Sexual reproduction is one kindof reproductive strategy among many, with costs and benefits asa function of the system environment.
This is fascinating when thinking about the human organs as cyborgian! Throughout these readings I have been intrigued by the link between goddess and cyborg and further, the same organs that would be thought of as goddess like, also having qualities that can be made to seem mechanical.
great sacks to the waist,” others that they dragged theground. “Observers” in the colonies reported that some slave women would lay theirlong breasts upon the ground before lying down beside them to rest. Othersimagined that when slave women stooped to work the fields, their breasts made themappear to have “six legs”.
What purpose did this racist myth serve in the European/colonialist mind? Was it a way of utilizing the size/shape/distance from the body, of the breast to further differentiate and alienate from the ideal flat "male" physique - as I discussed/questioned above?
“Nature herselfhas formed the human species into castes and ranks.”
One of the most direct examples of using the natural world/goddess form to explain racism and the hegemony
Enlightenment credo that all “men” were by nature equal, middle-class women werenot to become fully enfranchised citizens or professionals in the state, but newlyempowered mothers within the home.
So, the margin of difference in breast size amongst women is a factor in the disenfranchisement? When discussing the "male" form as a more consistent chest shape, and the "female" chest with such variation, and ultimate scrutiny, then arises a question of sameness as a form of hierarchy.
Gelphi argues that this new fashion was as much cultivated bywomen as imposed upon them
Closed question: how does one make such a distinction? Seems like that's a thin line. Well - not a thin line so much as an irreconcilable one or the other, in a patriarchal world.
human idea of beauty
Closed question: is this talking about beauty as an idea - extending to the natural world (non-human, plants, terrain, etc) or human specific ideals of "beauty"?
reproductive organs
When thinking about the reproductive organs as a mode to identify many women, I wonder about the connection between goddess and cyborg even further. If the cyborg/machine in comparison to the human body uses replication over reproduction, do these features render the female body more or less machine like? Often times in popular current day culture, people with reproductive systems speak of this part of the body as "parts," common when discussing menopause and the way these systems change, and decay, over a lifetime. I would be curious to trace these discussion and rhetoric surrounding the body and its relationship to thought processes of internalized machine-ism. Is this duality of speech an oppressive system or a reclamation?
wet nurses;
The place of the wet nurse, and the further banning of the role in Prussian law of 1794 reminds me of a cyborgian external feature. When thinking about the ideas of "goddess" vs "cyborg" as discussed by Haraway, this law is an enforcement of an idea of "natural womenhood," where the breast plays the role of the goddess, and the wet nurse acts as a technological advancement, making the woman a cyborg. This goes against the "natural order" that keeps women in a subsidiary place in society. This also makes me consider the question, are humans machines? and what makes a human, human, and a machine, a machine? When considering the fact that externalizing human processes to other humans sometimes allows for the solving of a problem, or the expediting of a process, then there seems to be a robotic element within two human components.
they are everywhere and they are invisible.
When discussing the ideal machine as a "micro-electronic device" "made of sunshine," there is an allusion to the invisibility of the ideal machine - with this view in mind, how would Haraway then deal with technologies such as facial recognition, or other covert technologies, that go as far as to use their invisibility for the gain of a system (ie government)?