Daniels, Jessie - Rethinking Cyberfeminisms - Race, Gender, and Embodiment

Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment Author(s): Jessie Daniels Source: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol.
37, No. 1/2, Technologies (Spring - Summer, 2009), pp. 101-124 Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27655141 . Accessed: 18/09/2013 20:31
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YBE R FEM RETHINKING C INISM (S): AND EMBODIMENT RACE, GENDER,

JESSIE DANIELS
"If you
HollaBackNYC up with streets phones genious everyday and to use subways, snap of photos technology
can't
slap him,
harassment
snap him,"
men
is the tag line for the website

The themselves their them array site's creators, fed on New York's cell in of
(http://www.hollabacknyc.com). by exposing to use and upload of an
encourage
women
Internet-enabled to the site. This expression
of harassers
is emblematic
of new
feminist practices called "cyberfeminism." Among cyberfeminists (Orgad 2005; Plant 1997; Pod?as 2000), some have suggested that Internet technolo
gies can be an effective medium for resisting repressive gender regimes and
enacting equality,while others have called into question such claims (Gajjala
2003). tial of Central Internet to such claims and counterclaims about the subversive poten as technologies cyborgs is theorizing 2002, that constructs 32), as when women of color writes about
quintessential
(Fernandez
Haraway
the "cyborg women making chips inAsia and spiral dancing in Santa Rita" (1985, 7). In this essay, I offer an overview of cyberfeminist theories and
practices. research, man/machine Drawing I review on a wide array claims tourism, of theoretical about and literature and potential within a empirical of hu global cyberfeminist identity the subversive disembodiment
cyborgs,
networked economy alongside analyses that highlight the lived experience

and actual Internet practices that of girls the and self-identified shifts gender women.1 and While some of contend Internet racial regimes
cyberfeminists
power through the human/machine hybridity of cyborgs (Haraway 1985), identity tourism (Nakamura 2002;Turkle 1997), and the escape from em bodiment
experience reveals ways lives
(Hansen 2006; Nouraie-Simone

and that actual they Internet use the practices Internet ways
2005b),
of girls and
I argue that the lived

self-identified their material, women corporeal hierarchies
to transform resist
in a number and
of complex
that both
and
reinforce
of gender
race.
[WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly 37: 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2009 by Jessie Daniels. All rights reserved.
2009)]
101
102
EMI NISM ERF RETHINKING CYB (S)
drawing on academic disciplines, I also focus rather deliberately on the theoretically informed empirical investigations by sociologists into While
Internet practices. Saskia Sassen's work addresses the embeddedness of the
digital in the physical, material world, and she catalogs theways that digital
technologies proactive "enable endeavors women in multiple to engage different in new realms, forms of contestation and in from political to economic"
(2002, 368). In contrast,Lon Kendall (1996,1998, 2000, 2002), in her richly nuanced ethnography of the gendered dynamics in themultiuser domain (MUD)
subvert
BlueSky,
white,
argues that digital technologies

masculine cultures and
reproduce rather than

hierarchies of power.
heterosexual,
In a 1997 article "Changing the Subject," Jodi O'Brien writes eloquently about the strict policing of gender identity online and the limitations of use of identity tourism. And Victoria Pitts's (2004) research about women's
the Internet on breast cancer forums offers an important corrective to the
discourse about disembodiment popular in cyberfeministwriting. My focus is based at least partly on familiarity; I am a sociologist by background and
training, pirical so it is the field research in which about I am most Internet conversant. is also Focusing on em strat practices an effective
sociological
egy for informing theoretical claims about the subversive potential of digital
technologies. challenge Finally, my to those who focus claim on sociological research ismeant to serve as a to want to transform as well as inform society
yet have little engagement in the cyberfield.
AND AND "ZEROES ONES": BEYOND CYBERFEMINISM(S) GENDER, RACE,

Cyberfeminism a clearly of is neither political debates, a single agenda. and theory Rather, nor a feminist movement refers with to a articulated theories, "cyberfeminism" the relationship
range
practices
about
between
gender and digital culture (Flanagan and Booth

more accurate to refer to the plural,
2002, 12), so it is perhaps

Within and among
"cyberfeminism(s)."
cyberfeminism(s) there are a number of distinct theoretical and political

stances in relation to Internet technology and gender as well as a notice
able ambivalence about a unified feminist political project (Chatterjee 2002,

199). terized and Further, by a some Utopian distinguish vision between the "old" woman about cyberfeminism, corrupting "confronting charac patriarchy, the top of a postcorporeal which is more
a "new"
cyberfeminism,
down from the bottom-up"

Thus, any attempt results common to write in a narrative ground
(Fernandez, Wilding,
about that cyberfeminism is inaccurately these variants
and Wright
as if it were
2003, 22-23).
a monolith what is the However,
inevitably provides
totalizing.
among
of cyberfeminism(s)
DANIELS
103
sustained
focus
on
gender
and
digital
technologies
and
on
cyberfeminist
practices (Flanagan and Booth 2002, 12; Chatterjee Wilding, and Wright 2003, 9-13).
Cyberfeminist various Internet practices technologies involve by experimentation self-identified
2002, 199; Fernandez,

and with do
engagement across several
women
mains,
including work (Scott-Dixon 2004; Shih 2006), domestic life (Na 2001; Ribak 2001; Singh 2003), 2001), (Harcourt 2000), feminist political organizing (Everett Pollock 2000), art (Fernandez, Wilding, and Wright
(Clegg civic engagement 2007; Sutton and
education
2003), and play (Bury 2005; Cassell and Jenkins 2000; Flanagan 2002; Kendall 1996).While there isno consistent feminist political project associated with cyberfeminist
within a culture in which Internet technology is so pervasively
practices,
coded
least
as "masculine"
potentially
(Adam 2004; Kendall

