[log in to unmask] (Ben Singer) Replied:
>Lee Brown said:
>
>>If I were to say that what Harraway means by the term "Cyborg" (in the
>>context of Cultural Studies -- you know that thing which grew from trying
>>to understand the oppressions of identity in 70-80s Britain, Birmingham
>>school, Stuart Hall and all that) is that the very nature of  humanness is
>>cyborg would it mean anything??  Not individual people, not prosthetic
>>enhancement for what ever reason or in whatever field (a car can be
>>considered a prosthetic enhancement because it expands the range of our
>>legs) but to define the term human is to also define the technology which
>>we use to create the world around us (or is that phrase too Marxist??)
>>
>I happen to agree, Haraway's work is politically engaged and academically
>responsible. What she says in the Cyborg Manifesto about "humaness" and
>about women in the integrated circuit is a lot more, however, than about
>technologically reorganizing one's body.
>
>I think one of the issues here is how transness (transsexuality) gets
>exoticized in critical theory contexts. The same holds true for how trans
>is always the exemplar of the "constructedness" of gender, never mind that
>everyone's gender is constructed: focus on the trannies as the limit case.
>When are these theorists going to add to the list of cyborgs ALL
>(non)humans?!!
>
>I am both concerned with the anti-intellectualism of this discussion *and*
>the reification, exoticization of trans bodies by critical theorists. Some
>of us get caught in the middle of such a debate and can't take sides. The
>point, I think, is to be more responsible and *situated* (another Haraway
>concept) about our academic work and cultural politics.

And in doing that one has to be aware that cyborgs and 'Borgs have a
decided place in popular modern culture.  Anything which might attach
transsexuals to that has to be to our extreme disbenefit.

Cartoons led to movies such as 'Robocop' which showed the technological
modification of a human body as ultimately sad and mutilation. The
massively distributed 'Startreck: The Next Generation' has 'Borgs as the
ultimate frightening evil, a race absorbing others through technologial
modifications to pure bodies, subsuming personality into a persuasive
collective unity.

I know two teen TSs who have terrible nightmares featuring Borgs.  For them
they are the antithesis of their right to be themselves.

How dangerous is it to discuss transsexuals as being Cyborgs?  Very.  Only
on Wednesday an 18 year-old transsexual was grossly humiliated and abused
by a psychiatrist she had been required to see in order to be referred to a
Gender Identity Clinic; the woman's mindset was that the youngster could
never become female, that she must be trying to make herself a copy of some
catalogue classification of women, following some sexual fantasy (she was
pressed, hard, to reveal all), that Net influences must be controlling her,
and that SRS is gross body mutilation.  Ignorant and outdated prejudice, or
an idiot intellectual informed by critical theory?  Either way it has no
place in treating someone who's brain is female and needs a body that
matches, and the evil bitch is just about to find herself embroiled in a
nasty complaints procedure.

Transsexuals / Suffers of Benjamin's Syndrome are NOT cyborg wannabes!
Please leave us out of such "academic mastubatory fantasies".

Anna

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