Beyond the Binary: A Study on Distorting “Gender” Within a Cybernetic System

Abstract

The notion of gender, being a cultural construct, has always been problematic in limiting or curbing individual identities, interests and roles and ‘misrepresenting’ them in imposing binaries; and the privileging of men over other genders cause overpowering physical–psychological dominations every time. Evolution, throughout the years which has been biologically rooted, is an act of nature. The human species might, now, just involve co-evolution with science and technology by constant attempts to push beyond nature-imposed limits and to incorporate technology extensively. Speculations done by scholars and futurists claim that by the mid-twenty-first-century humans will undergo genetic mutation by increased “user-friendly” technological interferences, which can be a boon or a bane and they themselves acknowledge that it is inevitable. Cyborgs and cybernetic systems, right from their outset, seem to have disregarded and dismissed the rigid boundaries and distinctions that existed between “humans” and “animal” and “humans” and “machine”. However, considering gender as an arbitrary and unnecessary limitation on human potential while the applications of neuro-biotechnologies, modern advancements and cybernetic systems seem to incorporate the same, which promotes a gender-neutral environment and eliminates the ‘superiority’ of any gender and works towards a postgender society. In addition, cyborg theory also distorts and configures “language” itself, which has forever been dominated by a phallocentric view and has further intensified distinctions. The paper, thus, not only delineates the oppression and impediments posed by “gender”, but also depicts how the “binaries” of the same are eradicated in a postgender and cybernetic information age.

Humans have been deeply circumscribed and determined by our accidental binary gender assignments. (Geary [3]; Ridley [10])