in such practices
2000),
there is something at
Wilding, and
transgressive
(Fernandez,
Wright
versive ... use
2003).
Gill takes exception when in affluent to the notion she describes northern that there is anything sub in these "women's countries ... familiar for e-mail,
Rosalind
practices
depressingly primarily
of the Internet
home shopping and the acquisition of health information" (2005,99; see also
Herring 2004). Indeed, ("the the commercialization for women") of the co-opts Internet rhetoric at sites such as iVillage.com Internet the of feminism
for profit (Royal 2005), as does much of the health information online (Pitts women in the global North have it is true thatmany affluent 2004).While
"depressingly sweeping ways women Sue Rosser, different feminist familiar" generalization are using in her lenses, practices suggests digital expansive concludes when a lack it comes of to the Internet, about the their technology uses this sort of awareness to innovative lives.2 through "aspects
technologies review
re-engineer
of information
that although
cyberfeminism
of differentfeminist theories," it lacks a sufficientlycoherent framework to be characterized as anything but a "developing feminist theory" (Rosser 2005, 19).3Other scholarswriting about cyberfeminism(s) are less concerned with
the lack of a coherent set of framework theories, and, debates indeed, and revel in the "sporadic, and tactical, Flanagan contradictory practices" (Booth
2002, 12) that constitute cyberfeminism(s).Yet it is exceedingly rarewithin

both cyberfeminist practices and critiques of them to see any reference to
the intersection of gender and race (Fernandez, Wilding, and Wright 2003, instead both the and the that 21); practices critiques suggest "gender" is a unified category and, by implication, that digital technologies mean the
same thing to all women across differences of race, class, sexuality.
104
NISM ERF EMI RETHINKING CYB (S)
In her book Zeroes andOnes, Sadie Plant is exuberant about the potential
of Internet izes technologies as a to transform liberating place the lives of women. because, Plant as she conceptual sees it, the cyberspace for women
inherently textual nature of the Internet lends itself to "the female" (1997,
23). Her the basic ders digital title refers to the binary language and ones code of zeroes and ones that constitutes ren that the programming as "female" is feminine, that computers as phallic and use. Plant "male," a world symbolically predicting in which
zeroes future
distributed,
nonlinear,
"zeroes"
are displacing the phallic order of the "ones" (Gill 2005, 99). Plant is perhaps the leading figure in popularizing the ideas of cyberfeminism beyond the essen academyWhile Plant has been justifiably criticized for reinscribing tialistnotions of gender (Wilding 1998),Wajcman (2004) writes that Plant's
about the potential against of gender previous to equality in cyberspace of must be un as of as a reaction masculine. and "ones" with conceptualizations essentializing room Plant's gender, technology binary how gen of the
optimism derstood inherently "zeroes" der
In addition leaves "race." no
Plant's
conceptual
for understanding is characteristic
intersects
In this way,
writing
field, as there is relatively little discussion of the intersections of gender with

"race," variables engage except to be both in cases added where on and volume, to race "race" "gender." it is both is included Thus, when in a long list of additional explicitly cyberfeminists and instructive. Practices, Fernandez,
gender edited
conspicuous
In their
Domain
Errors!
Cyberfeminist
Wilding,
clusionary of white
and Wright
aspects women
highlight cyberfeminist practices that eschew the ex

forms of of feminism, color out, are and they remind us "the lives mutually reliant" writing (2003, often culturally the "damaging 25). Yet, an
of earlier and women
as Fernandez "educated, cated
and Wilding white,
point
cyberfeminist
assumes sophisti
upper-middle-class, which ironically
English-speaking, ends up replicating
readership,"
uni
versalism of'old-style feminism'" (Fernandez and Wilding

the "damaging do we make universalism" of claims for two the of some forms subversive I potential of the
2003, 21). Given

what, then, Internet? for the view that
of cyberfeminism,
In the following
sections,
explore
the evidence
the Internet is a technology that facilitates gender and racial equality. First, I
focus on questions Then, related I turn by to political economy about examples their bodies. "identity and internetworked tourism" girls and the global allure are feminism. to debates
of disembodiment using the Internet
contrasting
of the way
and women
to transform
DANIELS
105
AND "A LIBERATING OFONE'SOWN':POLITICAL ECONOMY TERRITORY
FEMINISM INTERNETWORKED GLOBAL

economy its reliance for the required on the to mass exploited potential
A central debate within cyberfeminism has to do with the tension between

the political Internet other, and claims produce labor, of on the infrastructure hand, and, of on the the the one same
subversive
those
technologies.
Easily themost Her

and the subversive of scholars
influential figure in cyberfeminism isDonna Haraway. part human and part machine (1985), conceptualization of the cyborg,
potential who of a cyborg to gender future, and are of particular through interest to a come technology poststruc
number
turalism and cyberpunk fiction (Balsamo 1996; Flanagan and Booth 2002; DeVoss 2000; Flanagan 2002; Sunden 2001;Wolmark 1999). In contrast to
this promised of women future, of color critics have pointed to the problematic as construction quintessential working in technology manufacturing
cyborgs (Flanagan and Booth 2002; 12).The low-skilled work inmicrochip production and global call centers has not eased "the oppression of Third
World women, . . . [it] has merely perpetuated their oppression in a new
workplace" (Flanagan and Booth 2002,13; see also Eisenstein 1998). Ra dhika Gajjala raises the central question about the possibility of "subaltern
cyberfeminism produced who from below," given this economic of men context: "If cyberspace the world claims is at the expense even able to of millions enjoy and women how all over can we
are not
its conveniences,
make
that [these technologies] are changing theworld for the better?" (2003, 49).
This and juxtaposition global economic cyberculture both. of subversive inequality, on Internet technologies, is one on that few the one hand, writ it is the other, Yet, following gender, scholars
ing about crucial evidence
acknowledge. In the
in rethinking section, and race.
cyberfeminism, up the
to examine about
I take
empirical
political
economy,
POLITICAL ECONOMY
To take a global perspective, it is clear that those in industrialized nations
likely to own computers and have Internet access than are those are more
in developing societies (Norris 2001).The

