NG Sai Ning, Eunice
The Golden Project: Newly Formed Brotherhood in the Internet
Fig 1
Fig 2
Introduction
The emergence of the Golden Forum is quite an astonishing phenomenon in Hong
Kong society. Emerged originally as an Internet forum for discussions of digital products,
many discussion topics extended to gossips, scandals and celebrations of certain
people.(usually pretty girls, being called as “goddess” in Golden terms) For me, it serves
as a perfect example to demonstrate the newly formed masculinity and brotherhood using
the Internet as a platform. Since identities are sealed, the behaviors and thoughts posted
in the forums are more direct and straight-forward, thus getting closer to the masculinities
in modern Hong Kong society. The brotherhood is formed in a rather loose way as no
obvious restrictions and rules are presented. But yet we can still observe a certain degree
of the unity of behaviors and the conformity towards a society.
As figures 1a and 1b have shown, I created two pseudonyms “喜愛肉蒲” and “謙謙君
子” and interacted with the Golden community under these two identities. These two
users are both male and representing two different kinds of masculinities—the former is a
macho masculine guy who is very fond of woman and the latter is a metrosexual guy who
speaks for an alternative kind of masculinity. And I focused my project mainly on the
forums discussing relationships, “goddesses” and entertainment because I think it is
easier to observe masculinities in interaction with the female. In this project, I observed
the mutual interactions between my users and the Golden users and also other forums that
discussed gender-related issues. Then I tried to sum up some characteristics of the
masculinities demonstrated in the Golden Forum.
Flight From the Feminine: How to be a Golden Male
Fig 1a
Fig 1b
Fig 1c
Fig 1d
Michael Kimmel stated in his article “Gendering Desire” that Masculinity can be seen
as a flight from the Feminine. The figure of mother is considered as being too soft,
humiliating to the peers; therefore the boys have to escape from the qualities of a mother
in order to prove his masculinity. This phenomenon is also seen in Golden. Under the
name of “謙謙君子”, I posted a topic asking if other guys will wear make-up.(See Fig. 1a)
By asking this question, I tried to present a more metrosexual kind of masculinity and
question the traditional notion that guys should not wear make-up. Most of the Golden
users had pretty negative comments on that. (Fig 1b)Some of their comments even
reached the level of verbal violence. (See Fig 1c&d). They stressed that men shouldn’t do
that, this is sissy or this is gay. However, I’m glad to see that there are some users admit
that they made up too. (Fig 1d) But the point they made was as long as boys don’t wear
mascara and use blush, it is ok for guys to use cosmetics. This is somehow still defending
the traditional boundary of male and female. They try to loosen the male boundary a bit
in order to allow make-up, but a certain established code of male and female behaviors is
still be born in mind.
Moreover, what makes the Golden masculinity a bit different from the conventional
masculinity is that it emphasizes a lot on the possession and knowledge of IT products
and toys. The golden users love to demonstrate their knowledge on these topics. In this
kind of forums, female users are rarely seen. It has become a platform, or even a
battlefield for the Golden male to show off and prove themselves in front of each other.
Michael Kimmel once stated “He who has the most toys when he dies, wins.” in his book
Guyland. Masculinity is often marked by wealth, power and status. In a platform like
Internet, it will be hard and uncommon to show off these three traits, as it is indirect and
everybody is anonymous. So in my point of view, instead of showing off what you own,
it is more viable to show off what you know about a specific field which is technical and
rational: which is I.T. products in this case. So the IT forums in Golden have
transformed to a virtual battleground: using knowledge of the products to reconfirm their
statuses and to battle against each other.
Construction of Owns’ Language—Creation of a Male Community
Fig 2a
Fig 2b
Fig 2c
聽過都笑鳥
Fig 2d
One of the distinctive characteristics of the Golden community is the constant creation
of new slangs and terms. Non-golden users may feel shocked when they browse the
forums and found those unfamiliar new terms for the first time. Some terms even
extended from the platform of the Internet medium and reached to the popular society,
like the terms “港男港女” had aroused a heated wave of discussion in the society in 2007.
Besides, many new terms are created by the Golden users, like “毒拎” (nerd), “打 j”
(male masturbation), “型棍” (stylish and fashionable guy), “留名” (support you), “巴打”
(brother), “絲打” (sister), “小學雞” (nerds in primary schools), “膠” (nonsense, silly).
One thing that is very noticeable is that the majority of these newly created terms are
phallic-related. Words like “J”, “膠”, “拎”, “棍” all have connotations that refer to male
genitals. The high proportion of male users probably explains this phenomenon. Besides,
we can see that Golden Community is a phallic centered community: they are men, they
talk about women and they reject those non-males entering the discourse of this
brotherhood. But this brotherhood is rather loose and latent as there are no explicit rules
stating that how the members of the brotherhood have to perform. An essential function
of the creation of language is that it helps the Golden Community draws a line between
“us” and “other”. What you speak identifies you—in order to stress on the unique
characteristics that the Golden community possesses (like creativity, knowledgeable yet
horny, political leftist), it is very important to rely on a brand new set of terms to
distinguish themselves from other groups. The use of new language/slangs somehow
replace the rigid rules of brotherhood: when you use these terms and are familiar with
them, you are a part of us.
But somehow these phallic centered terms enter into our discourse in our society
almost unconsciously (as we can see the increasing popularity of these terms in social
medias and other medias), we tend to describe ourselves and others with these gendered
terms even when we are not male. When the language that we rely on are themselves
gendered and biased, we can be affected by its implicit ideology. i.e. only male can be
identified as “型” or “毒”. It isolates the other and expels the other out of our discourse in
the society.
