Information Society Watch

2001, Deanna Weber, The Laughing Medusa

This paper uses the feminist theories of Simone de Beauvoir, Sophie Plate, Linda Alcoff, and Teresa de Lauretis and tries to apply their ideas on self-identity and subjectivism to cyberspace. The author seeks to understand how online text is gender-oriented, and if knowing one's gender is important in relating to someone. While the freedoms inherent in this cyberspace would suggest a potent means of freeing personal/public discourse from the control of others, it also suggests an extension of these binaries created in real life. After an analysis of theories, the author concludes that in approaching cyberspace, a combination of de Beauvoir and Alcoff is best suited to reinvent identities and redefine women’s subjectivity. Women need to recreate their virtuality to encompass an alternative definition of womanhood (Adapted from author).

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