Cyberfeminism(s):
Origins, Definitions and Overview
ByVesna Dragojlov
University of Advancing Technology
21
Women
Women can’t
can’t add,
add, he
he said
said once
once jokingly.
jokingly. When
When II asked
asked
him
him what
what he
he meant,
meant, he
he said,
said, for
for them
them one
one and
and one
one and
and
one
one and
and one
one don’t
don’t make
make four.
four.
What
What do
do they
they make?
make? II said
said expecting
expecting five
five or
or three.
three.
Just
Just one
one and
and one
one and
and one
one and
and one,
one, he
he said.
said.
–– Margaret
Margaret Atwood,
Atwood, The
The Handmaid’s
Handmaid’s Tale
Tale
Cyberfeminism(s): Origins, Definitions and Overview
Within our technologically advanced society, we
would like to believe that the virtual space and the
internet have opened up the potential for women
to break out of the boundaries imposed on them
through decades under the rule of masculine
power. The internet has been hailed as a liberating, democratic space, open to everybody, devoid
of gendered, charted territory; unfortunately, that
has not been the case. The new space has only inherited old stereotypes. Part of the reason could
be that electronic networks emerged from the
military research field in which men such as Vannevar Bush, Norbert Wiener and Douglas Engelbart,
among many others, have played dominant roles in
computer science.
In support of this claim it is noteworthy to mention
Sadie Plant, a British cultural theorist, advocate of
cyberfeminism and influential author of Zeros and
Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture. In Zeros and Ones, Plant (1997) implies that dual roles
still prevail in a new space of fluid, boundless cyberspace: zeros and ones are at the core of new
digital technologies where she sees “1” as man and
“0” as woman, i.e., nothing, the “0-ther.”
22
Looking deeper into the history of technology,
from the Industrial Revolution to today’s information age, the same pattern can be mapped onto the
terrain of power and domination that men have
historically exercised.Women were kept out of the
realm of technology by their many domestic responsibilities (e.g., caring for children, housekeeping) and were thus perceived as caring, “homey,”
“artsy.” However, if we analyze the contributions of
women and men to their families, we will recognize that, throughout history, although tools were
made by men, and the hunting was performed by
men, food-gathering, cooking and childrearing
were always women’s roles.Those stereotypes have
ical engine. It is known today that Lovelace made
a major contribution to the construction of both
machines, yet she was not given credit until over a
century later, in 1979, when a new programming
language (ADA) was named for her, “in honor of
an obscure but talented mathematician…” (Plant,
1997, p. 60). There was also U.S. Navy Captain
Grace Hopper, who had a remarkable career in
the programming world following World War II,
including a major contribution to the formulation
of COBOL: “They called her Ada Lovelace of the
new machine” (p. 151).
Part of the problematic relationship between women and computer science is generated by women
themselves—consider how they have used the new
territory of the internet to widen the gap between
genders by creating their own cyber-presence in
the form of “cybergrrl-ism” in all of its permutations: “webgrrls,” “riot grrls,” “guerSince the early 1990s, the main goal
rilla girls,” “bad grrls,” etc. (Wildof cyberfeminism has been to analyze ing, n.d.) (e.g., figures 6, 9 and 10).
Another aspect of this problem could
issues of gender, new technologies
be the education of young women as
and... the internet.
they are steered away from mathematics and computer sciences and into the
humanities
from
an early age, with their “feminine”
prevailed with few exceptions, and they have conintellectual
inclinations
characterized culturally as
tinued into the digital age.
more appropriate to humanities, arts and crafts,
Yet the exceptions are remarkable. They include and social sciences (caring, homey and artsy fit the
Ada Lovelace, a gifted mathematician from the end bill here as well).They are thus creating a paradigm
of the 19th century, who helped Charles Babbage in which fewer women today play leading roles in
with his work on his famous calculator, the Differ- high-tech industries.
