In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir proclaims that women have no claim of “the virile myth that would reflect their projects they still dream through men’s dreams” (Beauvoir 213). The women of classical works of mythology are represented through the eyes of male writers. As they are neither written nor portrayed by their own sisters, the patriarchy ensures that the male character is always the Subject, whereas the woman in myth is reduced to that of a supporting role. Donna Haraway’s 1988 paper The Cyborg Manifesto hence seeks to create a “political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism” in the form of the cyborg (Haraway 291). Haraway defines the cyborg to be “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (291). It is “cybernetic” in that it functions inside a communication network, “hybrid” because it is a mixture between human and machine. The cyborg exists outside the gender binary highlighted by de Beauvoir. It is neither male nor female, Subject nor Object. The cyborg has no “genesis” (292) in that it is artificially created and is not born from a female womb. Greek myth states that humans were split into two separate parts by Zeus, “condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves” (Plato).
Haraway’s mythological cyborg, in comparison, is born as “a finished whole” (293). Unlike humans, the cyborg does not seek “completion” through a heterosexual partner as it is born as a whole, finished product. As such, the cyborg can be considered to be an “outsider” which exists outside the domains of identification. The woman, as de Beauvoir states, is dominated by the master-slave relationship of alterity where women are defined in relation to men. As the cyborg exists outside the domains of gender, it cannot be defined in relation to men. The cyborg, who has no defined gender, hence fulfils the myth of an imagined “post-gender” utopia. Simultaneously, Haraway states the irony of the cyborg, as they are “the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism” (293). The cyborg is created to work and fulfil the needs of military and profit, both systems of dominance instituted by patriarchal power structures, hence it is ironic that the cyborg that is created to further the goals of the patriarchy becomes the figure that upsets its long rule.
One of Haraway’s major critiques in her manifesto is that of radical feminists seeing life in “deepened dualisms of mind and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism in the social practices, symbolic formulations, and physical artefacts associated with ‘high technology’ and scientific culture” (295). She builds on de Beauvoir’s idea of the master-slave relationship, where men “keep woman in a state of dependence” (Beauvoir 209). Haraway asserts that it is this very dualism of gender which feminists ironically acknowledge which is “systematic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of colour, nature, workers in short, domination of all constituted as others” (313). The act of separating people into binaries is one that enables Othering and domination. While one party is Othered, the other party dialectically becomes the autonomous, absolute “One”, holding the power of God. Hence, instead of “deepening” the dualism between men and women, Haraway posits that these dualisms should be challenged. As dualisms are weakened, it becomes increasingly challenging for women to be Othered and hence dominated. It is only fitting that the Haraway’s ideal feminist myth takes the form of a high-tech cyborg, as its very existence challenges dualisms of man and machine.
Haraway describes three transgressive “boundary breakdowns” which make the existence of the cyborg possible. The first is the boundary between human and animal. Haraway posits that “iology and evolutionary theory have simultaneously produced modern organisms as objects of knowledge and reduced the lines between humans and animals to a faint trace” (293). Advances in the theory of evolution have shown that humans evolved from animals, hence we are one and the same. These scientific discoveries weaken the man-animal dualism such that the debate whether humans and animals are different becomes an ideological one (293). Haraway states that “he cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgressed”.
The second boundary crossing is between living organisms and machines. Machines, Haraway argues, have become “self-moving, self-designing, autonomous” (293). The machines of the past were inert, slow and unintuitive. They could hardly be compared to human-animal thought. However, the machines of the modern world have evolved such that they “have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial”. Scientific advances have created machines which are capable of thought, some with greater efficiency than humans, hence transgressing the boundary between animal-human and machine.
Haraway’s final boundary crossing is that of the physical and non-physical. Haraway illustrates her point with the example of microelectronic devices, claiming that they are “everywhere and they are invisible” (294). Microchips, Haraway argues, cause “invisible” diseases in the health hazards of producing them and “the experience of stress” caused by using microchips. Microprocessing chips are physical, material objects. Paradoxically, they are also non-physical as they have far-ranging effects which influence the connected modern world. Hence, the ubiquity of the microchip has transgressed the boundary between physical and non-physical.
