-Caveat Lector-
... or the conspiracy of technology(sts) against 'humanity' ...
>From http://www.philosophynews.com/book/excerpt/X00419991028.htm
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Philosophy Book Excerpt
October 28, 1999
Sex/Machine: Readings in Culture, Gender, and Technology
Patrick D. Hopkins, editor
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998
510 pages
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This anthology is the first comprehensive introduction to the full range of
issues in gender and technology studies. It is designed to be used as a primary
course text, but it is also a thorough summary of the issues involved in gender
and technology for the general public. The book begins with a thorough
introductory essay on the methodology and importance of considering issues in
technology, gender, and human nature. From there it covers the historical
impact on gender roles of specific technologies such as the automobile,
telephone, computer, and agriculture; a variety of moral and social policy
issues in reproductive technology, cosmetic surgery, sex selection, and genetic
manipulation of sexual traits; and, finally, the conceptual, personal
identity, and social issues of gender and the Internet, computers, cyborgs, and
technology in film and literature. Following is an excerpt from the book's
introduction.
EXCERPT
Gender studies and feminist theory have been involved in a debate for some time
now over the meaning of gender and sex, the very character of gender and sex.
Divided roughly into camps of "essentialists" versus "social constructionists,"
the debate parallels older realist and idealist battles. The essentialist
position may be oversimplified this way: some core, objective property
(typically understood as biological or biopsychological) defines what it means
to be a woman or a man, and the categories of male and female are thus culture-
independent and mind-independent "natural" kinds. The social constructionist
position may be oversimplified this way: the categories of male, female, man,
and woman are not "natural" kinds but are rather culturally constructed ideals
irreducible to biological or psychological properties, which change
demonstrably in meaning and practice over time and across cultures.
The political outcome of these positions is that essentialists tend to view
gender differences as innate and immutable, closed to modification at some
fundamental level by education, parenting, or ideological movements, with some
basic differences in gender roles pragmatically and objectively justified.
Social constructionists tend to view gender differences as created, learned,
and alterable, with gender role divisions always historically relative,
contingent, and ultimately unwarranted by appeal to an objective reality
outside human culture. While both sides of this debate can marshal compelling
evidence for their general claims, neither is unassailable. The dominant
criticism of essentialism is that it does not account for actual observed
variability in these "natural" categories and ignores a tremendous amount of
conceptual fuzziness and empirical counterexample in its biologistic
definitions. The dominant criticism of social constructionism is that it simply
seems to rule out any influences of the physical body on behavior, social
categories, and self-concepts, treating human beings as if they were all only
pure minds, exempt from the biological and evolutionary forces that constrain
all other organisms.
Irrespective of the theoretical merits of these two positions, technology
threatens or promises to circumvent the political heart of the debate by
altering the connection between the premises and conclusions of both sides.
Essentialists move from the belief that sex and gender differences are hard-
wired, largely immutable, and socially valuable to the conclusion that attempts
to ignore or eradicate them are futile, harmful, and sexually confusing. Social
constructionists move from the belief that sex and gender differences are
culturally produced and often socially detrimental to the conclusion that they
can be radically altered for the better through education, legal reform, and
improved theoretical understanding.
But for these moves, both sides depend on the assumption that "biological"
equals "immutable" and technology increasingly erodes that assumption. Taking
seriously the essentialist idea that gender identity, behavior, or
cognitive and personality traits may be sex-linked physical characteristics of
the body does not mean that these things are fixed. "Genetic," "biological,"
and "bodily" do not imply "unchangeable." Even if doubtful of the simplified
social constructionist claims that sex and gender are categories unconstrained
by objective, empirical bodily facts, technology can nonetheless allow us to
alter the body in such ways that gender's "naturalness" or "reality" no longer
has any permanent sway. Categories of gender and sex, regardless of their
possible "essentialist" foundations, are as open to change and difference as
the categories of social constructionism.
At proximal technological levels, the "natural" or "biological" constraints of
sex are already being modified as reproductive technology permits procreation
without sexual intercourse, removes menopause as a barrier to pregnancy, and
allows gender-disorienting or gender-ignoring personal interaction through
Internet technologies and virtual reality. At slightly more distal levels,
technologies such as cloning and in vitro gestation allow reproduction without
either sexual dimorphism or pregnancy. At more speculative levels, radical
bodily changes produced by genetic engineering, cybernetic implants,
nanotechnological reconstruction, and artificial intelligence uploading open
the possibility of a completely postgendered cyborgism and perhaps even a
posthuman subjectivity altogether.