ence Engine; she also helped with Babbage’s analyt-
Cyberfeminism(s): Origins, Definitions and Overview
Since the early 1990s, the main goal of cyberfeminism has been to analyze issues of gender, new
technologies and, especially, the internet. There
are, however, disagreements in terminology: “cyberfeminism” has been associated with the third
wave of feminism characterized by the diversity
of topics and the fluidity of the approach to gender; at the same time it has been viewed as a term
in opposition to feminism. In tracing the roots of
this particular state of the gender from the golden
age of invention to our current technologically sophisticated era, I am attempting to make a point
that, regardless of the admirable technological
achievements that act for the betterment of society, age-old gender stereotypes prevail. However,
I believe, as the cyberfeminist movement believes,
that this new age has indeed created opportunities
for women that have yet to be explored. This is, to
a certain extent, the intent of this paper.
and is fairly typical of the enthusiasms generated by
the internet. According to cyberfeminists like Sadie Plant, the internet is a quintessentially female
technology. First, the values of the internet, like
the free exchange of information, the lessening of
hierarchy and the nurturing aspects of virtual communities, are female values. Second, networking
technology is a final proof that the technology is
out of control and that the traditional male quest of
control can no longer operate. Hence, she claims
that the internet represents nothing less than the
death of patriarchy as it is a quintessentially female
technology.
Evolution of the Term “Cyberfeminism”
Typically, the cyberfeminists are not just a carbon
copy of traditional feminists, but rather operate
from different premises. For example, traditional
feminism states that despite the claims of gender
being less important in cyberspace, the internet
is still a sexist environment and, essentially, the
struggle must go on.
According to Merriam-Webster, the prefix “cyber” refers to everything is associated with computers and computer networks. Following World
War II, Norbert Wiener coined the term “cybernetics,” revamping the old Greek term meaning
“to steer, to govern”; Wiener used the term in an
interdisciplinary context of biological, technical and social systems to investigate their automatic processes (Cybernetics, n.d.). The term
“cyborg,” a mash-up of the term “cybernetic
organism,” derives from the early 1960s and is
used to describe the relationship between humans
and machines.
Cyberfeminism provides a more optimistic reading
In the 1980s, world-renowned cyberpunk author
Cyberfeminism Defined
Figure 1. Regardless of the admirable technological achievements that act for the betterment of society, age-old
gender stereotypes prevail. Image source: http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/projects/98-99/HAC/index.html.
23
Cyberfeminism(s): Origins, Definitions and Overview
William Gibson coined the term “cyberspace,”
which implies a spaceless virtual world of electronic networks, an ethereal space of, as he calls
it, “consensual hallucination” (Cyberspace, n.d.).
In this non-physical space, the concept of the body
as we know it has vanished, with the flesh taking
the form of a conductor. This approach in his fiction indicates holistic, sometimes sexist, fantasy,
because, for the most part, women are treated as
fem-robots (“fembots”) and cyberbabes. (Similar
concepts have been explored in such foundational
science fiction films as The Matrix and Blade Runner.) Gibson’s use of that term has exploded into
numerous combinations such as cyberbody, cybersex, cybermoney and many other permutations.
24
In the feminist context, the addition of the prefix
“cyber” to feminism—creating cyberfeminism—
has created an association between feminism and
computer technologies. Cyber-hype and its attachment to feminist movements in the early 1990s
created enormous potential—based on its status as
synonym for the exciting new computer technology and its aura of euphoria, it inspired new territories for contemplations and redefinitions of both
gender and feminism in general. The very concept
of Donna Haraway’s genderless cyborg, with its
fluid nature that lives in the consensual hallucination of the computer matrix and which is neither/
nor (i.e., male/female), releases women from
their gendered stereotypes, opens up new territory to both men and women, and creates many
opportunities for women to grow as individuals in
equal measure with men.
ing into full consideration issues of age, race,
class and political differences, thus assigning
cyberfeminism(s) its/their heterogeneous characteristics. (Wilding, a U.S. artist and a cyberfeminist, is also an activist who has seized on the global
nature of the electronic age as an opportunity
Figure 2. Lynn Randolph’s Cyborg (1989). This image
was used for Haraway’s book Simians, Cyborgs, and
Women. Haraway has remained passionate about Ran-
for connecting women across nations, offerIt is interesting to note that the choice fell on
ing support and creating a global community.)
