Some Cyberspace of Her Own

By Bronwyn Garrity

This article appeared in the March 19, 2001 edition of The Nation.

March 1, 2001

I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same.
      --Michel Foucault

Ever since I was assigned to read A Room of One's Own in college eight years ago, I have kept it close for support. Besides the fact that, like Virginia Woolf, I had also read Leo Tolstoy's journals and was similarly enraged by the clarity he exhibited at such a young age, I felt she was on to something. "A room of one's own," however, wasn't quite it.

I grew up in the 1980s inside a charming, if small, Spanish-style California home with a mom, a sister, a piano, many dogs and two brothers who were relentless in their efforts to jimmy my locks with butter knives. Although I liked to think I had my own room, the space's original and (now that I'm an adult I can say it) idiotic plans called for its doubling as a shortcut to one of the house's more popular bathrooms. I went to great and occasionally violent lengths to discourage use of this particular feature. The results? Ha, as DrRogue would say.

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About Bronwyn Garrity

Bronwyn Garrity is a writer and producer of websites and DVD-ROM content at Canned Interactive, an interactive design agency based in Los Angeles. This essay will appear in longer form in Graywolf Forum Four: The Private 'I', to be published in April. more...
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