Notes on the Political Condition of Cyberfeminism
Faith Wilding and Critical Art Ensemble
Cyberfeminism is a promising new wave of (post)feminist thinking and practice. Through the work of numerous Netactive women, there is
now a distinct cyberfeminist Netpresence that is fresh, brash, smart, and iconoclastic of many of the tenets of classical feminism.
At the same time, cyberfeminism has only taken ist first steps in contesting technologically complex territories. To complicate
matters further, these new territories have been overcoded to a mythic degree as a male domain. Consequently, cyberfeminist incursion
into various technoworlds (CD-ROM production, Web works, lists and news groups, artificial intelligence, etc.) has been largely
nomadic, spontaneous, and anarchic. On the one hand, these qualities have allowed maximum freedom for diverse manifestations,
experiments, and the beginnings of various written and artistic genres. On the other, networks and organizations seem somewhat
lacking, and the theoretical issues of gender regarding the techno-social are immature relative to their development in spaces of
greater gender equity won through struggle. Given such conditions, some feminist strategies and tactics will repeat themselves as
women attempt to establish a foothold in a territory traditionally denied to them. This repetition should not be considered with the
usual yawn of boredom whenever the familiar appears, as cyberspace is a crucial point of gender struggle that is desperately in need
of gender diversification (and diversity in general).
The Feminist Cycle
One aspect immediately evident is that the Net provides cyberfeminists with a vehicle crucially different from anything available to
prior feminist waves. Historically, feminist activism has depended on women getting together bodily--in kitchens, churches, assembly
halls, and in the streets. The organizing cell for the first phase of feminism was the sewing circle, the quilting group, or the
ladies' charity organization. Women met together in private to plan their public campaigns for political and legal enfranchisement.
In these campaigns the visible presence of groups of women plucked from the silenced isolation of their homes, became a public sign
of female rebellion and activism. Women acting together, speaking in public, marching through the streets, and disrupting public life
were activities that opened up political territories that were traditionally closed to them.
During the second wave of feminism, which emerged in the early sixties, women again started meeting together to plan actions. They
met in consciousness-raising groups that became the organizing cells for a revived feminist movement. This time, feminists began to
master a new tactic: Creating counter-spectacle in the media. Women staged actions targeted at highly visible public icons. Such
patriarchal monuments under feminist assault in the US movement included the Miss America Pageant, Playboy offices and clubs, Wall
Street, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pentagon, and the White House. Everywhere the actions occurred, the news media was there
to document outrageous female misbehavior. These tactics spread the news of growing feminism nationally and internationally. Visible
female disruption and subversion also provided images of female empowerment that inspired many women (and men) to begin taking direct
autonomous action on behalf of the rights of women.
If the first wave was marked by women's incursion into new political territories, this second wave was marked by a march into new
economic territories and by a reconfiguration of familiar ones. Most significant was women's demand for access to the means of
financial independence-a struggle that continues in the third phase of feminist practice. On the more traditional end of the
struggle, domestic space was no longer perceived as a totalizing feminine space, but was re-presented as a space of ambiguity with
both celebratory and exploitive characteristics. On the political front, feminism focused on liberation practices, and left the old
right wing practices behind, such as temperance movements.
The third wave of feminisms (cultural-, eco-, theoretical-, sex positive-, lesbian-, anti-porn-, multicultural-, etc.)--often
collectively dubbed Postfeminism--continues to use these models of public action and rebellion. A recent case in point was the
short-lived but highly visibleWomen's Action Coalition (WAC) that began in New York in late l991, following a series of events that
enraged women in the US: The dramatic, nationally televised Hill/Thomas hearings; the William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson rape
trials; and the judicial battles over abortion rights: all these contributed to a sense that it was time for women to launch a
"visible and remarkable resistance" to social, sexual, economic, and political oppression and violence. WAC quickly became a media
attractor as it launched action after visible action. WAC produced a spectacle that was hip, sexy, cool, fun, outrageous, and
visible. Eight thousand women joined in the first year, and chapters sprang up around the US and in Canada. Much of this initial
success was due to the highly effective communication and networking system that WAC immediately organized.