“cyber”—and not, for instance, on “techno-” or
Within the context of constantly fluctuating
“virtual”—to indicate an innovative approach to
electronic media, cyberfeminism(s) grow(s) by
feminism. “Cyber” has the role of differentiating
continuously changing.
the new theories and practices within the framework of new technologies from the earlier feminist As a result of the dynamic nature of the electronic
movements that were not associated with comput- environment, the definitions of cyberfeminism(s)
ers and technologies. How
much has been accomplished
I believe, as the cyberfeminist movement
since its implementation is yet
believes, that this new age has indeed
to be seen, but one thing is certain: it has created a new life.
created opportunities for women that have
According to Faith Wilding (n.d.), once we link
feminism(s) to “cyber,” meaning to govern and
control, we create some great opportunities for
feminism within the framework of the electronic
age. Cyberfeminism(s) could link the disparate
lives and experiences of woman trans-nationally
and trans-culturally in the integrated circuit, tak-
yet to be explored.
are very diverse and heterogeneous, so much so
that we could easily argue that “cyber” is not the
prefix to feminism, that, in fact, feminism is properly suffix to “cyber.”
Cyberfeminism(s): Origins, Definitions and Overview
I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.
– Donna Haraway,“Cyborg Manifesto”
The phenomenon of the cybernetic organism, or
cyborg, has been the focal point of cyberfeminist
movements since the publication of Donna Haraway’s pioneering and influential article, “The
Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”
(1985/1991). The cyborg, which to Haraway is
the non-gendered symbol of the future, many consider to be the beginnings of cyberfeminist theories, activism and art. In “Manifesto,” she explains
how unclear the boundary between the physical
and non-physical has become in the new age of
technologies and also how the figure of the cyborg undercuts entrenched notions of categories
of a single identity, especially of women, where
the identity is solely based on sex that pre-exists
gender. It is a hybrid body, a creature of the postgendered, postmodern world that becomes the
epitome of the polymorphous information society. It is transgendered and surpasses dualities as it
embraces multiple personalities that could be only
partial or even contradictory; it combines its many
parts into a “higher unity.” It is a metaphor of femi-
Figure 3. Screenshot from All New Gen, a video game
created by VNS Matrix.
tion of taking sides in the gendered world (she has
never even used the term “cyberfeminism”); instead, she envisions a cyborg that transcends the
barriers of gender dualities, hierarchical categories of the natural and artificial, of the organic and
technological, a cyborg as a future beyond gender.
Her cyborg world is not afraid of having close
relationships with animals or machines, and it is
not afraid of partial identities and contradictory
multiple personalities.
Haraway’s famous motto that “I would rather be
a cyborg than a goddess” (1985/1991, p. 181)
implies the movement from the organic, holistic
25
Figure 4. VNS Matrix Poster from the exhibition of the Experimental Art Foundation, Australia. Image source: http://
www.eaf.asn.au/
nist subjects, a delineating figure that transcends
hierarchical categories of the natural and artificial,
organic and technological. Yet, she does not place
technology, which is male-dominated, on one side
and the female and nature on the other.
It is important to note that Haraway has no inten-
world in which the female body returns to nature
(which was the platform for earlier feminist movements), to the diverse, heterogeneous world of
technology that she embraces:
The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world;
it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal
Cyberfeminism(s): Origins, Definitions and Overview
and promises complex and inter-related networks which in the end will bring down masculine domination. Plant offers a utopian version
of the feminine relationship to the machine by
indicating that the technologies essentially belong
to women: “The matrix weaves itself in a future
which has no place for a historical man” (1996,
The theme of cyborg as a creature of the post- p. 132). Her use of the term “weaving” recalls the
history of women’s labor, in
The matrix weaves itself in a future which which women stayed at home
has no place for a historical man.
and dedicated their time to
artwork while men played the
modern, fragmented world, is a promise roles of hunters and breadwinners (this same asthat will dissolve the longstanding, clear-cut sociation is explored by Freud, who saw a woman
boundaries between sexes and will become as the other/the weaver (Plant, 1997)). Today’s
crucial as the cyberfeminist(s) grow(s) with the technology, represented as matrix, refers back to
technological progress.
the network of digital “threads,” that is, “weaving.”
