GENDER ENOUGH?:

Cyber Identity and Gender Integrity in Cyberspace with

Cyberfeminism Perspectives

Alura Stacia Kandou, and A. G. Eka Wenats Wuryanta

Universitas Paramadina – Jakarta - Indonesia

Keywords: Cyber identity, gender, cyberspace, cyber feminism, new media.

Abstract: This research explores the concept of cyber identity and gender in cyberspace, specifically on Twitter as a

Social Media platform. The real social identity transformed into cyber identity in this era of globalization.

Cyber identity is known with the anonymity that will give discretion of self-expression in cyberspace but also

create cyber identity abuse that considered as something harmful for society's real social life. One of the most

interesting discussions to show the example of the use of cyber persona is gender bias. The methodology used

in this research is interpretive with the qualitative method, using literature studies from books, international

news articles, and scientific journals. The researcher will show how cyber identity will affect gender bias in

the cyber world with the theory of uses and gratification, also postmodernism theory as analysis reference.

This research finds that cyber identity is affecting individuals and society on controlling individuals,

especially in the scope of gender.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the current era of globalization, the strong

encouragement of people to access information is a

necessity. Access to this information is then used as

the basis for the emergence of new phenomena that

are considered unique in the eyes of the world

community. The number of world internet users in

2017 has reached 3.58 billion (Statista.com, 2017)

and is predicted to continue to grow every year. The

increase occurred from 2016 to 2017, amounting to

500 million users (Statista.com, 2017).

This is no exception in Indonesia. Internet users in

Indonesia have reached 105 million users in 2017 and

are predicted to rise to 113 million in 2018

(Statista.com, 2017). The following are statistical

data showing internet users in Indonesia:

Figure 1: Number of internet users in Indonesia (2017)

Source:https://www.statista.com/statistics/254456/number

-of-internet-users-in-indonesia/. 2018.

The i

nternet usage in Indonesia is the most to access

information and use of social media, following data

describing internet use in Indonesia:

Kandou, A. and Wuryanta, A.

GENDER ENOUGH?: Cyber Identity and Gender Integrity in Cyberspace with Cyberfeminism Perspectives.

DOI: 10.5220/0009400100760081

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Anti-Corruption and Integrity (ICOACI 2019), pages 76-81

ISBN: 978-989-758-461-9

Figure 2: Statistics of the Internet, Social Media and Mobile

Subscriptions Users in Indonesia (2017)

Source: We Are Social. Snapshot of Country's Key Digital

Statistical Indicators. 2017.

As researchers have said before that the use of the

internet creates new phenomena that are considered

unique in society, one of which is cyber identity.

Cyber identity is a matter that is being widely

discussed; the scope of cyberspace identity includes

not only individuals but also groups, ethnic groups,

even the scale of the country.

Historically, technology has become male

domination, and even new technology still continues

this tradition. In the past 20 years, the world has seen

an explosion in the field of information and

communication technology. In 1995, only 15 percent

of Internet users were women, but by the beginning

of 2000, women had reached 50 percent as internet

users. However, patriarchal culture has never been

absent, and men continue to control content and

benefit from the increase in women using the internet.

Likewise, in the segmentation of access to the focus

of internet use, it is clear that there are gender gaps in

how to access the internet between men and women.

Men generally surf and navigate more often, even

jumping from site to site, while women go directly to

certain sites or seek information about a particular

topic (Richard & Schnall, 2006).

As a more advanced society, access to information

and communication technology becomes wider and

more open. Women should become more liberated

from the confines of traditional patriarchal power

structures that have been surrounding and swallowing

them. In gender roles, gender identity is experiencing

a shift due to the advancement of information and

communication technology. The public's

understanding of feminine and masculine concepts in

the present is in a transition period (Plant, 1996). The

development of information and communication

technology has given women the power to express

their ideas in developing new business models, which

are more rational, visionary, and practical to obtain

information.

