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T E
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WHERE
IS FEMINISM IN CYBERFEMINISM?
Faith
Wilding
The
First Cyberfeminist International took place in Kassel, Germany, September
20-28, l997, as part of the Hybrid Workspace at Documenta X. After eight
days of intense daily life and work with over 30 participants at this
event, Faith Wilding reflects on the significance of these discussions
and their implications both for the attempts to define, and the arguments
against defining, cyberfeminism. While these and subsequent on-line
discussions, especially through the FACES list, provide a browser through
which possible practices of a cyberfeminist movement become visible,
what concerns her is how such a politics might be translated into practice
for an engaged (cyber)feminist politics on the Net.
Against
Definition
The
question of how to define cyberfeminism is at the heart of the often
contradictory contemporary positions of women working with new technologies
and feminist politics. Sadie Plant's position on cyberfeminism, for
example, has been identified as "an absolutely post-human insurrection
- the revolt of an emergent system which includes women and computers,
against the world view and material reality of a patriarchy which still
seeks to subdue them. This is an alliance of 'the goods' against their
masters, an alliance of women and machines" (1). This utopian vision
of revolt and merger between woman and machine is also evident in VNS
Matrix's Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century: "we are
the virus of the new world disorder/rupturing the symbolic from within/saboteurs
of big daddy mainframe/the clitoris is a direct line to the matrix..."(2)
Another position in this debate is offered by Rosi Braidotti: "....cyberfeminism
needs to cultivate a culture of joy and affirmation....Nowadays, women
have to undertake the dance through cyberspace, if only to make sure
that the joy-sticks of cyberspace cowboys will not reproduce univocal
phallicity under the mask of multiplicity...."(3)
The press release issued at the cyberfeminist discussions in Kassel
declared that: "The 1st CYBERFEMINIST INTERNATIONAL slips through
the traps of definition with different attitudes towards art, culture,
theory, politics, communication and technology--the terrain of the Internet."
What strangely emerged from these discussions was the attempt to define
cyberfeminism by refusal, evident not only in the intensity of the arguments,
but also in the l00 antitheses devised there - for example: "cyberfeminism
is not a fashion statement/ sajbrfeminizm nije usamljen/cyberfeminism
is not ideology, but browser/cyberfeminismus ist keine theorie/cyberfeminismo
no es una frontera/(4)..." Yet the reasons given by those who refused
to define cyberfeminism - even though they called themselves cyberfeminists
- indicate a profound ambivalence in many wired women's relationship
to what they perceive to be a monumental past feminist history, theory,
and practice. Three main manifestations of this ambivalence and their
relevance to contemporary conditions facing women immersed in technology
bear closer examination.
1.
Repudiation of "old style" (1970s) feminism
According
to this argument, "old style" (1970s) feminism is characterized
as monumental, often constricting (politically correct), guilt inducing,
essentialist, anti-technology, anti-sex, and not relevant to women's
circumstances in the new technologies (judging from the Kassel discussions,
this conception is common in the US and Western Europe). Ironically,
in actual practice cyberfeminism has already adopted many of the strategies
of avant garde feminist movements, including strategic separatism (women
only lists, self-help groups, chat groups, networks, and woman to woman
technological training), feminist cultural, social, and language theory
and analysis, creation of new images of women on the Net to counter
rampant sexist stereotyping (feminist avatars, cyborgs, genderfusion),
feminist net critique, strategic essentialism, and the like. The repudiation
of historical feminism is problematic because it throws out the baby
with the bathwater and aligns itself uneasily with popular fears, stereotypes,
and misconceptions about feminism.
Why is it that so many younger women (and men) in the US (and Europe)
know so little about even very recent histories of women, not to speak
of past feminist movements and philosophies? It is tempting to point
the finger at educational systems and institutions that still treat
the histories of women, and of racial ethnic, and marginalized populations,
as ancillary to "regular" history, relegating them to specialized
courses or departments. But the problems lie deeper than this. The political
work of building a movement is expertise that must be relearned by every
generation, and needs the help of experienced practitioners. The struggle
to keep practices and histories of resistance alive today is harder
in the face of a commodity culture which thrives on novelty, speed,
obsolescence, evanescence, virtuality, simulation, and utopian promises
of technology. Commodity culture is forever young and makes even the
recent past appear remote and mythic. While young women are just entering
the technological economy, many older feminists are unsure how to connect
to the issues of women working with new technology, and how to go about
adapting feminist strategies to the conditions of the new information
culture. The problem for cyberfeminism, then, is how to incorporate
the lessons of history into an activist feminist politics which is adequate
for addressing women's issues in technological culture.