Plant believes that in the new technologies men
After Haraway: Sadie Plant and VNS Matrix
will lose everything—their domination and powHardware, software, wetware—before their beginnings er. Technology can now give women something
and beyond their ends, women have been the simulators, that they never had before—total erasure of the
male presence.
assemblers, and the programmers of the digital machine.
symbiosis… In a sense, the cyborg has no origin
story in the Western sense; a final irony since
the cyborg is also a powerful apocalyptic telos
of the “West’s” escalating domination of abstract
individuation, an ultimate self united at last from
dependency, a man in space. (p. 150)
– Sadie Plant, Zeros and Ones
Sadie Plant
26
Zeros and Ones was written in an era (i.e., the early
1990s) when enthusiasm for new technologies cre-
The invention of the term cyberfeminism is associated with the year 1992. Two parties, from two
different parts of the world, began to use the same
term at around the same time, with different platforms: Sadie Plant, a cultural theorist from Great
Britain, and the art collective VNS Matrix from
Australia. Each side claims the ownership of the
movement’s initiation. However, both heavily relied on the philosophy of Donna Haraway and the
“Cyborg Manifesto,” which has become a seminal
piece within cyberfeminism.
Sadie Plant is interested in the deep history of the
technologically feminine. Plant traces female associations with technology back to the computer programmers Lovelace and Hopper (both mentioned
previously) and, by associating the symbolism of
the title of Zeros and Ones as a binary code in the
machines, she claims that women have always been
inextricably tied to technologies, beginning with
telephone operators, assemblers, typewriters, etc.
(see also Figure 1). For her, women are intelligent
machines; the zero that is the nothingness of the binary code is also “0-ther,” on the opposite side of 1
(Galloway, n.d.).
In Zeros and Ones, Plant offers an elaborate story,
often ephemeral, which connects women and
machines as “other” in relation to male culture
Figure 5. VNS Matrix’s Cyberfeminist Manifesto. Image source: http://www.sysx.org/gashgirl/VNS/TEXT/
PINKMANI.HTM
ated promises and opened territory for the liberation of women from the rule of men. As indicated
earlier, the hybrid cyborg living in the matrix of
zeros and ones, freed from gender duality, opens
up possibilities for both sexes to explore their
identities. Sadie Plant is viewed by many as a utopian because, unfortunately, the internet and new
technologies were not created in a vacuum, and
all the old gender stereotypes have been directly
transferred to this new, “liberating” environment.
Cyberfeminism(s): Origins, Definitions and Overview
At the beginning of the 21st century, however,
even as we are seeing some shifts in the voices of
women on the internet, inherited structures still
prevail. The presence of women on the internet
has become more pronounced as they continue to
search for their individual voices in e-businesses,
RPGs, forums and elsewhere. Additionally, they
have organized international conferences dedicated to cyberfeminist issues in an effort to consolidate their heterogeneous platforms.
created a billboard poster announcing their “Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century.” The centerpiece of the poster occupies three
floating, dreamlike, vaguely female figures mutating out of a marine-like fossil base, their arms
raised in an expression of power. The figures are
both masculine and feminine, products of air, sky,
VNS Matrix
In Australia during the early 1990s, four artists
calling themselves VNS Matrix formulated the
First Cyberfeminist Manifesto. Their work was in
different artistic media, but their topics were often
about feminism and cultural theories. Their investigations covered such areas as male domination
and control in new technologies, the construction
of new social space and issues of identity and sexuality in cyberspace. VNS Matrix referred to themselves as “Geekgirls.” Anarchic, ironic, perverse
and subversive, their goal was to “infect” certain
overarching patriarchal notions of narrative and
structure through the use of viral symbology and
the belief that “...women who hijack the tools of
domination and control introduce a rupture into
highly systematised culture by infecting the machines with radical thought, diverting them from
their inherent purpose of linear topdown mastery”
(VNS Matrix, n.d.).
As a testimony to their anarchic approach to the
dominance of men in technologies, VNS Matrix
Figure 6. The Anatomically Correct Oscar billboard created by Guerrilla Girls. Image source: http://www.guer-
earth and water, simultaneously in the past, present and future. The celestial globe that they hold
has the words of the manifesto inscribed in it:
“[W]e are the virus of the new world disorder
rupturing the symbolic from within…” (1991; see
figures 4 and 5).The poster announces a new era in
cyberfeminist art—one that comments ironically
on the masculine fantasies of domination.