litical economy is that women remain
material reality of the global po

global citizens; the digi
the poorest
tal era has not shifted this in significantways

aggregate-level of participation country-specific online, often data at faster show rates
(Eisenstein 1998). However,

have (Sassen increasing 2002, rates 376). It
that women than men
women is not surprising that
lag behind men globally in computer use and
106
BE R F EMI NISM CY RETHINKING (S)
Internet
access,
given
that
these
are
so
clearly
linked
to economic
resources
(Bimber 2000; Leggon 2006; Norris 2001).What

women's net place at the bottom is rapidly of the global increasing.
is intriguing is that despite

hierarchy, their Inter
economic
participation
In theUnited
apparent been race "digital the effect (Norris
States, the empirical research indicates thatmost of the

divide" in computer (or socioeconomic States, ownership status) the and more rate of Internet than access, has and has of gender access
of class In
2001).
the United
Internet
converged formen
remain panic some women small
and women who

differences and between
are white
and African
(Leggon 2006, 100).There

of usage between His women and men;
in access
kinds
and men
American
these differences,however, are negligible (Leggon 2006,100) Yet

convergence and negligible differences across gender and
despite the
intel
race, public
lectuals such as Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Anthony Walton do not hesitate to assert thatBlack culture is "the problem" when it comes to the digital divide (Wright 2002, 2005). Discourse
ures "women" or "Blacks and Hispanics"
of "the digital divide" that config

or "the poor" living in the global
South as information "have-nots" is a disabling rhetoric (Everett 2004,1280)

that fails to recognize Asians, the agency and Latinos, technological contributions whites of Afri (Wright can Americans, Chicanos, and working-class
What we need is a more multidimensional 2002, 57).

access that allows for individual agency.
view of inequality of
Conceptualizing
nomic women's by pointing want so 49). oppression agency out or with that
digital technologies exclusively in terms of either eco

lack of access regard the very to the people is overdetermined Internet. who in these as Gajjala are new and does not allow for recognizes this agency
excluded technologies
from mainstream on the new their own revolution" technolo
society terms (2003,
to include can
themselves see
that "they For many
themselves including
protagonists
of
women,
themselves
in these
gies means
including themselves in internetworked global feminism.
INTERNETWORKED FEMINISM GLOBAL

Within
feminism indifference,
the context of a global political economy, internetworked global

can and does bypass national national economic states, local opposition, mass a whole media new and major actors, thus opening
terrain for activism that addresses gender and racial inequality (Sassen 2002; Earl and Schussman 2003; Everett 2004; Kahn and Kellner 2004; Langman 2005; Sutton and Pollock 2000).
DANIELS
107
For women
of
color
who
want
to connect
globally
across
diasporas?
what Chela
cyberfeminist
Sandoval refers to as "U.S. thirdworld feminism" (2000)?the

practice of online organizing and discursive space takes on
added significance.Gajjala's
ras online sis with is a case years in point. of hands-on
(2003, 2004) writing about South Asian diaspo

Her practice work combines critical, such theoretical as SAWnet, analy the building e-spaces,
women-only
agendas ing women over, are to existing
South Asian Listserv. Gajjala

"produce subversive environments and
points out that if cyberfeminist

or they to succeed are in chang to so that empowering the world are situ
countercultures
technological of
and men it is important
lesser material to examine how
socio-cultural and
privilege communities
individuals
ated" within
who on have been the basis
the global political economy

systematically race and excluded of gender, the political
(2003, 54). For women

civic organizing online
of color
of African
from mainstream
engagement
American women both in theUnited

Woman writes: March "The provides sistahs their own of another the march and
States and globally around the Million

of cyberfeminism. the value their brand As Anna Everett of new technologies which
example recognized to
to further
agendas
promote
of activism,
did not require choosing which race oppression" (2004, 1283).

In a similar vein, Michelle
liberation struggle to fight first,gender or

notes the cyberfeminist practice of
Wright
online communities designed

as SistahSpace
specifically by and for Black women,

exhorts other
such
(http://www.Sistahspace.com).Wright
women
of color to engage with the "Internet beyond Web surfing and checking e-mail" (2005, 57). The kinds of cyberfeminist practices suggested by Gaj
jala, Everett, and Wright are more overtly political than other cyberfeminist
practices and are part of what Sandoval

technology of power.
(2000) refers to as an oppositional
Many women
view Internet
in and out of global feminist political organizations

as a crucial medium for movement toward gen
technology
der equality (Cherny and Weise 1996; Harcourt 1999, 2000, 2004; Purweal 2004; Merithew 2004; Jacobs 2004).Wendy Harcourt, anAustralian feminist
researcher with the Society for International Development, a nongovern
mental
view.
and the author of Women@ organization (NGO) based in Rome in Internet:CreatingNew Cultures Cyberspace, is a leading proponent of this
She summarizes that embedded the this stance when she writes that there is "convincing space that for evidence Internet is a tool reality for creating can be an a communicative empowering
when
in a political
mechanism
108
RETHINKING CYBERFEMINISM(S)
women"
up and
(1999, 219).The
"used" by women
notion that the Internet is a "tool" to be picked

for "empowerment" is a metaphor that is em
ployed repeatedly in the literature about global feminist organizations and

the Internet. The evidence to which Harcourt refers is written primarily
that focus on gender equality in their local by women working inNGOs regions and globally, a focus some have referred to as "glocality" (1999).The mobilization of global awareness and opposition to the repressiveTaliban regime by theRevolutionary Association ofWomen ofAfghanistan (http://
is just one example of the effective use of the Internet by
www.rawa.org)
a global feminist organization

