Menu-Driven Identity Workshop Response (Q1,Q2)

Among the web of Hotmail, Yahoo and Second Life, all of them avoid asking any question about the applicant’s ethnicity. However, people have to fill in name, gender and birth date as well. In the gender category, applicant can either choose to be male or female, which assume the concept of binary opposition and exclude the other possibilities. Besides, it is found the Yahoo will direct the applicant to different Yahoo when one choose the preferred content. Unexpectedly, there are US in Chinese, US in Spanish, US in Russian category. It may due to the increasing mobility across country. But, only US and Canada have multiple choices. Moreover, are Chinese, Spanish and Russian the only languages used in US, apart from English? Absolutely not. It is admitted they are the dominant groups. The designed choices seem to meet the needs of people, in fact, they are excluding the minorities.

In the Second Life, people are able to create their first name, but have to choose the last name from “a wide variety of last names”, which are all western family name. The Chinese or others family names are all absent in the given list. I wonder if they intend to exclude those non-white users. Even for the westerners, the list may not cover all of the western family name.

Once you enter the page of Lavalife, you will see a picture of a man is whispering to a woman, who has a big smile. And their dress codes are considered to be match man’s masculine image and woman’s feminine image. The heterosexuality obviously exists in the page. With the searching function, plenty of users who fit your interest (e.g. gender, age) will be shown. Their profile such as gender, age, location, zodiac sign, height, body type, smoking and drinking habit will be shown. However, it is not a must to fill in your body type, ethnic background, religion, smoking and drinking habit, or leave it blank. You can choose the option “prefer not to say”. Thus, it can claim that offline identities are still present is this kind of online identity constructions. Furthermore, it is found that people are more likely to tell their ethnic background if they are white. It seems the only worth to tell ethnic is white, while others are inferior. The most interesting thing found in Lavalife is users are able to search for other same gender users. After I’ve tried this function, it is found that for those who are homosexual have no gender shown. As mentioned above, only a choice of female or male is not satisfied. Also, after few times of same gender searching, a picture of homosexual couple(see the picture above) will appear on the page. I wonder if they are trying to hide the homosexual idea within the web. To compare with the picture (heterosexual couple) user see at the main page, the homosexual one is placed in less visible position.