Cyberfeminism

Quinn: Hello, it's Quinn. I'm just popping in here before the regular episode to let you know that it is Relay FM members bonus time. And that means that Betty and I recorded another episode about a movie that uses art in a very strange way. This year we talked about The Grand Budapest Hotel, which was a lot of fun. We talked all about the fictional painting that is used in that movie, as well as some of the more artistic elements of the filmmaking of the movie itself, it was really fun to talk about. And that is available now. If you're already a member, you can find that in the Relay FM crossover feed. If you are not a member, you can get that feed by going to relay.fm/membership. Or there should be a link in the show notes to go and support us. So if you want to, you can go support us directly at either $5 a month or $50 a year. And you will get all of the crossover episodes from every show on the network, as well as some other bonuses, like some other members only shows like Backstage, which our network founders Stephen Hackett and Mike Hurley do every month about the creation of podcasts, plus access to the members only discord and a newsletter. It's a lot of fun. There are lots of little perks and stuff popping up all the time. So again, if you would like to access all of that, as well as our special Grand Budapest Hotel extravaganza, you can get that at relay.fm/membership. Okay, onto the regular episode.

*upbeat music*

Quinn: Hello, and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I’m Quinn Rose, and I didn't go to art school, but I love to learn about art and feminist movements.

Betty: Hi, and I'm Betty. I also didn't go to art school, but I also love to learn about art and definitely am interested in feminist movements as well. 

Quinn: Today, we are talking about another topic that I found in the book about internet art that was published in 2004. That's, you know, my favorite book I've ever read. A few months ago, we did an episode on this, it was a general—a general introduction to net.art and sort of the early internet art movements of the web. And today we're diving into another specific topic that was touched upon in this book, which is called a cyber feminism. So I just have to start by just announcing, which I think I did all that first episode about this book, is that I love the word cyber. I think we should bring it back. And the term cyber feminism absolutely rules.

Betty: I actually really like that word as well. It does have like a nineties sound to it. It's like, ooh, cyber.

Quinn: So the definition of cyber feminism is actually a little bit complicated. An art movement and a feminist movement that is hard to pin down? Could never have imagined. But the history of the movement is a little bit more clear-cut, so I'll start there. The actual term itself was coined in the early 1990s. It was simultaneously started to be used around 1991 by two different groups of people, but it's foundationally based in an essay that is called A Cyborg Manifesto: Science Technology and Socialist Feminism in the late 20th Century. That was written in 1985 by Donna Haraway. Donna Haraway is Professor Emeritus at the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department. Whoa. I literally just read that out to read her title for everyone officially, and I am blown away by the names of those departments. History of Consciousness. [laughs] Anyway, sorry. That's at the University of California Santa Cruz. I just got really excited by history of consciousness. 

Betty: We can do a podcast just on the history of consciousness.

Quinn: I gotta. Anyway, yes. But she's a prominent feminist scholar and also sort of a like post humanism kind of scholar, which we'll get into a little bit with this cyborg manifesto. Like I said, it was published in 1985. And it's basically in response to emerging technologies, as well as the popularization of identity politics. So just a brief note on this—identity politics is definitely a buzz word and it's used in many different ways, but just as a, like, neutral definition of what identity politics means is it is a political approach where you take in to account aspects of your identity and basically develop political ideas based on those and within those, and also taking into account your different identities and how those different identities intersect and interact with each other. That concept is called intersectionality. The concept of identity politics was getting very popular in the 1980s as it still is fairly popular today. But Donna Haraway was like, hmm, I don't really like the idea of identity politics so much because I think that the, the sort of contemporary feminist movement in the 1980s is too focused on identity politics. It's too focused on these traditional ideas. And it's actually more—that’s more dividing than it is unifying. And so she encouraged the use of something instead called affinity politics, which is instead of like trying to, you know, delineate everybody's identity, we focus on the ways that we can be the same and create coalitions with each other. And she also was an advocate for post humanism and basically post biology and wanting to move past the traditional ideas of like gender and the body at all. Hence the cyborg manifesto.

