"Frankly, My Dear...": Women Changing the World Through the Internet

Gone With the Wind is a story of Southern plantation owners trying to get through the pain and tragedy of fighting, losing, and rebuilding after the Civil War. After the Southerners lose much of their way of life, they are forced to deal with huge societal changes in the best way they can. Some of them, like Ashley Wilkes, are stuck in the past, unable to move forward. The two main female characters, Scarlett and Melanie, represent the ways in which women were able to break social boundaries for their gender while at the same time remain true to their identities as women. Like Scarlett and Melanie from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind responded to the Civil War and Reconstruction, women today are responding to the new digital age by using the Internet to break social boundaries while preserving their traditional gender role.


Scarlett and Melanie show the importance of women's traditional role as social butterflies. Women are generally considered more relationship-oriented than men are. In GWTW, Scarlett eventually gets fed up with always trying to please other people, and eventually abandons any attempt to build good relationships. She turns to her love of money, running a business and marrying rich Rhett Butler. In the end of the book, Rhett concludes that one of the only things Scarlett ever wanted was "to be rich enough to tell the world to go to hell." And where did Scarlett end up?

Alone. 

Melanie, on the other hand, uses the societal change as an opportunity to both preserve and transform her social role. She is not afraid to befriend Belle Watling, a prostitute, which would have been impossible for her before the war. She volunteers at a war hospital, which again, would have been impossible without the Civil War. Rather than abandoning her gender role, Melanie expands it. 


Today, in the face of the great societal change of the digital age, women are responding in much the same way. Technology, like war, is traditionally masculine, but now women are finding their place in it. In the article “The Brink of Change: Gender in Technology-Rich Collaborative Learning Environments” (see citation in this post), Goldstein and Puntambekar explore how middle school boys and girls differ in attitudes toward technology and collaborative learning. They write, “Females tend to look at technology for its social function, whereas the male attitude toward technology is more focused on the machine itself” (506). Women have a natural tendency, not to mention a talent, for building social relationships. Some women, like the Southern women in Gone With the Wind, are resisting the way relationships are changing, but the women who are embracing the change and using it to improve their connection with others are thriving in the Internet environment.


Women are reaching out to each other all over the Internet. Pinterest, Facebook, and blogs are great examples of how women are strengthening former relationships and creating new ones. SheWrites and BlogHer are two examples of networks specifically for women to help each other with writing and blogging, and there are countless others. One example of an extraordinary woman who has used the Internet to her advantage is Susan Taylor, founder of Living Equilibrium (click here to read more).

But along with the ease of building lasting relationships, the Internet has the potential to help women tear them down. Think of your Facebook friends. Some of my “friends” in real life have used Facebook as an opportunity to post unflattering pictures of me and then refuse to take them down. I’ve had friends who were publicly denounced over Facebook. Women might use the Internet to form relationships with married or committed men, or as a way to create an alternate identity. The ways that women can use (and have used) the Internet to their own and others’ detriment are endless. Scarlett O'Hara herself handled all her social relationships by flattery, deceit, and cunning, often undermining the relationships of all around her. She married her sister's fiance, Frank Kennedy, simply for his money. Women today can follow in Scarlett's footsteps more easily than ever before, even creating a false identity on the Internet.

More and more these days I’m hearing that social networking sites are just a big waste of time. In certain cases, this is absolutely true--and those cases are becoming more and more frequent. But let’s not ignore the ways in which the Internet can be used for good by women all over the world. The Internet can allow women to reach their fullest potential in their capacity to love and care for one another, building on their natural social tendencies as women.

Women everywhere need to stop using the Internet as a time-waster--and we need to stop seeing it as no more than a time-waster. Today, we look back at the Southern women who refused to adapt to the new time, trying to stay “elite,” and we feel sorry for them. Well, let’s not be the ones that future generations will feel sorry for. Let’s take advantage of this magnificent tool that we’re so lucky to have in our day and age. Through the Internet, we can make a difference!