To be sure, the problem of losing historical knowledge and active connection
to radical movements of the past is not limited to feminism--it is endemic
to leftist movements in general. By arguing for the importance of knowing
history I am not paying nostalgic homage to moments of past glory. If
cyberfeminists wish to avoid making the mistakes of past feminists,
they must understand the history of feminist struggle. And if they are
to expand their influence on the Net and negotiate issues of difference
across generational, economic, educational, racial, national, and experiential
boundaries, they must seek out coalitions and alliances with diverse
groups of women involved in the integrated circuit of global technologies.
At the same time, close familiarity with postcolonial studies, and with
the histories of imperialist and colonialist domination--and resistance
to them--are equally important for an informed practice of cyberfeminist
politics.
2.
Cybergrrl-ism
Judging
by a quick net browse, one of the most popular feminist rebellions currently
practiced by women on the Net is "cybergrrl-ism" in all of
its permutations: "webgrrls," "riot grrls," "guerrilla
girls," "bad grrls," etc. As Rosi Braidotti (5) and others
have pointed out, the often ironic, parodic, humorous, passionate, angry,
or aggressive work of many of these recent "grrrl" groups
is an important manifestation of new subjective and cultural feminine
representations in cyberspace. Currently there is quite a wide variety
of articulations of feminist and protofeminist practices in these various
'groups' which range from "anyone female can join" chatty
mailing lists, to sci-fi, cyberpunk, and femporn zines; antidiscrimination
projects; sexual exhibitionism; transgender experimentation; lesbian
separatism; medical self-help; artistic self-promotion; job and dating
services; and just plain mouthing off. Cybergrrl-ism generally seems
to subscribe to a certain amount of net utopianism--an "anything
you wanna be and do in cyberspace is cool" attitude. Despite the
gripings against men in general, which pervade some of the discussions
and sites, most cybergrrls don't seem interested in engaging in a political
critique of women's position on the Net -- instead they adopt the somewhat
anti-theory attitude which seems to prevail currently; they'd rather
forge ahead to express their ideas directly in their art and interactive
practices.
While cybergrrls sometimes draw (whether consciously or unconsciously)
on feminist analyses of mass media representations of women--and on
the strategies and work of many feminist artists--they also often unthinkingly
appropriate and recirculate sexist and stereotyped images of women from
popular media--the buxom gun moll, the supersexed cyborg femme, and
the 50's tupperware cartoon women are favorites--without any analysis
or critical recontextualization. Creating more positive and complex
images of women that break the gendered codes prevailing on the Net
(and in the popular media) takes many smart heads, and there is richly
suggestive feminist research available, ranging from Haraway's monstrous
cyborgs, Judith Butler's fluid gender performativity, to Octavia Butler's
recombinant genders. All manner of hybrid beings can unsettle the old
masculine/feminine binaries.
Cybergrrlish lines of flight are important as vectors of investigation,
research, invention, and affirmation. But these can't replace the hard
work that is needed to identify and change the gendered structures,
content, and effects of the new technologies on women worldwide. If
it is true, as Sadie Plant argues that "women have not merely had
a minor part to play in the emergence of the digital machines.....[that]
women have been the simulators, assemblers, and programmers of the digital
machines, (6)" then why are there so few women in visible positions
of leadership in the electronic world? Why are women a tiny percentage
of computer programmers, software designers, systems analysts, and hackers,
while they are the majority of teletypers, chip-assemblers and installers,
and lowskilled tele-operators that keep the global data and infobanks
operating? Why is the popular perception still that women are technophobic?
Sadly, the lesson of Ada Lovelace is that even though women have made
major contributions to the invention of computers and computer programming,
this hasn't changed the perception--or reality--of women's condition
in the new technologies. Being bad grrls on the Internet is not by itself
going to challenge the status quo, though it may provide refreshing
moments of iconoclastic delirium. But if grrrl energy and invention
were to be coupled with engaged political theory and practice.....Imagine!
