The three goddesses interviewed all have very disparate views about the Net. Lisa Palac is a high priestess of cybersex, Dale Spender is a softly-spoken feminist and Anita Roddick is the campaigning founder of the million dollar Body Shop franchise who’s unable to conquer her technophobia.
Lisa Palac’s sexual awakening began when a vibrator fell out of a cupboard and hit her on the head. “I’d never masturbated or had an orgasm until I moved into a new apartment, and when I opened a cupboard, a vibrator toppled out. I thought it was hilarious and used to wave it around and make jokes about it when friends visited. About a year later I finally felt curious enough to try it and had my first orgasm. Suddenly I thought `This is it! God, this is what it’s all about. This is what Cosmo keeps mentioning.’ From that moment, I kept thinking about how I could have *MORE* orgasms.”
The next definitive moment was when Palac was going through a resolute anti-porn feminist phase, and was feeling a bit chilly. So she began rifling through her boyfriend’s wardrobe, ostensibly looking for a sweater. But she found a lot more than that. “I came across several porn videos, and it was obvious, from the extent of his collection, that he was an ardent connoisseur. I completely blew up at him and told him to either get rid of the porn or we’d have to split up.
“He begged me to `Please watch one video’ before making a final decision, so I watched a few and tried to have an open mind. After a while, I eventually stopped processing the politics of the scenes and found some of the images turned me on. Sexual fantasies are not necessarily politically correct. You have to break though the feeling that you’ll find nothing appealing. When I did, I could understand what the draw was and why people liked buying X-rated vids.”
There are no brilliant porn movies, according to Palac. “I’m often asked to list my favourite movies, but there aren’t any good films, only good scenes, and you have to wade through a lot of videos to find them. My experience of pornography have been very positive. There are lots of images that turn me on.”
Palac’s sexpertise emerged when she started writing about sex in the mid-1980s. In 1991 she was invited to launch a new US national sex magazine for women and men, entitled Future Sex. It was a hip publication that focused on the overlapping of sex, technology and culture. The high-tech element of this zine meant she was in high demand for media interviews, and wrote prolifically for Playboy, Penthouse, The Village Voice, Details, and published erotic fiction. Commenting on the Net sex scene she says: “Cybersex is no longer a fad or trend for me. I haven’t got out of the sex industry, but now I’m working on a book about women and surfing – waves, not the Net. My book, The Edge of the Bed (Harper Collins), is a capsule of all of my sexual experiences.”
Nowadays, Palac mostly uses the Net for e-mail. “I’m a member of the WELL, which is mostly text-based, and they have a variety of on-line conferences. I’m also a member of Echo, based in New York, and I like to drop in on their conferences.”
She believes technology has definitely impacted on our erotic lifestyle. “But the basics are the same. Plenty are learning how to use e-mail, and from there they’ll discover first crushes and have erotic interludes. Back in the beginning, the most-often asked question was: `Where are the virtual reality suits?” When can we have every sexual experience with every movie star? Then the debate shifted to: `If the suits can give us everything, we’ll be alienated from each other, so VR will ruin and destroy us.
“The reality is the great area in-between. No matter how much technology changes our lives, it’ll still be just a computer sitting there until you decide to interact with it. A big problem is the debate always seems to focus around the scenarios of people having sex with computers or new positions or lonely losers logging on who can’t find love in the real world. The fundamental change brought about by technology is that sex no longer means your penis in my vagina. The meaning of sex has been expanded to include intellectual committment. It’s also re-defined masturbation as a bona fide way of having sex between two people, using private chat rooms and sitting at their respective terminals. This is seen as active sex, now, and the safest kind of sex. It’s a huge shift in consciousness.”
So does she believe in cyber-adultery? “I’m not really sure. I’m lucky enough to have never been in a relationship where someone’s cheated on me. Generally, I think monogamy is too difficult for our species – we’re destined to breed with a variety of partners. It’s ridiculous to say: `If you love me, don’t have sexual feelings for anyone else. This is impossible.
