Skip to content

I’d rather be a goddess

2009 January 27
by Cat Durante

I was reading Haraway’s “The Cyborg Manifesto” and I was utterly disturbed. I would never think to use the words”class,” “race,” and “gender” in conjunction with “industrial capitalism.” Nonetheless Haraway not only uses these words in the same sentence but also dares to make an analogy to link these seemingly contrasting words.  Her list of future terms is perhaps the coldest aspect of the work I have read. That sex would become strictly genetic engineering perturbs me. I understand the author’s intent to break the classifications that women are grouped under (even using the word “women” here I am under scrutiny) but she seems to have lost the uniqueness inherent when one is a woman in the biological sense. I personally love being grouped with such strong individuals such as those at Bryn Mawr to call myself one of “the women” here. I don’t feel personally discriminated against when being asked to check the F box since I don’t mind being part of such a wonderful, mysterious, sexy, and confident group. I feel the excerpt is lacking love and demands that women feel this way…that they must fight to even the playing field and not have such a name as “woman.”

This image I found is one that popped up when I google imaged “non-gender.” Both persons are using the Prada LG phone and there really is no distinction in the pictures. The supposed “male” is slightly feminine and the “female” does have masculine characteristics. However, both use the same product…breaking the boundary that only women where PRADA. Perhaps this is the utopian environment that Haraway dreams for one day. Personally, I would rather be an exceptional “goddess” than a drone “cyborg.”

Comments are closed.