‘In the name of love’

Abstract

This article examines a group of Chinese seafarer-partners’ activities in an online support group and discusses how gender issues may serve to influence women’s informal learning process online. It reveals that seafarer-partners not only acquired information, knowledge and emotional support, but also learnt an attitude, which helped them to adapt to the environment. In this process, gendered communication content and style and gendered beliefs/values played a role.

Keywords

Bulletin Board Systems BBS China gender HCS informal learning intimacy marriage online support groups seafaring internet

Introduction

Although there is a large body of literature on internet-based learning, Na and Chia (2008) note that the focus has been mainly on online formal education rather than on informal learning. While formal education involves purposefully designed curricula and courses with evaluation and assessment in place, informal learning can be seen as a process of acquiring values, attitudes and knowledge through daily social activities (Cilesiz, 2009; Vadeboncoeur, 2006). As the internet enables people to retrieve and share a large amount of information, it provides rich resources for informal learners (Maier et al., 2005; Na and Chia, 2008).

The internet also enables people to form online support groups. Past research on online support groups suggests that group members seek and provide relevant information and knowledge (e.g. Orgad, 2005; Pitts, 2004; Radin, 2006). It is found that the message boards of online support groups are advice laden – members offer each other advice on how to deal with crises, problems, and bad feelings (e.g. Bar-Lev, 2008; Madge and O’Connor, 2006). The exchange of information and advice implies a process of informal learning, through which people learn from peers not only knowledge, but also values, beliefs, and attitude. Interestingly, such activities have rarely been studied as a learning process (Davies, 2004; Rager, 2003), and as a result, how group members adopt values and attitudes remains understudied.

Past research also makes it clear that although physical cues are absent online, there are gender differences in participation in online discussion and support groups (Herring, 2003). For example, Blank and Adams-Blodnieks (2007), Gooden and Winefield (2007), Klemm et al. (1999), Owen et al. (2004), and Seale, Ziebland, and Charteris-Black (2006) compared men’s usage of online prostate cancer support groups with women’s usage of breast cancer ones. They found that men’s usage was oriented towards seeking medical and treatment information, while women tended to focus on seeking social and emotional support. As such, it is reasonable to assume that gender also affects (informal) learning involved in online support, but in what ways? This article explores this question by examining a group of Chinese seafarer-partners’¹ activities in an online support group.

Research background and methods

Seafarers’ lives are characterised by two cyclical phases: long periods of working at sea, which is followed by long periods of leave at home. For Chinese seafarers, the lengths of working periods range from six months to one year, while leave periods on average last for four months.

Seafarers’ work patterns thus entail long-term and intermittent separation between seafaring couples, which can make seafarer-partners lonely and stressed (Thomas, 2003). Furthermore, the separation may make seafarer-partners feel that they live different lifestyles and have different experiences from other women whose partners work ashore. As a result, seafarer-partners are likely to separate themselves from others and feel that non-seafaring people could not fully appreciate and understand their situation, which tends to make them socially isolated (Thomas, 2003).

The advent of the internet, however, makes it possible for people in isolation to meet each other online and to form online communities. In 2003, a Chinese seafarer set up a Bulletin Board System (BBS) website, the Home of Chinese Seafarers (HCS). It enables hundreds of Chinese seafarer-partners to form an online community, through which they are able to ‘meet’ each other, share their experiences, and provide mutual support.

This article is drawn from a study of seafarer-partners’ activities on the HCS website. The study took a qualitative approach, which included online observation and qualitative interviewing. From May 2005 to October 2007, I logged on to the website almost daily to observe and analyse activities on the website. In order to understand seafarer-partners’ activities more adequately, I also interviewed 30 seafarer-partner participants from different parts of China. Among the 30 respondents, 29 had received or were receiving higher education; 25 were below the age of 30; and 11 were married at the time of interviewing. Apart from five university students, the remaining 25 were in full-time employment.

Learning about seafarers’ work

Seafarer-partners are likely to have a poor knowledge of their partners’ work, which is particularly true with those who are relatively inexperienced. This is because separation makes it difficult for seafaring couples to share job-related matters frequently. Being in relationships with seafarers, however, seafarer-partners may want to know more about seafaring jobs. Half of the informants mentioned in the interviews that they searched online in order to find out more information about seafaring and that the searching led them to the HCS website. On the site, seafarer-partners who had the opportunity to visit ships wrote about seafarers’ lives and working conditions on ships,² and some seafarers also wrote postings about their experience at sea. For example, La-La, a seafarer-partner who recently visited her boyfriend’s ship, wrote about her ship visit experience:

The ship stayed in the port for three days. My partner was very busy during these days, especially on last day when he was cleaning the cargo holds from morning to evening. I thought he did not need to work in the evening and therefore we could get off the ship and have a walk together, but he was again asked to work just before the dinner. I felt so bad, not because we could not go out together, but because he had not had his dinner yet. Every time he came back to the cabin, he was always covered in thick coal dust. Cleaning cargo holds was a very tough job and it must be very tiresome to do it all day long. When he left for work that evening, I could not help but shedding tears for his suffering.

