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controversial topics, and in a less assertive manner. Finally, although it was not a focus of the present investigation, women are further discouraged from participating in CMC by the expectation-- effectively internalized as well--that computer technology is primarily a male domain.

Much though I respect these researchers' attempts to study the cultural phenomenon that is the Net, their conclusions are at such a complete variance with my online experience that I can't help wondering if they're seeing patterns where none exist, or if we use the same Net. On every system I've ever been on I have always known talented, interesting, outspoken women of varying technical aptitude who seem to have no problem expressing what they think and making themselves heard. Asked one woman on the WELL during the dissection of the Newsweek piece, how can men dominate a discussion online when there is infinite room for everyone to post as much material as they like?

But indeed we may not be--even should not be--all using the same Net. MIT Media Lab researcher Amy Bruckman, who has founded two virtual communities as part of her research, writes, "When people complain about being harassed on the Net, they've usually stumbled into the wrong online community. The question is not whether 'women' are comfortable on 'the Net,' but rather, what types of communities are possible? How can we create a range of communities so that everyone--men and women--can find a place that is comfortable for them?" She adds, "I'm glad there are places on the Net where I'm not comfortable. The world would be a boring place if it invariably suited any one person's taste. The great promise of the Net is diversity."[22]

I agree with Bruckman wholeheartedly, which is why Shade's comment that ensuring equitable gender access, among other things, "means creating a friendly online environment, one that allows women to speak their thoughts without having to hide their gender"[23] worries me so much. I went online with an obviously female ID before I heard that women are often advised to use male or gender-neutral IDs. Once I had heard that advice, I persisted out of the conviction that if women don't use female IDs the online world will look even more male- dominated than it actually is, discouraging women even further.

It will be a huge waste if we create a set of rules for "appropriate behavior" that make the Net as stuffy and rule-bound a place to be as many in the real world. Surely we want to be equals, not school-marms. Given that the Net is, Bandwidth willing, infinite, it seems to me that there is room for all types of public forums, from the hellfire of alt.flame to controlled sites such as AOL's patrolled public areas--or the somewhere-in-the-middle, as PC World contributing editor and needlecrafter Judy Heim noted in her discussion of online needlecrafters' forums: "No one will ever, ever pick on you or laugh at you. If they did, they would find 500 women with razor-sharp rotary cutters all over them immediately."[24]

Virtual rotary cutters, of course. In this networked world, the ultimate bid for equality is not to be found in online participation, satisfying though that can be. If we are not to have a new kind of glass ceiling, we need more women who earn their positions in the power structure that defines the Net by inventing and deploying its technological bedrock. There is more control implicit in designing a good piece of newsreader software or an intelligent agent than there is in framing rules of Netiquette and demanding that people obey them. Ellen Spertus writes that her lack of distress at being flamed by a jerk came first from knowing that in real life she and her friends would eventually be in a position to hire and fire him, and only secondarily from knowing that her forwarding his message to his boss got him a disciplinary lecture. To guarantee equality in the future networked world, we need many more like her.