Cyborg as a Metaphor

A cyborg is an organism that is a self-regulating integration of artificial and natural systems. The boundaries that are transgressed via this metaphor are that a cyborg cannot fully be artificial and cannot fully be natural. Although a cyborg can sort of have the best of both the human experience and machine capabilities- it can neither be fully human or machine. “The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women’s experience in the late twentieth century. This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion (Haraway, 1). Here, when I think of the experiences of women there is an illusion in a sense that some experiences are from under societies own labels on women roles and the reality of these experiences stems from these labels. Labels such as- women having to stay home to take care of children are now changed to a new movement for women to also work outside the home. The decision to be a stay at home mother or to be a working mother should be a decision made by the woman. Yet under a capitalistic society the pressure to make money has to fall on someone and sometimes the decision becomes the lost relationships in family ties due to both parents working outside the home.

Haraway would rather be a cyborg than a goddess. To this I can see how being a woman who has the woman experiences and also being a woman who is needed in the work field is more ideal than being a woman who is just idolized.