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Cyberfeminism

The 1991 alliance that formed around cyberspace in Adelaide, England and Canada at once, with VNS Matrix, Sadie Plant and Nancy Paterson.

Worth your time?3.5/5Yes.Study the whole thing.What works, what does not, who it is for ↓
9:23in productionCh. 1 · Three origins, one name/ 9:23 · ceiling 15 min
4 chapters · 9:23Ceiling 15:00

The brief is written and checked. The video joins this page when it is cut.4 chapters · 1 min read · 9:23 planned

Read the brief

Cyberfeminism is a mythic, plural alliance formed in 1991 around critical engagement with cyberspace—not a doctrine, but a provocation. It emerged simultaneously from VNS Matrix in Adelaide, Sadie Plant in England, and Nancy Paterson in Canada. It got right that technology is never neutral—and wrong that myth alone can hold power to account. It matters now because it asked, before most did, who builds the future—and who gets erased in the code.

Movements & scenesFeminismThe internetPostmodernismFeminism across the network →
Chapters & takeaways4
  1. 1:03
    Three origins, one name

    The term was coined independently in 1991—by artists in Adelaide, a theorist in England, and a writer in Canada.

  2. 2:50
    Adelaide, 1991: manifesto in the heat

    VNS Matrix launched cyberfeminism into visibility with a manifesto published online during an Adelaide heatwave.

  3. 4:01
    A myth, not a movement

    It declared itself a myth—not a doctrine—rejecting unity in favour of multiplicity and ambiguity.

  4. 6:02
    What came after

    It is considered a predecessor to networked feminism and fourth wave feminism.

1 more chapterFewer chapters
Worth your time?

Yes. Study the whole thing.

3.5/ 5
What works
  • VNS Matrix's A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century (1991)
What does not
  • define a decade
  • influence a named artist
  • start a movement
Study it if
  • readers tracking how feminist thought engages infrastructure
  • critics of digital utopianism
  • historians of Australian art
Skip it if
  • those seeking policy blueprints
  • students needing canonical theory
  • readers expecting consensus or chronology
Who should study it, and who should skipHide who it is for
The written brief1 min read

What the thing is

Cyberfeminism is a plural, mythic, postmodern feminist alliance formed in response to cyberspace and new-media technologies.

Where it came from

It coagulated in queer punk scenes in Adelaide in 1991, visible through VNS Matrix’s manifesto; independently named the same year by Sadie Plant in England and Nancy Paterson in Canada.

What it gets right

It treated cyberspace as contested terrain, not neutral infrastructure. It insisted women build tools, not just use them. It refused fixed definitions, matching the instability of early networked life.

What it gets wrong

It mistook myth-making for methodology. Its rejection of doctrine left no shared framework for accountability, scalability or critique beyond irony and provocation.

Why it matters now

It prefigures today’s debates on algorithmic bias, platform governance, and who gets to shape digital infrastructure—but without the institutional scaffolding to translate critique into leverage.

Is it worth your time

Yes—if you care about how feminism engaged technology before ‘digital rights’ became a policy term. It is not foundational theory, but it is urgent, live wiring from a moment when the internet was still a punk basement.

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11:04
Avant-gardeThe avant-garde is a role, not a style. It begins with Saint-Simon’s 1824 demand that artists serve as society’s advance guard. Its validity rests on initial ideological unacceptability—not novelty, influence, or acclaim. It operates across media. Its historical chain (Dada → Situationist International → language poetry) is one of functional resemblance, not proven transmission. It matters now because it names a specific, high-stakes relationship between art and power—one that cannot be reduced to ‘being ahead of your time’.
9:47
EcofeminismEcofeminism is a critical framework that integrates feminism and political ecology, using gender to analyse human–nature relationships. It emerged from two sources: the 1974 coining of the term by Françoise d'Eaubonne in France, and the longstanding, cross-historical practice of women linking gender, race, class and environmental justice. Its strength lies in exposing culturally constructed parallels between the oppression of women and wildlife—not to equate them, but to reveal shared mechanisms of domination. Its weakness is the risk of retrojecting a named theory onto diverse, pre-theoretical actions—like the 1973 Chipko movement—without clarifying what the theory adds beyond naming. It matters now because climate governance still fails to centre the ecological knowledge and agency of women, especially in the Global South.
8:47
Post-InternetPost-Internet is a loosely defined 21st-century art movement. It emerged after the internet became ubiquitous—not as a period 'after' the internet, but as an 'internet state of mind'. Marisa Olson coined the term in 2006. Gene McHugh adopted it in 2009 via his blog, turning it into a movement. Artists make work that moves fluidly between screens and galleries, drawing on the web’s visual language while engaging critically with networked culture. Mediums include Second Life portraits, digital paintings on silk, and 3-D-printed sculpture.
10:08
Riot grrrl1990Riot grrrl was a short-lived, geographically specific feminist punk response to sexism in U.S. underground scenes. It produced no lasting institutions—but did produce replicable, low-barrier tools for feminist organising. Its influence is real, but narrow: it shaped fourth-wave feminism’s form, not its full scope.
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The fin-de-siècle French movement that prized artifice over nature and sensation over morality, and took its name from its critics.

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9:25