The mutating figures in this poster open up the
space for Haraway’s cyborg: a postmodern, fragmented, post-gendered, post-dualistic world, the
world of “All New Gen,” a multimedia project that
Figure 7. “Doll Yoko” net.art project by Francesca da Rimini. Image source: http://dollyoko.thing.net
27
Cyberfeminism(s): Origins, Definitions and Overview
Figure 8. VNS Matrix Art Collective. Image source: http://lx.sysx.org/vnsmatrix.html
28
VNS created in 1993 (Figure 3). “All New Gen”
was envisioned as an interactive piece in the form
of a parody of often violent and male-dominated
shoot-‘em-up computer games; it makes fun of everything that is masculine and macho-man oriented. The motto of the game is “Be aware that there
is no moral code in the zone” (Breeze, n.d.). Here
they try not to address any specific gender, since
both men and women can play. However, men with
stereotypical “masculine” qualities are warned that
in this game there is no place for those who feel
ego-threatened.
In their work, VNS Matrix make an attempt to rethink the boundary that exists between that which
is natural and the technological (the very name of
the collective, VNS Matrix speaks to that: “VNS”
sounds like “Venus,” the goddess of love).
This statement has associations with one of her net.
art projects, “Doll Yoko” (da Ramini, Dominguez,
& Grimm, n.d.), inspired by her stay in Kyoto, Japan, where she learned of the treatment of girls
as unwanted children, or “ghosts” as she calls them
(Figure 7).Local people showed her a pond where
for centuries women had drowned their baby
daughters because they were female, not male.The
story haunted her; as a result, she created this project, in which she was able to express her disgust by
using disturbing imagery; the online environment
gave her an opportunity to create a multidimensional, fragmented story that branches off into numerous directions as she weaves elements of her
story, including an email dialogue she had at the
time, with an activist, a New York-based Mexican
activist named Ricardo Dominguez. “Doll Yoko”
became an embodiment of all the drowned girls.
Francesca da Rimini, one of the more active members of the collective who continues to create art,
calls herself Gash Girl:
All women are ghosts and should rightly be feared.
I am Gash Girl . . . Puppet Mistress . . . Voice
Idol . . . Doll Yoko.
Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” was the major in-
– from “DollYoko”
Exquisite Aberrant Intelligence. Ghost AI.
These are my stories. I will not remain silent.
They are all true.
I am not mad. I have wept enough.
( Lies. Lies. ) (gashgirl, n.d.)
Figure 9. Banner for Guerrilla Girls’ website. Image
source: http://www.guerillagirls.com/
Cyberfeminism(s): Origins, Definitions and Overview
fluence upon VNS Matrix. The name of the collective itself, VNS Matrix, is indicative of this, as it
requires deciphering, like hacking computer code,
which in the name itself finds close ties with technology. “VNS” has its origins in the Roman mythologies (i.e., VNS=Venus, goddess of love). The
Latin word “matri” (as in “Matrix”) links the term
to the female body; “matrix,” in technical terms,
has many scientific connotations attached to it in
modern culture; for instance, the matrix featured
in science fiction writer William Gibson’s novels
is a conceptual space where numbers and codes
scroll to form the so-called real events. The matrix
also has roots in primitive arcade games. But why
did the collective choose to pair the very feminine
character of Venus with the male-dominated world
of matrices? Venus denotes ideas such as seduction, feminine power and control—as well as love,
which is softer than the notion of “matrix.” However, as indicated above, “VNS” is coded as “matrix,” being made of numbers and codes. Therefore
it is easy to find the close connection between the
female (VNS/Venus) and the male (Matrix).
ing cyberfeminism and consequently, very different, sometimes quite contradictory, responses are
generated. For instance,
•
•
•
•
Cyberfeminism is certainly feminism whose
focus is digital media
Driving force for the discussions about art
and politics
Revised version of feminism committed to
new political issues as a result of globalization
and new media social structures
The new product and marketing strategies at
the same time (VNS Matrix, n.d.)
