Mona, a sophomore at Yarmouk University in Jordan, spends about 15hours per week chatting online at the internet cafés that surround
the university campus.1 She has many male friends online. At the sametime, she is known among her classmates as a religious Muslim; she wears“modern Islamic dress,” combining a fashionable, patterned headscarfwith a matching modest smock, and never talks unnecessarily with hermale classmates. One day, she logged in at a popular café called Rishrush,and signed onto her favorite channel, “ Jordan.” 2 Since she hadn’t previ-ously planned to visit the internet café at this time, she hadn’t arrangedto “meet” anyone in the chatroom. There were over 100 people on thechannel on that day; Mona scanned their screen names, looking forfriends. Many of the names were in English. Some amusing ones, such as“I_need_a_wife,” caught her eye, but none of her friends were there.Mona didn’t pick anyone to chat with right away, but soon several users
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were hailing her. On “Jordan,” as on all of the channels which are popu-lar in Irbid, conversation doesn’t take place in the main chatroom.Rather, users communicate with each other one-on-one—though theyoften carry on five or more private conversations simultaneously. Monaresponded first to a user named “Romeo,” because she liked the sound ofhis “nick.” They wrote to each other in the standardized Romanization ofcolloquial Arabic that has grown up in chatrooms and through mobile textmessaging.3 As is conventional, he started by asking for her “asl.” Thisterm, which sounds like the Arabic word for “origin,” was coined inEnglish language chatrooms as shorthand for “age, sex, location.” InJordan, chatters identify themselves instead by listing their age, sex, andnational origin. Mona told Romeo that she was 19, female, andPalestinian; he responded that he was 23, male, and Jordanian.
The conversation proceeded slowly. “Romeo” told Mona that she wasromantic; she denied it. Romeo asked her to dance. Mona resisted. Finally,Romeo asked Mona which café she was in.
“I can’t tell you that!”“OK, I can guess. You’re in Rishrush.”“You’re really smart! How did you know?”“I didn’t. I just said that because I’m in Rishrush! So, which one are you?”“None of your business.”“You’re the one down at the end, to the left of the door.” This was true,
but Mona denied it.“No, I’m not!”“So, which one are you?”“I’m not going to tell. Which one are you?”“Do you see the girl sitting next to you?”Mona forgot that she had denied her identity. “That can’t be you. She’s a
girl!”“I’m the guy next to her.”Mona turned very slightly to the left, trying to look as subtly as possible.
She saw a Malaysian man. “He can’t be you. He isn’t Arab!”“What’s wrong? You don’t like my face? It’s true, I look Malaysian.”“I like it, but I still think it isn’t you.”“OK, I told you who I am—so which one are you?” Romeo insisted.Mona picked a boy. “I’m the one in the red shirt, across from you.”“That’s me!” said Romeo, and proved it by making a small movement
with his hand.
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Romeo and Mona continued to chat online for another hour, before hetold her that he had to go. Each of them unsmilingly raised one hand inparting as he left.
Since the late nineteenth century, Middle Eastern women have steadi-ly increased their presence in “public” spaces, such as the street, the uni-versity, the market, the office, and the mosque (Macleod 1993, Arat 1997,Asfaruddin 1999, Massad 2001, Thompson 2000, Newcomb 2006). Whilemodernization projects throughout the region have relied upon them todo just that, concerns of honor and respectability have neverthelesshaunted their efforts. Specifically, many local observers have feared thatwomen in public space would form sexual or love relationships outside ofthe bounds of conventional courtship and marriage.
Most literature on this topic has explored how women have justifiedtheir entry into public space by conspicuously avoiding suspicious entan-glements. For example, as Arlene Macleod (1993) argues, the new popular-ity of the veil in Egypt can be explained in part as a means for women tosymbolically identify themselves with the private even as they physicallyinhabit public space; a similar argument could be applied to the Jordaniancase. Esra Ozyurek (2006) describes a seemingly more tenuous balancingact in early republican Turkey. There, an informant proudly recalls the“enlightened”(2006:44) acts of displaying her body in gymnastics demon-strations and at the beach while “emphasiz(ing) that she did not have anyrelations with men”(2006:45). Although concerns of respectability are noless important in Jordan, the women whom I will discuss here have founda means of preserving their reputations while actively pursuing romance.4
Deborah Wheeler points out that, in Kuwait, internet chatting allowsfemales to “interact with males without fear of social consequences”(2006:146). While, as Wheeler notes, such consequences are not always soeasily avoided, in this paper I will show why it makes sense for Jordaniansto view the internet as both satisfyingly social and “safe.”
The women that I will examine have been increasingly condemned inJordan since I conducted the initial research for this paper in 2000.Nevertheless, their justifications for their actions are also accepted bymany. Particularly, those women who use the internet to look for a hus-band and those who adamantly avoid romantic topics with their (almostexclusively male) chatting partners find support for their actions. I amaware of one marriage which was performed as a result of internet chat-
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ting in Irbid and another which fell through after intensive negotiationsinvolving the partners’ families.5
In this paper, I will discuss how women navigate the terrain ofrespectability while violating one of its seemingly most basic rules. I willargue that internet chatting takes place in a “sphere” which is neither pub-lic nor private as these terms are usually conceived in the literature on theMiddle East (see Bourdieu 1977, Dresch 1989, Macleod 1993, vom Bruck1997, Wikan 2008). There, chatters present identities which are exclusiveboth of the more “public” identities which they put forward on the streetssurrounding campus and of the “private” identities which they claim athome and among friends. I will show how spatial practices adopted fromother realms of Jordanian life are employed to manufacture this space.
Public and Private SpheresAs numerous authors since Cynthia Nelson’s seminal 1974 article havepointed out, the division of Middle Eastern social life into “public” and“private” spheres is simplistic at best. Women in all Middle Eastern soci-eties investigated by anthropologists have social lives and social poweroutside the home; the external social world of women is distinct from theprivate domestic realm, and women’s activities there have tangible impli-cations for men (see Marcus 1992, Meneley 1996). Nevertheless, gendersegregation is also a salient concern in all of these societies, and women’saccess to many areas which could meaningfully called public, such asmarketplaces and mosques, has been limited. Meanwhile, women havebeen able to move more freely than men in relatively protected spacessuch as residential neighborhoods and homes.
