Neither Cyborg Nor Goddess

Abstract

The generational model of feminism requires that each new feminism is understood as better or more engaged with real, lived experiences than the previous versions. One of the differences between the second and third waves of feminism has been the need to negotiate and engage with the new technologies that have emerged since the personal computing revolution of the early 1980s. Cyberfeminism emerged in the 1990s, positioned as an example of what feminism could be and could do in the supposedly disembodied spaces of the Internet. New communication technologies and cyberspace have been widely regarded as providing the opportunities needed to bring about the global feminist movements of the new millennium — this third wave of feminism — and the Internet has been vaunted as the global consciousness-raising tool which the first and second waves lacked: ‘[cyberfeminism is a] woman-centred perspective that advocates women’s use of new information and communication technologies for empowerment’ (Miller 200). Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein claim that cyberfeminism is ‘a philosophy which acknowledges, first, that there is a difference in power between men and women specifically in the digital discourse’ and, crucially, that ‘CyberFeminists want to change that situation’ (2). While it is undeniable that the changes in the material conditions of technology have wrought new kinds of relationships and new ways of theorising bodies and identities, my question here is whether or not cyberfeminism is an adequate term to describe these changes.