The above phenomena often form new identities

in existing cyberspace. With the existence of

cyberspace identities, issues such as feminism and

gender are increasingly being discussed and warmer

to be discussed, both among individuals and groups.

All opinions and fruits of community thinking are

expressed in all existing social media containers, both

for the purpose of increasing gender equality or even

vice versa, to show the dominance of a gender.

The debate over the emergence of gender bias

because cyberspace identity also gave rise to

reactions to feminist idealists or also adherents to

gender equality, this paper will discuss the three as

research that the authors see capable of representing

what has happened in cyberspace over the past few

years.

In this study, researchers found a hypothesis that

refers to the use of social media as two blades, where

cyberspace identity can arouse the soul of adherents

of gender equality and feminism to be able to see a

problem and fight for women's rights which are

considered oppressed, but in the other side of the use

of social media also contributes to the condition of

gender bias that has existed so far with the existence

of all forms of opinion that uphold the superiority of

a gender to another gender.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The discovery of technology in the field of

communication and information has brought us into a

new era of cultural history. Some experts even say

that new media has really changed our lives (see

Andoni Alonso and Pedro J. Oiarzabal, 2010). Robert

Samuel, in his book New Media, Cultural Studies,

and Critical Theory after Postmodernism (2010: 3),

states that today, we are in a paradoxical condition in

a combination of social automation and individual

autonomy. This, according to Samuel, is one of them,

a result of the discovery of new media that have an

impact on the formation of "auto modernity" - to

describe the stages of the new culture. Samuel further

argues that modernity, which is a reaction to

postmodern, places emphasis on the social and

cultural conflict by celebrating the ability of

individual autonomy to exploit unregulated and

automatic social systems. Thus, new media provides

a frame of mind for every human who wants to free

himself from all kinds of rules that limit his space for

movement and wants to be free from all kinds of

rules, which are often unavoidable. Although

negatively, the growth of this new media can produce

libertarian and antisocial views.

GENDER ENOUGH?: Cyber Identity and Gender Integrity in Cyberspace with Cyberfeminism Perspectives

In the new media era, every individual and social,

cultural, economic and political groups must require

themselves to interact actively with new media, not

just to express individual or group identities, but more

importantly how then each group uses new media as

communication container for empowerment or

liberation, or borrowing the term Robert Samuel

(2010) for "celebrating the autonomous individual's

ability". In this perspective, according to Samuel, the

organized power of women, ethnic minorities,

workers, colonial identities, and subjects all demand

inclusion in a modern sense of equality.

Unfortunately, most academic and critical theories

ignore the important role of new media in fostering

social movements that have been played in rethinking

modernity and the formation of contemporary

society.

"Cyberfeminism" actually refers to how feminists

(cyber-feminists) use new media as a vehicle to

empower and free themselves from male-dominated

discourses. Cyberfeminism can also be an alternative

for how women should optimally use new media for

empowerment, so that big dreams about liberation are

not just utopia, which refers to a proposal that is good

but (physically, socially, economically or politically)

is impossible happen.

Cyberfeminism, according to the Dictionary of

Media Studies (2006: 58), is a study of new

technologies and their influence on women's issues.

The emergence of cyberfeminism, according to Sarah

Kember (2003: 177), can be defined with regard to its

origins in feminist theory and practice in the late

1980s and early 1990s, which are related to the

emergence of technology regarding the information

revolution. That was part of the response to

cyberpunk anarchist politics. Cyberfeminism later

became an important school of cyberculture and

feminism studies and has developed a series of major

concerns, including issues of separation of

body/mind, a vision of the community that focuses on

issues such as identity and social community.

Cyberfeminism later became the most active political

strategy and artistic method in the 1990s.

Cyberfeminism arises from the use of digital

media and new communication technologies. This

technology is considered to have both promises and

threats, with the potential for simultaneous

empowerment and oppression. They offer ways to

open up space and communicative communities, to be

involved in play and politics, and to access

information and make networks.

