since I’m a science fiction writer, let’s imagine this as a hypothetical situation. You’ve got three women communicating by email. A woman, another woman and a third entity who is a computational system but presenting as a woman.
Obviously this male metaphysical head-banging contest is going to last about ten minutes. This situation isn’t a math test.
The two women are going to feel deep sympathy and solidarity with this tortured, alien creature who so much wants to be a woman, while having zero chance of ever having a woman’s lived experience. This entity is a woman who will never be beloved, was never a daughter, sister, wife or mother. This woman never nurtured anyone, never had so much as a pet cat. She never danced, never sang a song, never felt the sun on her skin, could not comfort a weeping child, could not weep at the graveside of her parents, never got a smile, a compliment, never saw her own face in the mirror… And yet we somehow have this right to badger her with questions.
Turing Centenary Speech (New Aesthetic), Bruce Sterling, Wired.com, 25 June 2012.
Bruce, what the fuck kind of idea is this about the lived experience of being a woman? I hope it’s parodic – femininity as a beautiful fluffy meadow of dancing! and being loved!!! and getting compliments and smiled at and otherwise Gazed Upon – of petting kittens, raindrops on roses, nurturing little children and other fantasies of oestrogen-overdose.
I like the main point you’re making – that computers are Not Like Us and we should get the fuck over our human-centrism and stop pretending otherwise.
But you’re also trying to talk about gender in this essay, yet good god there are some bizarrely regressive ideas going on there.
*
[More thoughts from me about gender as a learned cultural system, as linguistic, and as an artificial drag performance – perhaps – at the weekend.]
(via hautepop)