"Finding Women on the Internet"
by Amy Goodloe

Over the past year there has been a great deal of media hype over issue of women on the internet: how many women are there? should women be afraid of online harassment? is the internet a boy's tool? are women online simply "babes on the web"? If the issue can be sensationalized, then you can count on the media to do just that, often at the expense of asking the one truly important question: where are women online? The short answer to the question is: we are everywhere, but if you want more details, read on!

Perhaps the most popular place for women to gather online is on mailing lists, which are members-only discussion groups that take place via email (for more on how mailing lists work, check out this month's How-To column). There are around 200 mailing lists that directly address topics and issues of interest to women, and new lists are created every month. The best resource for information about women's email lists is the massive list of Gender Related Electronic Forums compiled by Joan Korenman, and you can also read announcements about new lists on the women-online-news list.

You might decide to join a women's mailing list for any number of reasons. For example, there are several technical "help" lists geared towards women, though not all of them are restricted to women only. Women often find that these lists are lower volume than the "mixed gender" lists, tend to have fewer irrelevant or inflammatory posts, and generally create a more comfortable atmosphere for women to both give and receive assistance on a variety of problems and issues.

Lists like mac-women, spiderwoman and internet-women-help (full info at end) offer women a place to ask technical questions without the threat of patronizing, trivializing responses, and they allow women to build confidence in their own skills by answering other women's questions and generally sharing their knowledge and experience with the list. These lists also provide women a forum to discuss issues of particular interest to women, like women's health, or how women are faring in a particular field.

Discussion lists for women create a similar atmosphere, not unlike women-only professional or social meetings. The vs-online-strat list, for example, provides women who are interested in feminist online activism a place to discuss strategies, initiatives and current activities, while the cyber-sisters list offers women artists and writers a place to discuss their use of computers and the internet in their artistic pursuits. General discussion lists like women (for all women), girlfriend (for African American women) and sappho (for lesbian and bisexual women) offer women a place to discuss just about anything that's on their minds, and more focused discussion lists, like couples-l, libfem and living create a forum for conversation around certain issues and ideas.

Techno savvy urban areas also tend to spawn local discussion and networking lists, which can bring women together both online and off. In the San Francisco bay area, there are quite a few lists just for women, like the ba-bizwomen discussion list for women in small business, the ba-cyberdykes list for bay area lesbians, and ba-women, for news and announcements of interest to bay area women. Many of these lists sponsor social and professional gatherings and provide women with a safe space to network, meet other women in their field, build confidence in their skills and abilities, and generally increase the visibility of online women.

Some newsgroups are moderated, however, meaning that although anyone can read the group, message posted to the group must be approved by a moderator, which significantly improves the appeal of most groups. You can find up to date information on newsgroups that focus on women's issues from the Joan Korenman's excellent site, referenced above.

Probably the two most popular moderated women's newsgroups are soc.feminist, which is for discussion of issues relating to feminism and women's rights (and includes both men and women as participants), and soc.women.lesbian-and-bi, which is a social discussion group for lesbian and bisexual women. Unfortunately most of the other general groups, like soc.women and alt.feminist, are heavily populated by angry, loud men whose opinions run the range from mildly offensive to openly hostile and sexist. Occasionally a positive and interesting discussion will take place on these newsgroups, but most women find that it's hardly worth the effort of wading through the drivel.

With the moderated groups, however, readers take some comfort in knowing that someone is filtering out the truly time wasting posts, leaving the group free to debate and discuss a wide range of more relevant topics. On soc.feminism, for example, recent discussions have included a hot debate over different approaches to feminism and the works of Camille Paglia, as well as less emotionally charged conversation on issues like feminist parenting and women's equality in the work force.

Another popular meeting place for women online is in web-based forums, which are still fairly new. As their name implies, web-based forums are discussion groups that take place on the web, using special software to create, essentially, the effect of a newsgroup, but often with more options and flexibility.

Most of the major women's web sites have set up forums so that their visitors can interact with each other, often on topics that are related to the purpose of the site. WWWomen, for example, has several forums that correlate with their most popular directory categories, as well as a forum for women who are new to the internet and are seeking technical help. Women Online Worldwide and Pleiades Networks offer a wide range of women's forums, focusing on topics like money and finances, politics, home and garden, food and nutrition, women's music, health, business, and more.