Haraway’s cyborg metaphor rejects gender essentialism in its transgressive nature, as “gender, race and class cannot provide the basis for belief in ‘essential’ unity” (295). Haraway argues against gender essentialism, echoing the Beauvorian concept that “being female” (295) is not a real state defined by biological identifiers. Gender, then, can be seen as a system of domination by the capitalist patriarchy which forces itself onto men and women. The cyborg’s transgressive nature allows it to challenge dualisms of self and Other or male and female (313). Haraway posits that in order to undermine the capitalist patriarchal systems of domination of “all constituted as others” (313), these dualisms must be rejected and broken down, creating a post-gender society.
In “Postgenderism: Beyond the Gender Binary”, George Dvorsky and James Hughes argue for a “liberatory” breakdown of binary gender (Hughes and Dvorsky 2). Hughes and Dvorsky posit that technological advancements will eventually render gender essentialism irrelevant. Gender-essential functions like childbirth will eventually give way to technologically assisted reproduction, such that “biological wombs unnecessary for reproduction.” Hughes and Dvorsky also cite the increasing ubiquity of sex re-assignment surgery (10). The ability to change one’s sex at will further blurs the line between male and female, much like Haraway’s cyborg. As one gains the ability to change their sex, the transgender is no longer required to “conform to the gender binary” (11). Like Haraway, Dvorsky and Hughes believe that transgressive technological advancement will help to break down the gender dualisms. The breakdown of gender dualisms will necessarily result in a reduction of “patriarchal attitudes and behaviors” (5). If technology successfully removes the distinction between man and woman, the systems of domination will lose their power as there is no longer a woman that can be Othered.
Moniique Wittig’s 1981 essay “One Is Not Born a Woman” similarly critiques the woman-man binary. According to Wittig, women are “ideologically rebuilt into a ‘natural group’” (Wittig 9). Wittig’s statement concurs with earlier feminists like Haraway and de Beauvoir: all three thinkers agree that there is no true identifier that indicates that one is a woman. Their arguments are of the constructivist view that gender is performative and “instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” (Butler 519). Butler writes that:
The distinction between expression and performativeness is quite
crucial, for if gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows
or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no preexisting
identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or
false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity
would be revealed as a regulatory fiction. (Butler 528)
Here Butler posits that gender is performative rather than essentialist. Acts which constitute gender are not indicative of a “preexisting identity”. They do not result from one being born a certain gender at birth. Rather, the “various acts of gender” construct an individual’s gender identity over time. Butler then goes on to argue that a “true gender identity” is “a regulatory fiction”. The gender roles prescribed to men and women in society are “regulatory” as they are governed by strict social conventions. To “do” one’s gender requires “doing” it “in accord with certain sanctions and proscriptions”. If they are “fiction”, we can hence conclude that gender is only a social construct and a system of domination which the capitalist patriarchy uses to dominate all who they deem Other. Similarly, Wittig writes:
Thus it is our historical task to make it evident that women are a class, which is to say that the category “woman” as well as the category “man” are political and economic categories not eternal ones. Once the class “men” disappears, “women” as a class will disappear as well, for there are no slaves without masters. (Wittig 15)
Wittig argues that the categories of men and women are defined among political and economic lines, not biological ones. Like Haraway, Wittig acknowledges that the classing of women into a naturalistic group only serves to facilitate the master-slave relationship which dominates the woman as Other. To simply pronote the class of “women” is insufficient and living in false consciousness as it presupposes the totalising gender dualism. For Wittig, this category and gender dualism itself must be challenged. She similarly argues for the erosion of gender in order to thwart the systems of domination. Wittig also mentions the figure of the lesbian as a transgressive outsider. A lesbian is “a not-woman, a not-man, a product of society, not a product of nature” (Wittig 13). Like Haraway’s cyborg, the lesbian exists outside of the gender binary and hence challenges its phenomenological legitimacy.
In conclusion, we observe that both Haraway’s and Wittig’s approaches acknowledge the constructed nature of gender. This follows Butler’s ideas of gender being constructivist, constituted by performative acts repeated over time. Haraway and Wittig both acknowledge the need to challenge gender dualisms, as it is this dualism which allows the domination of man over women. Both writers employ transgressive figures of the cyborg and the lesbian to challenge this duality.
Works Cited
Beauvoir, Simone . The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Print.
Butler, J., 1988. Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), p.519.
Donna J. Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149-181.
Dvorsky, G. and Hughes, J. “Postgenderism: Beyond the Gender Binary”, Academia. 27 November 2021. https://www.academia.edu/7553496/Postgenderism_Beyond_the_Gender_Binary
Wittig, Monique. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. Print.