Central to this system was a phone tree, combined with adequate access to fax machines, e-mail, and media contacts. In a sense, WAC
was an early proto-electronic feminist organization. Having motivated and organized so many women, WAC reinvigorated feminist
activism, and, in the US, led a new wave of contestation in all the traditional feminist territories. Like most radical
organizations, it was only a temporary tactical organization. It was unable to survive its rapid growth, and all too soon reached
critical mass, when explosive splintering forced it to choose one of two outcomes: purge and bureaucratize, or dissolve. WAC wasn't
able to organize its way out of the contradictions of difference, nor was it able to continue resisting some of the dogmatic
tendencies of "mainstream" and "security state" feminism which proscribe certain behaviors, beliefs, and lifestyles. While the former
option of purge and bureaucratize was first attempted, the fabric of radicality was strong enough that dissolution spontaneously
occurred.
The third wave (with a few exceptions) has missed moving into one crucial area however, and that was the revolution in communications
and information technology. Cyberfeminism represents a new set of explorers ready to move the struggle into this new territory.
As yet, the movement is still too young to face struggles inherent in the economy of difference. As on most frontiers, there still
*seems* to be room for everyone. At the same time, there are lessons to be learned from history. Radical movements in their infancy
tend to return to past patterns. Cyberfeminism is no different, and key feminist issues such as feminine subjectivity, separatism and
boundary maintenance, and territorial identification are bound to arise again, even if they seem dead in other feminist
territories.
Territorial Identification
What is the territory that cyberfeminism is questioning, theorizing, and actively confronting? The surface answer is, of course,
cyberspace, but such an answer is not really satisfying. Cyberspace is but one small part, since the infrastructure that produces
this virtual world is so vast. Hardware and software design and manufacture are certainly of key importance, and perhaps most
significant of all are the institutions that train those who design the products of cyber-life. Overwhelmingly, these products are
designed by males for business or military operations. Clearly these are still primarily male domains (i.e., men are the policy
makers) in which men have the buying power, and so the products are designed to meet their needs or to play on their desires. From
the beginning, entrance into this high-end techno-world (the virtual class) has been skewed in favor of males.* In early
socialization/education, technology and technological process are gendered as male domains. When females manipulate complex
technology in a productive or creative manner, it is viewed and treated as a deviant act that deserves punishment.
This is not to say that women do not use complex technology. Women are an important consumer market, and help maintain the status
quo when the technology is used in a passive manner. For example, most institutions of commerce or government are all too happy to
give women computers, e-mail accounts, and so on if it will make them better bureaucrats. This is why the increased presence of women
on the Net is not solely a positive indication of equality. It is a very similar situation to late 50s/early 60s America when
middle-class husbands were more than happy to buy a second car for their wives--as long as it made them more efficient domestic
workers. Technology in this case was used to deepen the confinement of women within their situation rather than liberate them from
it. (As a general rule, anything you get without struggle should be viewed with intense skepticism). The technology and technological
processes to which women currently have access are the consequence of structural economic necessity. However, all we need is a shift
in consciousness to begin the subversion of the current gender structure (this is the positve side of so many women being on-line).
Thus, the territory of cyberfeminism is large. It includes the objective arenas of cyberspace, institutions of industrial design, and
institutions of education-that is, those arenas in which technological process is gendered in a manner that excludes women from
access to the empowering points of techno-culture. However, the territory does not stop there. Cyberfeminism is also a struggle to be
increasingly aware of the impact of new technologies on the lives of women, and the insidious gendering of technoculture in everyday
life. Cyberspace does not exist in a vacuum; it is intimately connected to numerous real-world institutions and systems that thrive
on gender separation and hierarchy. Finally, cyberfeminism must radically expand the critique concerning the media hype about the
"technoworld." While the utopian cyber-spectacle has been adequately deflated by documentation of ist abuse of the bureaucratic
class, low-end technocratic class, and workers involved in product manufacturing, this critique, in terms of gender and race, is
very modest. For example, who can possibly believe that age, race, or gender do not matter in cyberspace? The ability to assign
oneself social characteristics online is only an alibi for a very traditional and exploitive division of labor that is
representative of the overall system, and a seduction element for those whose real-world social environment has been eliminated by
pancapitalism's destruction of social spaces of autonomy. We must also ask what awaits people in a minoritarian position once they
are online? Will they find familiar and significant rhetorics, discussions, and images? Is there a continuity of discourse between
the real and the virtual (as there is for the white middle class)? While there are virtual pockets in which continuity exists, the
overwhelmingly representative situation is geared to the
same majoritarian consciousness that is found in the real-world. In other words,
elements of social stratification are reflected and replicated in cyberspace.