It is perhaps more useful to replace the dichotomy between public andprivate with the heuristic of a series of diverse spaces, resemblingFoucault’s discourses. As Foucault writes, one discourse can be distin-guished from others because “things were said in a different way; it wasdifferent people who said them, from different points of view, and inorder to obtain different results” (Foucault 1978:27). Discourse functionsby enabling certain types of communication, between certain types ofpeople, and preventing others. Importantly, this effect is produced spa-tially and temporally. Thus, for example, a European secondary schoolproduces knowledge about sex through “the space for classes, the shapeof the tables, the planning of the recreation lessons, the distribution of
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the dormitories (with or without partitions, with or without curtains), therules for monitoring bedtime and sleep periods” (1978:28). Similarly, inmany Middle Eastern societies, different spatial practices, forms of bodilycomportment, and conversational limits construct different types ofspaces for different occupants.
Such spaces are constructed according to several principles, includinggender, age, and kinship, and among their primary functions are the pro-tection of women’s sexual privacy and the construction of respectful rela-tionships between relatives. Both of these aims are considered important toproper personhood and to upholding the reputations of the individuals andfamilies involved. The presence or absence of different types of people in acertain space changes its nature and thus the type of discourse produced byits occupants. Thus, for example, if a male cousin arrives to visit, womenmay put on their scarves; if their father enters the room, young people maysit up straight and uncross their legs. Anne Meneley notes that, in Yemen,“The contrast between teenaged girls in the presence of older women andamong their peers is striking: in the company of older women, they arequiet and still, whereas in the company of their peers they are often highspirited and giggly” (1996:93). Conversational topics can change as well.Thus, Lila Abu-Lughod reports that among the Awlad ‘Ali, it is considereduntoward for young women to express interest in men or marriage in frontof older women although “(i)n same-sex groups of women who are closekin, age-mates, or familiar for other reasons, conversations are oftenbawdy”(1986:156). Such discussions are only appropriate among peers.
What has often been called “public” space, then, is one among manysocial spheres. Elizabeth Thompson’s definition is useful: “ the public [inpart] indicates a metaphysical kind of shared and anonymous space…notnecessarily defined in opposition to a private sphere” (2000:173). Thepublic can be understood as a space where behavior cannot be deter-mined by the identity categories described above because its occupantsare undefined; it can thus entail potential sexual danger for women.Among rural, traditional families of my acquaintance in Jordan, womendid not have individual identities in such space. For example, these fam-ilies considered it improper to expose a woman’s name in printedannouncements, even those intended for her female friends and relatives.They did not print the bride’s name on wedding invitations, instead iden-tifying her as a daughter of her father. Similarly, many informants saw itas immoral or shameful for women to work as public entertainers. In the
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early twentieth century, even education was cast as problematic. SomeJordanians initially feared that the women who had entered the publicspace of schools may not in fact be desirable moral models for their ownor others’ children (Massad 2001:89-90). Such scruples have been compli-cated by the modernizing projects of many nations, including Jordan (Arat1997, Thompson 2000, Massad 2001, Sreberny 2001).
As Joseph Massad (2001) has demonstrated, Jordanian women’sentrance into the public sphere was negotiated not only under the pres-sure of international scrutiny, but in the context of explicit attempts toreproduce foreign models of development. To many Jordanian observers,women’s presence in public space appeared to be a central element inWestern economic and political success. At the same time, however,Jordanian national identity was premised on the existence of a newlyessentialized “private,” “traditional” domain embodied by women. Eventheir role as arbiters of tradition, however, pushed women into the pub-lic realm; it necessitated state-sponsored education both for and bywomen. Education would enable women to run the private realm effi-ciently, to educate their children, and ultimately, “ to protect the nation-al heritage” (Massad 2001:82). In order for the nation to develop, womenmust enter public spaces, but in order for it to retain its moral character,they must be protected from sexual aspersions.
By the time I began my research in 2000, women’s education was gen-erally accepted in Jordan and women comprised the majority of YarmoukUniversity’s students (Yarmouk University 2003). The high level ofwomen’s enrollment in universities is indicative both of the widespreadinvolvement of the Jordanian public in the effort of national developmentand of the importance attributed to education in fulfilling this aim. Anumber of informants discussed such objectives with me. Most of myinformants were undergraduate students who were among the first intheir extended families to attend college. Within living memory, theirfamilies had subsisted as rural farmers or herders. They were proud ofwhat their educations could accomplish for themselves, their families,their local communities, and their nation. Nevertheless, in their dailylives, they were called upon to balance the “traditional” moral prescrip-tions with which they were raised, the requirements of “modernization,”and their own personal goals. Internet café interactions of the typerecounted above (and discussed in more detail below) provide one exam-ple of the delicate negotiations entailed by the twin strictures of
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respectability and “modern” space. As I will show, the internet hasallowed the construction of a new semi-public discursive realm formedaccording to familiar social principles. While fully separate from thespheres of family and female friendship, it is also distinct from the moretraditionally public space of the street.
Modernity, the Crowd, and the City StreetThe streets surrounding Yarmouk University can be read as a showcase ofmodernity and Westernization. In addition to internet cafés, they arelined with fast food restaurants, record and curio shops, pool halls, shoestores, and other businesses of service to the student body of a large,Western-style university. These businesses have big, colorful signs, oftenin English. The width and straightness of the streets create a sense of openspace reminiscent of the nineteenth century European colonial cities inthe Middle East described by Michael Gilsenan: “Open, linear, public,revealing, centered, rational, and insisting on its hierarchies–the space ofpower and status” (Gilsenan 1983:201; see also Newcomb 2006). Thisopenness violates the principles according to which the prototypical“Arabo-Islamic city” (Abu-Lughod 1987) was and is built; it contrasts simi-larly with many other neighborhoods of Irbid. As Janet Abu-Lughodwrites, because of the importance of gender-based segregation, many“Islamic” cities are constructed “not only to prevent physical contact butto protect visual privacy” (Abu-Lughod 1987:167). Particularly in residen-tial neighborhoods, where many women spend the majority of their time,narrow, winding streets and buildings with high windows work togetherboth to discourage strangers from entering, and to constrain vision. (Abu-Lughod 1987:167-169; Gilsenan 1983:171-172) The markedly differentbuilt environment of University Street thus asserts its allegiance toWestern ideas through its spatial form, its colors and textures, and therecreational activities which it provides.
