DOCSLIB.ORG

Download Download

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Download Download MAPPING TECHNOLOGY ON THE BODY, AGAIN: TOYS R US, CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS, AND THE NEW ESSENTIALISM Nancy Steffen-Fluhr1 Abstract--The mapping of technological agency onto allows one of them to pretend-drive his sports car. The first masculinity requires ongoing cultural work. This paper five gifts listed inside the catalog are: a digital tape measure, examines several sites where that cultural work is being a cordless air pump, a professional leather tool carrier, a done most vigorously, including a Red Envelope mail-order Swiss army auto tool, and a star navigator. In direct contrast, catalog, a TV ad from Capital One, the Amazon.com/Toys R the Red Envelope Mother’s Day catalog had featured such Us Website, a news story on astronaut Laurel Clark, the gifts as a lavender heart wreath, a tranquility fountain, a Harry Potter book/film series, and the essentialist polemics heart toggle bracelet, and a pair of fuzzy pink slippers. of Christina Hoff Sommers. It demonstrates how marketers The story that the objects and images in the Red sell products (and ideologues sell ideas) by selling gender Envelope Father’s Day catalogue tell is quite clear: Male “normality,” exploiting the fear that any gain in identity is inseparable from technological agency—the technological agency by women will be accompanied by a ability to use tools to make things happen. So, too, is male commensurate loss in identity-as-agency by men. happiness. The cover photo acts out in miniature sociologist Judy Wajcman’s assertion that, historically, men have Index Terms—Technology, Gender, Children’s toys and tended to bond with each other around machines in ways books, Christina Hoff Sommers that exclude women [2]. Although there are many pictures throughout the catalog of Dad interacting with his Sons, For most people in the United States, the fact that women there are no images at all of Dad and his Daughters. are 51% of the population but less than 10% of the nation’s The Red Envelope Father’s Day and Mother’s Day engineers has an obvious explanation: the Geek Gene is on catalogs illustrate the paradoxical durability of pink/blue the Y chromosome. Although gender styles and gender stereotyping. US women today probably spend as technological styles have changed significantly in the last much time partitioning their hard drives as they do thirty years, the belief that technology is inherently a “guy crocheting tea cozies. Yet we continue to employ the thing” has remained remarkably intact. This persistence is “snakes n snails/sugar n spice” dichotomy as an everyday not merely residual. The mapping of technological agency organizing principal despite the fact it is recognizably false onto masculinity requires ongoing cultural work. to our lived experience. This is largely because binary This paper examines several sites where this cultural thinking is so convenient, both existentially and work is being done most vigorously, starting with the commercially. An undifferentiated yellow world, in which aggressively pink and blue marketing strategies that US human traits could float free, would be more interesting than mega-corporations still employ and concluding with the the Ken and Barbie world we choose to live in; but it would essentialist polemics of Christina Hoff Sommers, author of also entail more anxiety. A binary gender scheme promises the recent book The War Against Boys (2000). predictability, a state that many of us confuse with “security.” Predictability also significantly reduces risks and SELLING PINK AND BLUE costs for retail marketers who consequently encourage us to think pink and blue as much as possible. Thus, despite an Gender is to people as water is to fish, sociologist Judith increase in the number of unisex bathrooms and other radical Lorber once observed [1]. The gendering of technology is social changes that have taken place in US culture over the similarly pervasive and invisible. The assumption that men last thirty years, on test after test, Americans continue to have the technological “right stuff’ (and that women do not) characterize men and women in the same starkly bi-polar is not simply a historical residue of the time when the only terms that their grandparents did: Men are dominant, US engineering school was the male-exclusive West Point aggressive, independent, objective, competitive; women are Academy. It is hardwired into the 21st century US cultural emotional, subjective, understanding, empathetic. infrastructure. For example, consider the Red Envelope In the early 1970’s, psychologist Sandra Bem developed Father’s Day catalog that I received last year. The cover the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) in order to test her pictures a European-American man and two young boys, theory that “psychological androgyny” was the healthiest presumably his sons. They are all laughing happily as he human state. The consensus at the time was that healthy 1 Dr. Nancy Steffen-Fluhr, Murray Center for Women in Technology, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights, Newark, NJ 07102. [email protected]. WEPAN 2003 Conference June 8 - 11, 2003 Chicago, Illinois 1 psychological functioning required congruence between homophobia is inseparable from gynophobia. The feedback one’s self-definitions and the prevailing cultural norms for loop between the two continually reinforces the binary one’s sex. (Girls were expected to be “feminine”; boys, system that produced it. “masculine.”) Gender aschematic individuals were typed as In such a system, masculinity and femininity are deviant. Before the BSRI, instruments treated masculinity constructed as interdependent terms. They only have and femininity as