Working at sea, which is commonly regarded as physically challenging, seafarers are often depicted as ‘masculine heroes’ (Thomas and Bailey, 2006). Writing about seafarers on the website tended to follow this narrative line, as the foregoing posting suggests that seafarers have to work long hours and do physically demanding jobs.

From the postings about life at sea, seafarer-partners learned seafaring careers from a particular perspective and acquired a belief that seafarers were hard-working people. Mermaid, a seafarer’s girlfriend in her mid-20s, stated in the interview:

He [her boyfriend] did tell me something [about his work]. But he has never told me how harsh his work is, since he is afraid that I may worry about that. [When coming to that], he equivocates. From others’ postings, I can loosely feel that his work must be hard.

Seafarer-partners also utilised this knowledge to teach each other how to cope with problems, to which I turn next.

Discussing problems

Seafarer-partners felt that another attractive feature of the HCS was that it allowed them to reveal their feelings related to seafaring lifestyle. Half of the informants mentioned explicitly that they were most likely to write postings when they felt bad. For example, Snow, a seafarer’s girlfriend in her late 20s, said in the interview: ‘Most of my postings are sentimental. When I feel good, I seldom make postings. When I feel bad, I want to give vent to this’. Another quarter of the informants stated that they liked to disclose all sorts of feelings, such as happiness, anger, and sadness, on the website. All these informants, three-quarters of those interviewed, also liked to read and reply to others’ postings revealing feelings and emotional problems. For example, Pine-Tree, a seafarer’s wife aged 28 said:

I like to initiate, and respond to, postings regarding emotions, for example, when seafarers’ relations with their lovers meet problems, when some people are not confident about their relationships in the separation period, etc.…These emotions and feelings are very similar to mine. I feel empathy with them. I will try my best to comfort them, to encourage them, and to support them.

These two quotations indicate that seafarer-partners online were willing to disclose personal problems and feelings. Furthermore, they also reveal that seafarer-partners were supportive to each other. For this reason, they tended to liken the HCS to their parents’ home where they could always find support.

However, the statements do beg an interesting question: What does the ‘support’ really mean? This question necessitates a close examination of postings. The following is one typical posting which revealed communication problems encountered by Lily, a seafarer’s girlfriend:

I used to feel fortunate that I could keep in touch with him [her boyfriend] through text messages and phone-calls since he works on coastal ships…I make use of every little spare time to send messages to him when he is away. Gradually, sending messages becomes the main theme of my life and it is my source of happiness…But he always replies me at the ratio of 1:3. This hurts me. I have warned him several times. But after only few days, he would be back to his former attitude. This time I feel that I have had enough…I sent him a message: Since it continues like this, we’d better break up.

Clearly, Lily was angry at her boyfriend’s unwillingness to reciprocate her messages. She thought that her boyfriend did not love her enough and wanted to terminate the relationship.

Lily received 15 replies. The following two could be considered as typical:

Lotus: In the past, I also used to hasten my husband to reply to my messages. Only after I visited his ship did I realise that how hard and tiresome his job is. There are always reasons for not responding to messages. Do not take it serious.

Rose: All men are careless. My partner only replies to me once after receiving one hundred of messages from me.…While women like talk about feelings, men like doing things. They do not show their love by words but by deeds.

The replies reframed Lily’s situation from different perspectives, but conveyed the same message – the situation was not, as Lily thought, that her boyfriend did not love her, but that there were other explanations. Lotus’ reframing of the situation was in line with the narrative about seafarers on the website: the seafaring job is tough and involved long hours. By invoking this narrative, Lotus tried to make Lily understand that her boyfriend had to work hard and therefore had little energy left for messaging. In Rose’s understanding, men and women are different, and all men are careless about feelings because they do not talk about feelings as women do. For Rose, it was ‘natural’, rather than problematic, that men were unwilling to reciprocate their partners’ intimacy. It has been noted that reframing the situation is a widely used strategy for managing negative feelings (Francis, 1997; Hochschild, 1979). Lotus and Rose clearly employed this strategy to make Lily believe that she should not feel bad about her boyfriend’s non-reciprocation because it was not a problem at all.

The interview data similarly suggest that reframing was a commonly used method by seafarer-partners to offer support. Dove, a seafarer’s wife in her early 30s, reflected upon how she advised others to solve problems:

I replied a lot to those who revealed bad feelings and emotions. Sometimes, a small problem can make seafarer-partners think too much, for example, they ask whether they should terminate the relationship, whether he still loves her, etc. There are many such postings. When I read this, I would reply: this does not matter, or it is not like what you thought, or something like that.