The street is, therefore, the appropriate environment for YarmoukUniversity, an institution which was founded, in large part, to promotethe integration of “modern” and Western practices and ideas intoJordanian society. At the university, women as well as men gain the knowl-edge and skills necessary to modernize Jordanian society. The university’sWestern orientation is evident in many administrative features such ascourse schedules, majors, a lending library, and co-ed classes. This model
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is also visually salient to students and faculty as they walk on the streetsto and from class. Despite its assertions of modern identity, however, anddespite the appropriation of Western goods and practices, the space pro-duced (Lefebvre 1991) on University Street (Shar’ Jam’), and its crossstreets, is comfortably Jordanian. Thus, despite surface similarities, a use-ful contrast can be made between the space of University Street as a typ-ical Western street.6
The “abstract” space of Western streets, described by Henri Lefebvre(1991), reproduces the atomized individual. On a Western street, pedestriansare channeled in a straight line along flat pavement. Their walking is inter-rupted only at pre-set intervals, apportioned evenly in space and timethrough a complex disciplinary technology. Perpendicular streets cut walk-ers’ paths at predictable points; timed lights determine whether pedestriansmust stop at these spots, or whether they may enter the street. Pedestrianswalk on sidewalks and enter the street only when directed to do so by lights.These technologies insure that unacquainted walkers can share space with-out conducting individual negotiations on every occasion. As such negotia-tions are unnecessary, it is normally impolite to communicate with otherpedestrians through touch, eye contact, or speech. Peoples’ identities arenot usually significant on the street; everyone maintains a standard distancefrom everyone else. Trajectories are commodified and theoretically ought tobe identical whether there are other people or cars using the street or not.It is thus illegal to cross the street against the light even if there are no carsin sight. Lefebvre writes, “Each space is already in place before the appear-ance of its actors”(Lefebvre 1991:56)
On Western streets, then, walkers do not “share” the same space in ameaningful way. The discomfort of being surrounded by strangers is therebyminimized. Friedrich Engels explains, however, that, at least during the earlyyears of industrialization, this discomfort was only partially elided:
There is something distasteful about the very bustle of the streets,something that is abhorrent to human nature itself. Hundreds ofthousands of people of all classes and ranks of society jostle pastone another; are they not all human beings with the same charac-teristics and potentialities, equally interested in the pursuit of hap-piness?…And yet they rush past one another as if they had nothingin common or were in no way associated with one another. Theironly agreement is a tacit one: that everyone should keep to the right
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of the pavement, so as not to impede the stream of people movingin the opposite direction. (cited in Benjamin 1968:166-7)
For Engels, it was disturbing to be surrounded by crowds of people whomhe would never know. The spatial practices of individuation arose in orderto assist walkers in negotiating this unease.
In Irbid, the tensions entailed by crowded streets have been resolvedwithin the context of different spatial practices, representational spaces,and representations of space (Lefebvre 1991). As I have argued above, spacein Irbid, as in much of the Arab world, is constructed through, and for,human relationships. The identities of most Irbid residents are dependenton the behavior and identities of their kin; this interdependence is repro-duced and given its emotional resonance through domestic micro-spatialpractices. Similar understandings of the potential meanings of spatial prac-tice inform Irbidians’ behavior in a wide variety of other contexts. Thus,while both Western and Irbidi pedestrians are constrained by social norms,Irbidi pedestrians must behave within a specific set of gendered rules orrisk destroying their reputations within their community.
Most Irbidians are not insensible of the identities of other pedestri-ans. Instead, the perceptible nearness of others creates particular rela-tionships which they must actively control and negotiate. Through suchnegotiations, spaces such as the street are continuously formed; theirmeaning is not “always already present,” though the material qualitiesand intended uses of spaces do direct and constrain their production. AnIrbid space such as University Street thus cannot be traversed withoutcommunicating with others. Individuals are always mindful of the posi-tion they claim through their gender, age, and dress, and of correspon-ding claims made by others. Similarly, traffic lights are not used; instead,streets must be crossed through interaction and cooperation with thedrivers of cars. The walker’s distance from other pedestrians must con-stantly be assessed, and her behavior adjusted according to their identi-ties. This task is particularly salient for women.
Though women physically walk in the street of Irbid, their voice and ges-tures keep them figuratively inside a woman’s realm that winds around andslips through but doesn’t penetrate the polluting, public street. Two womenpassing on the sidewalk, or waiting near each other in a shop, often gentlypush by each other, their fingers glancing across one another’s elbows, theirshoulders nudging one another’s backs. Their friendliness or annoyance
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affirms their mutual inhabitation of woman’s space. Each, for her own part,keeps a careful distance from nearby men. Maintaining proper distances isprimarily the responsibility of women, whose reputations would be dam-aged by improper contact. The hovering contagion of these men is a constantpresence, and without a glance a woman knows when she must step into thestreet to avoid walking too close to one of them on an uncomfortably nar-row sidewalk. When a woman follows a man through the doorway of a store,a man may even protect her privacy by shutting the door carefully betweenthem rather than holding it for her. If a man and woman have a reason tospeak, a business transaction to enact, they are convivial or even flirtatious.If no such connection is required at the moment, they glide by each other,enclosed within the two separate realities coexisting on one street.
The visual presence of the other, however, which is available to thegaze, ensures that such separateness will always be partial. While awoman’s modesty dictates that men should not glance at her, she cannotexpect this level of respect from strangers who have no obligations to her.On the street, men often stare at passing women or call out rudely tothem, “My life! My gazelle!” Thus, older women advise the younger, “Lethim look at you–just don’t you look at him.” For the glances of men andwomen to meet (for him to see her seeing him see her), would be, if onlymomentarily, a boundary crossing that should not occur; a crossing thatonce it has occurred, must be denied. The intensity which always accom-panies such momentary flickers reveals that both parties are fully awareof the significance of the interchange. Nevertheless, the street is not, forYarmouk co-eds, primarily a site of risk which must be traversed in goingfrom place to place; strolling down University Street is an activity in itself,cherished and planned for. Parading, fully covered, past men at whomone can only furtively glance, is a form of flirtation, however subtle, and,like any form of flirtation, it can be raised to the level of art.