opposite poles of the same scale, making it meaning in relationship to each other. That is, being a boy impossible even to measure androgyny. Bem’s innovation means not being a girl…just as being “white” means not was to employ two separate scales. Using a group of being “black”. The problem, of course, is that it is northern California college students as a cultural test-bed, impossible to prove a negative. In this sense, both she culled out a set of 20 adjectives that were strongly “masculinity” and the equation of masculinity and marked as stereotypical masculine traits and 20 adjectives technology are fragile concepts that require constant that were strongly marked as feminine. She added a third set propping up. If a woman could be instrumental, and thus of 20 words that were not strongly associated with either technological, and still be womanly, then traditional gender gender. On the BSRI, subjects use a seven point scale to rate categories themselves would become unstable. Men would how well each of these 60 adjectives describes them [3]. be in danger of having no separate ground to stand on in a For the last 25 years, I have administered the BSRI to zero sum game in which separation is the sine qua non of my students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Over identity survival. That is why the separation of femininity that time, there have been significant changes in response. and technological competence is such a persistent feature of For example, unlike Bem’s northern California students of US popular culture. the 1970’s, most of my students today do not regard the word athletic as strongly marked for gender. Women FEMALE GAIN IS MALE LOSS students in particular bristle at the adjectives gullible and childlike. However, both male and female students continue Contemporary mass media is permeated by the fear that to validate the underlying binary construct. They still tend to any gain in agency by women will be accompanied by a define men as instrumental and women as affective—and to commensurate loss in identity-as-agency by men. Today, as define instrumentality and affect as opposites. Since in the decades ago, stories about instrumental/technological contemporary world, instrumentality is canalized through women tend to foreground everything about them that is a- technological objects (the car, the computer), the attribution technological—i.e., nurturing. For example, in 1984, Good of greater affective competence to women inherently marks Housekeeping magazine ran a photo spread on two female them as technologically incompetent. In the zero-sum game astronauts, Dr. Rhea Seddon and Dr. Anna Fisher, both of gender stereotyping, a technologically adept woman is the highly-trained flight surgeons. The layout was entitled “First exception that proves the rule. Mothers to Fly in Space” [4]. (By the same token, astronaut Given the prevalence of female kick-boxers and leather Alan Shepard was “the first US father to fly in space,” but he girls in the current mass media (e.g. Shania Twain in her was never billed that way.) La plus ca change, la plus c’est “I’m Going to Get you Good” video), one might expect la meme chose. Nineteen years later, the MSNBC increased reporting of androgyny on the BSRI. And, indeed, anchorman ticked off the credentials of the seven astronauts my students are much more tolerant of gender aschemia than who had just died in the crash of the space shuttle Columbia: they were 25 years ago…but only for women. Androgyny is An Air Force pilot/mechanical engineer; a doctor/gymnast; a a trend that flows one way, from fem to butch, never the Navy aviator/track team star; an Air Force colonel with other way around. Both males and females in my classes advanced degrees in physics and chemistry. “There was even tend to support females in their desire to claim such traits as a mom onboard,” he added. The “mom” in question was self-reliance, independence, assertiveness, etc; but those Commander Laurel Salton Clark, a naval flight surgeon characteristics remain defined as inherently masculine even specializing in problems affecting crews of nuclear when women are said to possess them.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Christina Hoff Sommers
    A Conversation with CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS A resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former philosophy professor, Christina Hoff Sommers is a thoughtful analyst and trenchant critic of radical feminism. In this conversation, Sommers and Kristol discuss how American feminism, once focused on practical questions such as equal opportunity in employment for women, instead became a radical ideology that questioned the reality of sex differences. Narrating her own experiences as a speaker on college campuses, Sommers explains how the radical feminism of today's universities stifles debate. Finally, Sommers explains a recent controversy in the video game community, which she defends from charges of sexism in a widely-publicized episode known as "GamerGate." On claims of a “rape epidemic” on campus, Sommers says: It’s the result of advocacy research. You can get very alarming findings if you’re willing to interview a non-representative sample of people and if you’re willing to include a lot of behavior most of us don’t think of as assault. If you just play with those, you can get an epidemic. Rape, like all crimes, is way down. It’s at I think a 41- year low. [Rape on campus] is not 1 in 4, or 1 in 5 women, but something like 1 in 50. Still too much. But not [an epidemic]. On the feminist denial of sex differences, Sommers says: Femininity and masculinity are real. Women tend to be more nurturing and risk-averse and have usually a richer emotional vocabulary. Men tend to be a little less explicit about their emotions.
