Feminism And Cyberfeminism

While reading “Gender,” an essay by Jack Halberstam, the topic of sexism was brought to the forefront of my mind. It has been brought up more often in conversation in the modern era, issues such as how a few cruel insults pertain to female reproductive anatomy and, in a sense, degrade females and ultimately identify them, as well as femininity, as inherently “bad”. Such a thought stemmed from how Halberstam touches on the “problematic stabilization of the meaning of ‘women’ and ‘female’”: meaning there is no room for argument when it comes to your gender—you’re either a girl or not. You either fit into a strict mold, or you do not.

Marissa Meyer’s futuristic dystopian novel, Cinder, is set in an advanced society containing large divides between different groups of people including; cyborgs, humans, and Lunars. Cyborgs are often looked down upon as inhuman machines that are held to high expectations though, the majority of cyborgs are partially human. The antagonist, Cinder, is a cyborg who struggles with these divides between people. Because of this, Cinder feels the need to hide her Cyborg self and constantly work to appease others in order to be accepted. One theme this story suggests is “ In a society that can be very demanding, people need to learn to stop trying to please others, live for themselves, and do what they believe is right and they will benefit from their actions.” This theme is shown throughout the story in a series of critical scenes and also portrayed using author’s craft.

In Esther Dyson’s “Cyberspace: If You Don’t Love It, Leave It”, the existence of the internet is seen as potentially dangerous to today’s society. Dyson insists that the internet was once a sanctuary for tech savvy individuals such as gamers and professionals like engineers. The author focuses on the negative websites and communities that are often found offensive to the majority. She thinks the World Wide Web harbors a lot of power. This power can be accessed and conquered easily by most of the population. According to Dyson, responsibility is the key to changing the future (295). Her argument is convincing but slightly unrealistic. The internet seems to be growing into a whole other alternate universe. Society’s rapidly growing technology industry will only be harder to regulate. Most people will do what they want, when they want especially when it comes to the internet.

There is something subtle about attitudes toward women, something that many people act in accordance to but are only subconsciously aware of. It is the constant judgment that women face, and it is also something Deborah Tannen noticed while sitting in an ordinary meeting one day. During that meeting, she found herself noticing only the females of the room, not the men. Tannen then realized that it was because “The men’s styles were unmarked” (Tannen 389). While there are standard hairstyles and clothing for men, there are none for women. Everything that a woman wears is a reflection of who she is. In her piece titled There Is No Unmarked Woman, she writes about her experience and concludes that women cannot escape judgment no matter what they do.

The extent and degree of information and detail written in this article about each represented author and their contributing works can ultimately be seen as one of the articles main strengths. However, although this article gives a vast amount of information on the women’s opinions and beliefs the article at times seems disassembled and erratic. The flow of the article is somewhat hard to follow, and without an increased measure of concentration, the ability of the reader to comprehend and decipher whom the author is speaking of can be lost. Also, with the extensive amounts of information and detail that each female author contributes to the argument, readers are bombarded with data to interpret and distinguish upon. With the author of the article not decisively choosing the strongest points of argument from each author, the information becomes overwhelming and possibly confusing at times.

The rapid expansion of technological advancement is engulfing our culture. The author of IRL Fetish, Nathan Jurgenson argues that people have a weird interest in the world of offline. Technological advances are leading people into the realm of online, but Jurgenson also realizes the glorification of movement to offline. People who believe online world is destroying the real-life connection and many writers lament, “Writer after writer laments the loss of a sense of disconnection, of boredom (now redeemed as a respite from anxious info-cravings) …” (Jurgenson 127). People who are saying technological advances is removing people from the real-life so they think they can create a world where online does not exist. This new movement is educating the world that phone must be put away and boast about being offline. In IRL Fetish by Nathan Jurgenson, the author illustrates the practice of fetishizing of the offline world creates a misrepresentation of online and the offline world.

Another interesting statement I would like to bring to the surface is Alvarez writes in her book that “boys are born men but girls turn into women” (72). This made me think of the BBC YouTube clip we watched in class. Within this video a mother, father, and daughter are getting prepared for their daughters sweet fifteen. One of the first things I recognized in this film was that the father a male was speaking about and for the females when they were in the same room as them listening to what he had to say. This is a problem in itself as the male voices his and silences the women, in addition, he is speaking on a subject that he does not even fully understand, women. For arguments sake a women would never speak about a man and what it means to be one. This power dynamic within this family is troubling and shows the dominance of one gender over

But, in the “Should We Feed the Trolls?”, LaFrance states “that we are our real selves online as much as we are our real selves anywhere else” (LaFrance 1). The connection individuals are making with the Internet is negatively impacting our society, allowing people’s barbarous thoughts to be viewed by the public eye. The world needs to learn that talking behind a screen should be no different than in-person, because “technology doesn’t magically make a person’s behavior inauthentic” (LaFrance 1). If people begin to understand this concept, it will reduce the prejudices women encounter every day, that are still deeply rooted in our society. In “The Quiet Violence of the Unwanted Kiss,” the misogyny appears in our culture when

