Cyberfeminism
Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. It can be used to refer to a philosophy, art practices, methodologies or community. The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, exploring and re-making the Internet, cyberspace and new-media technologies in general.
The first use of the term cyberfeminist has been attributed to Australian artists and art collectives. The inception of the cyberfeminist art movement is described by one of its pioneers Linda Dement, as one that "coagulated and sparked in the reject-outsider mutiny, trauma-jouissance and fast hard beat of queer punk. It found visible existence and a manifesto, through VNS Matrix in the Adelaide heat wave of 1991… Cyberfeminism, as blurred edge range, entangles carnality with code; machines, blood and bad language; poetry and disdain; executables, theft and creative fabrication. It incites and follows lines of flight powered by contradiction, relatedness, transgression, and misbehaviour. It simultaneously embraces logic and unreason, giving the finger to binaries as it ravishes them."
VNS Matrix's A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century was published online in 1991.
The foundational catalyst for the formation of cyberfeminist thought is often attributed by Europeans to Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto", third wave feminism, post-structuralist feminism, riot grrrl culture and the feminist critique of the alleged erasure of women within discussions of technology.
Definition
Cyberfeminism is an alliance that seeks awareness to defy any sort of boundaries of identity and definition to be truly postmodern in its potential for radical openness. This is seen with the 1997 Old Boys Network's 100 anti-theses which lists the 100 ways "cyberfeminism is not." Cornelia Sollfrank from the Old Boys Network states that:Cyberfeminism is a myth. A myth is a story of unidentifiable origin, or of different origins. A myth is based on one central story which is retold over and over in different variations. A myth denies one history as well as one truth, and implies a search for truth in the spaces, in the differences between the different stories. Speaking about Cyberfeminism as a myth, is not intended to mystify it, it simply indicates that Cyberfeminism only exists in plural.Mia Consalvo defines cyberfeminism as:
- a label for women—especially young women who might not even want to align with feminism's history—not just to consume new technologies but to actively participate in their making;
- a critical engagement with new technologies and their entanglement with power structures and systemic oppression.
In "Cyberfeminist Bed Sheet Flown as a Flag" Linda Dement and Nancy Mauro-Flude devised a performance of the bed-sheet-flag, unfurling ribbons of quotes from the stains of their sisterhood kin: "A genealogical record, it bears smears and stains from productive encounters, convergences and brush pasts. The sheet has been endlessly folded, scrunched, wrung out or smoothed flat in spawning, connecting and adulterating across feminist time and creative persuasions." Initially Dement mapped a non-linear terrain of punk, cyberfeminism, rebellious aberration and corporeal digital transgression as a rumpled unclean bedsheet.
Authors Hawthorne and Klein explain the different analyses of cyberfeminism in their book: "Just as there are liberal, socialist, radical and postmodern feminists, so too one finds these positions reflected in the interpretations of cyberfeminism."
VNS Matrix member Julianne Pierce defines cyberfeminism: "In 1991, in a cozy Australian city called Adelaide, four bored girls decided to have some fun with art and French Feminist theory... with homage to Donna Haraway they began to play around with the idea of cyberfeminism."
Cyberfeminism is not just the subject matter, but is the approach taken to examine subject matter. For example: Cyberfeminism can be a critique of equality in cyberspace, challenge the gender stereotype in cyberspace, examine the gender relationship in cyberspace, examine the collaboration between humans and technology, examine the relationship between women and technology and more.
Sadie Plant much more viewed Cyberfeminism as a project which sought to uncover the history linking femininity and technology and how traits which were feminine were both useful to technology while still being in the same historical position as technology, objectified and to serve the ends of men, but for Plant this is where the future leads, towards technology and the abandoning of man, while women and technology go hand in hand escaping "the meat" for Plant by making "the meat" and "the mind" the same.
Theoretical background
Cyberfeminism arose partly as a reaction to "the pessimism of the 1980s feminist approaches that stressed the inherently masculine nature of techno-science", a counter-movement against the 'toys for boys' perception of new Internet technologies. According to a text published by Trevor Scott Milford, another contributor to the rise of cyberfeminism was the lack of female discourse and participation online concerning topics that were impacting women. As cyberfeminist artist Faith Wilding argued: "If feminism is to be adequate to its cyberpotential then it must mutate to keep up with the shifting complexities of social realities and life conditions as they are changed by the profound impact communications technologies and techno science have on all our lives. It is up to cyberfeminists to use feminist theoretical insights and strategic tools and join them with cybertechniques to battle the very real sexism, racism, and militarism encoded in the software and hardware of the Net, thus politicizing this environment."British cultural theorist Sadie Plant chose cyberfeminism to describe her recipe for defining the feminizing influence of technology on western society and its inhabitants.
European's often cite Donna Haraway as the inspiration and genesis for cyberfeminism with her 1985 essay "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" which was reprinted in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Haraway's essay states that cyborgs are able to transcend the public and private spheres, but they do not have the ability to identify with their origins or with nature in order to develop a sense of understanding through differences between self and others. Shulamith Firestone and her book The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution has been named as a precursor to Haraway's work in cyberfeminism. Firestone's work focuses reproductive technology and advancing it to eliminate the connection of the feminine identity being connected to childbirth. Firestone believed that gender inequality and oppression against women could be solved if the roles around reproduction did not exist. Both Firestone and Haraway had ideals based on making individuals androgynous, and both women wanted society to move beyond biology by improving technology.
Cyberfeminism is considered a predecessor to networked feminism, fourth wave feminism. Cyberfeminism also has a relationship to the field of feminist science and technology studies, Feminist Internet Theory
Timeline
1970s
's The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution created the foundation for many cyberfeminist activities. In her book, Firestone explores the possibility of using technology to eliminate sexism by freeing women from their obligation to carry children in order to create a nuclear family. In many ways, this can be seen as a precursor to cyberfeminism because it questions the role that technology should play in dismantling the patriarchy.1980s
was the inspiration and genesis for cyberfeminism with her 1985 essay "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century", which was later reprinted in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Haraway's essay states that cyborgs are able to transcend the public and private spheres, but they do not have the ability to identify with their origins or with nature in order to develop a sense of understanding through differences between self and others. Haraway had ideals based on making individuals androgynous, and wanted society to move beyond biology by improving technology.1990s
The term cyberfeminism was first used around 1991 by both the English cultural theoretician Sadie Plant and the Australian artist group VNS Matrix, independently from each other.In Canada, Nancy Paterson wrote an article entitled "Cyberfeminism" for EchoNYC in 1991.
In Adelaide, Australia, a four-person collective called VNS Matrix wrote the Cyberfeminist Manifesto in 1991; they used the term cyberfeminist to label their radical feminist acts "to insert women, bodily fluids and political consciousness into electronic spaces." That same year, British cultural theorist Sadie Plant used the term to describe definition of the feminizing influence of technology on western society.
In Russia in 1995, the Cyber-Femin Club was founded in the Pushkinskaya 10 art centre in St. Petersburg to bring together ‘women working with new media’, the most prominent of whom were curator Irina Aktuganova, philosopher and cultural critic Alla Mitrofanova, and St. Petersburg artists Olga Kisseleva, Gluklya and Tsaplya.
In 1996, a special volume of Women & Performance was devoted to sexuality and cyberspace. It was a compendium of essays on cybersex, online stalking, fetal imaging, and going digital in New York.
According to Carolyn Guertin, the first Cyberfeminist International, organized by the Old Boys Network in Germany, in 1997, refused to define the school of thought, but drafted the "100 Anti-Theses of Cyberfeminism" instead. Guertin says that cyberfeminism is a celebration of multiplicity.