    [Show full text]
  • A Content Analysis of the Women Against Feminism Tumblr Page Lyndsey S
    Lehigh University Lehigh Preserve Theses and Dissertations 2015 A Content Analysis of the Women Against Feminism Tumblr Page Lyndsey S . Collins Lehigh University Follow this and additional works at: http://preserve.lehigh.edu/etd Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Collins, Lyndsey S ., "A Content Analysis of the Women Against Feminism Tumblr Page" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. 2559. http://preserve.lehigh.edu/etd/2559 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Lehigh Preserve. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Lehigh Preserve. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Content Analysis of the Women Against Feminism Tumblr by Lyndsey S. Collins A Thesis Presented to the Graduate and Research Committee of Lehigh University in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts in Sociology Lehigh University May 18, 2015 © 2015 Copyright (Lyndsey S. Collins) ii Thesis is accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in Sociology. A Content Analysis of the Women Against Feminism Tumblr Page Lyndsey Collins ____________________ Date Approved Dr. Jacqueline Krasas Dr. Yuping Zhang Dr. Nicola Tannenbaum iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis advisor, Dr. Jacqueline Krasas, who has provided me with invaluable insights, support, and encouragement throughout the entirety of this process. In addition, I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Nicola Tannenbaum
    [Show full text]
  • Presentations Introduction Recent Feminist De
    Beyond the Generational Line: An Exploration of Feminist Online Sites and Self-(Re)presentations Yi-lin Yu National Ilan University, Taiwan Abstract This article deals with the feminist generation issue by tracing the transition from generational to non-generational thinking in recent feminist discourse on third-wave feminism. Informed by certain feminist recommendations of affording alternative paradigms in place of the oceanic wave metaphor to describe the rela- tionships between different feminists, this study offers the insights gained from an investigation with three feminist online sites, The F Word, Eminism, and Guerrilla Girls, in which these online feminists have participated in building up a third wave consciousness or a third space site through their engagement in (re)presenting their feminist selves and identities. In developing a both/and third wave con- sciousness, these online feminists have bypassed the dualistic understanding of sec- ond and third wave feminism and reached a cross-generational commonality of adhering to feminist ideology and coalition in cyberspace as a third space. Through a content analysis of their online feminist self-(re)presentations, this pa- per concludes by arguing that they have not only reformulated the concept of third wave feminism but also worked toward a new configuration of third space narratives and subjectivities that sheds light on contemporary feminist thinking about feminist genealogy and history. Key words third-wave feminism, feminist generation, feminist online sites, self-(re)presentation Introduction Recent feminist development of third-wave discourses has been bom- barded with a conundrum regarding generational debates. Although 54 ❙ Yi-lin Yu some feminist scholars are preoccupied with using familial metaphors to depict different feminist generations, others have called forth a rethink- ing of the topic in non-generational terms.
    [Show full text]
  • Mainstream Feminism
    Feminist movements and ideologies This collection of feminist buttons from a women's museum shows some messages from feminist movements. A variety of movements of feminist ideology have developed over the years. They vary in goals, strategies, and affiliations. They often overlap, and some feminists identify themselves with several branches of feminist thought. Groupings Judith Lorber distinguishes between three broad kinds of feminist discourses: gender reform feminisms, gender resistant feminisms, and gender revolution feminisms. In her typology, gender reform feminisms are rooted in the political philosophy of liberalism with its emphasis on individual rights. Gender resistant feminisms focus on specific behaviors and group dynamics through which women are kept in a subordinate position, even in subcultures which claim to support gender equality. Gender revolution feminisms seek to disrupt the social order through deconstructing its concepts and categories and analyzing the cultural reproduction of inequalities.[1] Movements and ideologies Mainstream feminism … "Mainstream feminism" as a general term identifies feminist ideologies and movements which do not fall into either the socialist or radical feminist camps. The mainstream feminist movement traditionally focused on political and legal reform, and has its roots in first- wave feminism and in the historical liberal feminism of the 19th and early- 20th centuries. In 2017, Angela Davis referred to mainstream feminism as "bourgeois feminism".[2] The term is today often used by essayists[3] and cultural analysts[4] in reference to a movement made palatable to a general audience by celebrity supporters like Taylor Swift.[5] Mainstream feminism is often derisively referred to as "white feminism,"[6] a term implying that mainstream feminists don't fight for intersectionality with race, class, and sexuality.
