific item can be
disturbing. Who would have though a mere apron would come to
symbolize so much?
(This isn't relevant to my argument, but it's fun. Ladies, the next
time you're in the supermarket with a male SO or family member, send
him down the aisle to pick up a box of Tampax. Bonus points if he
unconsciously wipes his hands after handling the package.)
The pattern is for women to struggle to break down the taboos that
restrict them. For example, early feminists started with clothing
reforms, adopting masculine trousers for their utility value.
Advertisements for Virginia Slims explicitly linked feminist progress
with a particular brand of a product originally thought of as
exclusively masculine-- and even today, a woman smoking a pipe or
cigar will draw strange looks. (I saw something very Freudian in a
bar last week. A couple sat down and pulled two identical large
cigars out of a case. The man lit his; the woman cut hers in two and
returned half to the case before lighting up. You may use this scene
as a Rorschach test-- WHICH Freudian interpretation occurred to you
first?)
Heavy industrial technology is so strongly associated with masculinity
that during World War Two, the government turned to propaganda to get
women into the factories-- see
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/wwii/powers/wecan.html. Note how feminine
the figure appears-- long eyelashes, curl escaping from under bandana,
full bust, no biceps despite the cocked arm-- in comparison to the
Rockwell painting that gave us the name "Rosie the Riveter," at
http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/Rosie.html. The obvious
implication is that it *is* possible to maintain an appropriate level
of femininity, even in a blue-collar setting.
(Note that for the most part, men have not responded by attempting to
break down the taboos *they* face. This is because there aren't many
of them, and they're not particularly restrictive. As a matter of
fact, the only one I can think of that's rigidly enforced is no
wearing women's outer clothing in the workplace.)
Computers have always been a primarily masculine technology. Of the
Great Names in computer science, only two are women-- and both ended
up associated with computer languages actively despised during the
Macintosh and PC revolutions. Most industry workers are men.
As recently as 1986, the idea of involving the net in matters of the
heart was not only seen as foolish, it provoked actual disgust-- an
unacceptable eroticization of the machine.
Nowadays, though, more and more people-- both men and women-- are
taking advantage of the reasonably mature technology of inexpensive
personal computers and modems. The gender distribution of Usenet and
Internet users has shifted wildly; men and women are thoroughly mixed.
Further, our culture seems to be assuming that the next generation of
children will have computer skills as routinely as they once had
typing or woodworking skills. (For example, during the pilot of the
television series _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_, there's a scene where
the school's most popular girl is unhappily struggling to complete a
programming assignment-- implying that basic computer literacy is an
essential part of a genteel secondary education.)
However, I claim that people still think of computer skills as
masculine-- and the news media reflects the vague dread that people
feel when they contemplate the potential disasters entailed in
allowing women to work with them.
Specifically, the text about Eddiesenior Jones McLauchlin is the third
news story I've seen involving women and computers that would seem to
be of mere local interest, but were unaccountably elevated to national
stature.
On June 16, 1997, this article appeared in the AP feed:
CINCINNATI - An old story of abuse with a new, high-tech twist.
Cincinnati woman Sandra Hacker allegedly locked her three children in
a room with broken glass, debris and child handprints of human feces
on the wall.
The reason? Police say she was so addicted to cruising the Internet
that she didn't want to be disturbed.
Hacker faces a court appearance Monday on three counts of child
endangering. Her estranged husband turned her in Saturday. The
children - ages two, three and five - are in police custody.
Experts already have a name for Hacker's problem: Internet addiction
disorder. Just like any other addiction, they say it can displace the
drive to eat, sleep or earn a living.
Of course, nobody would think to make national news of a woman who
neglected her children as a result of a cocaine addiction.
Finally, back in October 1996, there was the case of Sharon Lopatka,
who apparently died at the hands of a man she met through the
net. (It's still not clear whether the case is murder, death by
misadventure during rough sex, or a bizarre form of assisted suicide.)
To demonstrate that the theme is also found outside the news media,
allow me to present two (popular) fictional examples of women and
computers. First, the _X-Files_ episode "2Shy" puts a mild spin on
the traditional vampire tale: the monster stalks overweight women by
chatting with them over the net.
More significant is the Dave Barry short story "MsPtato and
RayAdverb," found in his book _Dave Barry In Cyberspace._ Barry
depicts a housewife whose husband brings home a computer. Repelled at
first, she gradually becomes familiar with it, learns the terminology,
and becomes mildly addicted to chatting over the net. She then meets
a particularly literate and humorous man, and begins to fall in love
with him-- much to her distress. As the tale closes, they've
exchanged photographs, confessed their powerful mutual attraction, and
are about to speak to each other over the telephone for the first
time. Barry carefully does not imply where the relationship is going
to go; both constructive disengagement and adultery are possible
outcomes.
Finally, there's a folktale on the net itself about the dangers of
chat rooms. A computer science major pseudonymed "Jen" breaks up with
her boyfriend, and "decided to get onto a chat line, being the wild
psycho she is she decided to get onto a sex line." She meets a fellow
pseudonymed "Jeremy," and they have cybersex. (That is, they type
first-person erotica to each other in real time, possibly while
masturbating. [Incidently, it really pains me to even SEE the word
`cybersex', let alone use it myself, but I know of no dignified
alternative.]) The relationship lasts about a year, and they decide
they're in love; Jeremy is so smitten as to suggest marriage.
Although they've never so much as spoken on the phone, they decide to
meet in a hotel room in Colorado. Jen arrives first, undresses, and
climbs into bed. The tale ends:
Think of what you would do in this situation. Now realize this really
did happen. Their lives will never be the same.
Note that "Jen" is specifically identified as a computer science
major. This makes little logical sense-- computer science students
understand the net better than anybody else, and are the LEAST likely
to get into such a mess. Bolsters my thesis nicely, though.
