Xenofeminism

[Lliikklkkj]

Has anyone come across this? I don't know how seriously to take this and if it merits any deeper delving (should I read the book?). Is there something here I'm missing? It looks like a very bleak vision from my reading. Particularly if this is the supposed future of feminism.

Oh dear, yes I know a few people into this nonsense. It’s not anywhere near new despite all the preposterous claims (some first wave feminists were interested in early sci fi tropes, and some second wave theorists like Shulamith Firestone also dabbled in the “assistive reproduction will liberate women” trope). It’s pretty silly though when all is said and done, always makes me think there’s been a bit too much Matrix-watching going on.

I would be sceptical about anyone who thinks this is the future of feminism - not to mention that, given the climate crisis, eco-feminism is likely to end up being a lot more fashionable (and at least has some practical thought behind it).

(Oh and it’s the kind of thing that sounds really great to people who work in tech in California, or spend all their time on social media and don’t have children. But it’s light years away from the average woman’s interests, particularly women who have had a child. The people I know who are keen on this sort of stuff are invariably child free in my experience and are totally unaware of the whole other side of bodily life that giving birth and looking after children brings.)

I’m sad this isn’t Xena Feminism, where I get to dress in leather and throw a chackram about whilst being awesomely Warrior Princessy.

@Deliriumoftheendless

I’m sad this isn’t Xena Feminism, where I get to dress in leather and throw a chackram about whilst being awesomely Warrior Princessy.

This would be excellent

Can someone please explain what this is to a lazy idiot like me?

Oh it’s all about how adapting and making use of the technological and media tools of capitalism, making assisted reproduction available to everyone and multiplying and expanding our sense of multiple gender(s) can produce new futuristic liberated modes of being liberated from gender roles, yadda yadda.

Sounds fab if you are 25 and work in software or journalism, but far fetched and daft to pretty much everyone else (especially anyone who’s had to push a baby out and then look after them - I mean, good luck with experiencing radical new modes of degendered technological being while sitting on an ice pack having your nipples chewed off )

I'm not entirely sure what all this is supposed to achieve.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberfeminism

Emancipation - liberated from our biology. If reproductive labour no longer requires women - we can be just like men.

@Lliikklkkj

Emancipation - liberated from our biology. If reproductive labour no longer requires women - we can be just like men.

I'm sure they'll keep us around and not just slaughter us at birth and replace us with realistic fuck dolls. They're great at that kind of stuff, men.

So just another pathway to transhumanism? Cyber and drug-fuelled liberation from fleshy materiality.

We can be just like men? Or we can be rendered unnecessary, as rich men take over the means of reproduction?

I'm sure the poor will still slog about doing the biological thing.

Yeah very much so - basically cyberfeminism meets queer theory meets too much Deleuze and Guattari.

yes, there was an element of this in 'woman on the edge of time'
the babies were gestated in a lab, iirc, but both men and women breastfed (I don't think the biochemics of this were explored)
the woman from our time felt jealousy, or something, that the men were experiencing something so exclusively female. But this was all in the context of a society that had truly done away with gender, which obviously doesn't apply to the present.
Also, it's a work of fiction, so not something to base a political philosophy on.

@Lliikklkkj

Emancipation - liberated from our biology. If reproductive labour no longer requires women - we can be just like men.

But we are our bodies. Isn't it better to celebrate that and how wonderful our bodies, with all their quirks and faults are?

Yeah - I’m sceptical about some versions of ecocriticism and eco-theory, but you can think of ecofeminism, for example, as a kind of anti-cyberfeminism: a materialist ecological feminism which comes out of the aspect of second wave feminism that is directly opposed to cyberfeminism and “xenofeminism”.

So, rooted in understanding the materiality of bodies and land as the fundamental commodities for resource exploitation under patriarchal capitalism; interested in a radical revisioning of society that does away with both hierarchies of land ownership and sex exploitation.

Though the cyber/xeno-feminists would no doubt dismiss this as terrible naughty bad “biological essentialism”, because it relies on bodies actually having a material existence, and not just being some airy bits of software-y gender code (or whatever similar bollocks )

@Lliikklkkj

Emancipation - liberated from our biology. If reproductive labour no longer requires women - we can be just like men.

Sort of like Brave New World then?

I’m not sure I fancy that at all. Even if we are ‘liberated’ from reproductive labour we are still smaller and weaker than men, so not really liberated from our bodies, surely?

Or would it ‘correct’ the size of our bodies too? (Urgh)

Well 100 sexes are going to bloom apparently, not quite sure how. I imagine eugenics would be in force well before that point.

I did hear Helen Hester, one of the authors, on a podcast discussing the criticism that endocrine disrupters contaminating water supplies was some kind of reactionary red herring - so what if it shrinks penises apparently. I think what disturbed me was Mark Fishers glowing endorsement of this carry on, and clear contempt for the sort of meanies who don't agree this is the best thing since sliced bread. It offers precisely nothing for women. And I rather liked Mark Fisher and am sad to have been put off him by those comments. I suppose they were his pals.... but I think my point is that I'm annoyed at the way it's being presented as something radical when queer transhumanism is feels like its being constantly rammed down my throat. It's pushing at an open door - it's pure neoliberal liquefaction and if these people don't have the tools to recognise this - I'm at a complete loss.

“it's pure neoliberal liquefaction and if these people don't have the tools to recognise this”

Exactly. I was having a good laugh recently at a seminar announcement I saw on “Transgender Marxism” - I imagine it as a bit like “ecological fracking” or “rational conspiracism” or similar 🤣