As noted in a previous essay on the political condition of cyberfeminism, there is much to be said for considering cyberfeminism a promising new wave of feminist practice that can contest technologically complex territories and chart new ground for women (7). There is a tendency though among many cyberfeminists to indulge techno-utopian expectations that the new e-media will offer women a fresh start to create new languages, programs, platforms, images, fluid identities and multi-subject definitions in cyberspace; that in fact women can recode, redesign, and reprogram information technology to help change the feminine condition. This net utopianism declares cyberspace to be a free space where gender does not matter--you can be anything you want to be regardless of your "real" age, sex, race, or economic position--and refuses a fixed subject position. In other words, cyberspace is regarded as an arena inherently free of the same old gender relations and struggles. However, it is of utmost importance to recognize that the new media exist within a social framework that is already established in its practices and embedded in economic, political, and cultural environments that are still deeply sexist and racist. Contrary to the dreams of many net utopians, the Net does not automatically obliterate hierarchies through free exchanges of information across boundaries. Also, the Net is not a utopia of nongender; it is already socially inscribed with regard to bodies, sex, age, economics, social class, and race. Despite the indisputable groundbreaking contributions by women to the invention and development of computing technology, today’s Internet is a contested zone that historically originated as a system to serve war technologies, and is currently part of masculinist institutions. Any new possibilities imagined within the Net must first acknowledge and fully take into account the implications of its founding formations and present political conditions. To be sure, it is a radical act to insert the word feminism into cyberspace, and to attempt to interrupt the flow of masculine codes by boldly declaring the intention to mongrelize, hybridize, provoke, and disrupt the male order of things in the Net environment. Historically, feminism has always implied dangerous disruptions, covert and overt actions, and war on patriarchal beliefs, traditions, social structures--and it has offered utopian visions of a world without gender roles. A politically smart and affirmative cyberfeminism, using wisdom learned from past struggles, can model a brash disruptive politics aimed at deconstructing the patriarchal conditions that currently produce the codes, languages, images, and structures of the Net.

Linking the terms "cyber" and "feminism" creates a crucial new formation in the history of feminism(s) and of the e-media. Each part of the term necessarily modifies the meaning of the other. "Feminism" (or more properly, "feminisms") has been understood as a historical--and contemporary--transnational movement for justice and freedom for women, which depends on women’s activist participation in networked local, national, and international groups (8). It focuses on the material, political, emotional, sexual, and psychic conditions arising from women’s differentialized social construction and gender roles. Link this with "cyber," which means to steer, govern, control, and we conjure up the staggering possibility of feminism at the electronic helm. CyberfeminismS could imagine ways of linking the historical and philosophical practices of feminism to contemporary feminist projects and networks both on and off the Net, and to the material lives and experiences of women in the integrated circuit, taking full account of age, race, class, and economic differences. If feminism is to be adequate to its cyberpotential then it must mutate to keep up with the shifting complexities of social realities and life conditions as they are changed by the profound impact communications technologies and technoscience have on all our lives.

While refusing definition seems like an attractive, non-hierarchical, anti-identity tactic, it in fact plays into the hands of those who would prefer a net quietism: Give a few lucky women computers to play with and they’ll shut up and stop complaining. This attitude is one toward which cyberfeminists should be extremely wary and critical. Access to the Internet is still a privilege, and by no means to be regarded as a universal right (nor is it necessarily useful or desirable for everyone). While brilliant consumer marketing has suceeded in making ownership of a PC seem as imperative as having a telephone, computers are in fact powerful tools that can provide the possessor with a political advantage (the personal computer is the political computer). If the Internet is increasingly the channel through which many people (in the overdeveloped nations) get the bulk of their information, then it matters greatly how women participate in the programming, policy setting, and content formations of the Net, for information coming across the Net needs to be contextualized both by the receiver and by the sender. On the Internet, feminism has a new transnational audience which needs to be educated in its history and its contemporary conditions as they prevail in different countries. For many, cyberfeminism could be their entry point into feminist discourse and activism. While there is a great deal of information about feminism available on the Net--and new sites are opening up all the time--it must be remembered that the more this information can be contextualized politically, and linked to practices, activism, and conditions of every day life, the more it is likely to be effective in helping to connect and mobilize people (9). A potent example is in the Zamir Network (Zamir "for peace") of BBS and e-mail that was created after the eruption of civil war in Yugoslavia in l99l to link peace activists in Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Bosnia across borders via host computers in Germany. The point is that computers are more than playful tools, consumer toys, or personal pleasure machines--they are the master’s tools, and they have very different meanings and uses for different populations. It will take crafty pilots to navigate these channels.