Reframing in effect was a process through which seafarer-partners taught each other to see the situation in a positive way. By reframing a difficult situation into a normal one, seafarer-partners learned from and/or taught each other to play down or dismiss problems in order to manage them.

‘In the name of love’

The reframing strategy and support on the website arguably served to sustain couple relationships. An interesting question arising here is why seafarer-partners tended to persuade each other to stay in the relationship. One posting from a seafarer’s wife gives a clue:

I have read many postings on the website…Some seafarer-partners are complaining about the relationships with seafarers, but they are always persuaded to change their minds by warm-hearted sisters in the name of ‘love’. It is moving and makes me feel that seafarer-partners are a very caring and romantic group with a little bit of ‘foolishness’.

These words indicate two points. First, seafarer-partners were aware that they ‘always’ tended to persuade each other not to take problems seriously. Secondly, the reason for this was because of ‘love’. Although seafarer-partners were aware that it might be ‘foolish’ to endure the problems associated with separation, they nevertheless believed that love is the most important thing in a relationship and that if there is love, other problems can be overcome. This belief reflects a cultural value, that is, love is the foundation of ideal couple-relationships and that it brings about ultimate happiness. This value is seen to be taken for granted by many people in today’s China (Chen, 2005).

Seafarer-partners also believed that love is particularly important for women. Mermaid stressed this point in the interview: ‘It is often said that love and family is the women’s life-time project’. This perception reveals that despite women’s economic independence, the traditional gender roles are still dominant: women’s place in traditional Chinese culture was in the home as care-givers, while men were supposed to earn a living outside of the domestic sphere (Yu and Chau, 1997; Zhang, 2006). Although the state policies in China have been promoting gender equality, traditional values die hard and are often drawn upon in everyday discourse (Zhang, 2006) – women in general are expected to be caring and affectionate, while earning a good living is still perceived to be men’s priority. These beliefs and values made seafarer-partners feel that they should cherish love and not to give it up easily in the face of difficulties and problems.

Learning to be adaptive

Mutual support had a visible impact on seafarer-partners. Lily came back to the thread later and thanked those who replied to her posting. She wrote:

It was just because I could not adjust myself. Before our engagement, he was very attentive to me, but now our positions are reversed – it is always me who is attentive to him. This made me feel being ignored. Thank you all very much for your kind replies! They help me to adjust.

Lily seemed to realise that her anger was simply because she could not adjust herself to the new situation, and that she and her boyfriend were still in love. Other women’s replies helped Lily to adjust to the change.

Through discussing problems, seafarer-partners learned to adopt a more accommodating attitude. As a result, issues that used to be problematic in the past would no longer be regarded so now. Seagull’s words reveal this point:

In the past, I did not know how hard and tiresome his work is. I felt that he should make a phone call to me immediately once his ship was moored to a wharf. Otherwise, I would be very angry. Now I know that their job is hard and busy. This [knowledge] makes my mind more at peace. Having read others’ experiences, I feel that life should be like this.

Thus, the learning process in the HCS helped to fine tune seafarer-partners’ attitudes to their living environment. In this process, constructing gender identities played a central role. Seafarers were described as hardworking ‘heroes’. To match this, seafarer-partners felt that they should be supportive. The gender identity construction drew upon and reflected gender values. For seafarer-partners, the geographic separation between the couples corresponded with the traditional division of labour: although they had their careers outside of their homes, they nevertheless stayed at the home base; by contrast seafarers were sailing far away from this base. Since seafarers were fulfilling their ‘duty’ by working hard for a better life for the family, seafarer-partners felt that they should provide them with support and affection at the home base.

Concluding discussion

In the offline context, Coates (2004) observes that in single-sex groups, women and men talk differently in terms of both styles and topics – women tend to empathise with and support one another and are more likely to discuss feelings and problems; by contrast, men often challenge and argue with each other and prefer to talk about impersonal things, such as current affairs and sport. The observation about women’s communication content and style seems relevant in cyberspace as well. In the HCS, seafarer-partners liked to discuss emotions and feelings, and they were keen on providing support to those who disclosed emotional problems. Furthermore, the research revealed that seafarer-partners’ communication drew upon and reflected gendered beliefs and values. They depicted seafarers as ‘masculine heroes’ who work hard without complaining. Seafarer-partners also believed that man and woman are ‘naturally’ different and took it for granted that love and family are most important for women.

More importantly, gender affected seafarer-partners’ learning in the HCS. Gendered communication content and style made it possible for them to guide each other to cope with problems involved in relationships. In this process, gendered beliefs and values provided both the motivation and rationale for seafarer-partners to teach and learn from each other to accommodate problems. As a result, seafarer-partners learned to change their attitude and to adapt to separation.