“Islamic dress,” which includes headcoverings and loose, body-maskingcloaks, is a common means for girls of limiting their visual availability. Theact of putting on Islamic dress experientially marks for women their entryinto “public space”; similarly, a woman’s voice and gestures, relaxed andexpressive inside the house, conform to strict standards of propriety,marked by restraint and understatedness, when she is outside. Throughthese changes of behavior and attire, women reduce both for themselvesand for male pedestrians the discomforts of mingling with strangers on thecity streets. They thus simultaneously construct the space of the street as
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“public” and protect themselves from attaining full presence in it (cf.Macleod 1993). Islamic dress, however, not only protects a woman fromfull presence in her surroundings at Yarmouk; it simultaneously assertsthat she belongs there. With its modesty and seriousness, with its crisplines and the clear, unfaded colors made possible by modern synthetic fab-rics, with its pointed adherence to modern understandings of the holy text,Islamic dress is a proper outfit for a young University student.
Dating in a Sexually Segregated SocietyThe delicate negotiations which Yarmouk students perform on the streetcan be understood as an index of a risk which is inherent in theUniversity’s project. Yarmouk is a self-consciously Western environmentdesigned to prepare some of Jordan’s brightest young people for a global-ized world; it is also a community of moral individuals for whom “theWest” is a place where, because of the breakdown of the family, everydecadent, hedonistic, sinful desire is indulged to unimaginable surfeit.For many Yarmouk students, then, the trick is to avail oneself of the licitbenefits of the West without betraying one’s homespun Islamic values.
In the eyes of these students, Yarmouk’s “modern” setting, comprised ofopen streets, co-ed classrooms, and dormitories where women live sepa-rately from their families, places students in situations which could bemorally dubious if they are not properly framed and enacted. The signifiersof Western modernity provide the necessary explanatory context for suchsituations; for many, modernity provides the only conceivable justificationfor attending a co-ed University or for living in a dormitory. Modernity, how-ever, provides only the excuse for these risks, not protection from them. Thesignifiers of modernity could easily slip into signs of degradation.
As my argument thus far has implied, many of these issues become par-ticularly salient in interactions with members of the opposite sex.Conversing with a boy in a context that could be construed as romantic is nota venture that any girl I met would undertake lightly. My friends differ great-ly among themselves in their assessments of what kinds of interactions withthe opposite sex are personally permissible, though all of them take suchdeterminations seriously. Couples do meet socially. Many girls, however,would not agree to meet a boy unless they think that they may love him.
Love is a serious, though involuntary, commitment for an Irbidi girl.Several girls speculated to me that women can fall in love just once in their
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lives. Marrying a “stranger” for “love” (instead of a relative or family friendchosen by one’s parents) is a much discussed and valorized modern act (cf.Ahearn 2001, Adrian 2003, Hirsch and Wardlow 2006). Often, it is framed asthe choice suggested by science; marrying a relative is believed to carrygenetic risks. It is only the importance attributed to love itself when com-bined with the prestige of love marriage which enables many girls to justifyundertaking meetings which could damage their reputations and those oftheir families. Such encounters are often accompanied by excruciating guiltfor the girl. One friend, for example, had arranged to meet men in personon two or three occasions. She explained this acquiescence by saying “afterall, I am a modern girl.” However, she undertook each meeting with greattrepidation. After keeping one date with a certain boy, she stood him up forthe second. The guilt and fear of discovery were simply too great.
The spaces where such meetings take place are carefully chosen. Theycan be neither fully public nor fully private. A private meeting is anunthinkable risk; if it were discovered, the sexual implications would beimpossible to disprove. Meeting in public, however, could allow the semi-licit act to be observed by others and reported in gossip, a form of socialcontrol of which Irbidis remain constantly aware. Hence, the Yarmoukarea reveals, to the attentive eye, a whole litany of half-and-half spacesfor sweethearts to meet in addition to (and predating) the internet café.They meet behind university buildings, in back parking lots, under trees,sitting close but not ever touching. If the relationship progresses, theymay go to the amusement park. The most intimate space available to cou-ples exists in places like the high-rise “Here is Irbid” café. There, hiddenbehind the heavy curtain of the section “for families,” surveying all ofIrbid through sixth-floor windows, while invisible to the street below,lovers sit in semi-darkness with their fully clothed bodies intertwined. Formen, such a meeting provides the opportunity for bragging, while womenmight hesitate to tell their closest friends. Nevertheless, college-agedmembers of both genders in Irbid, if not everywhere, appear fascinatedwith the other. This may explain the extreme popularity of the internetcafé, which provides a new means of negotiating these concerns.
The Internet Café as a Space of “ModernityThe internet arrived in Jordan in 1995 (Arabia Online 2001), barely 30years after the introduction of the Western-style University. By 2001,
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Yarmouk’s University Street was home to what was commonly asserted tobe the Guinness Book of World Records’ record-holding number of 104internet cafés. In fact, the book contains no such entry; nevertheless, thisdesire for recognition in an English-language, globally-oriented publica-tion points to the association of the internet cafés with the positively val-ued side of Western “modernity.”
A glance around a popular internet café reinforces this impression.Spare, clean lines, bright light, and shiny surfaces reminiscent of Westernfast food restaurants abound. Computers are set in neat rows on individ-ual desks. Colors are neutral, with the floors covered in a clinical whitetile; patterns, ubiquitous in home decorating, are absent. Arabic rockvideos play on a screen at one end of the room. Walls are decorated withsigns in English and pictures of Western and Arabic stars. The air is pleas-antly cool, due to air conditioning, and Pepsi and “cocktails” (non-alco-holic, in accordance with religious regulations) are served. One internetcafé even offers an elaborately Western toilet; it is equipped with a seatand offers toilet paper, an amenity generally considered disgusting inIrbid and rarely found outside of tourist hotels.
Most surprisingly of all, perhaps, in internet cafés, unacquainted menand women voluntarily sit in close proximity to one another, sometimesfor hours on end. Irbid’s internet cafés are thus among the only publicspaces in Jordan7 to cater to male and female clientele without offeringthem the option to segregate themselves.8 On buses, men often standrather than sit next to strange women; in restaurants, women are provid-ed a “family” section which men cannot enter unaccompanied. The mix-ing of men and women in internet cafés, then, is a sign of extreme com-pliance to Western mores. In fact, for many Jordanian women, it is also areason to avoid internet cafés altogether.
Using the internet is a controversial practice for female Yarmouk stu-dents. While many women students do enjoy the cafés, they are common-ly condemned as un-Islamic—a serious charge for most JordanianMuslims. In 2000, however, such objections were almost never framedwith reference to any particular evil found or inherent in “cyberspace.” 9
Though online chatting with men is the most common activity in whichgirls engage in the cafés, objections to the internet were always explainedin terms of phenomenologically present time and space. Internet caféswere not decent or safe spaces for young women to occupy; correspond-ingly, time spent there was “wasted.”