    [Show full text]
  • 2254 Last December, While the National Organization for Women
    SAUDI COURTS — WOMEN’S RIGHTS — GENERAL COURT OF QATIF SENTENCES GANG-RAPE VICTIM TO PRISON AND LASH- INGS FOR VIOLATING “ILLEGAL MINGLING” LAW. Last December, while the National Organization for Women (NOW) celebrated the success of its campaign for “non-sexist car in- surance,”1 a young woman already brutalized by her neighbors awaited further violence from her state. The previous month, Saudi Arabia’s General Court of Qatif had sentenced her to six months in prison and two hundred lashes for riding in a car with an unrelated male acquaintance, after which she was gang-raped by seven men.2 Her subsequent pardon by King Abdullah3 indicates the power of in- ternational outrage and pressure, but the lack of energy with which Western women’s rights groups participated in that outrage and pres- sure is indicative of a larger and troubling trend. Feminist groups too often do not help women abroad, but they can help, and they should help, because the need for their support is far greater overseas than at home.4 Although the reasons for their choice to prioritize sometimes relatively trivial matters in America over life-threatening issues facing women across the ocean may not be known, its effect is all too appar- ent: less pressure on foreign governments to end the suffering of mil- lions of subjugated Islamic women. With a legal system based on a strict interpretation of Islam,5 Saudi Arabia is a state of gender apartheid. For women permitted to work — they comprise 5.4% of the workforce6 — office buildings are segre- gated.7 For women taught to read — the illiteracy rate for women is ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 1 Nat’l Org.
    [Show full text]
  • Under Western Eyes Revisited: Feminist Solidarity Through
    “Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles Author(s): Chandra Talpade Mohanty Reviewed work(s): Source: Signs, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Winter 2003), pp. 499-535 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/342914 . Accessed: 11/04/2012 00:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Signs. http://www.jstor.org Chandra Talpade Mohanty “Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles write this essay at the urging of a number of friends and with some trepidation, revisiting the themes and arguments of an essay written I some sixteen years ago. This is a difficult essay to write, and I undertake it hesitantly and with humility—yet feeling that I must do so to take fuller responsibility for my ideas, and perhaps to explain whatever influence they have had on debates in feminist theory. “Under Western Eyes” (1986) was not only my very first “feminist stud- ies” publication; it remains the one that marks my presence in the inter- national feminist community.1 I had barely completed my Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Remembering Liberal Feminism in Radical Ways: Locating Conservative Strategies in the Narratives of Dr
    University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2009 Remembering Liberal Feminism in Radical Ways: Locating Conservative Strategies in the Narratives of Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, Tammy Bruce, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger Jenni Marie Simon University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Simon, Jenni Marie, "Remembering Liberal Feminism in Radical Ways: Locating Conservative Strategies in the Narratives of Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, Tammy Bruce, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger" (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 929. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/929 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. REMEMBERING LIBERAL FEMINISM IN RADICAL WAYS: LOCATING CONSERVATIVE STRATEGIES IN THE NARRATIVES OF DR. CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS, TAMMY BRUCE, AND DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER __________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of Social Sciences University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________ by Jenni M. Simon November 2009 Advisor: Dr. Christina Foust Author: Jenni M. Simon Title: REMEMBERING LIBERAL FEMINISM IN RADICAL WAYS: LOCATING CONSERVATIVE STRATEGIES IN THE NARRATIVES OF DR. CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS, TAMMY BRUCE, AND DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER Advisor: Dr. Christina R. Foust Degree Date: November, 2009 ABSTRACT This dissertation identifies and challenges post-feminist narratives that remember the second wave or 1960s and 1970s liberal feminism as a radical form of activism.
