Selfe Summary - Darci Peterson

In Cythia Selfe's essay, "Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution," she is claiming that we, as Americans, are representing ourselves inaccurately in our medias and advertisements. America is known to be a diverse land of opportunity where eveyone is equal, Selfe is saying that we reflect the opposite.

One of the things she talks about is Americans and their claim that technology will help us unite the world like one big village. Underprivledged people in the world could become more like Americans. We know this not to be true; Selfe brings to awarness, " twenty percent of the population uses up eighty percent of the resources" (par. 12). The way we display this global village is by creating what Selfe calls a electronic colony. It appears to unite the world but at the same time turns the unknown people into exotics, savages, and even objects. It grabs our interest and that is all that matters to companies.

Another thing Selfe brings to disscussion is that our land of equal opportunity is only equal for some people. Technology is suppose to be there for everyone regardless of race, gender, or class. She says, " Our cultral experience, indeed tells us something different-that America is the land of eqal opprtunity only for some people" (par. 41). Selfe explains the may differences America has offered between people as far as histoy goes back. America's history of slavery, woman's suffrage, labor unions, and current experience with poverty are to name a few. Due to the lack of colored people, family types, and class, we are setting ourselves up for a land of difference. Someone who did not know America supported those things would not know, to them it would appears as though America was a bunch of white families, well off, with a mother and a father and about two kids. Selfe believes this is an inaccurate reprsentation of America and if we want to make change so life is equal for everyone, we need to show people including Americans, what it looks like.

With that, Selfe says that the un-gendered utopia we claim to have created, does not exist for we still have gender based roles and traits and it is represented in the media. "Men use technolgy to accomplish things; women benfit from technology to enhance the ease of their lives or to benefit their family" (par. 51). This alone shows what a person on the computer does based upon gender in the eyes of America. It is show in adverisements as well. There is lack of single fathers or woman who work hard to name a couple. Gender roles are very defined as we claim otherwise.

Selfe is claiming through technology we are showing a misrepresetation of what America is claiming to be. If America wants to represent the qualities it claims, it needs to first show it though the media before Americans will began to further accept these changes. Maybe then America will think about a global village, a land of equal opportunity, or an un-gendered utopia.