Cyborgs and Feminism…Like Peanut Butter and Jelly, Clearly

You know what I kind of like about Donna Haraway?  She’s so freakin weird.  Okay, so pretty much every theorist we’ve encountered is a little bit off the rocker.  But who the hell likens feminism to cyborgs?  I feel like she’s probably a harcore Trekkie.  Anyway, the conclusion that I came to after reading her piece and skimming my notes–and this is the painfully boiled-down version–is that feminism itself is the oppressor of women.  And the reason for this is that the forms of feminism we’re used to are too Western, and not “borg” enough.  In the introduction to Haraway’s piece, the editor writes, “The old forms of domination endemic to an industrial society–to white patriarchal capitalism–are rapidly being rendered obsolete by new technologies” (2267).  Likewise, the old way of looking at the role of women in society, the old feminism, is becoming obsolete.  Haraway brings this up when she discusses Marxian feminism and radical feminism.  Both ideologies claim that they’re the one–theirs is the correct perception of women’s oppression, and both pose the only workable solution.  She writes, “neither Marxist nor radical feminist points of view have tended to embrace the status of a partial explanation; both were regularly constituted as totalities” (2280).  She sets up what she calls a caricature of both forms of feminism, where she outlines the critical points of Marxist and radical feminism.  At the end of each caricature, Haraway writes, “by addition race” (2281).  It’s clear that the two perspectives fail to take into account each other, but to add insult to injury, race is a marginal issue for both.  Even aside from the scientific and technological aspect of cyborgs, this is why Marxist and radical feminisms–the “Westernized” versions–must give way to cyborg feminism, which envelops several different factors in the oppression of women.

Haraway says that “science and technology provide fresh sources of power, [and] we need fresh sources of political action.”  She continues with this idea: “Some of the rearrangements of race, sex, and class rooted in high-tech-facilitated social relations can make socialist feminism more relevant to effective progressive politics” (2286).  Haraway illustrates how this works using what Richard Gordon calls “homework economy.”  This calls for a “restructuring of work that broadly has the characteristics formerly ascribed to female jons” (2287).  She explains that robotics and technological advances are causing unemployment among men worldwide; this, in turn, places more emphasis and pressure on the woman’s job.  I’ve read about it before, and Haraway stresses the urgency of what this does to the family’s economic situation.  The “feminization of poverty,” as it is called, is due to the pressure of sustaining the family’s lifestyle on the “woman’s wage.”  What I don’t understand about Haraway’s argument, however, is her almost absolute discrimination when referring to jobs.  Studies have shown that, for the most part, men in the workforce earn higher wages than women for the same occupation and with the same skills.  That doesn’t mean, though, that women aren’t just as likely to be affected by the increasing use of technology as a replacement for skilled and unskilled labor.  While we’re on the subject, did Haraway pay attention when she read Butler?  Not all families are headed by the “Western,” patriarchal heterosexual couple.  And it’s not exclusively women that may end up taking care of the children.