What caught my eye about Donna Haraway’s article "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," were two statements in particular. They are somewhat unique among most feminist literature or articles, and that is why they grabbed my attention.
“It is factually and politically wrong to assimilate all of the diverse 'moments' or 'conversations' in recent women's politics named radical feminism to MacKinnon's version” (158).
“There is nothing about teeing 'female' that naturally binds women” (155).
Most feminist literature that I have heard calls for women to unite and recognize that they are a group unto themselves, so I found it very interested (and appealing) that Haraway contests this. She argues that identity (including gender identity) is merely a psychological or social construction, and that it is erroneous to try and group all women together. In fact, she even argues that there is no “female” identity, that the idenity is “a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices”. The history of grouping woman together into such an identity is inherently false. The identity does not exist, ergo you cannot place all women into this non-existent “female” identity.
I am in agreement with Haraway in this regard. Grouping all women together, even when asserting that they have rights, is erroneously because it denies them each an individual identity. This is part of why I (and other that I know) have long resisted being labeled as “feminist”. Do I believe that women should have equal rights and respect and everything else? Absolutely, and very strongly. But I hated being labeled and thrown into one big mixing pot. It didn’t feel right, and Haraway supports this point of view.
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