    [Show full text]
  • Metoo, Discrimination & Backlash
    WOMEN GENDER& NO. 1 2021 RESEARCH #MeToo, Discrimination & Backlash WOMEN GENDER& RESEARCH VOL. 30, NO. 1 2021 WOMEN, GENDER & RESEARCH is an academic, peer-reviewed journal that: • Presents original interdisciplinary research concerning feminist theory, gender, power, and inequality, both globally and locally • Promotes theoretical and methodological debates within gender research • Invites both established and early career scholars within the fi eld to submit articles • Publishes two issue per year. All research articles go through a double-blind peer-review process by two or more peer reviewers WOMEN, GENDER & RESEARCH welcomes: • Research articles and essays from scholars around the globe • Opinion pieces, comments and other relevant material • Book reviews and notices about new PhDs within the fi eld Articles: 5000-7000 words (all included) Essays or opinion pieces: 3900 words (all included) Book reviews: 1200 words (all included) Please contact us for further guidelines. SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS EDITOR IN CHIEF Lea Skewes Morten Hillgaard Bülow, PhD, Coordination for Gen- Molly Occhino der Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Lise Rolandsen Agustín EDITORS Kathrine Bjerg Bennike, PhD-candidate, Depart- Lea Skewes, PhD, Post-Doc, Business and Social ment of Politics and Society, Aalborg University, Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark Denmark Tobias Skiveren, PhD, Assistant Professor, School Camilla Bruun Eriksen, PhD, Assistant Professor, of Communication and Culture, Aarhus Univer- Department for the Study of Culture, University sity, Denmark of Southern Denmark, Denmark Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, PhD, Associate Professor, Sebastian Mohr, PhD, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Department of Management, Society, and Com- Gender Studies, Karlstad University, Sverige munication, Copenhagen Business School, Sara Louise Muhr, PhD, Professor, Department of Denmark Organization, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark COVER ILLUSTRATION © Rebelicious.
    [Show full text]
  • Judith Butler's Notion of Gender Performativity
    Judith Butler’s Notion of Gender Performativity To What Extent Does Gender Performativity Exclude a Stable Gender Identity? J.T. Ton MSc 3702286 Faculty Humanities Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Research Group Philosophy Date: 25-06-2018 Supervisor: Dr. J.E. de Jong Second reviewer: Dr. H.L.W. Hendriks Content ABSTRACT 2 INTRODUCTION 3 CONTEXT 3 RESEARCH QUESTION 3 METHOD 3 OUTLINE 4 1. IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GENDER AND SEX? 6 1.1 THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN GENDER AND SEX 6 1.2 BUTLER’S CRITIQUE OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN GENDER AND SEX 7 2. BUTLER’S NOTION OF GENDER PERFORMATIVITY 8 2.1 GENDER AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT 8 2.2 WHAT IT MEANS TO BE PERFORMATIVE 9 3. GENDER IDENTITY IS UNSTABLE 11 3.1 GENDER IDENTITY BEING UNSTABLE IS PROBLEMATIC 11 3.2 BUTLER’S EXAMPLE OF TRANSGENDER PEOPLE IS PROBLEMATIC 12 3.3 BUTLER’S EXAMPLE OF DRAG IS PROBLEMATIC 13 CONCLUSION 14 RESEARCH QUESTION 14 IMPLICATIONS IN A BROADER CONTEXT 15 METHOD 15 FURTHER RESEARCH 16 REFERENCES 17 APPENDIX 1 – FORM COGNIZANCE PLAGIARISM 18 1 Abstract The idea that gender is socially constructed has been accepted as common knowledge for a long time. This raises the question how does the construction of gender work. Judith Butler proposed that gender is performative. What does Butler (1999, 2004, 2011) mean when she uses the term gender performativity and to what extent does her view of gender being performative leave room for gender as a stable identity? In this thesis I argue that Butler’s notion of gender performativity implies that that gender identity is unstable.