As with the use of technology to more mildly subvert existing gender systems,
these potential effects on gender identity and sexual being are both resisted
and invited. However, these radically disruptive effects on sexual biology and
gender identity seem to be more anxiety-producing and politically explosive
than mere gender-role shifting technologies because altering the very
physicality of sex appears to get at the heart of some cherished and previously
unalterable correlates of human social and personal identity. This can be
received as a great liberating step forward, or rejected as a great and
dangerous loss. It is in response to these sorts of radical technological
changes that familiar social and political alliances realign in odd ways.
Religious conservatives and radical feminists can find themselves on the same
side responding to reproductive technologies, or gender-bending virtual
technologies, while gruff old male science fiction writers can find themselves
being theorized as postmodern feminists.
CONTENTS
Contents
Introduction: The Intersection of Culture, Gender, and Technology (Patrick D.
Hopkins)
Discusses the importance of the intersection of gender studies and technology
studies and presents a four part analytical structure for addressing the
effects of technology and gender and sex roles and vice versa.
I. Inventing Histories: Gender and Technological Development
1. Women Hold Up Two-Thirds of the Sky: Notes for a Revised History of
Technology (Autumn Stanley)
Women have always been part of the development of technology, but often the
things women created and used were not called technology, such as cooking,
agriculture, leather tanning, and pottery. The term "technology" has been used
to privilege men's activities.
2. The "Industrial Revolution" in the Home: Household Technology and Social
Change in the Twentieth Centure (Ruth Schwartz Cowan)
Classic article arguing that new domestyic technologies increased rather than
decreased women's work in the home by raising the standards of cleanliness and
associating antiseptic cleanliness with motherly love.
3. The Culture of the Telephone (Michele Martin)
Covers the history of the telephone and how women's use of it turned it from
purely a business machine to a tool used for socializing and personal
communication.
4. Femininity and the Electric Car (Virginia Scharff)
Early in automotive history, the electric car was considered a woman's machine,
while gas and steam cars were considered men's machines. Women changed this
through insisting on using gas cars for socializing, travel, and political
activities. This contributed to the decline of the electric automobile.
5. Does Technology Work for Women Too? (Lilia Oblepias-Ramos)
Examines the concept of "appropriate technology" in the realm of technology
transfer policies and activities. Often, technologies are transfered to
particular cultures in order to benefit women, but fail to do so by ignoring
local cultural customs and restrictions. To make technology effective, women's
lives and the culture in which they live must be understood.
II. (Mis?)Conceptions: Morality and Gender Politics in Reproductive Technology
6. Bioethics and Fatherhood (Daniel Callahan)
Biological fatherhood carries intrinsic and nondispensable rights and
responsibilities. Donor insemination is immoral because the true father has
abandoned his child.
7. Artificial Insemination: Who's Responsible (Ronald Munson)
Donating sperm is just like donating blood in all morally relevant ways.
Biological fatherhood does not necessarily imply moral or social fatherhood.
Therefore, donor insemination is perfectly moral.
8. Sex Preselection: Eugenics for Everyone? (Helen B. Holmes)
Parents can now choose the sex of their children. While this should not be
criminalized, it is always motivated by sexist attitudes, is almost always
immoral, and will harm society.
9. The Ethics of Sex Preselection (Mary Anne Warren)
Sex selection is not always motivated by sexism, is not always immoral, and
probably will not result in consequences harmful to society.
10. Surrogate Motherhood: The Challenge for Feminists (Lori B. Andrews)
Examines the pro and con arguments feminists have used in the surrogacy debate,
looking particularly at the Bab M case. Argues finally that feminists should
support surrogacy because otherwise women are not treated under the law as
contractual agents and their other reproductive rights may be weakened.
III. (Re)Locating Fetuses: Technology and New Body Politics
11. Male Pregnancy (Dick Teresi and Kathleen McAuliffe)
Ectopic pregnancies in women and laboratory experiments growing fetuses in male
baboons prove it would be possible for a man to gestate a fetus. It hasn't been
done yet, but many men have expressed interest in the technology.
12. Is Pregnancy Necessary? Feminist Concerns about Ectogenesis (Julien S.
Murphy)
Ectogenesis, or in vitro gestation, growing a fetus in a machine, present many
problems for women, including a potential loss of power if they are no longer
needed to reproduce.
13. New Reproductive Technology: Some Implications for the Abortion Issue
(Christine Overall)
The right to an abortion has always meant women had a right to remove fetuses
from their wombs, but not that women had a right to kill the fetus. Up until
now, the first process always resulted in the latter, but with new incubator
and ectogenetic technologies, aborted fetuses may be kept alive. Thus, a
woman's right to an abortion and a fetus' right to life may be practically
compatible.