Separatism and Boundary Maintenance
Whenever feminism begins pushing its way into new territories, the avant garde members of the movement face incredible problems and
nearly insurmountable odds. Cyberfeminism is no different. Relatively few women have the skills to see through the cyber-hype, to
understand the complexity of the system, and most importantly, to teach other women how to survive and actively use the system. For
most women in the technosphere, it takes all their energy simply to survive transgressing the norm and learning massive amounts of
dense technical information. Just doing the latter is a difficult task that few people accomplish, but throw in the condition of
gender isolation (learning and working in a male domain) and the generally negative social representation of being a geek girl
(i.e., going against the grain of female construction) and it becomes immediately apparent that alienation levels are extremely
high. Under such conditions, as in the past, separatist activity has been a useful tactic, as well as one that can foster efficient
pedagogical situations.
Kathy Huffman often jokes that "in cyberspace men can't interrupt you [women]." The joke is funny because it does represent a truth
of gendered interruption; however, the pessimistic side of this point is that women are interrupted in cyberspace. They are often
overwhelmed with counter-discourse, ignored, or totalized under the sign of being "politically correct." A remark by a woman may not
be interrupted, but continuity of discourse, with particular regard to women's issues, is often interrupted. Here again there is a
need for separatist activities at this point in post/feminist decolonization of cyberspace. During this early stage of development,
women need to experiment in developing their own working and learning spaces. This kind of activity has occurred in all phases of
feminists territorial decolonization, and has shown itself to be very productive. Separatism should be welcome among cyberfeminists
and among those who support a cyberspace of difference. It should be remembered that separatism among a
minoritarian (disenfranchised) group is not negative. It's not sexist, it's not racist, and it's not even necessarily a hindrance to
democratic development. There is a distinct difference between using exclusivity as part of a strategy to make a specific perception
or way of being in the world a universal, and using exclusivity as a means to escape a false universal (one goal of cyberfeminist
separatism). There is also a distinct difference between using exclusion as a means to maintain structures of domination, and using
it as a means to undermine them (another goal of cyberfeminist separatism).
At the same time, separatism can reach a point where it is counterproductive. The cycle of useful production in regard to separatist
activity can be traced by the applicability of one of its main slogans, "The personal is political." In consciousness-raising groups,
personal information is typically disclosed. Then patterns begin to emerge out of these disclosures. Notions that were thought to be
personal, private, idiosyncratic, and psychologically bound turn out to be points of group knowledge and represent sociological
tendencies. Group members come to realize that their "individual" problems are only mirrors of social pathologies that affect all
the people of a given class, race, gender, etc. In turn, each individual comes to realize that it is not a personal flaw that led
he/r to be in an unacceptable socio-economic situation, but that the structure of the political economy is to blame. In order for
this process to succeed, there must be a solidarity of identity, and when oppression is high, this can only happen in a separatist
environment. However, once these social currents are discovered and this knowledge is deployed among the given social group, the
need for separatist activity drops and can even become counterproductive. At this point, the uneasy romance between coalition and
diversity can begin.
For feminism in general, the time for separatist action seems to be over; however, we must remember that all areas of society are not
equally gendered-some territories are more equalized than others. Given that cyberspace is one of the most inequitable, it should be
expected that a number of early feminist organizational and educational tactics will be revived.
Feminine Subjectivity
Cyberfeminism is currently at that unfortunate point where it has to decide who gets to be a separatist cyberfeminist and who does
not. The haunting question of "what is a woman?" once again returns. In theory, this problem is graspable, but first, what is the
problem? Looking back on any feminist movement, there have always been tremendous conflicts within women's groups and organizations
brought on by attempts to define feminine subjectivity (and thereby, "us" and "them"). In the second wave, the feminine was defined
in a manner that seemed largely to reflect the subjectivity of white, middle class, straight women. The third wave had to debate
whether or not transvestites, transsexuals, and other "males" who claimed to be female identified should be accepted into activist
organizations (and at the same time, women of color, working class women, and lesbians all still had grounds for complaints). In
addition, it was never decided how to separate the feminine from other primary social variables that construct a woman's identity.
For example, part of the problem in many feminist organizations, and in WAC in
particular, was that the middle class professional women had the greatest economic and cultural resources. They therefore had greater
opportunity for leadership and policy making. The women outside of this class felt that the professionals had unfair advantages and
that their agenda was the primary agenda, which in turn brought about a destructive form of separation.