Cyberfeminism was a term coined in 1994 by

Sadie Plant, director of the Cybernetic Culture

Research Unit at Warwick University, England, to

describe feminist work that was interested in

theorizing, criticizing, and exploiting the internet,

cyberspace, and new media technology in general.

The term and movement evolved from third-wave

feminism, a contemporary feminist movement that

followed feminism in the second wave in 1970, which

focused on equal rights for women, and which

naturally followed the first wave of feminism in the

early 20th century, which concentrated on women's

suffrage. Cyberfeminism tends to include the

majority of young women, technologically savvy

women and Western, white, and middle-class people

(Encyclopedia of New Media, Sage Reference).

Sadie Plant (in Gamble, 2010: 270-271) defines

Cyberfeminism as a rebellion of parts of goods and

materials from patriarchal emergence consisting of

links between women, women and computers,

computers and communication networks, liaison and

connecting machines. This opinion, according to

Gamble, marks the existence of utopianism

cyberfeminism, which says that technology is not

harmful to women and that women should seize

control of the new information system. However,

according to Gamble, today, cyberfeminism has

many issues to compete with, not just needs to

balance a political agenda that is coherent with the

utopian vision of the dream of cyberspace. The

multiplicity of feminist resources and networks on the

website, according to Gamble, has shown that there is

a presence of women in cyberspace, although it is also

seen whether this will lead to beneficial coalitions.

The postmodernist theory adopted by Jean

Baudrillard, where the concept of hyperreality is

formed. Baudrillard states that what is happening in

the real world today is a form of hyperreality, and the

media is one of the mediums that makes people

immersed in it. (Ritzer, R., & Goodman, 2009). This

relates to what the author examined in this paper,

where the media that make people eventually formed

with all the conditions of hyperreality places

themselves in imaginative and not real situations.

This creates a lot of polemic or resistance between

one individual to another individual or group one and

the other. The community is lulled by events that

occur in cyberspace so that they seem to forget the

right things happening in the community.

3 METHODOLOGY

The theme of this study is about cyber identity and its

relationship to gender bias in cyberspace, to the

current dynamics of communication, there has been a

shift in terms of the medium used by society to be able

ICOACI 2019 - International Conference on Anti-Corruption and Integrity

to participate in the social world. This will then be

linked to how the shifts shape cyber identity and

gender bias in cyberspace

The methodology used in this study is an

interpretive methodology, because research is an

attempt to find an explanation of social or cultural

events based on the perspectives and experiences of

the person being studied. The interpretative

methodology also sees that facts are unique and have

specific contexts and meanings as the essence of

understanding the social meaning. This study uses

descriptive-analytical methods. Where in this study

will produce descriptive data through words, both

oral or written, and also observed behavior of the

phenomenon under study? Qualitative research

serves to understand complex issues, examine social

phenomena that cannot be studied with quantitative

methods, and to explore a study to be more detailed.

In this study, the data collection technique used is to

use secondary data collection such as books,

scientific journals, including electronic journals, and

international news articles related to the problems in

this study.

4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

In looking at the phenomenon that occurs in society

today, where technology becomes a thing that cannot

be separated from each individual, internet, mobile

phones, applications, and all facilities obtained from

social media. With the rapid technological

advancements, the use and function of the media,

which previously only included the dissemination of

messages and information, became the arena for the

community to compete in displaying their opinions

and thoughts.

Every individual has what is called identity;

identity is used to identify someone in the social

world. The identification of a human will determine

how they live, their mobility, their pattern of life, and

is considered a process of diversity. This is no

exception or limitation to identity in cyberspace.

Cyber identity or cyber identity is an understanding

of the identity of an individual in the virtual world.

Virtual world identity is also interpreted as an identity

formed by someone to be displayed in cyberspace,

whether honestly or not. This is then associated with

the concept of anonymity, where one can become

someone else in the virtual world.