Imagine cyberfeminists theorists teaming up with brash and cunning grrl
netartists to visualize new female representations of bodies, languages,
and subjectivities in cyberspace! Currently (in the US) there is little
collaboration between academic feminist theorists, feminist artists,
and popular women's culture on the Net. What would happen if these groups
worked together to visualize and interpret new theory, and circulate
it in accessible popular forms? Imagine using existing electronic networks
to link diverse groups of women computer users (including teleworkers
and keystrokers) in an exchange of information about their day-to-day
working conditions and lives on the Net; imagine using this information
network as an action base to address issues of women digital workers
in the global restructuring of work. Such projects could weave together
both the utopian and political aspirations of cyberfeminism.
3.
Net utopianism
As
noted in a previous essay on the political condition of cyberfeminism,
there is much to be said for considering cyberfeminism a promising new
wave of feminist practice that can contest technologically complex territories
and chart new ground for women (7). There is a tendency though among
many cyberfeminists to indulge techno-utopian expectations that the
new e-media will offer women a fresh start to create new languages,
programs, platforms, images, fluid identities and multi-subject definitions
in cyberspace; that in fact women can recode, redesign, and reprogram
information technology to help change the feminine condition. This net
utopianism declares cyberspace to be a free space where gender does
not matter--you can be anything you want to be regardless of your "real"
age, sex, race, or economic position--and refuses a fixed subject position.
In other words, cyberspace is regarded as an arena inherently free of
the same old gender relations and struggles. However, it is of utmost
importance to recognize that the new media exist within a social framework
that is already established in its practices and embedded in economic,
political, and cultural environments that are still deeply sexist and
racist. Contrary to the dreams of many net utopians, the Net does not
automatically obliterate hierarchies through free exchanges of information
across boundaries. Also, the Net is not a utopia of nongender; it is
already socially inscribed with regard to bodies, sex, age, economics,
social class, and race. Despite the indisputable groundbreaking contributions
by women to the invention and development of computing technology, today's
Internet is a contested zone that historically originated as a system
to serve war technologies, and is currently part of masculinist institutions.
Any new possibilities imagined within the Net must first acknowledge
and fully take into account the implications of its founding formations
and present political conditions. To be sure, it is a radical act to
insert the word feminism into cyberspace, and to attempt to interrupt
the flow of masculine codes by boldly declaring the intention to mongrelize,
hybridize, provoke, and disrupt the male order of things in the Net
environment. Historically, feminism has always implied dangerous disruptions,
covert and overt actions, and war on patriarchal beliefs, traditions,
social structures--and it has offered utopian visions of a world without
gender roles. A politically smart and affirmative cyberfeminism, using
wisdom learned from past struggles, can model a brash disruptive politics
aimed at deconstructing the patriarchal conditions that currently produce
the codes, languages, images, and structures of the Net.
Definition
as a political strategy
Linking
the terms "cyber" and "feminism" creates a crucial
new formation in the history of feminism(s) and of the e-media. Each
part of the term necessarily modifies the meaning of the other. "Feminism"
(or more properly, "feminisms") has been understood as a historical--and
contemporary--transnational movement for justice and freedom for women,
which depends on women's activist participation in networked local,
national, and international groups (8). It focuses on the material,
political, emotional, sexual, and psychic conditions arising from women's
differentialized social construction and gender roles. Link this with
"cyber," which means to steer, govern, control, and we conjure
up the staggering possibility of feminism at the electronic helm. CyberfeminismS
could imagine ways of linking the historical and philosophical practices
of feminism to contemporary feminist projects and networks both on and
off the Net, and to the material lives and experiences of women in the
integrated circuit, taking full account of age, race, class, and economic
differences. 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 technoscience have on all our lives.
While
refusing definition seems like an attractive, non-hierarchical, anti-identity
tactic, it in fact plays into the hands of those who would prefer a
net quietism: Give a few lucky women computers to play with and they'll
shut up and stop complaining. This attitude is one toward which cyberfeminists
should be extremely wary and critical. Access to the Internet is still
a privilege, and by no means to be regarded as a universal right (nor
is it necessarily useful or desirable for everyone). While brilliant
consumer marketing has suceeded in making ownership of a PC seem as
imperative as having a telephone, computers are in fact powerful tools
that can provide the possessor with a political advantage (the personal
computer is the political computer). If the Internet is increasingly
the channel through which many people (in the overdeveloped nations)
get the bulk of their information, then it matters greatly how women
participate in the programming, policy setting, and content formations
of the Net, for information coming across the Net needs to be contextualized
both by the receiver and by the sender. On the Internet, feminism has
a new transnational audience which needs to be educated in its history
and its contemporary conditions as they prevail in different countries.