After writing “Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer,” in the 1987 edition of Harper’s, Wendell Berry was critiqued by readers who felts he was using his wife as a “drudge.” Berry writes that, “My wife types my work. She sees things that are wrong and marks them with small checks in the margins. She is my best critic because she is the one most familiar with my habitual errors and weaknesses. She also understands, sometimes better than I do, what ought to be said.” (Pg. 180) But his readers seemed to miss this. To make a full response to them, Berry writes “Feminism, The Body, and the Machine.” Through his use of quotation marks, tone, and diction,

Regarded as the beginning of the “cyberpunk” movement, William Gibson’s classic novel Neuromancer, confronts the pronounced societal issues of feminism of the time. By distorting the female traits of his characters, Gibson illustrates that gender equality is only achieved when the female persona is able to transform away from both the desired and rejected feminist attributes imposed by societies fixed gender roles.

In the short story Lamb to the Slaughter, the author, Roald Dahl, uses irony and allusions to represent women, illustrating the notion that their capabilities are often underestimated. In society, women are stereotyped and commoditized, and as a result, are portrayed and identified under degrading labels; unconsciously becoming accustomed to such standards the more they are exposed to them.

For instance, when Offred has a conversation with her doctor about her pregnancy she remembers: “There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially. There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren, that’s the law” (75). This quote shows how misogyny is embedded into everyone’s brain because it’s taught that only women are the problem, not men; if fertility problems arise, it’s the fault of a woman because the only purpose women have is to reproduce, and if they cannot they should be shamed and isolated as unwomen. Even though, those women have done nothing wrong but be sterile, it reduces their purpose and their contributions to society therefore society shames them and makes them feel guilty. Case in point, Offred also reflects on her body and how she hates it now: “My nakedness is strange to me already. ... Did I really wear bathing suits, at the beach? I did, without thought, among men, without caring that my legs, my arms, my thighs and back were on display, could be seen. Shameful, immodest. I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it's shameful or immodest but because I don't want to see it. I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely” (78). Offred hates her body because of the misogynistic idea that the female anatomy is odd and should not be

Neuromancer is an amazingly complex novel. Being one of the first of its kind, Gibson tells a chilling tale of a world where computers, and a thing called " the matrix," become more "real" than reality. The story, set in the not-so-distant future, has our hero, Henry Dorsett Case, embarking on an adventure that stretches the limits of the reader's imagination. But even though Case is our main character, there are others with as much or more power and influence. Women play a significant role in aiding Case throughout his mission. Not only are they noteworthy, they hold most of the "power" and at the end, it is a woman who holds the final "key." By using the feminist approach to literary

Atwood makes note throughout the novel that women themselves are just as oppressive as their masculine masters. For example, when Janine gives her testimony of her “telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen”, the crowd begins to chant “Her fault, her fault, her fault.”, this suggests that the society that she is living in is a society based on guilt and victim blaming (72). Likewise, in American society, rape is often wrongly believed to be the fault of women, largely because the legal system in the United State is often in favor of the rapists. Marshall University’s Women Center defines rape culture as being “perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety.”, in many ways, Gilead and Western society still perpetuated the notion that it is the fault of the woman (Marshal University, 2014). Victim blaming is quite common in both liberal and conservative regions of the country. In addition to the on-going denigration of women, Atwood presents the audience the issue of class, some women are worth more than others. For instance, the relationship between Offred and Serena Joy is conflictive in many ways how the biblical account of Sarah and Hagar, like Hagar, Offred is mistreated by Serena Joy. Serena is described as “She doesn’t turn her head. She doesn’t acknowledge my presence in any way, although she knows I am there. I can tell she knows, it’s like a smell, her knowledge; something gone sour, like old milk”, Offred is a constant reminder to Serena that she has failed in conceiving a child by her means (Atwood 46). As a result, Offred is subject to contempt by Serena since Offred is having intimacy with the Commander. In essence like Offred, Serena too is subject to abuse via, humiliation. Due to Serena’s

The “New Woman” refers to a category of women, beginning in the late 19th century, who adopted feminist ideals, wishing to break gender roles and gain independence from and equality with men (Newton, 560-61). While not one specific, real person, the “New Woman” is an overarching term that encompasses the many women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first generation of these women strove for economic and social autonomy with roles separate from the home and family spheres of domesticity (Newton, 561). For example, they would not marry, but instead receive a higher education and work in a profession (Newton, 561). To replace their commitments to men and family, they instead formed close and passionate relationships with other women, though these relationships were not sexual in nature, people viewed women as passionless and pure. The second generation, however, living in a more modernist culture of sexual freedom, began to discuss female sexuality, and wanted to participate in more opportunities only offered to men, including drinking and smoking (Newton, 564). Because of the societal idea that only men were sexual beings, New Women had to explain the intimate relationships among them, which had become sexual in the second generation. Thus, they created the idea of masculine lesbians, who had male souls that caused them their sexual feelings (Newton, 566). The “mythic mannish lesbian” refers to these women who dressed and acted in a masculine manner