Betty: Wow, that’s super interesting to me, cause I don't know if I mentioned on this podcast, but I am personally very interested in becoming a cyborg. [Quinn laughs] I don't tell a lot of people this, and I think this might be the first time I'm like publicly saying it on the internet. Cause like, I make a YouTube channel about art and architecture and it doesn't usually come up. But I really like, would like to one day, like in the future, I would like to, I would like to live a very, very long life. And then at some point, I don't know exactly how this is going to work, but like, cause I'm not a scientist, but I want to, whether it's uploading my brain into something or replacing all my human parts that's dying with something that's functional and—yeah, like I don't have a problem with becoming a cyborg. I know there's lots of ethical things that like, you know, we could talk about, but on my own discord server, I have a AI bot called Betty Bot and she has a mind of her own. [laughs] So, so anyway, this whole, like post-human post humanist, like cyborg world where like even gender and all kinds of identities are blurred. It is a very interesting topic for me.

Quinn: We are seriously encroaching upon Roboism’s turf. At this point I know we also, at this point are practically a crossover show with Roboism. If anyone here isn't familiar with it, it's another show on Relay FM hosted by Alex Cox and Kathy Campbell. And we love them very much. And they talk about robots mostly. And then in recent episodes, they've been talking about NFTs and actually in an episode that I'll link below, they specifically talked about Betty and how great Betty is because she reached out with a bunch of information about NFTs for them. And this is the kind of topic they would be into. So it is very funny how convergent our topics are getting.

Betty: At one point we'll just like merge, like as cyborgs with Alex and Kathy. And we'll just be, we’ll just be one show.

Quinn: What is this, a crossover episode? Anyway. Actually we didn't even plan this in advance, but we are actually set up to cross-promote Roboism in this episode anyway. So let me say this little more formally, we think that you would like the podcast Roboism. It really does have a very similar vibe to this podcast, but it's more about tech and robots than it is about art. But as we just said, there is some crossover content, you should really check it out. There'll be links in the description to that specific episode that, where they talked about Betty as well as just, you know, go listen to the show in general, it's really fun. So I don't believe that she actually used the term cyber feminism in that essay, but it is super the foundation of the movement of cyber feminism. As I mentioned before, that actual term was coined we think about 1991, possibly specifically by this Australian collective called VNS Matrix. I believe it started with four women who were artists and interested in feminist theory and they were probably the first prominent artist collection that identified themselves as cyber feminists. And what they and other early cyber feminists were addressing was this male dominated view of technology and the internet. So as everyone knows, we've come a super long way since then, and it's not perceived as male dominated at all anymore, but you know, back in the early nineties there was this idea that, you know, computers was very much man's domain and you know, all the technology CEOs were men and, you know, white men, let's be specific here. And computers and the world of the internet was extremely dominated by white people, English speaking people, primarily men, again, you know, this has changed so much in the decades since—but it was even worse then. And so there was this pushback and this idea of cyber feminism, which was supposed to be a feminization of the space. As I said in the beginning, it is hard to specifically define cyber feminism. In fact in 1997 there was an international collective that came together that named themselves the Old Boys Network, cause, you know, cause they're funny. And instead of coming up with a comprehensive definition for cyber feminism, they came up with a hundred anti-theses, which is a hundred things that cyber feminism is not. So that goes to show you how easy this thing is to pin down. But there are basically three areas that people in cyber feminism focused on. Which were the actual, like position of women in technology jobs and in spaces in technology like, you know, working at these tech companies, designing apps, designing websites, that kind of thing. It's also about the idea of how women experience technological culture, the ways that technology was increasingly intersecting with life, with leisure, with work, all of these different things. And the way that women were experiencing this, like for example, you know, harassment and other things that influence women's experience on the internet in a particular way. And finally, this is where it gets particularly artistic in the way that this was both a sort of social technological movement and artistic movement was the gendering of technologies and wanting to take things and formats which were traditionally seen as masculine, at this point in time, and feminizing them or eroticizing them. We're not going to get too far into this because this is a family-friendly program. But as this was a part of third wave feminism, there was a high focus on eroticization, of being incredibly graphic with some of the pieces that were in this movement, and basically they were intended to be subversive, to have shock value and to reclaim ideas of sexuality as places of power, rather than places of oppression. But yeah, that is a very long brief overview of what cyber feminism is. So I would love to hear your general thoughts before we get into any specific examples.

