Given that the Internet began as a masculine technoculture, using masculine technology, it has traditionally seemed unfriendly-or directly intimidating-to women. For some commentators, this is no accident. Spender cites Nola Alloway's (1995) research as indicating that 'even three-year-old boys in pre-school insist that the computers are the boys' territory, and the girls are verbally and physically driven away':

   Girls in general seemed uninterested in accessing the resource when competing for the opportunity meant entering the fray with an antagonistic group of boys and the adoption of a combative style of interaction. Within this context of aggressive competition, it seemed understandable, if not outright intelligent, to avoid the computer and to select an alternative activity that did not involve physical harassment.

   Although men took an early head start on the Internet, women could have been associated with computers from the beginning of their social biography. Computers had keyboards and, at the point of computer take-up, women were the socially designated 'typing' gender. Feminist commentator Dale Spender notes that 'just about every survey indicates that when the men have moved in, the women have moved out. In the UK [according to Cole et al. 1994] in 1978, 28 per cent of the students enrolled in computer sciences were women; by 1985-86 this figure had dropped to 13 per cent and the trend continues'. Women started off by being involved, but then it became a 'gendered' area-as computers became increasingly associated with mastery and control.

   From the physical exclusion of the pre-school class to the intimidation of young adult women, this technocultural absence can ho constructed as engineered by masculine activity. In western culture, sexual harassment has often been viewed as an inappropriate expression of sexuality, but it is more likely to be about issues of power and control Given that there is a lack of physical co-presence on the Internet, it might be felt that cyber-harassment is a virtual problem, rather than an actual one. This is not the experience of those who have suffered cyber-harassment. Judy Wajcman comments that the 'harassment of girls interested in Computing continues into tertiary education. At this stage the harassment takes the form of obscene computer mail or print-outs of nude women. Women students in computer science at MIT found this problem so pervasive that they organized a special committee to deal with it'. Jacques Leslie discusses the case of a man (Sykes, who used the online female persona 'Eris') who pretended to be female online. His 'major revelation', resulting from this gendered interaction with technoculture, was the 'extent of sexual harassment of women'. After four months, Sykes abandoned his pretence 'because he could not write programmes without being constantly interrupted by male advances... [but] one male player who apparently had a crush on Eris became so irate that he tried to get Sykes banished from the MUD'.

   Australian researcher Ann Willis, in her work on Wired and its online equivalent, Hotwired, 1993-97, argues that the magazine/s construct the technocultural domain as masculine frontier territory: 'One of the myriad of examples of this is an advertisement which appeared in Wired H for the Mega Race CD-ROM game. The caption reads "No Cops No Laws No Wimps-Are you a girlie-man or a Megaracer?"'. (Notably, there's no option to be a girlie-girl/woman.) Willis goes on to say:

   The film, My Darling Clementine is a classic example of the American frontier environment where good girls don't go until law and order are established, and bad girls who do, suffer the most dire consequences. This frontier myth operates as a convenient one for the CMC [computer mediated communication] environment because it reconfirms and justifies (particularly for men) why women shouldn't be there, and reconfirms the stereotype that (sensible, worthwhile) women themselves shouldn't and wouldn't want to participate in this environment anyway.

   The frontier discourse of shouldn't and wouldn't is re- articulated in a Wired article called 'alt.sex.bondage' by Richard Kadrey. His exploration of the alt.sex. bondage site, provides, as it were,'. . . a novicef's guide' to the site. Kadrey positions CMC within the masculine discourse of a cyber-frontiersville. In doing so, he reiterates the stereotype that women shouldn't really be there because it is too mad, bad and dangerous.

   Describing the CMC environment as an 'asylum' he states, 'while the overall tone of abs (the alt.sex.bondage site) is friendly and open, not everyone who visits here feels safe. Women, especially, who have posted openly about their sexual lives have reported being inundated with e-mail from guys offering to "do" them. One discouraged female user wrote," ... unless a woman has a strong stomach, she won't post here more than once".