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The actual practice of chatting on the internet, on the other hand, isusually understood to be less morally problematic for unmarried womenthan even the briefest, most public meeting with an unrelated man. Thisis the case because my informants view the Islamic injunction to segre-gate the sexes as primarily a prohibition against seeing (chiefly for males),being seen by (for females), hearing (for males), being heard by (forfemales), or touching a member of the opposite sex. Written communica-tion, of which internet chatting is an example, is considered by many tobe a very minor offence.10 This is not to say that the boundaries of propri-ety are never skirted, or even crossed, in internet cafés; these infractions,however, occur in the establishments’ real, three-dimensional space.
At first glance, the Western-ness of the cafés’ physical plant appearsseamless. There is, however, one spatial element universally present, inmy experience, in Irbid internet cafés, which is almost never found in sim-ilar computer facilities in the US, where computers are usually backed bya wall or partition; in Irbid cafés, on the other hand, patrons’ chairs arepositioned against the room’s outer walls, facing each other, with eachindividual imperfectly shielded by her computer. Casual observation doesnot render this characteristic particularly salient; computer users in Irbid,like their Western counterparts, appear to politely ignore their neighbors.In fact, however, the relational construction of space in the internet cafémirrors that of social space in the home.
As I argued above, space in Jordan is constructed through reference toits occupants. People comport themselves differently according to theidentities of the people present. This behavior is enabled by the structureof the room itself. In rooms designated for socializing, as in the internetcafé, Jordanians usually place the furniture against the walls, thus allow-ing all interlocutors a direct, unobstructed view of one another. The impor-tance of the gaze in creating and affirming relationships is thereby utilizedto manufacture warm, inclusive social space. Correspondingly, none of theinhabitants of social space thus arranged are required to turn their backson their companions, which would be considered rude. People sharingsocial space, including internet café patrons, thus orient their bodies inrelation to one another. This effect is reinforced by a further injunctionagainst showing another person the soles of one’s feet; following the rulesof etiquette requires a complexly embodied attention to the locations ofall of the people who share the space of a room. The internet café’s layoutenables the performance of such proper manners, casting the café as a
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social space. Like the Irbid street, this space is not homogenous, but is pro-duced instead by the presence, and interactions, of its occupants.
Because it is a social space, the internet café creates obligations amongits patrons; this characteristic distinguishes it from the street outside.University Street, which is a fully public space, imposes no ties on its occu-pants. Thus, it is both possible and unsurprising for men to stare openly atfemale pedestrians and even call out romantic messages to them. It fallsto women to maintain proper distance by averting their eyes and theirpaths from those of men. In internet cafés, however, male patrons enacttheir social responsibilities to women by studiously ignoring them. Themarked spatial assertions of sociality in the café thus reflect, and reinforce,the fact that most people go to internet cafés in order to socialize with oneanother; they go there to chat online, primarily with other patrons of Irbidinternet cafés, and often with patrons of the same café.11
The café can also be contrasted to Yarmouk University’s student comput-er facilities, most of which were installed a year or more after internet cafésbecame popular. There, students do not stare at one another, but neitherdo they orient their bodies in relation to each another. Instead, they eithersit in rows facing the front of the room, as in a classroom, or, alternatively,they face the walls of the computer lab. These laboratories appear to bedesigned as non-social spaces; it seems likely that the University hopes todiscourage chatting in favor of more academic pursuits.
The social space of the internet café employs technology to create animproved version of the private-public space used by couples. Café patronscommunicate with members of the opposite sex, with the privacy of beingnearly unobservable by others. Patrons usually can’t see each other’s screensand ostensibly don’t know what their companions are doing on their com-puters. Users chat one-on-one rather than in open chatrooms, ensuring thattheir conversations are as private as possible. At the same time, they do notplace themselves in any situation which, if observed, could be construed asan opportunity for sexual relations. The café frames such encounters interms of the modernity which is necessary to justify them, while enablingusers to obey Islamic regulations (even if they may not always avail them-selves of this opportunity.) The decision to chat online with other Yarmoukstudents can be understood as a modern, technological means of satisfyingdesires which, if not specifically modern, have been heightened by moder-nity; the astronomical growth internet café industry in Irbid testifies both tothe ubiquity of such desires and to the efficacy of this solution.
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Internet Chatting in Real-World SpaceWhen I first began to ask my friends what they did in the internet cafés,they told me that, through online chatting, they could meet people from allover the world. Mesa, for example, mentioned online “friends” in such faroff places as France, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. The possibility of mak-ing such ties certainly works towards constructing the cafés as “of” thetransnational realm, and internet chatting as a proper, progressive usage ofWestern technology. However, as I later learned, Mesa, like most internetcafé patrons in Irbid, spent a negligible amount of time talking to peopleoutside the borders of Jordan. Most of her chatting partners, in fact, attend-ed Yarmouk University and frequented the same cafés that she did.
In fact, as Mona’s story above implies, many users chat with others whoare present in the same café. Chatting technology is tailored to this practice.Though Mona feigned innocence during her chatting session, and even dur-ing her initial account of this story to me, she actually knew well howRomeo had “guessed” her identity. Unless café owners adjust their comput-ers to block this feature, as few do,12 a savvy user can employ his own com-puter to access the nicknames of every chatting patron in the establish-ment. Many male users select their chatting partners in this way on aregular basis, hailing women whom they find attractive. Mona, herself, alsoknows how to do this though she never does. She prefers to get to know aboy online before she “meets” him in an internet café where they can sneakglances at one another while they type. While the fact that Romeo had cho-sen her from within the café didn’t seem to bother her, admitting that shehad encouraged him to do so would have been unseemly.
Though Mona was reluctant to discuss her full role in this encounter,she had nevertheless acted with a freedom that is possible only in theinternet café. Outside the café, relationships between male and femaleYarmouk students entail risk and imply commitment. Sometimes, thewords “ I love you” are among the first that a boy speaks to a girl; onlysuch strong feelings could justify his initiating a relationship with her. Inthe internet café, on the other hand, individuals can inhabit a socialspace with members of the opposite sex without creating ties or obliga-tions. As several friends told me, café patrons are free to flirt withoutdeclaring love. They have not committed themselves to serious relation-ships. Their reputations remain (mostly) unharmed.