For many, cyberfeminism could be their entry point into feminist discourse
and activism. While there is a great deal of information about feminism
available on the Net--and new sites are opening up all the time--it
must be remembered that the more this information can be contextualized
politically, and linked to practices, activism, and conditions of every
day life, the more it is likely to be effective in helping to connect
and mobilize people (9). A potent example is in the Zamir Network (Zamir
"for peace") of BBS and e-mail that was created after the
eruption of civil war in Yugoslavia in l99l to link peace activists
in Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Bosnia across borders via host computers
in Germany. The point is that computers are more than playful tools,
consumer toys, or personal pleasure machines--they are the master's
tools, and they have very different meanings and uses for different
populations. It will take crafty pilots to navigate these channels.
While cyberfeminists want to avoid the damaging mistakes of exclusion,
lesbophobia, political correctness, and racism, which sometimes were
part of past feminist thinking, the knowledge, experience, and feminist
analysis and strategies accumulated thus far are crucial for carrying
their work forward now. If the goal is to create a feminist politics
on the Net and to empower women, then cyberfeminists must reinterpret
and transpose feminist analysis, critique, strategies, and experience
to encounter and contest new conditions, new technologies, and new formations.
(Self)definition can be an emergent property that arises out of practice
and changes with the movements of desire and action. Definition can
be fluid and affirmative--a declaration of strategies, actions, and
goals. It can create crucial solidarity in the house of difference--solidarity,
rather than unity or consensus--solidarity that is a basis for effective
political action.
Cyberfeminists have too much at stake to be frightened away from tough
political strategizing and action by the fear of squabbles, ideologizing,
and political differences. If I'd rather be a cyberfeminist than a goddess,
I'd damned well better know why, and be willing to say so.
A
Cyberfeminist cell
How might cyberfeminists organize to work for a feminist political and
cultural environment on the Net? What are various areas of feminist
research and net activity that are already beginning to emerge as cyberfeminist
practice? The 1st Cyberfeminist International (CI) in Kassel serves
as an example of feminist Net organiz(m)ation.
Responsibility for organizing the CI workdays was taken on by OBN (Old
Boys Network)--an ad hoc group of about six women--in on-line consultation
with all participants. Because of the on-line communications between
the OBN leadership and participants, collaborative working relationships
and the content of the meetings were already established by the time
the participants met together face to face in Kassel. A shifting and
diverse group of more than thirty women ( self-selected by open invitation
to members of the FACES listserv, [with a core of about ten]) participated
in the CI.
From the first day this collaborative process--a recombinant form of
feminist group processes, anarchic self-organization, and rotating leadership--continued
to develop among women from more than eight countries and from different
economic, ethnic, professional, and political backgrounds. Each day
began with participants meeting in the Hybrid Workspace to work on various
taskforces (text, press, technical, final party, etc.) and to organize
the public program for the day. This was followed by three hours of
public lectures and presentations for Documenta audiences. Afterward
the closed group met again for dinner and to discuss issues such as
the definition of cyberfeminism, group goals, and future actions and
plans. Work was divided according to inclination and expertise; there
was no duty list and no expectation that everyone would work the same
amount of hours. Flexible schedules permitted conviviality, impulsive
actions, brainstorming, and private time. Constant connection of participants
to the FACES listserv was maintained electronically. Practically all
group activities were video- and audiotaped and photographed. Participants'
personal computer equipment was set up in the open work/meeting space
and most of the lectures were accompanied by projected images from the
lecturers' web-sites. One participant taught the group how to set up
CU_SeeMe_ connections and continued to participate virtually after she
had to leave, and two young Russians trying to join the CI in Kassel,
faxed a diary of their illegal journey as they jumped from from country
to country to evade visa problems. Thus there was an interesting interplay
between virtuality and flesh presence. The face to face interactions
were experienced as much more intense and energizing than the virtual
communications, and forged different degrees of affinity between various
individuals and subgroups, while at the same time they made all kinds
of differences more palpable. Brainstorming and spontaneous actions
seemed to spring more readily from face-to-face meetings. The opportunity
for immediate question and answer sessions and extended discussion after
the lectures also enabled more intimate and searching interchanges than
are usually possible through on-line communications. Most important,
all presentations, hands-on training, and discussions took place in
a context of intense debate about feminism, which produced a constant
awareness of the lived relationship of women and technology.