“It also depends on how you define `cheating’. I think it’s when you feel you have to lie to your partner. If I give someone a blow job on-line, or send an X-rated e-mail, I don’t count that as cheating. It doesn’t matter.”
Palac has also experienced the rhapsodies and heartbreak of on-line love. “I’ve fallen in love on-line. The most amazing thing about this experience is that it happens so intensely and so quickly *because of* the absence of a physical body. When words are all you have — there is no image of the other person, much less the physical proximity — you use them with a vengeance. Suddenly you know the most intimate details of someone, without ever having seen their face. They seem perfect. They understand and accept you like no one else ever had. You thought you just wanted some sexual intrigue. But now, you want — dare I say — a relationship.”
She believes the spectre of on-line sexual harassment should be taken seriously. “The idea of cyber-rape is pretty strange – you can just put the prefix `cyber’ in front of anything and it’s a reason to get hysterical about sex again.” Ask Palac about censorship and she becomes fiery. “I don’t care about politicians talking about censoring the Net – they jump up and down about porn on the Net, but they don’t care about kids. It’s all bullshit. There are children starving in the US, some with no education, or living in poverty. It’s so fucked up.
“Histrionics is the only way some people know how to talk about sex. People are incredibly interested in sexual material on the Net and many sex sites get a million hits a day – they want what they can’t have. It scares some people how unstoppable it is; with a magazine you can say: `You can’t sell that here.’ But you can’t shut down the Net.”
She says she has seen some “really gross images on the Net”. “I found one is Usenet of a woman sucking a dog’s dick. I wish I hadn’t of looked at it. Sometimes I’ve viewed pictures other people have pointed out. I like to be shown things I haven’t seen before.
“I think everyone, including children, should have access to any sexual information they want. They need to be given the option to explore off-limits material – life isn’t always happy, cheerful and positive. Some of the hottest sexual experiences I’ve ever had have involved situations where I was frightened or ambivalent – sometimes I haven’t even like the person.”
Feminist Dale Spender, 53, is appalled by porn, virtual sex and sexual harassment. She’s the author and editor of over 30 books, including the internationally acclaimed Man Made Language and Nattering on the Net, and is now involved in the electronic media as co-originator of WIKED, an international women’s database. She’s always instantly recognisable, decked out in her favourite colour, purple. Purple eyeshadow, purple necklaces, a purple stone in her ring and, surprisingly, black high heels. But what on earth had she done to her hair? It looked neat enough in a feathered, elf-ish cut, but…
“I’m actually trying to get it a rich purple colour, which my nieces love,” Spender explains. It’s caught in a transition phase. She’s a woman who communicates ideas as though they’re being barked by someone who wears combat fatigues, but in person she’s more like the type who’d arrive home spotless after a “discover the artist within” fingerpainting class.
“Many women feel mousey and scared and are worried about becoming an impersonal robotic tech-head with nothing but alt.binaries.sex for personal gratification,” Spender says. “They’re also genuinely terrified of `breaking’ the computer. They worry more about crashing a system or causing a problem that’ll lead to considerable expense or inconvenience. This is in contrast to men who’ll tend to take more risks.” She says women want to know the rules and how things operate before they take any “leaps”, whereas men are more adventurous.
And then it was time to hoe into computer techies. “What gives me the shits is how techies tell me how I have to set up my computer. What about alternatives? But they swagger around, look at my technology and say `You paid for *this*? You’ve been taken for a ride.’ Then they cast me aside, do a series of flamboyant clicks, which emphasise their expertise and mystique, declare that it’s all a matter of doing `X, Y, Z’ and abruptly leave, looking disdainful. I’m left feeling none the wiser, frustrated and stupid.”
She says support staff should instruct and help, “but very few do. They add to the problem of computer anxiety by making it difficult for women to feel at ease. A woman’s way of wanting to read the instructions first is at odds with the unpredictability and so-called anarchy of cyberspace.”
