“No Boundaries”? Girls’ Interactive, Online Learning About Femininities

Abstract

This article explores girls’ learning about issues of femininity that takes place in the presence of others online, connected through chat rooms, instant messaging, and role-playing games. Informed by critical and poststructuralist feminist theorizing of gendered subjectivity, agency, and power, the article draws from qualitative interviews with 16 girls in Vancouver, Canada. Girls reported that online activities allowed them to rehearse different ways of being before trying them out offline, where they might have been reined in for going against perceived expectations for their gender. The article shows that girls enjoyed playing with gender and being gender rebellious. They practiced taking more initiative in heterosexual relationships than is currently authorized in prevailing rules of romance. Without necessarily challenging the underlying gendered power inequalities, some battled back in cyberspace against sexual harassment. In the conclusion, the authors reflect on the implications for girls’ individual and collective empowerment and for transformative pedagogy.