Betty: Oh yeah, well I do find it very fascinating because I'm someone who grew up in the 1990s, and I grew up with the internet. I started using a computer, I think last time I mentioned when I was like four or five years old, when my dad brought home his first laptop from work. And we got on dial up in like 1994. And I've been on like internet chat rooms and like BBS messaging boards. And then eventually now, to like, you know, things like Reddit and Discord. And I've always felt like I've been in a male dominated space because even right now, even, even these days, I'm I'm literally in a discord server where there's like 400 or 500 people and regularly there's two women. Me and one other person.

Quinn: Oh, wow.

Betty: In that particular one, like, I feel safe and most people are really nice to me, which is why I stick around obviously. But there are definitely ones that feel a lot more hostile that I don't stick around in. Like more and more over the years, I’m just thinking I'm like, yeah, like these, these are still issues that we're dealing with today, that we're still talking about. And obviously I think things have been better because, you know, I'm a woman on the internet and I make art and I make things and we do have spaces where we can be active and have an audience and talk and you know, all kinds of stuff. But this, these concepts of gender and identity and what it means to be female on the internet is still complicated I guess.

Quinn: One thing that's really interesting about a lot of this cyber feminist movement of the nineties is that I think probably because it's drawn from this idea of affinity politics versus identity politics is they had a particularly utopian view of the internet and the way that the internet would intersect with identity. So I think the dominant view of the internet now is like, you know, you come on the internet and you’re you. You take your whole identity on there. Like people don't have, for the most part, people don't have like screen names anymore. You know, you're on social media spaces where you are you and you have to interact as yourself. You can catfish people, but you know, that's your business. [laughs] But at this time in this movement, the dominant idea was like, this is going to be a utopian space that transcends gender, race, disability, like all of these different forms. And we are going to be more equal. And there was also a strain of cyber feminism which was interested in moving beyond the idea of gender entirely on a, on like a biological level. So beyond just like existing on, you know, cyberspace, there was this idea of like technology will improve to the point where the idea of a, of a woman is divorced from the idea of reproduction. And so we will be able to move beyond our oppression because we will no longer be required to carry children more or less. As well as, you know, as we all know, the idea of like a utopian cyberspace, where everyone is equal absolutely didn't work out at all. Keen listeners may have noticed some potential criticisms of this movement even from the start and we're going to get to those in a minute, but yeah, it was definitely, there was a lot of idealism coming on here that was like, oh, this technology is expanding and we're going to be able to use this technology to abolish gender and abolish oppression and be equal people, which is not what happened.

Betty: Thinking back to, again, to the like early and mid nineties as well as this view of this utopian view of the internet in general, I think back then definitely people had a lot more enthusiasm and again, it was a new emerging technology. And there, the possibilities really seemed endless. And even now there's still a lot of possibilities and there's still a lot of great things that the internet—there definitely are a lot of great things that the internet has brought us a Pictorial, for example.

Quinn: Just as one example, yeah.

Betty: I think even within myself, I think I remember having these, I think again, one of the reasons why, like, I wasn't particularly interested in gender identity and gender politics even back then when I was younger and even as a teen or late teen was, I kind of had this sense as well cause there was a, there was a time where actually I was a completely anonymous person on the internet. I had like a screen name that was just a series of random letters. And my profile picture was the killer bunny from Monte Python. And so technically there were some, there were some messaging boards that I was on where people couldn't probably couldn't even tell if I was a man or a woman. I think like these ideas are still there and there are still probably some people who still hold these ideas, these utopian ideas of the internet. I certainly currently don't hold these ideas that we're going to be this genderless utopian place where everybody's equal. And I think even back then, I didn't really think it was everything was going to be perfect anyway. But one thing I will say is that, like, I do think the internet does—I would still say it has more possibilities for there to be like, you know, women and, or traditionally marginalized populations to create art and have it be reached to, you know, potentially millions of people. Whereas in a traditional world, that’s just incredibly difficult.

