Selfe - Brandon

In Cynthia Selfe's Paper, "Lest We Think A Revolution is A Revolution", she describes what the internet is supposed to do, and how that differs from its actual function. She describes the supposed land where everyone is equal as the "Global Village". The Global Village is a place where everyone is equal and free to share ideas. The "Electronic Colony", is where us, as Americans, are better than everyone else, and are sharing our technology with the "savage" people. The "Land of equal Opportunity" narrative is where, on the internet, everyone is the same, everyone is equal. The "Land of difference Narrative" is where bigger companies and more powerful people still have more say than the others. The final narrative, "The Un-Gendered Utopia" is described as men and women being the same on the internet, but the "Same Old Gendered Stuff" narrative describes how women are still expected to use technology for cooking and cleaning.
Selfe claims that "We cannot, indeed, even imagine, collectively, ways of relating to gender outside the context of our familiar historical and cultural set of experiences" (307), evidenced by the way women are still treated. They are still thought of as housewives and not members of society. Selfe also claims "Americans have no collective imaginary context for, or historical experience of a real global village, nor do they have any real experience with an undifferentiated land of opportunity"(304). She claims that the different graduation rates for black and white students, and the fences across the Mexican border show that we only want some people to prosper.