from Mexico, in their efforts where to cross a number national
(Kensinger 2003). Another

of feminist frontiers NGOs have to establish a system
example comes
the Internet sup of global
used
port and exchange in pursuit of amore gender-equitable society (Merithew 2004). And global feminist networks begun in South Asia have fostered a
challenge to gender-specific abortion, or "son selection," as some refer to the
practice of terminating pregnancies in which the fetus is female (Purweal 2004). Lauren Langman (2005) refers to these kinds of global social move
ments organized and online as internetworked writing facilitates social movements, from within transnational them, make feminist or ISMs.These a strong case and organizations, that information the women technology
networks
indicate ameasure of success for global feminism (Jacobs 2004). Sassen enu
merates presence range of dozens in and local of women's use of the organizations Internet and has online and argues that women's a whole are key the potential domains to transform where women
conditions
institutional
actors (2002,379). Many individual women

perience the Internet
outside any formal political organization ex

space" for resisting the gender oppression
as a "safe
that they encounter in their day-to-day lives offline. In her edited volume On ShiftingGround: Muslim Women in theGlobal Era, Fereshteh Nouraie Simone
tion
(2005a)
includes essays about the importance of global informa

for women description young place living in and resisting repressive gender regimes. of the importance women, a of the Internet is a liberating is notewor territory identity
technology
Nouraie-Simone's thy: "For of one's educated own?a
Iranian to resist
cyberspace imposed
traditionally
subordinate
while providing a break from pervasive Islamic restrictions in public physical

space. The in cyberspace feminism, virtual nature of the Internet?the into politics, structure ongoing and the of interconnection on process issues of of self that draws and participants gender discourses textual
patriarchy,
DANIELS
109
expression without
new possibilities Here, own" as
the prohibition or limitation of physical space?offers

agency and empowerment" Woolf's (2005b, 61-62). of one's her the evokes Virginia for feminist "liberating call for a "room when own." she
for women's
Nouraie-Simone a prerequisite online as a
consciousness territory of one's
describes than
experience
Rather
"tool"
when term
imagery invoked by so many

describing "cyberspace" information to suggest that
of the global feminist organizations

Nouraie-Simone to a "place and chooses to resist," where gender politics." the she For
technology, she goes
participates
in discussions
of "feminism,
patriarchy,
her, cyberspace makes global feminism possible in her life offline on an inti
mate, immediate, and personal level.
the evidence presented here about the political economy and global feminist organizations and individuals using Internet technologies in While
ways ecdotal, sive? that resist oppressive it does offer some regimes insight of gender into and sexuality Is the is admittedly Internet is the is no an the questions, of embeddedness, here. As Sassen space; notes, rather, subver Internet "purely is always
If so, for whom?
Sassen's
concept is useful
that there
as embedded digital" or
in materiality, exclusively
"virtual"
electronic
the digital
"embedded"
attention women. center place tions For
in the material
effects working the women the
(2002, 367-68). Melanie

of digital in a technologies factory potential in global Internet
Millar
on diverse in China future
(1998) calls
groups or of a call
to the uneven
microchip
in India, rooted outside
Internet
is not
a subversive For women the
but
a work organiza
in economic the affluent
necessity. global
feminist
North,
is a "tool"
to be
used
for addressing gender inequality in local regions and leveraging connections

to feminists space" in other away regions. from a For Nouraie-Simone, repressive gender regime the Internet is a "safe to occupy in the offline world.
Each has different relations to digital technologies, and these are embed
ded in present-tense, material, embodied lives rather than imagined cyborg futures.
AND THE DISEMBODIMENT ALLURE OFIDENTITY TOURISM

After the cyborg, the two ideas that hold themost allure for cyberfeminists
interested in the subversive potential of the Internet are identity tourism
and disembodiment. Lisa Nakamura

"identity try on for tourism" size to describe "the the descriptors
in her book Cybertypes coins the term

process by which applied members of one of another group race to persons
generally
or gender" (2002, 8).The
allure of changing identities online has been part
no
EMI NISM RETHINKING CYB ERF (S)
of the sociological writing about the Internet since Sherry Turkle's Life on
the Screen. Turkle contends that assuming alternate identities online can have
positive psychological and social effectsby loosening repressive boundaries Westfall 2000;Whitley 1997).The idea that racial oppres (1997,12; see also sion is linked to embodied visibility is one about which African Ameri
can sociologists and other scholars have written eloquently, going back to
WE.B.Du
ly and the the social
Bois
(Du Bois 1903/1995;Tal

press accounts as well as in this passage of visibility in what
2001).This
as the scholarly Hansen:
idea appears frequent

literature "The on "race" of ex suspension the
in mainstream Internet, category of race
from Mark in online
environments a fundamental according said to subject
transforms way: to visible everyone by
perience
is, potentially of racial
suspending traits, online to what I
the automatic environments
ascription can,
signifiers sense, be
in a certain
shall call a 'zero degree' of racial difference" (2006, 141).