Many web-based forums have moderators who weed out inappropriate posts and keep conversation flowing, but in most cases anyone can read and respond to the forum so there is significantly less privacy and intimacy on a web-based forum than there is in a mailing list. In some ways this is considered an advantage, as new and different voices are always joining the conversation, but it also generally prohibits women from building the kind of online friendships that come from regular contact with the same group of people.

To participate in a web-based forum, you must be continuously logged on to the internet, whereas with most email and newsgroup readers you can read and respond to messages offline, so this method of communication requires that you have relatively reliable and cheap access to the internet. The main advantage to these forums, however, is that they do not generate extra email to sort through, which for some people is a welcome relief. They are also typically very easy to use, which appeals to internet users of all skill levels!

Finding women on the internet isn't hard to do, but it will take some time and effort for you to find the medium and the forums you feel most comfortable with. Experiment with all of them -- join a couple of mailing lists and participate in several newsgroups and web-based forums -- and then decide what method of communication suits you best. Ask your friends and colleagues what their favorite online hangouts are and give them a try, or go for something new and different. Whatever you do, you should have fun doing it!

But you might also want to exercise a moderate degree of caution. While the internet is not the scary place the media makes it out to be, a little common sense goes a long way. For example, don't give out your home address over the internet, unless it's in a private email message to someone you know. If you want to order something, have it sent to your office address, or to a friend's PO Box, or better yet get a PO Box yourself. Be careful who you give your home phone number out to and don't publish it on the internet, unless of course it's also your home office number. And never send your credit card number over the internet, unless you're entering it on a secure web page (your web browser should give you an indication when you're on a secure page -- in Netscape, the little key at the lower left corner appears locked).

In other words, you are in control of your personal information. You don't even have to give out your full name if you don't want to. When you sign up for your internet account, you can list yourself with your first initial only and your last name, and you can choose a login that is simply your last name, your first initial and last name, or something completely different. While most women do use their full names, you are free to choose as much or as little anonymity as you feel comfortable with.

You are also in control of your journey online, and if you are worried about privacy or safety online, choose your forums accordingly. If you just want to "lurk" -- to "listen in" on online conversations without taking part in them -- you can do so just about anywhere with complete safety. If you want to participate, you might choose to do so in mailing lists, because list participation is typically limited only to those who are subscribed to the list, whereas anyone can read or post to most newsgroups and web based forums. Some mailing lists also have a strict women only policy, so you can be sure that the other listmembers are all women, which might make you feel more comfortable when discussing certain topics.

If you do encounter harassment online, you have several options: you can ignore the unwanted messages in the hopes that they will go away on their own, you can forward a copy of the unwanted messages to the sender's postmaster, or you can respond with an authoritative statement requesting that communication cease immediately and informing the sender that future messages will be deleted unread. To determine the address of the sender's postmaster, simply change the first part of the email address to: postmaster, like this: if the message comes from johndoe@somecompany.com, you can reach the postmaster at: postmaster@somecompany.com Many email programs also allow you to "filter" your messages, so that you can easily filter out annoying or threatening messages without ever having to look at them.

This is not to suggest, however, that the internet is in fact a dangerous place to be; far from it. I personally believe the internet is as safe or more so than the physical world, especially if we are aware of our rights and know how to protect ourselves. I also believe that my experience as a woman online is an important example: I have been actively involved in a variety of online forums for over two years, with the email addresses: agoodloe@women-online.com and amy@lesbian.org, both of which are also associated with my full name, and yet I have not received so much as one piece of harassing email. Now I have received my share of stupid, homophobic comments, mostly in response to a web site I run called Lesbian.org, but these are generally harmless and are to be expected for someone with as much visibility as I have. That's not to diminish the experiences of other women -- online harassment is real and does happen, just as it does in the physical world -- but I maintain that it is significantly more rare than the popular media would have us believe. The real truth about women online is that we are everywhere, and our numbers grow each day!