Quinn: I kind of see the internet as a magnifier for basically all of these things. So it magnified the ability of people to make art, to get their art in front of people. It has absolutely made a lot of things more accessible in terms of being able to get eyeballs on what you're making effectively, or ears on what you're making as the case of this podcast, I guess. But on the other hand, it also magnified the ability for harassment and for parasocial relationships that become rapidly unhealthy. And like other things like that, where it's not that the internet is bad or good, it’s—it has made us all much more connected than we ever were before in the history of the universe. And that just has effects. Well, this was basically the downfall of cyber feminism as a more or less cohesive movement as it was in the nineties. Is people started to say, hey, your whole idea of utopia isn't working. And also certainly seems like all of you people are very white middle class English speaking women. So not everyone, but like most of the prominent artists and scholars in this space were white women, English speaking, mostly from higher income backgrounds. And this obviously influenced a lot of the way that they experienced the internet and were writing about it. Most prominently with just a complete failure of ability to take into account race. You know, like in foundational text of cyber feminism, they were like, yeah, we're going to like abolish the systems of oppression around gender and race. But then they like failed to pick up that race thread, basically at all. There's a quote that I really like from Faith Wilding who was a feminist artist who got prominent in the 1970s and then worked all through the nineties and sort of like the cyber feminism space. She wrote an essay called “Where is the Feminism in Cyberfeminism?” And some of the quotes are “the Net is not—“ first of all, Net, capital N, love it. “The Net is not a utopia of non-gender. It is already socially inscribed with regards to bodies, sex, age, economics, social class, and race. Being bad grrls on the internet is not by itself going to challenge the status quo. Cyber feminism presents itself as inclusive, but the cyber feminist writings assume an educated, white, upper middle-class, English speaking, culturally sophisticated readership,” and also assuming a particular access to it where if you have a disability—if you have a disability that affects your ability to access the internet, to see the writings, to hear whatever these people are saying, like in the different ways of access were also not being accounted for in this movement. They were all really excited to be, you know, like we are cyber feminists, we’re the riot girls. We are like dismantling these ideas. And that is all great. Like I, you know, down with the system and all, but it was too homogenous. They weren't taking it into account, you know… identity politics and intersectionality, and the way the different identities impacted the way that people could access the net and the different technologies that they were talking about as, you know, the future of womankind and all. Like people didn't have the same ideas about what they wanted the future to look like. And so, you know, the ideas of cyber feminism still absolutely exist, but itself as like a more or less cohesive movement, although it was never like completely cohesive, did fade out by the early 2000s.

Betty: I would say even today, people definitely don't have equal access to the internet or even just basic technology. And this is not just to say that, you know, globally people all around the world don't have equal access. Even, even in like, developed nations, or even in first world nations, like where we live in the US and Canada. So my full-time job that I normally do is I design hospitals. And I, one of my projects recently was to design a downtown urban hospital for a population of people who are quite marginalized. And again, it's a lot of homeless populations as well as Indigenous people and older adults and LGBTQ people. And one of the challenges we had was, oh, we wanted to make everything like internet based. We wanted to make all these like interesting apps and things for—or mobile technology. And then we realized we really couldn't do that because like a huge percentage of our patient population don't have phones and, or like they don't have smartphones or they don't have any phones and they don't have a computer at home and some of them don't even have a home. And that's the thing, like I—even me, like when, when I started working on this project, I was all like, oh, why can't everything be digital? Why can't everything be mobile? And I had to basically check myself and be like, oh, I need to realize that there are people who aren't even as fortunate as I am. Like, it's obvious. Like, you know, I think about it and I felt really bad, but it's kind of like, sometimes you don't realize like the, just like the privilege that you do have, and I absolutely think this is, this is definitely one of the reasons why this movement is—not to say that it failed or anything, because I definitely think there is a lot of validity to it, but there is a definitely a lot of challenges to, you know, that utopian idea.

