Female Cyborg

Nicole Atkings
Uni of Saskatchewan, ug in honors English
Living Dolls: Explicating the Female Cyborg

Focusing on cyberpunk fiction, not technically 1980s.

female characters in servitude
ship who sang = pilot, navigation, housekeeping, learn to sing to entertain

Wind-up Girl “the scientists gave her … doglike urge to obey” (Bacigalupi)
“her body performs just as it was designed” (Bacigalupi)
domestication of female sexuality

“woman as machine… already … some deformity… “ (Donawerth)
“crabbed claws… clubbed feet” (McCaffrey)

literalizing union of rational man and feminine machine—Donawerth

“Delphi… machinery of men’s desires” (Donawerth)
Tiptree breaks the fourth wall. Delphi’s experience with her own.

stereotype of women obsessed with romantic love
“The Real Girl”
longing is primarily focused on proper romantic love (Lewitt)

The Matrix
Oracle does not tell her she is the one.
Her role is to fall in love with the one.
Can’t even discover the one.


limitless options
but “cyberpunk is fairly intractable as far as the rep of gender relations is concerned” (Cadora)

From ORU, 2015

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