The wide variety of content presented in the lectures, web projects,
and workshops touched on many of the hottest topics of concern to cyberfeminism:
Theories of the visibility of sexual difference on the Net; digital
self-representations of online women as avatars and databodies; analyses
of gender representations, sex-sites, cybersex, and femporn; strategies
of genderfusion and hybridity to combat stereotyping, essentialism,
and sexist representations of women; feminism as a "browser";
the dangers of the fetishistic desire for information and the paranoia
created by the new technologies; dissemination of knowledge about women
in history; studies of differences between women and men programmers
and hackers; an examination of feminist electronic art strategies; feminist
models of technological education; health issues of wired women; and
discussion of how to organize and support feminist networking projects
in different countries (10).
The chief gains from the CI discussions were trust, friendship, a deeper
understanding and tolerance of differences; the ability to sustain discussions
about controversial and divisive issues without group rupture; and mutual
education about issues of women immersed in technology, as well as a
clearer understanding of the terrain for cyberfeminist intervention.
While the CI did not result in a formal list of goals, actions, and
concrete plans, we reached general agreement on areas in need of further
work and research. An ongoing concern is how to make cyberfeminism more
visible and effective in reaching diverse populations of women using
technology. Options discussed included creating a cyberfeminist search
engine that could link strategic feminist websites; country-by-country
reports of netactivity and cyberorganization for women; forming coalitions
with female technologists, programmers, scientists and hackers, to link
feminist Net theory, content and practice with technological research
and invention; education projects (for both men and women) in technology,
programming, and software and hardware design, that would address traditional
gender constructions and biases built into technology; and more research
on how the ongoing global restructuring of women's work results from
the pervasive changes introduced by information technology.
"(Cyber)Feminism
is a browser through which to see life." (11)
If cyberfeminists have the desire to research, theorize, work practically,
and make visible how women (and others) worldwide are affected by new
communications technologies, technoscience, and the capitalist dominations
of the global communications networks, they must begin by clearly formulating
cyberfeminisms' political goals and positions. Cyberfeminists have the
chance to create new formulations of feminist theory and practice that
address the complex new social, cultural, and economic conditions created
by global technologies. Strategic and politically savvy uses of these
technologies can facilitate the work of a transnational movement that
aims to infiltrate and assault the networks of power and communication
through activist-feminist projects of solidarity, education, freedom,
vision, and resistance. To be effective in creating a politicized feminist
environment on the Net that challenges its present gender, race, age,
and class structures, cyberfeminists need to draw on the researches
and strategies of avant garde feminist history and its critique of institutionalized
patriarchy. While affirming new possibilities for women in cyberspace,
cyberfeminists must critique utopic and mythic constructions of the
Net, and strive to work with other resistant netgroups in activist coalitions.
Cyberfeminists need to declare solidarity with transnational feminist
and postcolonial initiatives, and work to use their access to communications
technologies and electronic networks to support such initiatives.
NOTES
1. Caroline Bassett,
"With a Little Help from Our (New) Friends?" mute, August
l997, 46-49.
2. VNS Matrix webpage: [sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns/]
3. Rosi Braidotti, "Cyberfeminism with a difference." [www.let.ruu.nl/womens_studies/rosi/cyberfem.htm]
4. The complete l00 Antitheses can be found at Old Boys Network [http://www.icf.de/obn]
5. Braidotti. Ibid.
6. Sadie Plant, Zeros + Ones: Digital Women + the New Technocultures.
New York: Doubleday, l997. p. 37
7. Faith Wilding and Critical Art Ensemble, "Notes on the Political
Condition of Cyberfeminism."[http://mailer.fsu.edu/~sbarnes]
8. Using the term "feminism" is very different from using
the term "women"--although perhaps one should consider using
the term "cyberwomanism," which acknowledges the critique
of racist white feminism so justly made by Audrey Lorde, Alice Walker,
bell hooks, and others.
9. See, for example, the listings of l,000 feminist or women-related
sites in Shana Penn, The Women's Guide to The Wired World. New York:
Feminist Press, l997.
10. For more information on the First Cyberfeminist International and
papers see [http://www.icf.de/obn]
11. Alla Mitrofanova, presentation at the First Cyberfeminist International
in Kassel, September l997.
(Faith Wilding, a founding participant of the feminist art movement,
is a multi-media artist, writer, and feminist-activist currently living
in Pittsburgh, USA.)
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