Page 275 - Communication Theory and Research

McQuail(EJC)-3281-19.qxd 8/16/2005 12:02 PM Page 260

260 Communication Theory & Research
Gender codes and the Internet: cyberfeminism

Cyberfeminism is a term for a variety of academic and artistic practices that
centre around and in the Internet, and other new technologies. Some authors even
have it that ‘after years of post-structuralist theoretical arrogance, philosophy lags
behind art and fiction in the difficult struggle to keep up with today’s world’
(Braidotti, 1996). Whether art or philosophy is the motor, cyberfeminism is the cur-
rent version of one of the key feminist essentials to connect theory with practice.
The year 1997 even witnessed the beginning of Cyberfeminist International during
the renowned art fair Documenta in Kassel, Germany. Cyberfeminism is very much
in debate but has some defining common features. Transgender politics or gender
bending is one of them, referring to the possibilities that the new technologies offer
to escape from bodily gender definitions and construct new gender identities, or
even genderless identities. Technophilia is another defining factor of cyberfemi-
nism, accepting and celebrating the fact that technology is no longer an external
factor to the human body but has become an integral part of it. Donna Haraway’s
writing on cyborgs offers the almost canonical frame of reference here, the cyborg
being ‘a cybernetic organism, a fusion of the organic and the technical forged in
particular, historical, cultural practices’ (Haraway, 1997: 51). Thinking of pace-
makers, hearing aids and even glasses, cyborgs are completely ordinary as well as
the subject of science fiction such as Robocop and Total Recall.
Cyberfeminism on the Internet is found among others in the so-called Multi
User Dungeons (MUDs). MUDs have attracted the attention of many feminist
authors and seem to have become paradigmatic for the Internet as a laboratory
for gender. MUDs are text-based, virtual games which may have the different
purposes of seeking adventure and killing monsters, of socializing with others
and building new communities. They also offer a tool for teaching by construct-
ing virtual classrooms. One usually does not access a MUD through the World
Wide Web, but links up through Telnet. When logging on for the first time, one
chooses a name for the character one wants to be and keeps that name for the
duration of the game, which can – in fact – go on for years. It is precisely this
choice of identity at the beginning of the game that the MUD reputation of being
a laboratory for gender experiments comes from. Women play as men, men
operate as women, others choose multiple identities like Laurel and Hardy, or
try what it means to operate as an ‘it’. Sherry Turkle’s (1995) book Life on the
Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet offers the most extensive account of gen-
der experience in the MUDs, concluding that MUDs provide a postmodern
utopian space in which existing social boundaries and dichotomies cease to have
relevance. In the words of Turkle: ‘MUDs are proving grounds for an action
based philosophical practice that can serve as a form of consciousness raising
about gender issues’ (Turkle, 1995: 214).
Whereas life in the MUDs challenges gender identities, other forms of cyber-
feminism undermine existing gender symbols and representations in different
ways. Parody and irony are the postmodern stylistic devices used to construct
typical cyber varieties of gender, that are neither traditional nor feminist. It is
expressed in its terminology of geekgrrls, bitches, riotgrrls, guerilla grrls and