Many women have an inherent dislike of techies, who seem to have an unnatural attachment to their machines. “Women are encouraged to leave the machines to men and put their energy into relating to people. They often worry about the sort of people they’d become if they were computer-oriented. When they look at computer techies they reject them as role models and don’t like what they see,” she expounds. “Women also tend to underestimate their competence and some men, who only know how to basically switch the machine on, boast they’re computer competent.”
Spender isn’t all politically correct talk – she’s genuinely appalled. And she finds pornography particularly irritating. “Christ! Look at where we’re sitting, in Soho, surrounded by it,” she winces., looking at the club opposite with its garish neon sign flashing “live show, sexy girls”. “Interactive online porn is more like visiting a red-light district that looking at a magazine. If porn is about power, there must be more power in chopping up and interacting with a body than just drooling over it in a magazine. I want to know what effect this is having on young boys. Why isn’t anyone asking these questions?”
And then there’s flaming. “A lot of 14-year-old girls aren’t streetwise – they’re not savvy enough to say `fuck off!’ to an obscene comment. And some of it’s particularly revolting.”
She cites an incident endured by geekgirl e-zine editor Rosie X, who is “as tough as they come” and was bombarded with savage online harassment.
“She got all these messages from guys on Valentine’s Day saying they knew where she lived and that she’d have her throat cut and be gang-banged, `fucked to death’ as a Valentine’s Day treat. Some shitty men like these will invade your territory – it only takes a few. And this sort of behaviour scares a lot of women away.”
Male aggression also occurs in daily scenarios. Spender mentions an incident when she visited a US school where the girls complained there was “too much aggro” when they tried to use the computers. She saw 15-year-old boys physically push the girls away from the computers and verbally abuse them – “slut” and “slag” being among the printable epithets. The male teacher then said: “I told you girls were trouble. They stop everyone from working.” Spender regrets she hadn’t taken along a video camera to record the incident. “I didn’t name the school because there’s all sorts of legal implications, such as defamation, in the US. I was just passing through that school, and it’s irresponsible to stir things up when you can’t stay in the front line. But I don’t think it was an isolated incident.”
Along with the majority of girls, she’s unimpressed with computer games too. “Most of them are of the drop-dead variety. The main aim is to kill as many things as possible. The themes of girls’ books are very different – they’re interested in personal relationships and the ongoing story of existence. Even Barbie games focussed on the wrong areas – men promoted a CD-Rom title where Barbie toured the world looking for fame and fortune. But later research showed that girls wanted to see Barbie doing social activities, such as horse riding, going to the beach and camping.” (A year after this interview, Barbie Fashion Designer CD-Rom hit the jackpot and sold trillions of copies – you could design party dresses outfits and print them.)
She says universities offering online courses are particularly interested in her findings that women don’t tend to “fall in love” with technology. “For men, technology is often a toy, they get pleasure from technological interests. But women tend to ask, `Do I need it? How much does it cost? Will it save me time?’
Women often work and do most of the household chores and child care. So they don’t have time to configure software and hardware – they need it to work immediately. For men, computers have already become a leisure pursuit.”
Apart from uninteresting games, the electronic media are often not available to many women. “Women may simply be able to afford less access than men. Also, their careers are delayed because of child rearing, and this could mean they’ve missed out on upgrading their computer skills. People worry about Bill Gates owning 80 per cent of software in the US, but 99 per cent of software businesses are owned by men. There are no women-owned international software companies, no female equivalent of Gates, Ted Turner or Rupert Murdoch, and no female film studios.
“Meantime, men have more computers, spend more time with them and are the dominating presence in cybersapce. When computers first made their appearance in the business world, they were placed in women’s hands, because women had typing skills and keyboard experience. What’s surprising is how quickly this power grab has taken place.
