Fembot alchemy

As much as I like sci-fi and fantasy, reading the words cyborg or chimera in this article had a completely different meaning. http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html harway's cyborg manifesto.

Now I claim to be a feminist myself, due to the way my life was growing up my major influences were mostly female, raised solely by my mom who was raised by hers, the closest parents I have till now remain to be my mom and grandmother (to whom I wish refer to by her nickname Zizi only and never as grandma or any of its synonyms). that lack of a male influence (other than my own) provided the balance within me to respect the finer sex (as we call it back home). but then again I do not completely agree with haraway's Ideas even though within her own culture and society her ideas might be the best approach possible.

Haraway talks about the cyborg, a unity of man and machine, sometimes of animal and machine or even all three together, like the chimera's produced by alchemy, the elements have been deeply infused that you can't recognize when does the human start and the machine begins or the other way round but they are simply on unit, one piece the ultimate singularity. she says the bature of the cyborg is that it refuses to see the differences within it (it's parts if you will) but only sees itself as a whole, and no one can blame it because if it did see it's parts does parts will conflict and fight each other forcing it to disentegrate, so unless unity is achieved NOTHING is achieved. Logical right, well that's the cyborg's luck that it runs on digital logic while humans run on the logic of chaos (and refuse to follow it even).

she says that when a person aspires to be a feminist they are faced by the problems of not using the sum of their parts to strengthen their position but conflict themselves by pitting their parts against each other. her main example was the when one says "woman" to try and fight for women rights, they mostly mean white adult females, so when someone says "black women" they just excluded all blacks by saying woman, and excluded everyone but blacks by saying black (I am using this just as an example and not to practice racisim for those of you who enjoy the backwater political correctness), a vague example that she gives but what she is trying to say is that in the modern american society one person is divided into so many parts of race gender and class etc... that they fail to unify and fight for their rights. so she is trying to say that the best approach for that is to reach cyborgism and become one whole without botering with the petty differences. it's like when people got mad at oprah for supporting barack obama because their both black but not hilary clinton while they are both females, IT IS THAT CONFLICT that makes everything within this society so godamn difficult, what is really the difference between black, white , yellow, brown, red or terrorist (since that last one is now the common refrence for the arab race), male or female, essentially there isn't any difference if we break it down to biology or physiology (except for the fact that men and women have different genetellia). exactly the same no difference what so ever, at least not enough to case such huge controversy between those properties of humans (race gender class... etc).

but no, humans can't leave it simple, they have to overcomplicate and then try to simplify, men have to be from mars and women have to be from venus, what about black men then ? jupiter since most of them are well built? what about native americans ? pluto since it no longer is a planet? why do they have to complicatre things so much for it to be unbearable to live among fellow human beings.

It is quite simple actually, when americans wanted to write in zero G NASA developed a very expensive pen in which the ink flows out regardless of gravity, russians just used a pencil. it is what I call the Old world VS the New world syndrome, The old world wise and aged have taken control of the surrounding environment (as well as surrounding peoples) and reached a point were no conflicts exist (mostly I mean darfur, palestine, pakistan and india, and others are just what we call a hurricane in a cup) through culture and tradition. whereas, the new world, just like the youth, is hotheaded, stubborn and quick to react at times, as well as abusing it's power, whenever possible. they started very early on, since the renegade oldworlders escaping the traditions and cultures that they felt opressing them went out to their promised land and started their own traditions and cultures, traditions of oppression starting with the red indians, to black slaves and so on and so forth but also culture of liberation, and freedom, which are essentially magnificent but still can be used for not really good terms ( the route to hell is lined with good intentions right). so with those overcomplicated conflicts of oppression and freedom over the mere 200 years of evolution of the new world, old grudges of the past haven't dissipated yet, from both sides. those bottled up feelings inside tend to now come up and divide the whole that makes a human. Newwolrdlers that escaped the old world claim it for themselves and reject their past, while newworlders that where brought by force or made there (latinos) still respect their original heritage, that's why you have african american and mexican american and asian american but never german american, irish american, english american or even french american.

The whites have reahed their unity but tend to forget that non-white folk are similarly humans and should be at the same unity, sure they do now (most of them) but it is kind of a little late so it will need sometime for te grudges to dissipate (or maybe not grudges between arabs and israillies within the general masses are still alive, but in most cases they do dissipate) so to that extent I agree that the only quick formula to reach this unity is to go for Haraway's cyborgism as it is effective.

another example of how these differences have been overlooked in the old world, haraway mention's a french theorist that says feminism appeared after world war II, while women cojoined men hand in hand in 1919 in egypt against the british oppresison and went down in the streets to protest the british invasion and the exile of Saad Zaghloul they also overlooked their relegious differences in that same riot/protest and the slogan of that protest was long live the crescent with the cross (recognizing the two major relegions in egypt which are christianity and islam). so it's not that hard to overlook the differences in the face of oppression, and since feminism appeared to give women their rights, this means their rights are being oppressed this means that they should cyborgify and forget their differences for the greater good of aquiring their rights.

what I don't like about Haraway's article though is that she wants to abolish the goddess status of women, and make them ONLY cyborgs, to which I disagree due to the fact that this status in my opinion is simply placing women on a high pedestal of respect, women are the givers of life and raisers of generations, that status shouldn't be slashed for the sake of their rights but merely used as a reinforcement, to provide levereage for the women rather than looked at as a weakness.

so really haraway's point about the cyborg is really valid although I really don't think the goddess status should be forgotten...