Theory in a Digital Age: A Project of English 483 Students, Coastal Carolina University

Conclusion

A Cyborg Manifesto was originally written in 1983, and since then people everywhere have become more and more like Haraway’s cyborg, and with that gender has been able to evolve from a socially constructed, black and white dichotomy, into a spectrum that is inclusive of those transitioning between genders and who are agendered and reject the concept of gender entirely. In recent years there has been a proliferation of gender neutral bathrooms. There have been clothing lines representing agender and genderfluid people in society with gender neutral clothing. Role models like Laverne Cox, celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner, and martyrs like Leelah Alcorn have functioned to represent trans right and issues in the media and substantially increased trans visibility and reinforced the notion that it is okay to be neither male nor female, but someone in between. Trans people and the movement they have emboldened and fervently fought for is the best example of how we, as humans, are more cyborg than ever before. Feminism has fought to dismantle gender roles and norms that historically have reinforced the gender dichotomy. Modern technology has fostered a virtual world where gender is vestigial and superfluous to the experience, allowing gender to be toyed with, manipulated, or erased at will.  The antagonistic duality of gender is deteriorating into a fluid spectrum of masculine and feminine thanks largely to technology. We are moving closer to what Haraway described as “the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender.” Humans aren’t becoming cyborgs because of the amount of silicon in our bodies or our computing capacity, but because we are moving towards a more androgynous whole in which dualities like gender do not define us.

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