Past research suggests that individuals acquire information and emotional comfort from online support groups, which help them to cope with problems and crises (e.g. Orgad, 2005; Pitts, 2004; Radin, 2006). Through examining the informal learning process involved in the HCS, this article suggests a new dimension of online support and thus points to a new direction of research. It shows that drawing upon dominant cultural values, group members collectively construct group specific identities and beliefs and learn to adopt them in order to adapt to the environment. Perhaps this kind of informal learning is the core of online support. It is also reasonable to argue that the key outcome of the learning is an accommodating and positive attitude and that the key process is managing emotions (see also Tang, 2009). To take the argument a step further, as women are more willing to talk about feelings and communicate their emotions, it can be suggested that the informal learning may be more effective in women’s groups.

Footnotes

Funding

This work was supported by a SIRC-Nippon Foundation Fellowship.

Notes

References

Bar-Lev

(2008) ‘We are here to give you emotional support’: Performing emotions in an online HIV/AIDS support group. Qualitative Heath Research 18(4): 509–521.

Blank

Adams-Blodnieks

(2007) The who and the what of usage of two cancer online communities. Computers in Human Behavior 23(3): 1249–1257.

Chen

(2005) The Transformation of Marriage and Families in China, (in Chinese). Beijing: Central Compiling and Translating Press.

Cilesiz

(2009) Educational computer use in leisure contexts: A phenomenological study of adolescents’ experiences at internet cafes. American Educational Research Journal 46(1): 232–274.

Coates

(2004) Women, Men and Language: A Sociolinguistic Account of Gender Differences in Language. Oxford: Blackwell.

Davies

(2004) Negotiating femininities online. Gender and Education 16(1): 35–49.

Francis

(1997) Ideology and interpersonal emotion management: Redefining identity in two support groups. Social Psychology Quarterly 60(2): 153–171.

Gooden

Winefield

(2007) Breast cancer and prostate cancer online discussion boards: A thematic analysis of gender differences and similarities. Journal of Health Psychology 12(1): 103–114.

Herring

(2003) Gender and power in online communication. In: Holmes

Meyerhoff

(eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 202–229.

10.

Hochschild

(1979) Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. American Journal of Sociology 85(3): 551–575.

11.

Klemm

Hurst

Dearholt

. (1999) Gender differences on internet cancer support groups. Computers in Nursing 17(2): 65–72.

12.

Madge

O'Connor

(2006) Parenting gone wired: Empowerment of new mothers on the internet? Social and Cultural Geography 7(2): 199–219.

13.

Maier

Armstrong

Hall

. (2005) JointZone: Users’ views of an adaptive online learning resource for rheumatology. Learning, Media and Technology 30(3): 281–297.

14.

Chia

(2008) Impact of online resources on informal learners: Parents’ perception of their parenting skills. Computers & Education 51(1): 173–186.

15.

Orgad

(2005) The transformative potential of online communication: The case of breast cancer patients’ internet space. Feminist Media Studies 5(2): 141–161.

16.

Owen

Klapow

Roth

. (2004) Use of the internet for information and support: Disclosure among persons with breast and prostate cancer. Journal of Behavioural Medicine 27(5): 491–505.

17.

Pitts

(2004) Illness and internet empowerment: Writing and reading breast cancer in cyberspace. Health 8(1): 33–59.

18.

Radin

(2006) ‘To me, it’s my life’: Medical communication, trust, and activism in cyberspace. Social Science & Medicine 62(3): 591–601.

19.

Rager

(2003) The self-directed learning of women with breast cancer. Adult Education Quarterly 53(4): 277–293.

20.

Seale

Ziebland

Charteris-Black

(2006) Gender, cancer experience and internet use: A comparative keyword analysis of interviews and online cancer support groups. Social Sciences & Medicine 62(10): 2577–2590.

21.

Tang

(2009) Shaping feelings in cyberspace: The case of Chinese seafarer-partners. Emotion, Space and Society 2(2): 104–110.

22.

Thomas

(2003) Lost at Sea and Lost at Home: The Predicament of Seafaring Families. Cardiff: SIRC.

23.

Thomas

Bailey

(2006) Square pegs in round holes? Leave periods and role displacement in UK-based seafaring families. Work, Employment and Society 20(1): 129–149.

24.

Vadeboncoeur

(2006) Engaging young people: Learning in informal contexts. Review of Research in Education 30(1): 239–278.

25.

SWK

Chau

RCM

(1997) The sexual division of care in mainland China and Hong Kong. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 21(4): 607–619.

26.

Zhang

(2006) Gender role egalitarian attitudes among Chinese college students. Sex Roles 55 (7–8): 545–553