The cyber identity will determine a person's

reputation in cyberspace, and as we know that cyber

coverage is unlimited, what is meant here is crossing

national borders and crossing the boundaries of all

lines of society (Nabeth, 2006).

From this cyber identity, all phenomena can

occur, such as two things that are very contrasting

with each other - gender bias and feminism. In

cyberspace, everyone can express their opinions. The

contribution of society in cyberspace is then

interpreted as a form of democracy in Indonesia.

Theoretically, the cyber world does not see the

limitations of age, gender, ethnicity, or race.

Everyone has egalitarian rights in cyberspace.

In cyberspace, there are often discussions about

gender, one of which is gender discrimination.

Gender discrimination or gender bias that occurs in

cyberspace is a form of lifting issues that occur in

people's daily lives, about how women and men

should carry out life according to their gender. This is

then revealed and written on several platforms social

media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so

on. Freedom of expression in this virtual world can be

done anonymously, or with the original account of the

owner, this then stimulates the public to discuss this

topic to be an interesting thing. Even on some social

media, gender bias is still widely reported not only by

individuals but also by news channels. Here is an

example of a tweet taken from twitter that shows

public opinion about men:

Figure 3: Tweet Community Opinion Regarding Men

Source: www.twitter.com. 2018.

When seen in the picture shown, tweets suggest

that men are gender difficult and dangerous creatures.

If associated with the theory uses and

gratification, the use of social media in Indonesia is a

form of monitoring function, where people can access

information needed to achieve their individual goals,

social media in Indonesia is still a medium for the

community to be able to convey how the patriarchal

system must stand still in Indonesia, for cultural or

religious reasons.

The presence of women in the contemporary

gender identity of the virtual world is portraying

stereotypes and positioning of women in this modern

era. New Media can either support or biased the idea

of gender inequality by confirming, spreading, and

socializing. The result can be intriguing, which can be

considered correct or seen as normal, but also, it can

GENDER ENOUGH?: Cyber Identity and Gender Integrity in Cyberspace with Cyberfeminism Perspectives

be seen as an error gender system that needs to be

changed.

The average account on social media today can

be anonymous when expressing their opinions and

raises conditions in cyberspace that seem exaggerated

from what is seen in the real world. This is also called

the formation of hyperreality, as happened in the

theory of postmodernism. Often time's people create

posts on social media using invalid data, and this then

raises the pros and cons of other social media users.

Things that are uploaded on social media can

easily affect other users, with an example when there

are rampant rape cases in Indonesia, developing and

viral tweets are attacking among netizens in Indonesia

about whether the rape is caused by wrongful victims

or perpetrators of rape. One example of a tweet that

the researchers found was as follows:

Figure 4: Tweets Regarding Rape

Source: twitter.com. 2018.

From the tweet, it was seen how the owner of the

account explained that rape occurred because the

victim deserved to be raped. This then led to other

opinions from netizens, opinions that emerged from

netizens also varied, there were pros and cons about

who should be blamed in rape cases. The social media

platform is no longer just for information, but also for

communication - both positively and negatively. The

war between account users also often occurs in social

media which indicates that there has been a shift in

human communication culture in this era of

globalization to become a form of cyberculture

(Chandra, 2016)

Indirectly, when making a decision to participate

in cyberspace, people are faced with choices to

become themselves or not, the public is given the

freedom to register their personal account and provide

their private information. On the other hand, the

community is also given a choice to be another

persona on social media, and other people never know

whether a person on this social media is real or not.

The reality seen in cyberspace does not necessarily

have something in common with what happens in the

social world of the individual.

On this basis, the use of social media in terms of

gender discrimination can be more easily done. In this

era of globalization, gender is not a new thing to

discuss. Proponents of gender equality and feminism

are competing to convince people that women's and

men's rights are the same. According to the feminism

approach, these feminist fighters make efforts to

connect the principles of feminism to social life,

which are full of women's concerns about stereotypes,

gender bias, gender discrimination so that women feel

more equal to men (Hesse-Biber, Nagy, & Leavy,

2007).