Nevertheless, relationships in the internet café do have the potential tobecome serious. Often, as the first step towards intensifying an online rela-
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tionship, men and women agree to chat with each other from the samecafé. I negotiated one such meeting myself. One day, I was chatting with aman who told me that he was from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Informants toldme that men chatting on the “Jordan” or “Amman” channels often claim tobe from Jeddah, since many Jordanians consider that city to be the idealhome town. (Saudis are known to be rich, though excessively conservative;Jeddah is reputed to be the least conservative city in Saudi Arabia.) Afterchatting for awhile, Amer revealed to me that, despite being from Jeddah,he was actually in Irbid and would like to come over to my café. After Iassented, he asked me what he should say to me when he came. “Please,”I typed back, “don’t say anything!” Amer yielded immediately, promisingthat he wouldn’t even look at me. We exchanged cursory physical descrip-tions, and signed off. A short time later, a man who fit his self-portraitwalked through the door. Appearing to ignore me completely, he passed byand headed up the stairs to the café’s second floor. Amer signed on again,and we continued chatting until I had to leave.
While Amer’s behavior was appropriate for a first encounter, as anonline relationship progresses, partners may use several means to esca-late their level of involvement. Men may send women scanned photo-graphs or romantic e-cards by e-mail; few women reciprocate, thoughsome do. If partners know each other well, they may sit directly acrossfrom one another at a café. Even in this case, however, they do not stareat one another. They don’t want the other people in the café to noticetheir relationship. The ultimate goal of chatting for many men is to con-vince female chatters to meet them in person. Of course, such a meetingcarries all of the dangers already described. Nevertheless, if a girl likes aboy’s personality online, she may give in to his requests for a date.
Layla agreed to meet a boy with whom she had been chatting onlinefor six months under the trees in a shady, half-hidden parking lot on cam-pus. He had told her that he was leaving Jordan to study abroad, and thathe wanted to see her before he left. She agreed to the meeting because,she told me, talking with someone in person is the only way to know ifyou love him. In Irbid, family members often organize similar short meet-ings between potential marriage partners as a prelude to arranged mar-riages. Layla talked with her friend for half an hour; from this conversa-tion, she was able to determine that she did not, in fact, love him. Thenext day, he sent her an e-mail asking for her permission to speak to herfather about marriage. She declined.
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The internet café thus provides a space for the construction of a newkind of relationship between men and women. Girls agree to “meet” boysto chat in the internet café, or in person, not because they have been intro-duced to them through family connections, or because they are uncontrol-lably in love with them, but because the couple has formed a personal rap-port. An internet relationship does not entail the same kinds of obligationsthat are required by more traditional attachments. Partners can extricatethemselves from it at any time, without consequences for their reputations.This freedom is possible because internet friendships are not integratedinto larger social networks. The identities presented by chatters on theinternet are not interdependent with those of their relatives.
The Private/Public Sphere of Internet ChattingMuch literature on the internet has debated the question of whether itcomprises a sphere separate from quotidian social life in which individu-als are “free” from the constraints of their ordinary identities. While mostearlier literature focused on the “ liberating” potential of “cyberspace,”recent work has emphasized how offline constraints and goals are trans-ferred online (Alexanian 2006, Johnson-Hanks 2007). Daniel Miller andDon Slater have rightly argued that, rather than assuming that internettechnology inherently creates a separate social sphere, “to the extent thatsome people may actually treat various Internet relations as ‘a worldapart’ from the rest of their lives is something that needs to be sociallyexplained as a practical accomplishment” (2000:5). For my informants, theinternet did enable a different form of identity construction within a sep-arate sphere; this phenomenon is only comprehensible, however, withinthe terms of Irbidi social life.
In most Jordanian social situations, the identities of relatives arelinked. Most social relationships are integrated into an individual’s kin-based social network. When Jordanians meet one another for the firsttime, they usually inquire about each other’s family relationships, familyname, and village of origin. They do this, in part, in order to determinewhether or how they might be connected with one another, either bycoming from the same village or region, or by sharing a distant genealog-ical relationship (cf. White 1994:95 on Turkey). The discovery of such aconnection makes it more likely that the relationship will be furtherdeveloped. Once people become friends, they are quick to build connec-
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tions with one another’s families. Thus, when college students first visitone another’s homes, they normally spend a large portion of their visitconversing with their friend’s parents and siblings. When people visittheir friends, relatives living in the same household often feel obliged tocome along and are always welcome. Close friendship is rarely a one-on-one affair; entire families form social connections.
Learning about a person’s family is considered to be a vital part of get-ting to know her because a person’s family is often seen as an essential partof herself. As Suad Joseph argued for Lebanon, kin in Jordan “do not expe-rience themselves as bounded, separate, or autonomous” (Joseph 1999:12).Relatives believe themselves to be, and behave as if they are, internallyconnected. Such bonds are intensely emotional. They “may try to read eachothers’ minds, answer for each other, anticipate each others’ needs,expect their needs to be anticipated by significant others, and often shapetheir likes and dislikes in accordance with the likes and dislikes of oth-ers” (Joseph 1999:12). In the context of this similarity, it is logical for kinto share social relationships.
The fact that relatives are generally believed to be alike and sociallyconnected also explains, in part, why their reputations should dependupon one another. As Joseph writes, “A woman’s behavior immediatelyreflect(s) on her brother’s honor, dignity, and sense of self” (Joseph1999:123). Everything from an individual’s neat appearance to her moralcharacter can reflect on her family. For many Jordanians, women’s mod-esty gains much of its importance from its role in upholding the honor ofmen. Action undertaken within a defined social realm depends on theintersubjective acceptance of a particular presentation of the self (seeGoffman 1959). In many Jordanian contexts, the self which a man presents(and therefore, the success of his action) is dependent upon his honor;honor stems, in part, from a man’s ability to properly protect the womenfor whom he is responsible. As Andrew Shryock writes, honor “ is the qual-ity of male persons which enables tribespeople to develop social andpolitical relationships which transpose the obligations of kinship or theintegrity of a house into domains where kinship and house do not neces-sarily exist” (Shryock 2001:343; Shryock’s English). Through honor, then,the value of women’s moral behavior can be transformed into men’s“symbolic capital” (Bourdieu 1977).