However, ence online an asTurkle is only changing and others identities suggest. within online may not be as subversive an experi Jodi O'Brien very narrow notes that gender-switching and that there gender "gender switch (read is
acceptable with
boundaries is conducted"
"earnestness occurs
which (1999,
gender-policing 82).4 O'Brien it is intended long as there
when earnest
switching policing" ing
interprets as play or
the
to mean
that when as
performance, that a "natural"
identities
is tolerated
is agreement
referent remains "intact, embodied and immutable" physical/biological) (O'Brien 1999, 82). Switching identities online seems much less prevalent than the kinds of online experiences thatPitts describes in her research on
women new with forms breast cancer who via seek sites and find real community and create (Pitts of knowledge such asWomen.corn's BreastFest
2004,55).
Additional going out online online and research to "switch" spaces into actual online or racial practices identities, identities and at via suggests people along that rather actively axes have than seek
gender and
that affirm For
solidify young their 2005),
social girls
of race, access through sites
gender, to the
sexuality.
example, form
teens who least social
Internet
increasingly
identities, often
in part, networking
their
online
interactions
(Mazzarella
such asMySpace
identities online
or Facebook
through
(boyd 2004); people

MiGente,
of color affirm racial

andAsianAvenue.com
BlackPlanet.com,
(Byrne 2007; Lee and Wong

bisexual, and transgender)
2003); and self-identifiedQLBT

go online to "learn to be
(queer, lesbian,
queer" (Bryson
women
2004, 251) by using sites such asQueerSisters
(Nip 2004; see also Alexander
DANIELS m
2002). switch ing
In
large measure, and racial and
the notion identities, race rather
of "identity functions than this
tourism,"
in which device a
people for think
gender
as a heuristic activity being
about
gender
commonplace
online practice.What then of the cyberfeminist claim of dispensing with a as embodiment path to gender (and racial) equality?
Nouraie-Simone sive while living under writes a that part of why she finds regime the Internet in Iran so subver repressive sex/gender is the chance
to escape embodiment: "The absence of the physical body in electronic space

and the anonymity as this offers have a liberating effect for on repressed social of freely she con as well from or identity, 'chosen nects 'electronic technology' " identities' 61?62; (2005b, from to s gender becomes emphasis 'a tool added). the design
In this passage, of the body
liberation
oppression chosen
to the
absence
as to the ability Nouraie-Simone ethnic that identities, she goes gender
adopt writing
"freely
identities."While includes that in this on "issues
it is not "switching" same passage
clear gender
if her unlikely, out part
practice given "discourse"
it seems
she writes patriar
online
to seek as
of feminism, (2005b,
chy, and
politics,"
of her
"self-expression"
61-62).The
impact of digital technologies on self-identifiedwomen's

in materiality women with and breast embodiment. cancer Pitts is instructive on are not necessarily interested
lives is grounded
this point: in "Online or gender-play
too interested in leaving the body behind them.Their public narratives do not 'hide' the body, and they generally do not abandon gender, beauty and
conventional aspects of femininity.... sickness and In detailing treatment, some of the more women's unpleasant bodies as bodily they are they present
really lived" (2004, 55).

Instead study bodily seek selves of going out online to escape where illness, embodiment, they can the women explore recovery, and and in Pitts reaffirm loss. Pitts the s re s Internet spaces of
in the presence
surgery,
search is useful for considering the impact of the Internet on self-identified

women's nologies change, lives and illustrates to create the ways meaning women for engage to with Internet or at tech least in order the material themselves lives and improve,
conditions
of their
their bodies.
The putative invisibility online and the "decoupling identity from any race analogical relation to the visible body" (Hansen 2006, 145) to escape
and gender visibility rests on an assumption of an exclusively text-based
online world
nologies, such
that belies the reality of digital video and photographic

as webcams (and image-sharing sites, among them Flickr
tech
and
YouTube), which make
images of bodies a quotidian part of the gendered,
112
ERFEMIN RETHINKING CYB ISM (S)
and racialized, online world

of disembodiment, "definitions cyberspace body, of situation,
(White 2003). Rather

must and be considered are both
than a libertarian utopia

an environment contested and in which are influ
identity
enced by power relations" (Pitts 2004, 53-54).The

for many en and cyberfeminists girls' engagement within alongside with the valorization Internet The technologies use of
allure of disembodiment
of self-identified suggests Internet an wom inherent to
contradiction
cyberfeminism.
technologies
(re)shape bodies by the seemingly disparate communities of "pro-ana" girls

discussed below and transgendered women illustrates this contradiction.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF EMBODIMENT: CONTINUING AND"TRANNY" HORMONE LISTSERVS "PRO-ANA" WEBSITES

Cyberfeminists vert gender and have heralded the allure of disembodiment cyberfeminists, as a way such to sub gender oppression. Some as Braidot
ti (2002), Plant
and with However, nologies celebrate Internet the
(1997), andWilding
potential of a new in ways women there is and technologies
and CA
wave that girls'
Ensemble
new
(1998), recognize
that engage for women. Internet in such tech prac
of feminist chart
practices ground with feminist
foregrounding suggests that
engagement innately
something
tices. Wilding
valorization critique
and other cyberfeminists (Everett 2004) have warned

of women's cyberpractices In the following without section, an accompanying two I offer
that the
feminist that
is problematic.
examples
illustrate both the continuing significance of embodiment online and the

problematic space of uniformly regarding all women's engagement with cyber as feminist.
PRO-ANA WEBSITES
The emergence of pro-ana, a shortened term for "pro-anorexia," sites sug
gests that some (mostly young, predominantly white) women form online communities in order to offer each other nonjudgmental support in finding
strategies as anorexia and tactics for disordered or bulimia.These eating young behaviors, women most both often resist and diagnosed embrace nervosa
such diagnoses for their behavior

2005; Mulveen and Hepworth,
(Dias 2003; Fox,Ward,

As a young woman
and O'Rourke
quoted in re
2006).
search by Fox, Ward, and O'Rourke put it,"Personally, I feel that ifa person is starving themselves or throwing up *solely* because of the desire to look
like kate moss, don't have all devon the aoki (hehe to be . . . my considered favorite model), gisele, etc . . . they as criteria anorexic. Anorexia is defined
DANIELS
113
a mental
disease
. . . the ability
to
play mind-games
with
yourself
relating
to
anything food or exercise" (2005, 955).