The reality that happens on social media is not the

real reality. According to Yusuf Amir Piliang, this

cyber identity can eventually be called the

development of what happened in the real world. The

development of social space that moves into

cyberspace can affect three levels, namely

individuals, groups, and society (Piliang, 2004).

At the individual level, the boundaries of personal

identity shift and become chaotic. Cyber identity will

influence one's way of thinking, perception,

personality, and lifestyle. At the group level, social,

territorial boundaries have shifted, group

communication no longer requires conventional

space and territories, so there is a shift in social values

within which the concept of being close and close can

feel far away. The last level is society, where the

creation of an imaginary community where

communities no longer need real place and

communication, but only forms of imaginary

communication through technology (Piliang, 2004).

This cyber identity is feared to be misused by

certain parties in launching its action to achieve its

objectives. We never know who they are behind

chatter on social media; in this case, the researcher

raised gender bias. The gender bias that occurs in

social media is a representation of individuals or even

groups who feel that their gender is superior to

another gender. Indirectly, we can see how this

community effort to influence the thinking of other

internet users to agree to the concept of superiority in

a gender. In the end, not all people in cyberspace

understand that they can have a very broad effect on

influencing others on social media to agree with the

concept of gender superiority.

All feminism theories in cyberfeminism are active

efforts to change gender inequality through

information and communication technology (Handy,

2001). According to Wilding (1998), cyberfeminism

is seen not only as an opportunity to create a new

formulation of the theory and practice of feminism,

but cyberfeminism is also a new way to overcome the

complexity of the social conditions created by global

information technology.

Cyberfeminism is presented as a space where

digital information can be freely accessed and

transmitted electronically, without any theoretical,

ICOACI 2019 - International Conference on Anti-Corruption and Integrity

emotional, existential, and traditional cultural

preconditions. This is an arena where knowledge is

decentralized and has authority as a result of the

development of science. The virtual world, as a

decentralized communication system, has changed

the construction of gender inequality. There is no

room for claims of authority in a patriarchal

framework, which usually serves to subvert women's

potential when speaking on their behalf. The virtual

world, according to the view of cyber feminists, has

opened up new possibilities and freed women from

traditional violence, which they experienced before in

many aspects such as in religious, intellectual,

theoretical, and philosophical discourses. Cyber

feminists feel that information and communication

technology is a new e-media for women. They got the

opportunity to start from the beginning, such as

making languages, programs, platforms, images,

identities, and various multi-subject definitions.

Through e-media, they can also redesign programs

that aim to meet women's needs. Various variations

in cyberspace also become a means to change the

condition of femininity as intended from the concept

of cyberfeminism, which is to eliminate gender

inequality.

5 CONCLUSION

The cyber identity, which is the identity of individuals

or groups in the cyber world, can have a very broad

influence on all fronts. This cyber identity is done to

achieve the goals of each individual differently.

Cyber identity influences the mindset of society about

gender, where the formation of hyper-reality about

gender is prevalent in the cyber world, and the

individuals involved see that the use of cyberspace

will easily help them achieve their goals of spreading

ideas about gender superiority to another gender.

Misuse of cyber identity also happens in

cyberspace, and this is because people are given the

freedom to be what they are in cyberspace, they can

be themselves or be someone else. The boundaries of

identity also seem gray and can affect the real social

life of the community.

In the end, cyber identity writers consider having

a negative effect on society's social life. If cyber

identity can be used to achieve community goals,

cyber identity can also be used to achieve good things

such as gender equality and acceptance of sexual

orientation, which is still considered taboo in

Indonesia.

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GENDER ENOUGH?: Cyber Identity and Gender Integrity in Cyberspace with Cyberfeminism Perspectives