If you reflect on all six of these tales, you'll note that in all of
them, there is an implied causal relationship between women working
with computers and Bad Things happening. (That is: child abuse,
bizarre sex, marriage trouble, virtual incest, and/or death.)
Consider the Hindu diety Kali. Bozos who get their anthropology from
_Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom_ know only of the negative
aspect of Kali: the destroyer, the mother who eats her own young. But
Kali is also a fertility diety, and can take on an aspect that is
soothing and maternal as well. Assuming Joseph Cambell is onto
something, the ambiguity people (particularly men) feel about the
nature of women should be something similar.
On the one hand, the patriarchal view of the ideal woman would have
her making love monogamously, bearing and raising children, limiting
her social interactions to family (nuclear or extended,) and staying
sane and cooperative throughout the process. The corresponding fear
is that she'll refuse sexual relations with her husband, neglect or
murder the children, socialize widely and have a variety of sexual
contacts, and possibly go mad (thus becoming an embarrassing and
expensive burden.)
Hence, men are always watching for signs that the women in their lives
are about to turn down the path of evil.
Along comes the computer. When computers were the size of
refrigerators and cost millions of dollars, society's fear about their
impact on our lives emphasized their inhumanity and our resultant
dehumanization. But now, everybody has one-- and they're not using
them to do their taxes or play Donkey Kong. They're using them to
flirt.
Hence-- and for those of you who are dozing off, wake up, here comes
the thesis-- I claim that men are afraid that women, particularly
women in their families, are going to use the computers to make
acquaintances all over the world and consummate them, resulting in
total disintegration of individual mens' personal lives.
And now a bonus: the feedback loop between the media and superstition.
Editors learn very quickly what sells. A routine atrocity-- child
neglect or abuse in the underclass-- doesn't sell *because* it's
routine. But involve computers, and the story suddenly becomes
gossip. When people think of computers, they still think of white,
middle-class people; while everybody drones on about the incredible
diversity of the net, everybody also knows that to become part of this
"diversity," you have to blow three grand of hard currency on a
machine that'll be a boat anchor in five years.
Now consider the view of the world this engenders. People know that
child abuse is occurring, but they tend to ignore it. But when they
trip over one of these gossipy tales they will read it-- gossip is
fun. The problem is, they then associate details of the case with the
category of the atrocity itself. That is, they hear, "My wife was
talking in a chat room the other day," and they remember, "I read a
story about a woman who got into that and ended up neglecting her
kids." (Fellow pedants will recognize this as a common error in logic
technically known as "category error.")
Feedback sets in when editors work to address the specific concerns of
their readers. Their readers are worried about what computers could
do to family life, so the editors watch out for stories about the
combination-- and since no AP stringer ever submits an article
headlined "LOCAL FAMILY PURCHASES COMPUTER, PLAYS SIM CITY," the only
articles the editor has to chose from all focus on atrocities. This
completes a positive feedback loop, and so things get progressively
worse.
(Historically, such loops only go away when they're superceded by
others. Seen a piece about the dangers afternoon coffee klatches pose
to family stability lately? [No, I'm not kidding. They caused
lesbianism or something. If tomorrow morning the women of America all
decided to get together with their friends and paint smiley faces on
each others noses with clam juice, by sunset some damned fool or
another would thunder from the pulpit that Clam Juice Nose Smileys Are
Destroying The Family.])
The superstition that computers are bad for women or their families is
chilling. Consider the fishing village I mentioned earlier. If it's
bad luck for women to be on fishing boats, the only people who can
fish are men. This gives them control of the wages and the profits
from the sale of the fish. Women are frozen out of an important sector
of the economy, and their dependence on men increases.
If it's bad luck for women to play with computers, disapproval and
outright intrafamilial bans on the activity will fall the hardest on
female children and adolescents. This cuts back on the number of
women entering college with good computer skills-- and nowadays,
practitioners in EVERY FIELD use computers.
Tales of fishing boats that sank because a woman touched it kept women
down in previous eras; tales of madness and death that result from a
woman using a computer keep women down in this era.
The Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban tracks modern folklore. The
consensus of the group is that most urban legends are harmless, and
there's no reason to forcibly debunk them. If somebody wants to
believe that a ghostly hitchhiker vanished from their aunt's
hairdresser's car, let them. But a small subset are deemed harmful.
Perhaps you've heard tales of Vegas travelers waking in hotel rooms
with kidneys missing and "CALL 911" in lipstick on the mirror. The
folks who handle organ donations say that such stories hurt
donations-- and when organ donations drop, people die. Hence, members
of alt.folklore.urban are enjoined to debunk the tale when they hear
it-- even if it means being a little rude.
Hence, please consider this a preemptive debunk of a harmful
superstition I see forming on the horizon. And if you happen to be at
a party and somebody says, "I'd never let my daughter on that Internet
thing; there are some real psychos out there," you might want to
consider saying, "Oh, I read a thing by an Internet expert that said
the press is blowing that all out of proportion because it makes a
good story." If you've gotten this far, it's even true.
--
AP.national (07-05) 09:06:53
Woman diagnosed with Net addiction disorder
The time soon came. The lights were out, the mood was right, and she
heard a key in the door, she heard someone walk in and around the
corner, and she whispered, "Jeremy", Jeremy said, "Katie?" (this was
the false name she had given him.) Yes she said, so he fumbled for the
light, and turned it on to see Jen on the bed naked before him. Then
next thing heard around the world were two blood curling screams. Jen
covered herself up, and with her most humiliated voice said, "Dad?"
and Jeremy said, "JEN!!!"
Stephan Zielinski szielins@pbi.net
Mon, 21 Jul 1997 23:40:34 -0700