A woman’s conduct also has repercussions for the marriage prospects,friendships, and self-respect of her female relatives (cf. Wikan 2008). In
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performing social calculations, a woman may even consider a relative’sreputation more important than her own. For example, one informanttold me that she would not walk on the street with her boyfriend because“even if I don’t care about my own reputation, I should think about mymother’s.” Such public propriety is imposed by the constant, very realfear that “people will talk”; a reputation can be easily damaged by thewatchful eyes and loose tongues of neighbors and classmates. Much of thework that internet cafés do in order to enable romantic encounters, then,entails providing patrons with a sense of being separate from their fami-lies and free from social surveillance.
The space of internet cafés provides patrons with an experientially dis-tinct sense of individuality. Their exaggeratedly “Western” decor reinforcesthe illusion that café space is set apart from customers’ quotidian lives andsocial ties, a separate “sphere.” The layout of the café and the materialnature of the computers also produce feelings of separation and individu-ality in users. The patrons of an internet café sit in the same room, but theyshare a space of concentration only with those who attend to the samescreen.13 As Jonathan Crary has pointed out, the “management of attention”through television and computer monitors “is not primarily concerned withlooking at images but rather with the construction of conditions that indi-viduate, immobilize, and separate subjects”(Crary 1999:74). The experienceof focusing one’s mind and vision on a small, glowing screen, rather thanon the larger social environment, encourages people to think of themselvesas individuals. Thus, as Crary argues, computers, like other devices whichdemand “attention,” participate in the production of “modern experiencesof social separation and of subjective autonomy” (Crary 1999:2).
Since café patrons sit facing one another, most often with their backsto the wall, their computer screens are usually protected from others’sight. No one can walk behind chatters and glance at their monitors.Screens are also shielded from neighboring users either by barriers posi-tioned at the sides of individuals’ desks or by the spacing of desks sever-al feet apart. The computer itself is thus private; no one has to know whata user does there. This privacy forms a marked contrast to the arrange-ment in university computer labs, where students face the walls or sit inrows, thus displaying their screens to the people behind them. In a socie-ty where it is widely considered undesirable ever to be alone, the privacyof internet cafés is experientially distinct and significant. It produces anunfamiliar sense of individuality. Importantly, however, café barriers
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never block individuals’ forward line of sight; the social nature of the caféspace is not violated. The confluence of these factors produces a very par-ticular kind of space. Computer users are involved in social interactionswhile their privacy and hence their individuality is heightened.
This subjective autonomy is also expressed online. Users chat individu-ally rather than on open chatrooms, thus shielding their activities fromother chatters who might “talk” about them. They can chat with multiplepartners at one time, without revealing this promiscuity to any of them.Café patrons can also look at internet sites which might be perceived asscandalous without fear of discovery.
The information which chatters disclose to and conceal from oneanother evades gossip by rendering internet relationships discrete fromparticipants’ real-world social networks. In contrast to most friendships inJordan, those formed on the internet do not usually involve the revelationof facts which could connect individuals to their families or even their vil-lages of origin. The only aspects of their backgrounds which most chattersshare are their age, gender, and national origin. Rather than seeking outpeople with prior connections to themselves, women actively avoid chat-ting with any man who knows their family. Notably, unlike the majority ofmy friends in Jordan, those who told me about their chatting activitiesappeared reluctant to introduce me to their families.
The internet is thus distinct both from women’s offline social spheres,formed through connections, and from the traditional “shared and anony-mous” (Thompson 2000:173) public sphere, inhabited by men. In the pub-lic sphere, men’s genealogical relationships form the public face of theirfamilies, and their good reputations depend upon protecting the privacy ofwomen. On the internet, it is specifically these “public” genealogical rela-tionships which are not discussed, while women’s “private” thoughts andfeelings, usually shared with relatives and same-sex age-mates, comprisetheir online identities. Nevertheless, the internet has a “public” element,as any stranger on the street could potentially become an online friend.
The internet sphere, then, is neither public nor private as these termshave previously been applied in the Middle East. Relationships are notpart of a prior web. People on the internet are not socially categorized byrelationship or age, so behavior cannot be adjusted accordingly. All thesame, chatters openly share information which is normally excluded fromthe public sphere. The individuation produced by the materiality of thecomputer, the café environment, and the self-presentation of chatters, by
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masking connectivity, makes it much easier for Yarmouk students tospeak openly and to undertake the risk of mixing with the opposite sex.In internet cafés, students can comfortably engage in casual romanticrelationships which would be unthinkable in other contexts.
Conclusion: Internet SocialityIn this paper, I have described a locally specific type of internet use. I willnow turn to the implications of my findings for studies of the internet inother locations. Much recent literature on the internet has attempted tonegotiate the tension between the insights that, while the use of the inter-net cannot be understood without attention to local forms of sociality,there are also similarities between the uses and meanings of the internetin different locations (see Miller and Slater 2000, Alexanian 2006,Johnson-Hanks 2007). Here, I would like to suggest one means of reconcil-ing this contradiction: an attention to the significations which the sign ofthe internet has carried (iconically, indexically, or symbolically) as it hastravelled from place to place. The interaction between these similar signsand their new cultural and linguistic contexts goes a long way towardsexplaining the differences and similarities between internet use in differ-ent locations. For example, the cultural meaning of freedom explains why(female) internet users in Irbid, in contrast to many others, have notclaimed membership in online “communities.”
Miller and Slater have pointed out that the internet has “come to standas a symbol of potential freedoms” (2000:16) and that, moreover, this sym-bol carries different cultural valences in different places. In Trinidad, theyhave argued, due to the legacy of slavery, freedom “is ontological, reflect-ing a basic sense of personhood” (2000:16). In Jordan, by contrast, attitudestowards freedom are more ambivalent. While political freedom is highlyvalued, informants were quick to insist that social freedom must have lim-its. People are understood to have natural desires (such as the desire forromance) upon which they should not act; controls are thus necessary andhelpful to save people from themselves (see Pearl 2006, Mahmood 2005,Boddy 1989). To the extent that the internet signifies social freedom inJordan, then, it is dangerous and potentially disreputable.
It is partly for this reason that most of the Jordanian women I know donot claim an identity as internet users. This is in marked contrast to othergroups such as Trinidadian chatters (Miller and Slater 2000), “geek” pro-
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grammers in Bangalore (Kelty 2005), and internet users that trade and pro-duce music in the form of “mods” (Lysloff 2003). For Jordanian women, ifnot men, chatting is controversial enough that most do not want to claiman identity as internet users in the community at large. Some non-users toldme that they would think less of a girl if they saw her through the windowof an internet café; it is probably for this reason that most women do notuse cafés where they could be easily observed. Cafés with large windowsopening onto the University Street are patronized largely by men. Womenusually chat in internet cafés which, like coffee shops that are used forromantic meetings, are inconspicuously located on the upper floors ofshopping centers or multi-use buildings. The only woman of my acquain-tance who claims an identity as an internet user called herself a “modernsheikha” and uses the internet primarily to proselytize Islam.