Suzanna Paasonen, a Finnish cyberfeminist whose
dissertation was dedicated to the theories and applications of this new movement (resulting in the
book Figures of Fantasy), gave a general, possible
definition based on the activities of cyberfeminists
and cultural theorists in Europe and the U.S. Generally speaking, cyberfeminism embraces feminist
acquisition of information and computer technologies on both theoretical and practical levels, and
it questions the relationship of the domination of
man in the world of technologies. In new media
The Shifting Nature of Definition
studies, cyberfeminism is considered to be identiWithin the initiation of the cyberfeminist move- cal with gender studies of new media that explore
ment, it is worth noting that its initiators ap- the inter-relatedness of gender, embodiment and
proached cyberfeminism from different perspec- technologies. Aside from this general definition,
tives. However, these various theories co-exist, and the concept of cyberfeminism is very fluid, as the
OBN group claims. Based on the oriToday cyberfeminism sits at the
gins of cyberfeminism, and keeping in
crossroads of art, theory and activism. mind the theories of Sadie Plant and
Donna Haraway as well as the artwork
cyberfeminism was created in that context. It is of VNS Matrix, it is possible to deduce three differtherefore unsurprising that cyberfeminist concepts ent viewpoints/definitions, according to Paasonen
of the female gender and relationships between (2005):
women and technologies (as well as the politics
1.Plant’s version of cyberfeminism stands for
therein) are so diverse.
an aim to depict technologically saturated
In 1997 at the First International Conference of
Cyberfeminists in Kassel, Germany, a group of
cyberfeminists from the United States and Europe
met with the goal of defining this new movement.
This gave birth to the OBN website (OBN is an abbreviation of “Old Boys Network”), which was created to document the conference topics. However,
the participants decided not to define the movement because, they acknowledged, cyberfeminism
embraces many fields of study: politics, culture,
art, communication theories and technology. Instead, they came up with a list of statements of Figure 10. “Girls need modems,” GeekGirls postcard.
what cyberfeminism is not, entitled “100 anti-theImage source: http://www.geekgirl.com.au/geekgirl/
ses” (OBN, n.d.). One section of the OBN website
is dedicated to Q&A, the results of which are very postoffice/illustrations_techa.html
interesting as it contains various questions regard-
29
Cyberfeminism(s): Origins, Definitions and Overview
culture and the (im)possibilities of women
in this context. Philosopher/feminist Rosi
Braidotti and Donna Haraway belong to this
category, as well.
2.The second possible definition of cyberfemi nism implies critical analysis of cybernet ics in relation to feminism. This definition
can be associated with many strains: both
Haraway and Sarah Kember as it relates to
artificial life, Alison Adams’ explorations into
artificial intelligence, Katherine Hayles’s work
in cybernetics, and projects by subRosa, a
collective of artists, activists and theoreticians
of which Faith Wilding is a found ing member. (It is important to
note that some of those listed here, such
as Adams, do not want any sort of association
with cyberfeminism.)
3.The third possible definition refers to the
analysis of women as users of information
technologies and digital media, as well as
analysis of the structures of power.This move ment is prevalent in the U.S.
30
Today cyberfeminism sits at the crossroads of art,
theory and activism. What is needed now is to
transfer interests from utopian visions to the critical discussions of power, money and business on
the internet.
According to Julianne Pierce, a member of VNS
Matrix, new cyberfeminism implies creating foundations on which it is possible to further build so
that in this new millennium women can create
their own pathways and their own unique companies. However, the question remains: What shall
we do with cyberfeminism when it takes roots and
reaches its destination? Paasonen proposes that we
should take the movement and its future trends
very seriously, especially Haraways’ proposition
from two decades ago—we should explore the
possibilities of cooperation between feminists and
women, not in the direction of their oppositions;
we should think together with the previous movements of feminists and other feminists outside of
those.
The division between new and old feminisms, both
on and off the internet, does not work in the long
run as an analytical approach. Instead, cyberfeminism must live online and offline at the same time,
and it must consider all the implications this division brings about. It can question all these problems, but in order to achieve its goals, it must build
a solid foundation in order to become situated, be
embodied and be political (Paasonen, 2005).
The future is femail!
–Verena Kuni
References
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About the Author
Vesna Dragoljov is the Associate Professor in
Multimedia at UAT. She teaches a variety of
classes related to new media and technology and
arts. In her research work, she strives to integrate
various fields of study that she has been involved
in through her education, including linguistics
theories, history of art with a focus on contemporary art, and new media technologies, among
others, and how they all play together on an
interdisciplinary level to create a new product.
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