{"id":385,"date":"2009-03-13T22:42:08","date_gmt":"2009-03-14T03:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=385"},"modified":"2009-03-24T07:13:46","modified_gmt":"2009-03-24T12:13:46","slug":"technology-in-the-female-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=385","title":{"rendered":"Technology in the Female Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Harraway article that we read she expresses hope in the possibility that we can be saved if we all learn to live as cyborgs,\u00a0 a blending of the human and the machine.\u00a0 Joanna Russ would appear to agree with this idea as her Utopian society Whileaway in The Female Man<\/em> is made up almost entirely of cyborgs.<\/p>\n

The people on Whileaway are trained to become one with technology from birth, and eventually it becomes a part of them.\u00a0 Although its description seems rustic and pastoral, the society of Whileaway is only possible through their use of and coexistence with technology.\u00a0 I have no idea what an induction helmet is, but it must be pretty awesome if “with their induction helmets on their heads, their toes controlling the green peas, their fingers the vats and controls, their back muscles the carrots, their abdomens the water supply,” (51).\u00a0 Not to mention that at some point they figured out how to not only have babies without any males, but to genetically modify those babies to an almost perfection.<\/p>\n

My question is this:\u00a0 Is technology necessary to conquer nature?\u00a0 Not only trees and butterflies nature, but human nature, or more specifically female nature?\u00a0 Russ spends a great deal of time explaining to us that the idea of “female nature” or “maternal instincts” are just social constructs that are meant as a mode of domination by males (and other females as well).\u00a0 Men in the novel constantly assume that it is part of a woman’s DNA that she will be happy with pretty clothes, or that all she wants to do is sit on the couch and eat bon bons while her husband Climbs Everest (what is a bon bon anyway? I’ve always wondered that).\u00a0 So why is it so necessary that technology be so ingrained in her idea of a utopia.\u00a0 Women are only seen as strong enough to exist on their own\u00a0 on Whileaway, and only with the help of all their technology.<\/p>\n

Janet would be considered the most advanced J, or most enlightened, in a way.\u00a0 However, her and the rest of the people on Whileaway are completely dependent on advances in technology to survive.\u00a0 Jael would be the strongest J physically, and the one could argue the toughest.\u00a0 However, she relies on her robot boy-toy for pleasure.\u00a0 Also, the women of Womenland are dependant on technlogiocal advances to survive using it as a means of commerce, namely baby farming and time travel.\u00a0 Jeannine seems to be the most connected to nature, with her cat (Mr. Frosty!) and her plant, but she seems to be the weakest of the J’s to me.<\/p>\n

If Russ was attempting to get across the point that women can do whatever men could do and that the differences between the sexes is illusory, why this emphasis on technology?<\/p>\n

I may have completely misread the novel.\u00a0 I am assuming that Whileaway is meant to be\u00a0 a utopia.\u00a0 It is possible that it was not meant to be and therefore everything I said above would be pretty much worthless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Harraway article that we read she expresses hope in the possibility that we can be saved if we all learn to live as cyborgs,\u00a0 a blending of the human and the machine.\u00a0 Joanna Russ would appear to agree with this idea as her Utopian society Whileaway in The Female Man is made up … Continue reading Technology in the Female Man<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[52,49,13,51],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-9-female-man","tag-joanna-russ","tag-sex","tag-technology","tag-the-female-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}