This redefinition of anorexia as "the ability to play mind-games" around
food or exercise refigures the usually disabling rhetoric of eating disorders

into one of strength and "ability" mention famous women that does not include woman's are seek everyone "favorite part out turn of who model" the cul is "starving is revealing tural products ration" net (954).The themselves."The here because of this young models engaged and
celebrities
that young young their bodily with
in pro-ana communities and away
for "thinspi to the Inter
girls of the pro-ana rituals of diet, peers
to support
exercise, and
purging from
in the relative of
"safety"
of being
their pro-ana
the judgments
others (mostly parents) (Dias 2003; Fox,Ward,

strom rituals 2001).Young associated women with who identify this community provide
and O'Rourke
report that with
2005; Wal
the bodily a sense of
as pro-ana
participants
"control over" their bodies Walstrom

YouTube,
2001). And
2005; (Dias 2003; Fox,Ward, and O'Rourke these of increasingly, images "thinspiration" appear on
site, as well one are as on thinks personal of these websites practices, Internet (Daniels the young technologies
the video-sharing
and Meleo-Erwin girls involved with
2008). Whatever pro-ana sites
engaging
with
inways that are both motivated by and confirm (extremely thin) embodi
ment.While about avoid their those own participating embodiment, but rather in pro-ana the fact to engage sites may is that with they others appear are not about to be going their ambivalent online bodies to via
corporeality
text and image inways that make
them feel in control of those bodies.
"TRANNY" HORMONE LISTSERVS

A second illustration of the way the Internet can be a site for bodily websites, such trans as Gen such as formation derSanity Christine with such is that of community-based (http://www.gendersanity.com), Beatty'sWebHome and websites Care how of transgendered and
personal
webpages,
(http://www.glamazon.net).These established by trans or trans-friendly
sites, along physicians, provide gendered in ways. of
Listservs
as TransGender about
(http://www.transgendercare.com), the body women, in specifically such as Anita,
formation The
to transform
experience
transgendered
whose
pastiche
Internet technologies enables her gender transition (Bryson 2004, 246), is

noteworthy whether information they in this context. Many nonheteronormative bisexual, important or transgender, for or also queer women, global identify technology as lesbian, as an regard
medium
resisting
repressive
114
EMI NISM ERF RETHINKING CYB (S)
regimes of gender and sexuality (Alexander 2002; Bryson 2004; Chatterjee 2002; Heinz, Gu, and Zender 2002). Combining themetaphors of "tool"
and "place," Mary of of the Bryson, Internet, that in her writes: are study "Internet of Australian tools and QLBT women's ex serve of QLBT that a periences variety women, communities the lives
functions
relevant with
to, and other
scaffold, queer
including safe"
. . . interaction (2004, 249). Like
women the women
in a space
is relatively study
Nouraie-Simone,
in Bryson's serves to set
experience
life online
as a safe space,
an observation
that
up an oppositional
safe.The with Internet gender identity
relationship to life offline ("real" life) as space that is not

provides and QLBT practices, women as well with opportunities context to experiment which as a cultural within
to learn how
2004, 249).
to be queer
the
through participation
of Anita,
in a subculture (Bryson
in Bryson's research,
Indeed,
experience
included
illustrates this point:

Anita: I've was along looking from Gaining the gotten mainly those up a lot of an information from sharing I've the thing, used tranny and hormone a few other list. It lists
information
lines. With reports of where
the web, surgeons, they'd
transgendered of that surgery, stuff up
sites for information on the Net. a fair
photos posted
surgeons information
about
hormones
is important.
I have
bit of experience
erature.
in biochemistry and can read the scientific lit
Mary: Anita:
do you access that information? I can get into theMedLine database and that kind of thing. If I want information about any ofthat stuff, theNet is the firstplace How
I go. It's not always easy to find good information though, espe
cially ifyou are looking for knowledge that is community-based. And ifyou are going to read themedical articles, you really need to know the jargon and be able to read between the lines. (2004,
246)
Here, Anita describes her use of the Internet to navigate the biom?dical
sex/gender establishment (Butler 2004; Epstein 2003). She reports getting

information from an e-mail Listserv, pursuing further information on par
ticular surgeons, looking for digital photographic

and reading the peer-reviewed medical literature
evidence of theirwork,
culled from the database
MedLine.
Both her technique for finding information and her assessment
DANIELS
115
of what
(Green net
she finds demonstrate an example of sophisticated digital fluency

2005, 2006). Anita's including bricolage search issues; strategy engines; combines web-based Listservs; in using a a number databases; and of Inter websites digital pho
technologies, with of
dealing tography
transgender surgical is not
community-based Anita's to be goal another
outcomes. to pretend
patchwork instead,
of digital her aim
technologies
gender
online;
is to find help in transforming her body offlineinways that align with her
own sources nuanced sense to of gender navigate complex identity. gender Anita's piecing suggests of digital together that we of diverse need a much gender, Internet more and transition
and
understanding
technologies,
feminist politics.
Anita's escape experience or indicates temporarily that rather than using the online, technology she and to other embodiment "switch" identities
self-identifiedwomen
nologies line not but to more to
(and men)
"the absence
are actively engaging with digital tech

their bodies offline. Anita goes on does) her to of the body" and (as Nouraie-Simone that allow
permanently
transform
experience the
to access
information,
resources,
technologies
transformher body into a (differently)gendered body that aligns with her

identity. And nology, of the in ways that are women, analogous and men, reliable to the pro-ana use digital about girls' images gender use of the tech part transgendered strategy in as a crucial transition.
gathering
information
RACIALIZED EMBODIMENT ONLINE/OFFLINE