These are but some of the practical problems that have emerged out of the issue of exclusivity and imperfections inherent in
definitions. Defining feminine subjectivity can never be done to the satisfation of all, and yet, practically speaking, it has to be
done.
The current theoretical solution to this problem is to have small alliances and coalitions that do not rely on bureaucratic process.
Such coalitions should be expected to dissolve at various velocities over time. Also, naively humanistic or metaphysical principles
(depending on one's perspective) like "sisterhood" should be left in the past, and we must all learn to live with the conflicts and
contradictions of a house of difference. Of course, this is easier said than done. Truth changes with the situation. In a territory
like a US or British cultural studies department, we can talk about living in a house of difference. In other more inequitable
territories, it is more difficult, and clear boundaries (often essentialized) of differences for identity purposes are often
required. For example, telling a person of color who has just been beaten by the police that "the officers were only reacting to a
racist textual construction that links people of color with the sign of criminality" is probably not going to have much resonance
(even though in legitimized academic territories the argument is quite convincing). While the simpler explanation, "your ass just got
beat because you are a person of color" will be quite convincing, because in this case, who is on what side of the racial divide is
unambiguous in the mind of the unwilling participant. In this context, the hard boundaries of essentialism make sense and have
greater explanatory power until the ambiguity that emerges out of
successful consciousness raising and contestation becomes a part of everyday life.
Consequently, one can expect that essentialized notions of the feminine will
continue to appear and find acceptance.**
Dinner Parties
Cyberfeminism is currently drawing upon social and cultural strategies from past waves of feminism. For example, dinner parties that
celebrate women's achievements and serve as convivial coalition building events are a famous part of feminist history, as witnessed
not only in the fundraising dinner parties held by female suffragists, but also in Judy Chicago's Dinner Party; in Suzanne Lacy's
art/life performances; in Mary Beth Edelson's "Last Supper" detournement; and in the countless feasts prepared and served to each
other by feminists all over the world in the past decades. In recognition that women need to feed each other and desire conviviality,
Kathy Huffman and Eva Wohlgemuth in their Web project, "Face Settings," are using the medium of the dinner party as an organizing and
educational tool for cyberfeminists. The events--which often happen during international media festivals and symposia where men are
the leading actors„are meant to overcome the isolation of cyberculture, to get women connected to each other, and to help them begin
to learn and use electronic technology in producing
their own work. It has been shown that forming strong working groups among people who only communicate virtually is far less
productive than forming groups among people who also meet in the flesh. For this reason, it is important for cyberfeminist to make
opportunities to meet together bodily and form affinity groups to facilitate building a transnational, transcultural movement. And
what better way than a dinner party to dissolve the estrangement so often produced by even the friendliest online communications?
Indeed, the virtual medium must not replace the affective and the affinity-building functions of presence.
Cyberfeminist Education
Cyberfeminists have already grasped the importance of making hands-on technological education for women a core priority. But this
education needs to be contextualized within a critical feminist analysis and discourse about women, Netculture and politics, and the
pancapitalist labor economy. Cyberfeminists need to make their voices heard much more strongly in the discussion of Net development.
In doing so, cyberfeminism needs to think about who they consider their constituency. As a cultural and technical avant garde,
cyberfeminists need to remember that most women who now work with computers and information technology in first world countries are
at best glorified typists, for whom the computer simply represents an intensification of work. The question must be asked:
What relationship do these women have to technology? How is this relationship produced, and how can it be contested? Cyberfeminism
could provide a consciousness raising site where women can tell stories about their experiences with all the different aspects of
technology, and how it affects their lives. Such a site could teach women to question the increasing transparency of technological
incursion into their workplaces and into everyday life. And of course, there must be ongoing education, information, and activism
concerning the feminized "global homework economy (Haraway)" which is profoundly worsening the lives of women in developing
countries.
Feminist education (women's studies) as it was pioneered in the US in the early 1970's included the idea that a "separate" education,
where women would not have to compete with males, and where they would have the freedom to frame issues and ask questions that
challenged the hegemony of received practices and ideas. The Feminist Art Programs in California, for example, maintained their own
studios, courses, and teachers within an institutional academic structure. But more deeply, it also became evident that a separate
space allowed uncensored and radical experimentation that included the meltdown of traditional disciplines, practices, and
territories of expertise, and that initiated some postmodern art practices that have changed the face of mainstream art and art
history in the US. What might a feminist educational program in computer science and media technology accomplish? Imagine!!