The self-identification of individuals as internet users appears to be anessential component of the construction of online “communities.” ReneT. A. Lysloff defines (internet) community “as a collective and ongoingperformative practice of group representation (to itself and to others)”(2003:256). While women who enjoyed the internet did socialize offlinewith same-sex friends who shared this interest, they did not imaginethemselves as a distinct group, sharing a common project or identity withfellow chatters.14 In Jordan, as I have argued, a community implies a webof individuals who share and uphold a common moral standard (see Pearl2006). The “freedom” of the internet can be seen as a freedom from thiskind of standard; as such, it is a poor basis for a community. Further, thepractices of individuation described above allow people to act as individ-uals rather than members of a community. Internet relationships in Irbid,then, take place in a separate sphere, but not within a community. Thisfinding is in contrast to the assumptions of much of the literature on theinternet. For example, Samuel Wilson and Leighton Peterson’s 2002review of the anthropological literature on the internet is entitled “TheAnthropology of Online Communities”; similarly, broad-ranging collec-tions use the word “community” in their titles, such as Community in theDigital Age (2004), Communities in Cyberspace (1999), and Cybersociety 2.O:Revisiting Computer Mediated Communication and Community (1998). Like“freedom,” “community” has locally specific meaning within which inter-net practice must be understood.
Other meanings carried by the internet in different locations must alsobe understood culturally. The internet has generally been viewed as an
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engine of globalization (Eickelman and Anderson 1999, Anderson 2003,Bernal 2005), or, as Miller and Slater put it, a technology which “tran-scends dualisms such as local against global” (2000:7). In the case underdiscussion, however, it is fair to say that the use of the internet is prima-rily local. While some of my informants did chat with people in othercountries, the ability to do so was not the main factor motivating theircontinued interest in the internet. As I have argued above, however, theglobal is important as a signified. In Irbid, the glamour of the global,which is indexed by the internet, legitimates a local practice.
Finally, much literature has shown that, for many, the mediated, textualnature of much internet communication indexically signifies alienation fromthe body, conventional identities, and the material world (Turkle 1995,Kollock and Smith 1999; see also Haraway 2001). For Americans, as JodiO’Brien has argued, the invisibility of internet chatters’ bodies has mainlyled them to “replicate conventional gender stereotypes of sexuality anddesirability” (O’Brien 1999:87). In Jordan, while deception does occur, peo-ple usually do not misrepresent their physical appearances. It is not their dis-tance from a gender ideal which stands in their way in forming romanticrelationships, but rather the implications that physically enacted relation-ships would have for their reputations. The signified of disembodiment,present in different locations, allows Jordanian users to circumvent norms ofgender segregation. Nevertheless, as this paper has shown, this disembodi-ment is only produced through explicitly embodied practices.
The desire to use new technologies such as the internet is generated byand within already-existing social contexts. Nevertheless, technologiesoffer new material and semiotic tools with which to accomplish sociallyconstructed goals. The practice of exploiting these tools can produce newsubjectivities, such as the heightened individuality which I havedescribed, as well as new social forms, such as the semi-public sphere ofJordanian chatting. Only time will reveal the larger effects of these formson Jordanian society.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the following colleagues for valuable comments on earlier drafts ofthis paper: Daniel Bass, Sonia Das, Bridget Guarasci, Luna Khirfan, Kairos Marquardt,Yaseen Noorani, Andrew Shryock, and the editors of Anthropological Quarterly.
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ENDNOTES1This is a true story, though it contains some composite elements, culled from interviewswith both Mona and “Romeo.” Further, some details have been changed to protect theiridentities, and all dialogue is reconstructed. The dialogue was repeated to me by Mona,from memory and in English translation, and I jotted it down, again from memory, afterI got home that day.2Like most Irbidi chatters, Mona used IRC software. See Kollock and Smith 1999:6 for a dis-cussion of the particulars of text chat.3This Romanization uses English letters for similar sounding Arabic ones, and fills in thegaps with numbers. So, for example, “h” signifies the Arabic , and “7,” is written“’7”; the apostrophe represents the dot.4On modern conceptions of romance in other locations, see Ahearn 2001, Adrian 2003,Hirsch and Wardlow 2006.5The fact that neither of the women involved had a living father may indicate that suchengagements are still socially problematic.6While my paper focuses on the contrast between Western and Jordanian productions ofspace, I do not intend to imply that these ways of producing space are opposite to eachother, nor to deny the existence of many other types of spatial production, both through-out the world today and in the past. For examples of other ways in which space has beenproduced, see Lefebvre (1991).7This generalization does not apply to the wealthy neighborhoods of West Amman.8In Amman, though I did not visit enough cafés to obtain an accurate sample, this did notseem to be the case. There, I visited one café that did have a women’s section, and anoth-er which was apparently patronized exclusively by men.9Most of the research for this paper was performed in 2000; by 2002, many Jordanians hadcome to condemn internet chatting for promoting inappropriate relationships betweenmen and women. In 2000, the details of internet chatting were not widely known by olderauthority figures; when parents learned that their daughters could have romantic encoun-ters with boys in chatrooms, many condemned chatting even from safe spaces such as thehome. As computers began to enter a significant number of homes over next five yearsand to be valued for a range of uses, internet cafés became increasingly disreputable.They continued to be associated with internet chatting in the public imagination.Nevertheless, cafés remained well-attended, and many students continued to chat.Though they knew the practice to be controversial, they still viewed it as less damaging totheir reputations than more direct contact with the opposite sex. Many students contin-ued to defend chatting as harmless and modern.10While written communication is widely seen as a minor infraction, for those who opposeinternet chatting, writing undertaken with romantic intent falls into a different category.11Pornography is also extremely popular in Jordanian internet cafés, though it will not beaddressed in this paper.12Some cafés invest in a “safer” image. These cafés ban pornography and make their chat-ting users anonymous.13It is not usual, though neither is it uncommon, for friends to share one computer screen.14The one male chatter whom I questioned about this issue implied that male Irbidi chat-ters do form a community. He expressed pride in his internet exploits, and described agroup of male friends who represented themselves to one another as savvy internet users.
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