The pointed to by cyberfeminists is understand able, given the significance of racialized embodiment (Du Bois 1903/1995; Fernandez 2003; Tal 2001) for understanding the lived experience of racism. allure of disembodiment in
online online. In the study of pro-ana (2005), analysis in 8th 115 know the authors online do communities not take up by Fox, Ward, racial identity references I was life and O'Rourke as a point of worlds is not often remarked upon in the literature about gender
Yet racialized embodiment and theways this offline reality is embedded
curiously one never was
even when grade. I had [T]here I was
of the participants been really
explicitly but in my
it: "It
started
overweight, going a on
average?about . .. mostly, crisis. I didn't I'm ad
at 5'3. who
just
too much having
maybe
I was
really
early mid-life
opted, and my whole family iswhite, while I'm Asian. I had/have a lot of issues circling around feelings of abandonment which I partially translated
into 'no one loves me . . .not even my real parents' type stuff" (957).
116
RETHINKING CYBERFEMIN?SM(S)
The young girl quoted here indicates that her racial identity,and the discordant racial identity of her (adopted) family, is a contributing factor in
her desire to be involved with pro-ana practices.Yet the authors do not ad
This is a lost opportunity for an analysis that dress the issue of racial identity.
would further illuminate the connection between gender, race, and online
identityby speaking to the compelling research that exists involving gender, "race," and disordered eating (Lovejoy 2001;Thompson 1992).
In though contrast, in her Bryson her acknowledges sample of QLBT the racial dynamics includes at work only even research women one wom
an of color. The white participants in her study rarely identified racism as

a problem of online communities, whereas "the discursive construction of
racial identity online was a persistent problem for theAboriginal participant

whose Net experiences were frequently characterized by marginalization, si
lencing and enforced segregation" (2004, 246). The marginalization, silenc ing, and enforced segregation that theAboriginal woman in Bryson's study
faces in online spaces across is characteristic of difference. of what Kendall's many experience on in online the online communities lines
ethnography
community BlueSky
inclusive, ness tinue and certainly on is predicated to have or
is informative on thispoint. While

not social "racist" structure to include them greater yet the to (or "sexist") in which or not "white to include 2000,
BlueSky
is relatively
men con gender, s text sexual
in any overt way, middle-class people 272).
the inclusive
the power race marks facilitates and race,
whose BlueSky of gender,
sexuality only
as other" inclusiveness
(Kendall across
nature
differences men
orientation, "limits the
predominance 'others' who can
of white fit
simultaneously into a culture
inclusiveness
themselves
by and for those white men"

that the QLBT young Unlike women girls in find either that many of whiteness.
(272). BlueSky, like the queer online spaces

study seek are racism out and the pro-ana on an spaces predicated of white
Bryson's
empowering, the cyber
assumption online
supremacists
(Daniels 2009) or thewhite, masculine

neoconfederates on Dixie-Net
desire for community expressed by

2000), the whiteness that Ken
(McPherson
dall describes in BlueSky is very much likewhiteness in the offlineworld: an unmarked category that is taken for granted in daily life. Race matters in
cyberspace precisely because "computer networks are social networks"
(Wellman 2001) and those who

edge, mura, offline, experiences, and Rodman counters and values 2000, 5). The
spend time online bring their own knowl

them when fact assertion that they log on (Kolko, as Naka it does race matters online,
with
the oft-repeated
that cyberspace
is a disembodied
realmwhere gendered and racialized bodies can be leftbehind.
DANIELS
117
These ties, shed In both Internet in ways of seeing or
two light
examples, on gender,
the pro-ana race, and the
and
transgendered potential engage control
online of
communi the Internet. with bodies Instead of the
subversive
instances, technologies that both cyberspace even a
self-identified to manage, resist and
girls
and women and
in practices
transform,
their physical and the race.
reinforce
hierarchies to
of gender
as a
place place
in which with no
experience
absence of
body,
text-only
visible
representation
the body,
these girls and self-identifiedwomen use digital technologies inways that simultaneously bring the body "online" (through digital photos uploaded to theweb) and take the digital "offline" (through information gleaned online selves).Here, digital technologies embedded in allow life for the transformation of corporeal and material lives in everyday
ways that both resist and reinforce structures of gender and race.
to transform their embodied
CONCLUSION
This review of differentforms of cyberfeminism(s) suggests a reality inwhich
the Internet to the is embedded illustrative in material, example corporeal lives the in complex the ways. To return that opened essay, cyberfeminists
who
are engaged with technologies inways that in the digital era.Mobile and embodiment highlight race, gender, phone created HollaBackNYC
even in the technologies, current political economy, are widely affordable
and extremely popular globally (Rheingold 2006).The tag line "If you can't slap him, snap him," suggests both the resistance of internetworked global
feminism and a strategy of resistance that is simultaneously embedded in
daily life,digital technologies, and embodiment.

laback" means to oppose an embodied notion
In this instance, to "hol

(men exposing
of harassment
their genitals) with an embodied, and embedded, form of resistance (taking digital photos of those exposed bodies). However, given that the resisters
pictured on the site are exclusively white and predominantly female, we
must ask whether HollaBackNYC

reinforcing areas. and tices, and the culture of surveillance Internet subways at the race. While some cyberfeminists are
and its many imitators are disrupting or

focused who such a on are minority harassed and men on in urban city streets prac
technologies a mechanism same time that
offer women for resisting they
gendered
racialized
reinforce
established
hierarchies
of gender
wildly
enthusiastic
about
the
subversive
potential of a cyborg future, identity tourism, and disembodiment that is offered by digital technologies, evidence from cyberfeminist practices and
empirical research on what people are actually doing online points to a
118
RETHINKING CYBERFEMINISM(S)
more pressive For an the
complicated workplace
reality.
For
some,
the
Internet
economy
reproduces political
op
hierarchies
that are
rooted
in a global
economy. and
others,
the Internet to be offers sex/gender Internet selves,
represents protagonists space"
a "tool" in their and a way and
for global own to not
feminist
organizing For but
opportunity Internet
revolution. just survive,
still others, also are resist, engag their com
a "safe
repressive ing with embodied
regimes.
Girls in ways
self-identified that enable Girls them involved
women
technologies not escape
to transform in pro-ana
embodiment.
munities deploy Internet technologies that include text and images in order to control theirbodies inways that are both disturbing for others and deeply
meaningful for them. Self-identified queer and transgendered women en
gage with digital technologies in order to transform theirbodies, not to play at switching gender identities online.
Scholar-activists gender domination who have wish also been to challenge slow to seize the status quo of racial and the opportunity of engaged
public discourse offered by the Internet.Risman

