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By Megan Hasenwinkel
Conclusion
What are the implications of these discussions? Why should we care about Molly, with her razor fingernails? The answer is that we should care because science fiction is merely a different view of our present. As Donna Haraway says in her "Manifesto for Cyborgs," "the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion." (174) Heather J. Hicks emphasizes this point while observing women at her workplace: "The service workers. . .made their living from nothing more solid than words and numbers. Their bodies appeared to play no part in their work as they sat before their computer terminals, typing and staring thoughtfully into fields of pixels." (2) We are living in a cyborg nation and increasingly it is the women who are working with the technology to make the toys for the men. Leblanc articulates this well: "Men have emerged as the primary producers and consumers of the new high technologies of the computer age; it may be third world women who labor in sweatshops to assemble the components, but it is overwhelmingly men who own the factories and boys who play the video games." (8) It seems that the "fictional" portrayal of women being controlled by technology is already here.What lessons can we, as women, take from this discussion of science fiction in order to better our own relationship with technology? What deeper implications are there? When technology is used as a controlling force, women are overwhelmingly the losers. There are very few examples of a beneficial technological takeover for women. Many feminist stories that do have a cyborg character, such as "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," serve as a warning rather than a guide for women.
Technology is too easily used by those in power to control those who are not. One only needs to look at the abortion debate in this country to see an example of a patriarchal attempt at technological control of women's bodies. This is not that dissimilar from Molly's lack of control over her own fate. The warning is that if we let technology stay in the realm of the masculine, it will only become another tool of the patriarchy.
However, if we can find ways to use technology that work in symbionce with nature, and, by implication, with women, there is hope for a beneficial relationship between women and technology. In the feminist science fiction works, when technology was not used to control nature, but to enhance it, technology found a comfortable and sustainable position in society. Unfortunately, real world examples of this type of thinking are difficult to find, but this is the attitude that must be adopted.
What may need to happen, then, is our acceptance, both men and women, of the power of nature and of our own weaknesses before that force. The same will to control that drives patriarchy also drives the desire for technology. If this drive is not overcome, we are doomed to the dreary techno-world of cyberpunk. If we can overcome this drive, then there is hope for a more equal future.
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