“When I tell people I am a cyborg, they often ask if I have read Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. Of course I have read it. And I disagree with it”
“The manifesto, published in 1985, promised a cyberfeminist resistance. The resistance would be networked and coded by women and for women to change the course of history and derange sexism beyond recognition. Technology would un-gender us. Instead, it has been so effective at erasing disabled women1 that even now, in conversation with many feminists, I am no longer surprised that disability does not figure into their notions of bodies and embodiment”
“Haraway’s manifesto lays claim to cyborgs (‘we are all cyborgs’) and defines the cyborg unilaterally through metaphor”
“Disabled people who use tech to live are cyborgs. Our lives are not metaphors”
“It can be a bit intimidating to claim cyborg identity. I feel like it is an impossible task to define myself against the cyborg wreckage of the last century while placing myself in the present and projecting forward”
“They like us best with bionic arms and legs. They like us deaf with hearing aids, though they prefer cochlear implants. It would be an affront to ask the hearing to learn sign language. Instead they wish for us to lose our language, abandon our culture and consider ourselves cured. They like exoskeletons, which none of us use. They would never consider cyborg those of us with pacemakers or on dialysis, those of us kept alive by machines or made ambulatory by wheelchairs, those of us on biologics or anti-depressants. They want us shiny and metallic and in their image”
“I went looking for a word to name the Donna Haraways of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a word inclusive of cyberfeminists and transhumanists, a word that captures the theft of cyborg identity, and mocks the thieves a bit. I call them tryborgs. They have tried to be cyborgs, but they are stuck on the attempt, like a record skipping, forever trying to borg, and forever consigned to their regular un-tech bodies. They are fake cyborgs. They can be recognized because, while they preach cyborg nature, they do not actually depend on machines to breathe, stay alive, talk, walk, hear or hold a magazine”
“tryborg concerns: The Anthropocene, Texting, Networking”
“cyborg concerns: Can I afford my leg? Will a stalker, a doctor or the law kill me?”
“The cyborg is the engineer’s dream. The engineer steers and manipulates the human to greater performance. As a common cyborg, I subvert that dream. I do not want to sell any of their shit for them. I am not impressed with their tech, which they call 3C98-3, and which I am wearing, a leg that whirs and clicks, a socket that will not fit unless I stay in the weight range of 100-105 pounds. I am 88 per cent charged in basic mode and I have taken 638,402 steps on this leg. The last one they gave me was a lemon. Maybe this feeling of trial-and-error, repetition and glitch, is part of the cyborg condition and, by extension, the disabled condition”
“cyborg concerns: Caution: There is a problem with the component 3C98-3. Walking is possible with restrictions. Possibly no switching into safety mode. Conduct a self-test of the component by connecting/disconnecting the battery charger. If this feedback occurs again, use is no longer permitted. Contact your orthopaedic technician immediately”
“cyborg concerns: I’m told by the technicians to maintain an average amount of walking on a daily basis. Don’t go overboard, but don’t be lazy either. Stay in the middle. The insurance company could pull my data and decide I haven’t used my leg enough to justify the next one”
“99% of the moments I share with my daughter are the most joyous, but in relation to my amputation it would be time spent in the Gulf of Mexico. I have not been in the ocean in 18 years, I have lived with in 1 mile of it for the past 8 years. I was able to finally put together parts for a water leg a year ago. My ass limped to the water line and I went for it. I spent 3 cold hours just sitting there letting the waves hit me. Hypothermia, jelly fish, and sharks wouldn’t have made me get out”
“In this essay I use identity-first language (‘disabled women’) instead of person-first language (‘women with disabilities’). Beyond the political and collective reasons for this choice (#SayTheWord), I don’t like the preposition ‘with’. Prepositions are for relationships; I am not in a relationship with disability.”