While cyberfeminists want to avoid the damaging mistakes of exclusion, lesbophobia, political correctness, and racism, which sometimes were part of past feminist thinking, the knowledge, experience, and feminist analysis and strategies accumulated thus far are crucial for carrying their work forward now. If the goal is to create a feminist politics on the Net and to empower women, then cyberfeminists must reinterpret and transpose feminist analysis, critique, strategies, and experience to encounter and contest new conditions, new technologies, and new formations. (Self)definition can be an emergent property that arises out of practice and changes with the movements of desire and action. Definition can be fluid and affirmative--a declaration of strategies, actions, and goals. It can create crucial solidarity in the house of difference--solidarity, rather than unity or consensus--solidarity that is a basis for effective political action.

Cyberfeminists have too much at stake to be frightened away from tough political strategizing and action by the fear of squabbles, ideologizing, and political differences. If I’d rather be a cyberfeminist than a goddess, I’d damned well better know why, and be willing to say so.

How might cyberfeminists organize to work for a feminist political and cultural environment on the Net? What are various areas of feminist research and net activity that are already beginning to emerge as cyberfeminist practice? The 1st Cyberfeminist International (CI) in Kassel serves as an example of feminist Net organiz(m)ation.

Responsibility for organizing the CI workdays was taken on by OBN (Old Boys Network)--an ad hoc group of about six women--in on-line consultation with all participants. Because of the on-line communications between the OBN leadership and participants, collaborative working relationships and the content of the meetings were already established by the time the participants met together face to face in Kassel. A shifting and diverse group of more than thirty women ( self-selected by open invitation to members of the FACES listserv, [with a core of about ten]) participated in the CI.

From the first day this collaborative process--a recombinant form of feminist group processes, anarchic self-organization, and rotating leadership--continued to develop among women from more than eight countries and from different economic, ethnic, professional, and political backgrounds. Each day began with participants meeting in the Hybrid Workspace to work on various taskforces (text, press, technical, final party, etc.) and to organize the public program for the day. This was followed by three hours of public lectures and presentations for Documenta audiences. Afterward the closed group met again for dinner and to discuss issues such as the definition of cyberfeminism, group goals, and future actions and plans. Work was divided according to inclination and expertise; there was no duty list and no expectation that everyone would work the same amount of hours. Flexible schedules permitted conviviality, impulsive actions, brainstorming, and private time. Constant connection of participants to the FACES listserv was maintained electronically. Practically all group activities were video- and audiotaped and photographed. Participants’ personal computer equipment was set up in the open work/meeting space and most of the lectures were accompanied by projected images from the lecturers’ web-sites. One participant taught the group how to set up CU_SeeMe_ connections and continued to participate virtually after she had to leave, and two young Russians trying to join the CI in Kassel, faxed a diary of their illegal journey as they jumped from from country to country to evade visa problems. Thus there was an interesting interplay between virtuality and flesh presence. The face to face interactions were experienced as much more intense and energizing than the virtual communications, and forged different degrees of affinity between various individuals and subgroups, while at the same time they made all kinds of differences more palpable. Brainstorming and spontaneous actions seemed to spring more readily from face-to-face meetings. The opportunity for immediate question and answer sessions and extended discussion after the lectures also enabled more intimate and searching interchanges than are usually possible through on-line communications. Most important, all presentations, hands-on training, and discussions took place in a context of intense debate about feminism, which produced a constant awareness of the lived relationship of women and technology.