“Some people assume that women have an anti-machine attitude, but the reality is much more complex. The machines women use every day are not regarded as `sexy technology’. Items such as the washing machine, microwave oven and typewriter are often not thought of as technology at all. But this paradox, where women use machines but everyone thinks they don’t, can easily be explained by a fundamental feminist principle: despite evidence of women’s achievement, when women do it, it doesn’t count.”
A woman who has achieved prodigious results is The Body Shop founder and chief executive Anita Roddick, OBE. However, despite building up a £110.6million company with over 1300 branches in 45 countries, she still dictates all of her e-mails and is a self-proclaimed Luddite. Heck – she hasn’t even mastered cutting and pasting! She’s nervous about promoting The Body Shop’s new web site because she doesn’t want to get entangled in any tricky questions. Her PR lady is sitting nearby to answer anything ruinously “technical”. “I don’t have a clue about technology. Or computers. Or e-mail. Or Web sites,” Roddick admits. She is sitting defensively with her arms and legs crossed in her too-long black leggings, Doc Marten boots and dangly earrings. Her only concession to corporate dressing is a smartly tailored black jacket. Roddick’s incredibly enthusiastic, energetic, petite and thin, and looks a decade younger than 53, with a wild array of dark hennaed curls. She’s also a dedicated campaigner who can abruptly switch from an attentive schoolgirl demeanour to spouting “in your face” provocative comments. “You’re looking at England’s biggest Luddite,” she quips, self-deprecatingly. “I can’t use the Internet. I think it’s because of my age and the false belief that all this technology is too confusing. I prefer belly-to-belly communication. But I’m still keen to learn – I’ve offered all of my staff a free weekend in Paris if any of them can spend two days and teach me how to use it. But they can’t tie me down – I’m always on the move.”
She thinks there a big difference between using the Net and speaking to someone. “I like to hold on to the notion of communication and intimacy. Hot breath stuff. I know I should have mastered the skill of using computers a decade ago. I have a huge respect for the Net and technology and that’s why we had our Web site up so early. But personally, I’m still into the antediluvian stuff. I handwrite everything. I’d have to break down a huge mental barrier. A myth I cling on to is that I don’t have the time to learn all about this – I’d have to be force-fed it and made to sit in a room and molded before they let me out.
“I’d love to wake up and find that I’m able to use e-mail. And it would be very handy, when I’m writing speeches, to know how to move the text around.”
What, cutting and pasting? But that only takes a minute to learn…
“Yeah, but I don’t know how to do it,” Roddick concedes, despondent for a moment. “Technology should be designed to help us communicate more easily. Once I tried to send a fax from my computer and I couldn’t get it to work. I ended up wasting three whole days on it and it was so frustrating. For many people of my age, the last skill we had to learn was how to drive. The most irritating thing about it is the teachers who can’t believe we can’t master technology. I have the will to want to do it, but it’s difficult to translate that into time. My two daughters, who are 26 and 24, use computers and don’t have any problems with them. It’s just a different generation.”
For about five months annually, Roddick visits stores throughout the world. “It’s very time consuming. I’ve got an e-mail account and I dictate replies and my assistant sends off the answers. Well, I can use the basics of email, it’s just that replying takes up so much time. We get a huge amount of feedback – about 40 emails a day – and most of it’s positive. Many of them are from people asking unusual questions, such as `What makes up elephant’s skin?’ or `Now you’re selling banana shampoo, will you be using bananas in any other products?’ I just write the answers down in a scribbled fashion. I use the tools I have. Sure, I’ve got a notebook computer, but it takes up so much time to start it up. It’s quicker to write something down. I won’t be bludgeoned into using anything just because it’s politically correct. I use what I want. I just happen to be mobile a lot more than most people are.
“I’m not po-faced about communicating. I’d pull down my knickers and show my pubic hair to African tribal women if they haven’t seen that sort of thing before. Women like to talk about their bodies and how they look after their skin and polish it. This is much more valid and better than counting the number of rows of corn they’ve planted. Sometimes, when we’re sitting in villages, a laptop doesn’t seem like a suitable method of communication. ”