Cyberspace lends itself nicely to the creation of separate learning andpractice spaces for different groups, and it seems fruitful to
expand and maintain these spaces for now in the spirit of feminist self-help. One of the most important educational tools
cyberfeminists can offer is an ongoing directory of electronic strategies and resources for women, including feminist theory
discussion groups, electronic publishing and exhibition venues, zines, addresses, bibliographies, mediaographies, how-to sites,
and general information exchange. While compilations of these resources are already underway, there is a growing need for a more
radical and critical feminist discourse about technology in cyberspace (as opposed to discourse in critical and media studies
departments in universities). In cyberfeminism, this discourse arises directly from actual current practices and problems, rather
than from abstract theorizing. Thus cyberfeminism offers the development of applied, activist theory.
An obvious group to target for cyberfeminist networking, education, and expertise is the first generations of young women now
graduating from schools and colleges (mainly in the US and Europe) who have had some training in electronic media and in media
theory. Having already begun to work in electronic media in school, many of these young women will be searching for ways to get
electronically connected, and thus will experience in full force the gender whammy of cyberspace. While many of them have had some
exposure to feminist theory and practice in the academy, most of them will be faced with a terrifying void when it comes to feminist
support and access in cyberspace. Since cyberspace seems to attract younger women, it is important that cyberfeminists develop
projects and sites for purposes of recruitment.
Cyberfeminist Body Art
Bodies generally are all the rage on the Net--whether they are obsolete, cyborg, techno, porno, erotic, morphed, recombined, phantom,
or viral. But most of these "bodies" are little more than recirculated commodified images of sexuality (particularly female and
"deviant" sexuality) or medical imaging (such as the infamous Visible Human project), and are presented uncritically. Many artists
are contributing to an explosion of body art on the Net, much of it simply a transposition of what already exists in other media.
Cyberfeminist body-centered art is coming alive on the Net. As to be expected, the vagina and the clitoris have pride of place in
much cyberfeminist work such as that of VNS Matrix. "Cunt art" was a fiercely joyous, liberatory, and radical rallying icon for
feminist artists and activists in the 1970s. Women's consciousness-raising and medical self-help groups regularly examined each
others' genitals and reproductive organs, and the speculum became the symbol not only of sexual liberation, but also of feminist
demands for reproductive freedom and for a woman-centered health-care system. As Donna Haraway suggests in _Modest Witness_,
feminists interrogating technoscience (and particularly the new reproductive technologies), need to arm themselves with "the right
speculum for the job," one that "makes visible the data structures that are our bodies." The visualization and data-gathering engines
that drive both the new information and reproductive technologies can be redirected and applied to the task of "designing the
analytical languages [the speculums] for representing and intervening in our spliced, cyborg worlds" (Haraway, p. 212).
Cyberfeminism can create reconfigured networked bodies in cyberspace, bodies that are passionately incorporated in textual, visual,
and interactive works. Simultaneously, deconstructive projects that address the proliferation of dominant cultural, gender, and
sexual codes on the Net will be more effective if they come from a strong, libidinal center, and are understood through the filter
of women's history. Indeed, cyberfeminist body art projects are haunted by women's bodily histories. They are often motivated by
rage against the forces of censorship, repression, and normalization. Primarily, though, they are motivated by absence--the absence
created by female infanticide, clitoridectomy, anorgasmic medications, suttee, footbinding, enforced celibacy, sexual misinformation,
lack of birth control information, rape, forced pregnancy, and by female restriction and confinement.
Part of theoretical feminism's project has been to explore the possibility of difference in female sexuality and desire. Much French
and American feminist, literary, and psychoanalytic theory in the 1980s was dedicated to this research. The Net offers possibilities
for exploring these questions in a new technological and information setting, and among a new population of author/producers who are
more grounded in practice than in theory. Although this line of research seems to have left the binary of woman/nature far behind, it
is by no means certain that it will not fall into some of the traps of essentialist feminism, or succumb to the lure of simply
countering masculinist Netculture with a feminine Netpornography. There is much to be gained from consciously interpolating women's
histories and bodies into cyberspace; much can be learned from naming the absences, and beginning to create a multifaceted, fluid,
and conscious feminist presence.