The wide variety of content presented in the lectures, web projects, and workshops touched on many of the hottest topics of concern to cyberfeminism: Theories of the visibility of sexual difference on the Net; digital self-representations of online women as avatars and databodies; analyses of gender representations, sex-sites, cybersex, and femporn; strategies of genderfusion and hybridity to combat stereotyping, essentialism, and sexist representations of women; feminism as a "browser"; the dangers of the fetishistic desire for information and the paranoia created by the new technologies; dissemination of knowledge about women in history; studies of differences between women and men programmers and hackers; an examination of feminist electronic art strategies; feminist models of technological education; health issues of wired women; and discussion of how to organize and support feminist networking projects in different countries (10).

The chief gains from the CI discussions were trust, friendship, a deeper understanding and tolerance of differences; the ability to sustain discussions about controversial and divisive issues without group rupture; and mutual education about issues of women immersed in technology, as well as a clearer understanding of the terrain for cyberfeminist intervention. While the CI did not result in a formal list of goals, actions, and concrete plans, we reached general agreement on areas in need of further work and research. An ongoing concern is how to make cyberfeminism more visible and effective in reaching diverse populations of women using technology. Options discussed included creating a cyberfeminist search engine that could link strategic feminist websites; country-by-country reports of netactivity and cyberorganization for women; forming coalitions with female technologists, programmers, scientists and hackers, to link feminist Net theory, content and practice with technological research and invention; education projects (for both men and women) in technology, programming, and software and hardware design, that would address traditional gender constructions and biases built into technology; and more research on how the ongoing global restructuring of women’s work results from the pervasive changes introduced by information technology.

If cyberfeminists have the desire to research, theorize, work practically, and make visible how women (and others) worldwide are affected by new communications technologies, technoscience, and the capitalist dominations of the global communications networks, they must begin by clearly formulating cyberfeminisms’ political goals and positions. Cyberfeminists have the chance to create new formulations of feminist theory and practice that address the complex new social, cultural, and economic conditions created by global technologies. Strategic and politically savvy uses of these technologies can facilitate the work of a transnational movement that aims to infiltrate and assault the networks of power and communication through activist-feminist projects of solidarity, education, freedom, vision, and resistance. To be effective in creating a politicized feminist environment on the Net that challenges its present gender, race, age, and class structures, cyberfeminists need to draw on the researches and strategies of avant garde feminist history and its critique of institutionalized patriarchy. While affirming new possibilities for women in cyberspace, cyberfeminists must critique utopic and mythic constructions of the Net, and strive to work with other resistant netgroups in activist coalitions. Cyberfeminists need to declare solidarity with transnational feminist and postcolonial initiatives, and work to use their access to communications technologies and electronic networks to support such initiatives.

1. Caroline Bassett, "With a Little Help from Our (New) Friends?" mute, August l997, 46-49.

2. VNS Matrix webpage: [sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns/]

3. Rosi Braidotti, "Cyberfeminism with a difference." [www.let.ruu.nl/womens_studies/rosi/cyberfem.htm]

4. The complete l00 Antitheses can be found at Old Boys Network [http://www.icf.de/obn]

5. Braidotti. Ibid.

6. Sadie Plant, Zeros + Ones: Digital Women + the New Technocultures. New York: Doubleday, l997. p. 37

7. Faith Wilding and Critical Art Ensemble, "Notes on the Political Condition of Cyberfeminism."[http://mailer.fsu.edu/~sbarnes]

8. Using the term "feminism" is very different from using the term "women"--although perhaps one should consider using the term "cyberwomanism," which acknowledges the critique of racist white feminism so justly made by Audrey Lorde, Alice Walker, bell hooks, and others.

9. See, for example, the listings of l,000 feminist or women-related sites in Shana Penn, The Women’s Guide to The Wired World. New York: Feminist Press, l997.

10. For more information on the First Cyberfeminist International and papers see [http://www.icf.de/obn]

11. Alla Mitrofanova, presentation at the First Cyberfeminist International in Kassel, September l997.

(Faith Wilding, a founding participant of the feminist art movement, is a multi-media artist, writer, and feminist-activist currently living in Pittsburgh, USA.)