TOWARDS A PROSTHETIC FEMINISM

INTRODUCTION: PERFORMING THE DIGITAL BODY -- A GHOST STORY

by Theresa M. Senft

What do cyborgs, prosthetic feminism and online culture all share in common? The author introduces the notion of l'ecriture digital, and contemplates the next wave of contemporary sexual politics, both online, and off it.

SNOW ISN'T WHITE
by Barbara Browning

The cyborg is comprised of the biological infected with the mechanical, East infected with the West, male infected with female. In all this infection, do cyborgs worry about sexually transmitted diseases? Can they get AIDS? The author of Samba: Re sistance in Motion, writes about prostheses, feminism, contagion and cyberpunk novel, Snow Crash.

HEARING THE NET: MIA LIPNER
Interviewed by Cathy Young and Theresa M. Senft

Cathy Young and Theresa Senft interview Mia Lipner, a blind communications theorist, about the experience of "hearing the internet". Lipner's sound art piece, Requiem Digitatem -- a true story of trust, suicide, and death on the net, narrated by both Lipner and her computerized text reader -- is available on audio tape for our subscribers at an additional cost of $5 US.

PHONE SEX IS COOL: CHAT LINES AS SUPERCONDUCTORS
by Marcus Boon

Boon details the routing mechanisms by which computers handle incoming phone transmissions on a phone sex chat line. Unpacking the components of the "silicon regime", the author writes an ethnography of machine-sexuality, one which collapses the boun daries of contemporary private and corporate space.

MY WOMB, THE MOSH PIT
by Sharon Lehner

The author, who aborted an 18 week fetus, struggles to understand the reality portrayed by a sonogram image, versus the cyberspace notion of "life on a screen".

CLOSETS IN THE MATRIX

CHANGING THE SUBJECT

by Jodi O'Brien

Are there truly, as some advocates claim, "No closets in cyberspace", or are new ones forming as we speak? O'Brien poses the question: Just how elastic is the institution of gender, and how can concerned onliners change the assumed Subject of cyberspa ce?

MODEM BUTTERFLY, RECONSIDERED

by Kaley Davis and Theresa M. Senft

This story charts the struggle of the women of Echo to define "woman" in digital space, and asks: What does biology have to do with the search of marginalized people for private forums, online? How is the physical body, with racial and sexual markin gs, re-written into cyberspace, and why?

TURING, MY LOVE
by Matthew Ehrlich

"Can you think what I feel? Can you feel what I think?" Alan Turing (the inventor of Artificial Intelligence) asked his young lover Arnold in 1951. Matthew Ehrlich's experimental love letter repeats Turing's questions, and casts cyberdoubt over "re al" sex.

BODIES THAT MATERIALIZE

ON SPACE, SEX AND STALKERS

by Pamela Gilbert

Pamela Gilbert, an academic at a midwestern university, woke one morning to find nude modeling photos of herself being traded on Usenet. This is a meditation on the politics of harassment, cyber-style.

THE THROES OF ADDICTION

by Alan Sondheim

Here is an all-too familiar tale: the story of an online junkie, sitting in a coffee shop, at once aware of his body and oblivious to everything but his addiction. He sits, drinking coffee, plugged into his notebook, which is by all accounts a prosthe tic device without which he ceases to exist.

CHATT(ER)ING THROUGH THE FINGERTIPS: DOING GROUP THERAPY ONLINE
by Yvette Colón, MSW

What is it like to run group therapy over a modem? Which techniques or substitutions are made online for the visual cues that usually tell a therapist her patient is lying, or upset? Yvette Colón, a licensed clinical social worker, discusses her exper iences running "group" online.

METRO ON ICE MEETS BALL AND CHEANG
by Mocha Jean Herrup

Mocha Jean Herrup describes her private seduction/confusion/ordeal as she helps lesbian multimedia artist (and frequent participator in the Whitney Biennial) Shu Lea Cheang with her CyberBowling installation, done in conjunction with The Walker Arts C enter (Minnesota) and America Online.

WHEN THE DIGITAL IS POLITICAL

When the Personal becomes Digital: Linda Dement and Barbara Hammer Move Towards a Lesbian Cyberspace
by Holly Willis and Mikki Halpin

What are the differences between lesbian cinema and queer interactive art? Willis and Halpin, co-curatorsof the interactive media component of the New York City Mix queer film festival, discuss ways to mark queer space in cyberspace.

Potential Contributions of Information Technologies to Human Rights
by Patti Whaley

How might the Net be better be utilized to help human rights organizations reach more constituents? The author focuses especially on the Beijing International Women's Conference for many of her examples.

New Jack(ed) City? Wiring the South Bronx
by Emily Poler

A New York City health care planner explains the racism and sexism of Senator Exon's Brave New Wired World scenarios, while suggesting that proponents of poor urban internet access can stand to learn a great deal from the lessons of public health care workers.

The 'Space' of Cyberspace: Review of Miller's "Women and Children First: Gender and the Settling of the Electronic Frontier"
by Harry Cleaver

Economist Harry Cleaver discusses the uses and abuses of Laura Miller's "frontier" metaphor in her essay "Women and Children First: Gender and the Settling of the Electronic Frontier." Cleaver suggests that frontiers are useful precisely because they engender resistance, and offers the Chiapas Mailing list as an example of 'indigenous resistance' within both online and offline culture.

RESOURCES

Kinder, Gentler Glossary, for Net Neophytes, and Others!

by Cathy Young

Feminist Yellow Pages