Fembot Feminism: The Cyborg Body and Feminist Discourse in<i>The Bionic Woman</i>

Sharp, Sharon

doi:10.1080/00497870701593739

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…She is tough, emotionally in control, calculating and is no longer an innocent. In fact, as portrayed by Sharp (2007), the cyborg has to get rid of her soft and gentle ‘female’ sensitivity, as this is incompatible with technological or masculine superiority. Thus the female cyborg's abilities and intellect are represented in masculinity, while her body performs her femininities.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caught in the Gendered Machine: On the Masculine and Feminine in Cyborg Leadership

Muhr¹

2010

Gender Work & Organization

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Many studies have shown that female managers have to work harder than men to gain recognition, and that this often leads top female managers away from the leadership style characterized by soft skills and emotional understanding. Instead, another characterization can be seen; that of tough gendered machines fighting their way to the top -cyborgs. This article uses Haraway's metaphor of the cyborg to explore the way in which a top female manger tries to fight for gender equality by employing masculine strategies with a female body. However, contrary to the usual argument that women become masculinized leaders, the article argues for a reading in which female leadership becomes both excessively masculine and excessively feminine, challenging simplified readings of gendered leadership. In the case-study, this leads to a situation where high-performance behaviour from a top female leader in effect ends up reinforcing gender inequality.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caught in the Gendered Machine: On the Masculine and Feminine in Cyborg Leadership

Muhr¹

2010

Gender Work & Organization

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“…In considering this technological context, we will refer both to the often overlooked gendered history of our writing implements, such as the typewriter, as well as discuss the wider and more abstract technologies of for example the peer‐reviewed journal, as well as the social technologies of textual representation in general. In thinking about the complicated ways in which gender is assigned to an author in the writing process, and to challenge the notion that we can reasonably reduce the act of writing — a mediated, technologically embedded practice — to a gender binary or to a gender identity, we find inspiration in our shared interest in the figure of the cyborg, as this has been used both in science and technology studies (e.g., Clynes and Kline, ; Gray, , ; Grenville, ), feminist theory (Balsamo, ; Campbell, ; Haraway, ; Sharp, ), organization studies (Muhr, ; Nyberg, 2009; Parker, , ) and as a trope in popular culture analysis (e.g., Bowring, ; Czarniawska and Gustavsson, ). Particularly important for our use of the cyborg metaphor is the way Haraway () uses the metaphor explicitly to challenge gender binaries.…”

Section: Enter the Cyborgmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Gendered Technologies and Cyborg Writing

Muhr¹,

Rehn²

2014

Gender Work & Organization

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Since Hélène Cixous introduced it in 1975, the notion of a specifically feminine writing — écriture féminine — has been discussed as a provocative and potentially disruptive form of representation that breaks with masculine and authoritarian modes thereof. However, in this paper we will discuss how the notion of écriture féminine may itself be at risk of getting trapped within the gender binary its progenitors tried to break free from. As a commentary on this, we suggest looking at the gendered nature of the research text from the perspective of the technologies with which they are produced, as the writer — when writing/publishing — is always already embedded in the technologies of the publishing machine, turning (academic) writing into something akin to cyborg writing. We further suggest that an understanding of the cyborg nature of writing can introduce a parallel mode of inquiry, which holds the potential to enrich écriture féminine and stand as a critique of too simplistic readings of the same.

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“…Female cyborgs are constructed as goddesses representing good and evil with the power to create and destroy (Giresunlu 2009), while male cyborgs are associated with hypermasculinity, hardness, and militaristic violence (Jeffords 1994). The original bionic woman (1976-1978), created in the context of second-wave feminism, walked a contradictory line between promotion of a powerful independent woman and an emphasis on sexuality and traditional codes of femininity (Sharp 2007). The present article extends this literature by including class as a pertinent category of analysis when examining the role of cyborg in popular culture.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temp Cyborgs

Johnson

2011

Television & New Media

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This article analyzes three primetime television series: Chuck and Bionic Woman on NBC and Dollhouse on Fox. The narratives and representations in the three programs raise questions about the role of immaterial labor, gender, and technology in contemporary life. Each series articulates and reifies the unequal sexual division of labor around prized technological work. The texts also express the instability of humanity as it becomes ever more intimate with new technology. As cyborgs, the main protagonists are temporary subjects because technology is driven by capital's need for newer products and newer iterations of existing technology. The potential for liberation and collective activity that comes with the newfound power, skill, and interconnection of cyborgs is closed off. The contemporary cyborg in Chuck and Bionic Woman is alienated and never far from being obsolete, while Dollhouse shows the possibility for working-class resistance.

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Fembot Feminism: The Cyborg Body and Feminist Discourse inThe Bionic Woman

Cited by 6 publications

References 2 publications

Caught in the Gendered Machine: On the Masculine and Feminine in Cyborg Leadership

Caught in the Gendered Machine: On the Masculine and Feminine in Cyborg Leadership

On Gendered Technologies and Cyborg Writing

Temp Cyborgs

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