ologists net not to find means such an an to transform Yet, as well curiously, their content or offers have opportunity. presence do not most college for
(2004) urges feminist soci

society, and the Inter do academic or the
as inform
sociologists
Internet
beyond create
university-sponsored Internet, and they do
faculty not
webpage,
they in online
participate
communities
social with
networks. the Internet
I echo
Michelle email"
Wright's
call for scholar-activists
to engage
"beyond
(Wright 2005, 57). It is critically important for those of us who hope that our work can and should speak to audiences beyond the academy to follow the lead of critical cyberfeminists and "hollaback" by engaging the Internet
as a discursive space and a site of political struggle.
JESSIE is an associate professor of sociology atMercy College inNew DANIELS York City. She has anMA and a PhD in sociology from theUniversity of
Texas at Austin and has taught at colleges and universities around the United
States. She is the author of White Lies (Routledge, 1997) and Cyber Racism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), both dealing with race and forms ofmedia.
Currently, she is at work on research projects about digital technologies,
race, and gender, including a study of feminist bloggers and an analysis of the
representation of bodies onYouTube.
DANIELS
119
NOTES
1. Throughout both recognize and "women" may this essay I use the term "self-identified of difference and woman" and its plural who to and or the problematic female universalizing of queer in the terms "woman" women may
to signal the inclusion GenX in some
transgendered
not have biologically entries online . . .Through
anatomy. blogger Kristie Helms form or another since I've gotten divorced, writes: "I've been posting 25. 1996 when gotten I was. Oh.
2. For example, U.S.-based journal-type Various places. discovered
all ofthat, . . moved .
annulled,
changed/ met
sexual orientation,
from Manhattan
to Brooklyn
to Boston,
three life-long best friends over the Internet, . . .bought a house and had . . .urn ... six . . . gotten a book published, one essay published, one piece of erotica published jobs, (twice), bought three cars, sold two of them, stopped talking tomy mother, started talking to my mother, had my father tell me I'm going to hell and just generally keep finding Gill may regard these June 2007). While myself periodically" (personal communication, an I think that such elements as "depressingly assessment, like history that is familiar," events of concerned with the only powerful political leaders, invalidates the substance of what constitutes women's 3. Rosser along with lives. participation of technology in the information through technology workforce radi femi the reviews women's and "use"
"design"
the lenses of liberal feminism, feminism, and postcolonial in this literature iswell
cal feminism, "African American nism. Offering 4. O'Brien (2001) a review here.
and Racial/Ethnic" to all the nuances
that speaks
beyond
scope of my project
does not explicitly
address
switching
of racial identities, but in KaliTal's to "racial passing," about which
review of Nakamura,Tal
likens this phenomenon extensively.
African American
scholars have written
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Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment Author(s): Jessie Daniels Source: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol.

YBE R FEM RETHINKING C INISM (S): AND EMBODIMENT RACE, GENDER,

is the tag line for the website

(http://www.hollabacknyc.com). by exposing to use and upload of an

Internet-enabled to the site. This expression

networked economy alongside analyses that highlight the lived experience

(Hansen 2006; Nouraie-Simone

I argue that the lived

EMI NISM ERF RETHINKING CYB (S)

argues that digital technologies

reproduce rather than

yet have little engagement in the cyberfield.

AND AND "ZEROES ONES": BEYOND CYBERFEMINISM(S) GENDER, RACE,

gender and digital culture (Flanagan and Booth

2002, 12), so it is perhaps

cyberfeminism(s) there are a number of distinct theoretical and political

able ambivalence about a unified feminist political project (Chatterjee 2002,

down from the bottom-up"

2002, 199; Fernandez,

engagement across several

(Clegg civic engagement 2007; Sutton and

(Adam 2004; Kendall

2002, 12) that constitute cyberfeminism(s).Yet it is exceedingly rarewithin

NISM ERF EMI RETHINKING CYB (S)

optimism derstood inherently "zeroes" der

In addition leaves "race." no

for understanding is characteristic

field, as there is relatively little discussion of the intersections of gender with

highlight cyberfeminist practices that eschew the ex

of earlier and women

as Fernandez "educated, cated

and Wilding white,

upper-middle-class, which ironically

English-speaking, ends up replicating

versalism of'old-style feminism'" (Fernandez and Wilding

2003, 21). Given

of disembodiment using the Internet

AND "A LIBERATING OFONE'SOWN':POLITICAL ECONOMY TERRITORY

FEMINISM INTERNETWORKED GLOBAL

A central debate within cyberfeminism has to do with the tension between

Easily themost Her

ing about crucial evidence

in rethinking section, and race.

in developing societies (Norris 2001).The

material reality of the global po

tal era has not shifted this in significantways

(Eisenstein 1998). However,

that women than men

women is not surprising that

lag behind men globally in computer use and

BE R F EMI NISM CY RETHINKING (S)

(Bimber 2000; Leggon 2006; Norris 2001).What

is intriguing is that despite

States, the empirical research indicates thatmost of the

and women who

(Leggon 2006, 100).There

these differences,however, are negligible (Leggon 2006,100) Yet

of "the digital divide" that config

South as information "have-nots" is a disabling rhetoric (Everett 2004,1280)

What we need is a more multidimensional 2002, 57).

digital technologies exclusively in terms of either eco

from mainstream on the new their own revolution" technolo

society terms (2003,