    [Show full text]
  • Developing a Corporeal Cyberfeminism: Beyond Cyberutopia
    Article new media & society 12(6) 929–945 Developing a corporeal © The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permission: http://www. cyberfeminism: beyond sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermission.nav DOI: 10.1177/1461444809350901 cyberutopia http://nms.sagepub.com Jessica E. Brophy University of Maine, USA Abstract This article discusses – and rejects – cyberutopia, an idealized theory of internet use that requires users to leave their bodies behind when online. The author instead calls for a cyberfeminist perspective in relation to studying the internet and other new media, centrally locating corporeality and embodiment. The underutilized concept of intra-agency is then employed to develop liminality in relation to the experience of going online. The author then outlines different versions of cyberfeminism and endorses that which addresses the relationships between the lived experiences of users and the technology itself. The article concludes with a call for theorists to expand and enrich the concepts used to study new media. Key words body, corporeality, cyberfeminism, dualism, gender, ntra-agency, liminality, torsion There are no utopian spaces anywhere except in the imagination. (Grosz, 2001: 19) Many of the early discourses surrounding the internet were utopian in nature, claiming that the disembodied nature of online spaces creates an egalitarian online experience, devoid of the discrimination attributed to the embodied experience. Feminists, in particular, have been quick to assess the possibilities of gender bending (Danet, 1998), online activism and connectivity (Hawthorne and Klein, 1999), though not all feminists have uncritically accepted the internet as a potentially utopian medium (Kramarae, 1998; Stabile, 1994). This article recognizes the importance of exploring the feminist potentialities of disembodied and dislocated online interaction, yet calls for a more nuanced approach to understanding the role of the body and materialism in studies of the internet.
    [Show full text]
  • Cyberfeminist Theories and the Benefits of Teaching Cyberfeminist Literature
    12 Cyberfeminist Theories and the Benefits of Teaching Cyberfeminist Literature Maya Zalbidea Paniagua Camilo José Cela University of Madrid Spain 1. Introduction In 2010 I had the opportunity to interview Julianne Pierce, writer and artist who took part of the first cyberfeminist group called VNS Matrix, at the conference "Riot Girls Techno Queen: the Rise of Laptop Generation Women" at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. When I asked her what she thought about present day cyberfeminism she answered melancholically: "Cyberfeminist movements are not as visible as they used to be during the 90s" ("Personal Interview with Julianne Pierce by Maya Zalbidea Paniagua" n/p) It is certainly true that the 80s and 90s supposed the golden age of cybercultures. Cybernetics arrived in the 1960s (Wiener 1968) but the glorious age of the Internet started in the 80s. In 1984 William Gibson coined the term cyberspace and anticipated the Internet revolution in his novel Neuromancer (1984). Other cyberpunk novels also illustrated a post-apocalyptic future such as: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick. Cyberpunk films such as Blade Runner (1982) and The Terminator (1984) received enormous impact. And some years later the Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, CERN publicized the new World Wide Web project in 1991, and during the 90s cyberfeminist theories and movements spread internationally. Unfortunately a climax of disillusion and a crisis of moral values has influenced negatively cyberfeminist thought, promoted by the idea that women in the third world cannot have access to the Internet, the battle between ecofeminists and cyberfeminists, and the ecological awareness of the difficulty to eliminate electronic garbage.
    [Show full text]
  • Betrayed Women
    experiences and systemic inequality. Af3rr: Sex, Fear, and Feminism On contention that academics are so The book documents the histori- Campw which depicted feminists as credulous of gender feminism be- cal changes in Canadian families as frigid hysterics who created the date cause it promotes the shedding of well as the pluralityofand contradic- rape crisis, Sommers' controversial their passive ivory-tower skins. "By tions in fimily experiences. The col- jAccusr provides an extremely un- supporting and promoting trans- lection indudes diverse experiences complimentary portrait of feminists formationism, not only do school such as divorce, same-sex couples, as a group of frenzied "gender warri- administratorsbuild up their r&um&, minority fimilies, poverty and vio- ors" in quest of recruits, vindication, they get to feel they are participating lence. It is surprising, however, that and ammunition. Predictably, most in the educational equivalent of the issues such as age as a source offamily North American feminists have rel- storming of the Bastille." The in- oppression, intergenerational con- egated this book to their overcrowded triguing issue raised here of the acad- flicts, children's interpretation ofh- backlash shelf, a justified reaction to emy's concern with social activism ily experiences and aging in (and Sommers' smug, often shortsighted over the past few decades unfortu- outside) fimilies were not included. liberal idealism, and occasional nately remains, like Sommers'. few Despite these omissions, this text- McCarthyite rhetoric. Apart from her speculative ideas, unexplored. book is both useful and effective in stale critique of the chimera known While the existence of hard-core challenging students to raise politi- in backlash vocabulary as "victim misandrist feminists in the academy cally contentious issues about inti- feminism," however, Sommers does is as undeniable as the existence of mate and personal matters.
    [Show full text]