CONCEPTS
TECHNOFEMINISM
Technofeminism is the application of feminist theories and methodologies to the study of technologies and the discourses surrounding them. While early technofeminist scholarship focused heavily on interrogating and exposing the gendered construction of both technologies and their uses, the evolution of this inquiry has expanded to include the implications of technologies and their discourses for wider society in more nuanced and intersectional ways.
The technofeminist scholarship we draw from here (outlined in the Past section of this web text) represents technofeminist rhetorical scholars whose work developed through a sustained focus on the expansion of digital communication technologies and analysis of the rhetorics surrounding this. When we use the term “technofeminism” throughout this article, then, we honor the work that has been completed by those scholars, referring to a technofeminist rhetorical methodology that interrogates technologies (particularly communication technologies), critically identifying/exposing inequalities in issues of access, embodiment, and intersectionality. Our version of technofeminism is also explicitly a social justice framework which seeks “to distribute and reassemble—or otherwise redress—power imbalances that systematically and systemically disenfranchise some stakeholders while privileging others” (Haas & Eble, 2018).