Not a Utopia.

Talking about the union of gender and technology immediately made me think of my dear friend H.R. Giger. Giger is a Swiss artist who is known for his sublimely frightening and hopeless drawings and landscapes. I love his work because of his unfailing and exacting attention to detail, which makes his stuff all the scarier. If you know him, you probably know him for having designed the monster from the Alien movies.

Anyway. When I thought of “gender and technology,” and I thought of “Giger,” I didn’t think “utopia.” I thought of this piece:

This is one called “Birth Machine.” It, like much of Giger’s work (he’s often regarded as very misogynistic) does disastrous things to gender. Apart form how phallic everything about the piece is (the gun, the little screwdriver-like implements each child is holding), it’s a statement about reproduction. The children are all identical, and all emerging from a weapon as a weapon; they are immediately going out to harm. Technology can definitely be used in this way, as a tool for manipulating and killing. Giger, I suppose, sees the idea of women being used as a weapon to produce lethal offspring as a possibility.

Myself, I’m not so pessimistic. I think – hope – that technological progress will be kind to women and men alike. I guess this is sort of a reminder to myself, though, to not take it for granted that progress will be completely positive.

EDIT: from “A Cyborg Manifesto:” “From one perspective, a cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in a Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of defense, abouit the final appropriation of women’s bodies in a masculinist orgy of war.” THAT is what the picture evoked for me.