The New Platonic Love: from the Divine Love to the “j-able”Goddess
Fig
3a
Fig. 3b
Fig 3c
Link 1: http://forum4.hkgolden.com/view.aspx?message=3341649
There are some significant similarities and fatal differences when we compare
Platonic Love with the Golden worship of goddesses. Platonic love is a glorification of
the lover: the love of a person inspires his mind and it directs him to the love of the
divine. Platonic love is non-sexual and highly spiritual. However, the lover in Platonic
love is somehow objectified as he/she is seen as a medium to God’s divine love.
Similarly, the goddesses in the Golden community are objectified—they are simply
objects of desires. They are distanced and unreachable from most of the “毒拎” . They
are often described as “J-able” (worth masturbating) . Users’ responses often indicated
that they have already masturbated after seeing the photos of goddesses. The physical
attractiveness and sexual appeal are striped off from these girls’ personalities. Therefore
although they are being worshipped like goddesses, they are still unavoidably objectified.
The discussion shown in figure 3a serves as a very good example as it demonstrates
the sexual fantasy of a golden male towards a “goddess”. Being so distanced and out of
reach from the “goddess”, the impotent male can only fulfill his sexual desire with the
aids of a fetish—which is the oil-absorbing paper in the case. And what amazed me was,
the Golden Community actually reinforces this kind of imaginative relationship with the
goddess. In this case, the user’s comments on his behavior are neither positive nor
negative. Other users see it as a light-hearted joke but keep making fun of it. (fig 3b)
However, these behaviors somehow “push” the post to the top of the list and attracted
many people to browse the post. And discussion topics like this narrating the imaginative
fulfillment of the relationship with the goddesses often appear in Golden Forum as well.
Therefore we can sum up the new Platonic Love exhibited in Golden is a mixture of
fantasy and masturbation: celebrating a distanced female figure and objectifying her in
bodily terms.
This kind of masculinity shown in the worship of goddess is quite special because at
the same time it exposes the lack of confidence in the Golden male. Instead of making a
change in reality (like courting a girl and developing a healthy relationship), they
fantasize about female’s bodies and satisfy their desire through masturbations and fetish.
It is very escapist as they do not solve the problems in reality. Yet they are still complicit
with the hegemonic masculinity even though they are powerless comparably: they try to
regain their subjectivity through the objectification of female.
In order to know more about Golden guys’ sexual fantasies, I wrote an adult story and
posted it in Golden. (see link 1). It is a piece of short story involving an ordinary working
guy who fantasized about his boss and finally had sex with her one day. It is quite a
violent tale as it stresses the male dominance over female and the hatred towards female
power. However, it is not a very popular story, receiving only 33 responses in total. After
consulting my friends who are active in Golden Forum, they concluded that one of the
reasons of my failure is that it is not “real” enough. They pointed out that a popular adult
story in Golden has to generate a feeling of “commonness” and a sense of “peeping”. The
encounter with the goddess has to be taken place in ordinary situation so that the readers
feel like that they will encounter her some day. The admiral and the fantasy of her have to
be confined in the private realm. This helps demonstrate the mentality of many golden
male: lacking confidence in reality but satisfy their fantasies through imagination.
What Sustains the Brotherhood: Reinforcement System
Fig 4a
Fig 4b
What makes the Golden users so addictive to the forums? How is the power relations
built in the Golden Forum? My assumption is that the unique reinforcement system in the
Golden community helps build up and stabilize this structure. The responses of other
users upon your post or opinion are essential to masculinity: as Michael Kimmel said that
peer functions as gender police. They create a community based on brotherhood, and it
functions through inclusion and exclusion: accepting and rejecting members according to
the norm of behaviors.
In Golden Forum, a kind of reinforcement system is manifested in a symbolic way.
Members can 賜酒 and 派膠 to each other. (See Fig 4a) The former is a compliment
while the latter is an animadversion. Besides, members can also like or dislike the post.
Like my post about whether guys will make up was disliked by a lot of people. Members
who contribute a lot (like posting porns, writing adult stories) usually gain a lot of credits
from that. However, this kind of contributions stabilizes the norms and behavioral codes
of Golden male rather than question it in a critical way. I think this system sustains the
brotherhood as it allows the members to reflect on each other. And it provides a powerful
incentive for members to contribute more, or to conform to the norm of masculinity--- as
the ones who deviate from the norms are usually “disliked”.
Conclusion
Over 70% of the Golden users are male. Among them, more than 60% of them age
between 17-25. Although we cannot generalize the masculinity of this group of people to
all the young male in Hong Kong, we have to admit that they do represent a certain
proportion of young Hong Kong male. During the process engaging in the discussion in
the forum, I kept having a question in mind: why these people just talk and fantasize,
while not acting something to improve in realty? To me, they are not just physically
masturbating, but mentally as well. Their sense of inferiority is so prominent that it
generates both sympathy and anguish inside me.
Establishing effective communication with the opposite sex seems to be the way out.
Golden male has to grow up and enter into realty: female is not just an object of fantasy
and the proof of masculinity is just a superficial way to confirm your social status. I do
hope that Golden male can realize their potentials and actively get involved in the society
instead of fantasizing sexual adventures and boasting their IT knowledge on a virtual
platform.
References
Kimmel, Michael. “Gendering Desire”, The Gender of Desire: Essays on Male Sexuality.
New York: State University of New Yor Press, 2005.
Kimmel, Michael. Guyland: the Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. New York:
Harper. 2008.
** Link of the posts of 喜愛肉蒲 and 謙謙君子
喜愛肉蒲:
http://forum3.hkgolden.com/ProfilePage.aspx?userid=316465
謙謙君子:
http://forum3.hkgolden.com/ProfilePage.aspx?userid=317615
Rationale:
Getting fed up with the Golden guys and decided to become a part of them and… be bad.