Conclusion
It seems safe to say that cyberfeminism is still in its avant-garde phase of development. The first wave of explorers, amazons, and
"misfits" have wandered into what is generally a hostile territory, and found a new land in need of decolonization. History is
repeating itself in a positive cycle, where feminist avant-garde philosophies, strategies, and tactics from the past can be dusted
off and reclaim their former vitality. Separatist activities in the real or virutal forms of dinners, discussion groups, and
consciousness raising sessions are viable once again. Essentialist philosophies enacted in body art, cunt art, and identity
maintenance recombine with constructionist notions of identity development. An epistemological and ontological anarchy that is
celebratory and open to any possibility is threading its way through cyberfeminism. The dogma has yet to solidify. At the same time,
the territory is a hostile one, since the gold of the information age will not be handed over to women without a struggle. To make
matters worse, a big tollbooth guards access to this new territory. Its function is to collect tribute from every entity--individual,
class, or nation, that tries to enter. Entrance for individuals comes at the price of obtaining education, hardware and software;
entrance for nations comes at the price of having acceptable infrastructure, and to a lesser extent, an acceptable ideology.
Consequently, a more negative cycle is also repeating itself, as the women who have found their way into cyberterritories are
generally those who have economic and cultural
advantages in other territories; these advantages are awarded through class position, with its intimate ties to cultural position and
race. As this group helps open the borders to other disenfranchised groups, it must be asked, what kind of ideology and structure
will await the newcomers? Will it be a repetition of the first and second waves of feminism in political and economic arenas? Will
cyberspace and its associate institutions be able to cope with a house of difference? Knowing and understanding the history of
women's struggle (along with other struggles in race relations and class relations) is essential--not just as a resource for
strategies and tactics, not just so tactical responses to ybergender issues can be improved, but also to see that the new gender
constructions that come to mark the entirety of this new territory (not just virtual domains) do not fall into the same cycle as in
the past.
Consider this example. In the US, third-wave *activity* peaked in 1991. Barely three years later, this visible resistance had again
died down, leaving continuing debates about feminism largely to the academy. In l997, federal "welfare" laws were repealed in an
all-out assault on the public safety net for the poor. At the same time, forced labor through "workfare" and prison programs has
begun to intensify, and the expansion of the feminized global electronic homework economy has produced a new wave of sweatshop labor.
Since these initiatives have a dramatic effect on poor and working-class women, one would think that the conditions would be right
for a new popular front of feminist activism and resistance. However, the social body and public life seem so splintered, alienated,
stratified, and distracted by market economy, that as yet no signs of such activism have appeared. Is this problem partly that the
avant garde has been paid off to the extent that the issues of the poor which do not effect its members are no cause for
action? Is this problem repeating itself in cyberspace and in its manufacture? There
are so many more problems to face than just access for all.
Notes
* Just so the authors' position is clear: We do not support a reductive equality feminism, i.e., support the existing system, but
believe there should be equal gender epresentation in all ist territories. We do not support pancapitalism. It is a predatory,
pernicious, and sexist system that will not change even if there was equal representation of gender in the policy making classes. Our
argument here is that women need access to empowering knowledge and tools which are now dominated by a despicable "virtual class
(Kroker)." We do not mean to suggest that women become a part of this class. To break the "glass ceiling" and become an active part
of the exploiting class that benefits from gender hierarchy is not a feminist goal, nor anything to be proud of.
**In her essay, "The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics," Sadie Plant spins a mythical genesis for the convergence of women
and machines in a feminised cybernetics based on women's ancient invention of the craft of weaving. This convergence "is reinforced
by cyberfeminism... a perspective (which) is received from the future." In the 70's creating a female mythology was an inspiring and
necessary part of recovering and writing the histories of women, and of honoring female cultural inventions and female generativity
(the Matrix). Cyberfeminist mythologizing is a welcome sign of inspiration and empowerment, and at this point in time, makes good
tactical sense. Such work offers a clear explanation of a constructive relationship etween women and technology, and it begins the
process of rewriting the gender code of cyberspace. However, in a political sense, the function of the mythic "natural woman" has
its limits. In this case, it seems just as likely that weaving was a woefully boring task that was forced upon the disenfranchised.
(This trend of boring and alienating work as a the domain of the disempowered is certainly repeating itself in the pancapitalist
technocracy.) As cyberfeminist critique increases in complexity, and therefore in ambiguity, the current cyberfeminist mythology will
have to fade away much as matriarchal Crete and cunt iconography did in the late 70s.