14. Opinion in the Matter of Davis v. Davis (Supreme Court of the State of
Tennessee)
A divorcing couple vied for custody of seven frozen embryos left over from
unsuccessful in vitro fertilization trials. The wife wanted them for gestation,
the husband wanted them destroyed. The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that they
could not be gestated without both parents' permission because Roe v. Wade
protects the husband's right not to procreate.
IV. Body Building: The (Re)Construction of Sex and Sexuality
15. The Medical Construction of Gender: Case Management of Intersexed Infants
(Suzanne J. Kessler)
When infants with ambiguous or multiple-sexed genitalia are born, pediatric
specialists still talk as if the infant has a true sex that must be discovered,
even when faced with proof otherwise. The decision of whether to construct a
male or female child is complex and political and often based on aesthetic
judgments.
16. Women and the Knife: Cosmetic Surgery and the Colonization of Women's
Bodies (Kathryn Pauly Morgan)
Women only use cosmetic surgery because their desires have been forced on them
by a sexist culture.
17. Facing the Dilemma (Kathy Davis)
Women have cosmetic surgery for many reasons and must be listened to for their
stories.
18. Sappho by Surgery: The Transsexually Constructed Lesbian-Feminist (Janice
G. Raymond)
Transsexuals are men trying to steal women's power and bodies through the use
of mutilating technology. They cannot be considered real women and should be
excluded from women-only events.
19. The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto (Sandy Stone)
Discusses transsexual motivations and case histories, sex reassignment
surgeries, clinic politics, transsexual history, and criticizes the radical
feminist attacks on transsexuals.
20. Reproductive Controls and Sexual Destiny (Timothy F. Murphy)
Many people would genetically engineer or selectively abort fetuses in order to
ensure heterosexual children. This is clearly the result of heterosexism, but
is not necessarily immoral and should be legal.
V. (Virtual?) Gender: From Computer Culture to Cyberspace
21. Computational Reticence: Why Women Fear the Intimate Machine (Sherry
Turkle)
Women have different styles of programming and do not like the thought of
having a relationship with a machine. Most men have no such hesitations and are
more likely to interact emotionally with computers.
22. Excluding Women from the Technologies of the Future?: A Case Study of the
Culture of Computer Science (Bente Rasmussen and Tove Hapnes)
A case study of a computer science department at a technical university
demonstrates five social categories, including hackers (all male), dedicated
students (all male), teachers (all male), and female students. Female students
are handicapped by the masculine culture of computer science, but also do not
recognize relevant differences between different kinds of male students.
23. Tinysex and Gender Trouble (Sherry Turkle)
Examines the complex issues of personal and sexual identity in cyberspace.
Argues that much of postmodern skepticism of true or real or fixed identity is
acted out and evident on the internet.
24. In Novel Conditions: The Cross-Dressing Psychiatrist (Allucquere Roseanne
Stone)
Examines the famous case of the "electronic lover" in which a male psychiatrist
posed as a disabled woman on the early internet and the reactions to the status
of this constructed person when the ruse was revealed. Involves conceptual
issues of identity and truth-telling that differ from "real life."
VI. Our Machines/Our Selves: Gender and Cyborg Subjects
25. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late
Twentieth Century (Donna J. Haraway)
Keystone article of feminist technology studies arguing that there can be
liberation and pleasure in violating the boundaries between machines and bodies
and that the prescriptive myth for feminists should be the cyborg--a post-
gendered body of mixed machine and organism. Feminism that demonizes technology
will fail women in important ways.
26. Automating Gender: Postmodern Feminism in the Age of the Intelligent
Machine (Judith Halberstam)
There is nothing intrinsically or even particularly valuable in the wholeness
of the categories of woman and human that anti-technology feminists are so
worried about. There is no reason why blurring the boundaries between bodies
and machines and between genders should be considered intrinsically bad.
27. The Pleasure of the Interface (Claudia Springer)
While the image of the cyborg does hold out the possibility of gender
liberation and certain kinds of epistemic pleasures, the image of the cyborg in
contemporary film and literature does not achieve a postgendered, liberatory
dream. Instead, literary and cinematic cyborgs usually magnify sex differences
and usually represent a hypermasculine, muscle-bound, violent male as the
cyborg ideal. We need to recognize the reinscriptive tendencies of conventional
gender ideals even as we create something as seemingly subversive as the
cyborg.
{{<End>}}
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