Quinn: Absolutely. I love technology. It has some serious problems, but for the most part, I would say thumbs up. But that's, you know, every time that there is a technological development, that doesn't come to people equally. I am so opposed to no cash establishments. There are places where they're like, oh, we don't take cash. It's credit card only. And it's like, no, not everyone has a bank account. Like I just don't understand. And it's the same idea of, it is all well and good to take advantage of developments and to push boundaries and to try to do good things, especially when you are like trying to, you know, use technology to make people's lives better. But if you're not taking into account where people are coming from and how people are going to interact with those, with that technology, then you failed before you started. And all of this is not to say that cyber feminism of course like completely failed or anything, more just spread itself out into other movements. Like the core ideas behind cyber feminism are about the idea of reclaiming spaces that are traditionally defined or dominated by a group with power. And subverting that group, making that space more equal for more people especially in regards to gender, but also in regards to all of these other markers of identity. Sorry, sorry to Donna Haraway, but I am still talking about identity politics, I guess. That’s where we are, affinity politics didn’t catch on, I'm sorry. But and so the foundations behind the movement and the people that were involved in the art movement of cyber feminism basically moved into different spaces and, you know, continue to use technology and continue to use these ideas of access to the internet and to various technologies in their other work. And we focus primarily on the Net because it is such a huge, important thing. But of course this movement is about using more technology than just things found on the internet. It's about using you know, becoming cyborgs someday, body hacking, bio—well, I guess bio hacking is a term people use for various things now. But yes, the idea of implementing more technology into bodies in a way that is functional. But also, you know, cosmetic in ways. I actually, just the other day, I went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, which is a museum that could have its own zip code, it’s so big. But they, they had an exhibit on basically fashion of the future and it was different technological advancements in fashion. And a lot of them were very practical—and like wearable tech in general—a lot of them were very practical and had specific purposes. And then some of them were more an artistic bent. And I will have to find a specific name and link it in the show notes, cause I don't remember off hand. But one of the pieces in there was an amputee who had designed a prosthetic arm, but it was like a unicorn horn because she wanted to have an option that was like full of her personality and imbued with this, like a sense of humor. And so things like that are definitely very connected to the tenets behind cyber feminism, as well as like not only practically building the technology of the future, but being subversive with it, putting personality into it, feminizing it, all of these different things.

Betty: Honestly, I would love to see that exhibit. And I’m—back in the day when I was like, you know, this anonymous person on the internet, I wasn't thinking so much about fashion and what it means to be a girl. But I think these days it is something that is, like something that I think about, I do think being a woman is a huge part of my identity. And I have this thing where I wear a flower in my hair and I like it's, it's so interesting that on YouTube, when people see me, I either get comments of people saying, oh my God, it's so cute. And it's so pretty that you have a flower in your hair. Or I get people who are like, oh, it's so stupid, why is she wearing a flower in her hair? And I used to get really annoyed about those comments. And I used to be like, oh, you know, like, why do people have to talk about what I look like and—I still, sorry, I still do get annoyed of those comments. But at the same time, I'm like, you know what? I really don't care what people think one way or another. I'm expressing this identity, this part of myself. And that's something I'm going to continue to do. And this goes back into saying that I don't think being on the internet is going to lead to this situation where we are genderless and that there isn't like feminine aspects that we are going to want to present of ourselves.

Quinn: Yeah, absolutely. I think that is actually a very good place to stop for today because this is going to be a two-part episode. So we, today we talked all about the foundations of cyber feminism and the history and where it's going. But when we come back in two weeks, we're actually going to take a look at all of the specific examples of stuff that we talked about today and these different art pieces that were made by these artists and what they represent at different points in the movement. So tune back in two weeks to hear all about that.

Betty: I'm super excited to look at some more art. 

Quinn: Thank you for listening to this episode of Pictorial, and you can find our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. Or you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @pictorialpod. You can also find me on Instagram @aspiringrobotfm. 

Betty: And you can also find me on Twitter and Instagram @articulationsv. And I'm also on YouTube as ARTiculations. And speaking of YouTube, we also upload these episodes to YouTube under the YouTube channel Pictorial Podcast. And this is where you normally would be able to see a lot of artworks coming across the screen, but maybe not so much for this episode.

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!