Cyberfeminism is a feminist perspective that emphasizes the interaction between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. It might refer to a philosophy, a practice, or a group of people.
Feminists interested in theorizing, analyzing, exploring, and remaking the Internet, cyberspace, and new-media technologies in general coined the term in the early 1990s.
Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto," third-wave feminism, post-structuralist feminism, riot grrrl culture, and the feminist critique of the evident erasure of women in discourses of technology are credited as the primary catalysts for the emergence of cyberfeminist philosophy.
The prevailing cyberfeminist viewpoint sees cyberspace and the Internet as a utopian way of liberation from societal conceptions, including gender, sex difference, and race. A definition of the notion, for example, described it as a fight to be aware of the impact of new technologies on women's lives, as well as the so-called creeping gendering of technoculture in everyday life.
It also considers technology to be a means of connecting the human body to machines. This is proven by how cyberfeminism is stated to define a specific cyborgian consciousness idea, which implies a method of thinking that breaks down binary and oppositional discourses, as maintained by theorists like Barbara Kennedy.
There's also the example of the renegotiation of top-down masculinist artificial intelligence (AI) into a bottom-up feminist version known as ALife programming.
Cyberfeminism originated partially due to "the pessimism of 1980s feminist ideas that emphasised the intrinsically masculine nature of techno-science" and a counter-movement to the notion of new Internet technologies as "toys for boys."
Another factor contributing to the growth of cyberfeminism, according to a paper written by Trevor Scott Milford[11], was the lack of female speech and engagement online about issues that affected women.
"If feminism is to be adequate to its cyber potential, it must mutate to keep up with the shifting complexities of social realities and living conditions as they are changed by the profound impact communications technologies and technoscience have on all of our lives," cyberfeminist artist Faith Wilding argued.
Donna Haraway's 1985 essay "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," reprinted in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, was the inspiration and genesis for cyberfeminism (1991).
According to Haraway's essay, while cyborgs can transcend public and private spaces, they lack the ability to identify with their beginnings or with nature to build a sense of understanding through disparities between self and others.
Haraway's work in cyberfeminism has been compared to Shulamith Firestone's book The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. Firestone's work focuses on reproductive technology and its advancement to erase the link between the feminine identity and childbirth.
Firestone felt that if the duties surrounding reproduction were removed, gender inequity and discrimination against women might be eliminated. Both Firestone and Haraway had aspirations predicated on making people androgynous, and both women desired society to progress beyond biology through technological advancements.
Information technology exists inside a social framework already established in its practices and is ingrained in highly sexist and racist economic, political, and cultural surroundings. Through unrestricted sharing of knowledge across boundaries, information interchange on the internet does not inevitably abolish hierarchies.
Also, the Internet is not gender-neutral; it is not a free area that can be colonised regardless of body, sex, age, finances, social class, or race. Despite the undeniable contributions of women to the invention and development of computing technology, the Internet today is a contentious zone that began as a system to support war technologies and is now a component of patriarchal institutions.
Any new possibilities envisioned for the Internet must first accept and properly consider the consequences of the Internet's founding structures and current political situations. As a result, inserting the word feminism into cyberspace, interrupting the flow of masculine codes by loudly expressing the goal to bastardise, hybridise, provoke, and infect the patriarchal order of things by politizing the Net's environment, can be considered as a radical act.
Cyberfeminism is now drawing on prior waves of feminism's social and cultural efforts. Its goal is to assist women in breaking free from cyberculture's isolation, communicating with one another, and studying and applying information technology to create their own work. Cyberfeminists must create opportunities to physically meet and form affinity groups to assist the development of a transnational and trans-cultural movement.
Cyberfeminists must make their views heard louder in discussions on Internet development. Even though there are more women online now than five years ago, the Internet still appeals to a male gaze. The growing number of women who use the internet indicates that the gender gap in information technology is shrinking. However, women continue to be the primary victims of knowledge disparity, particularly in wealthy countries.
Written By: Aishwarya Neeraj
.jpeg)
0 Comments