Post-humanist scholar and feminist theorist Donna Haraway's iconic 1983 A Cyborg Manifesto addressed the artifice around gender norms, imagined the future of feminism, and proposed the cyborg as the leader of a new world order. Part human and part machine, the cyborg challenged racial and patriarchal biases.

“a world without oppression and domination; where sexual, racial, and other so called natural distinctions have lost their meaning.”
Donna Haraway

In the 1980s, computer technology was largely seen as the domain of men—a tool made by men, for men. Cyberfeminism emerged in the 1990's after the popularization of the World Wide Web. The movement asked: Could we use technology to hack the codes of patriarchy? Could we escape gender online?

“This is the self [that] feminists must code.”
Donna Haraway

A four-woman group of cyberfeminists called the VNS Matrix wrote their own Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century (1991)in homage to Haraway, proclaiming “We are the virus of the new world disorder.”

“We emerged from the cyberswamp. . .on a mission to hijack the toys from techno-cowboys and remap cyberculture with a feminist bent.”
Virginia Barratt, VNS Matrix

Cyberfeminists were brazen artists, gamers, writers, and programmers using the Internet to challenge gender norms and the constraints of the physical body. Their work commented on the pornographic and sexist elements of the gaming world, the forgotton legacies of women in technology, the intersection between life forms and machinery, restistance to the patriarchy, and more.

“It was a child of its time, inspired by all the new and yet unexplored opportunities of digital networked technologies.”
Cornelia Sollfrank, Old Boys Network

In 1997, the First Cyberfeminist International was organized by a Berlin collective, satirically named the Old Boys Network after the circles of male privilege on which patriarchy feeds. There, 38 women from 12 different countries produced a provocative anti-manifesto called 100 Anti-Theses of Cyberfeminism.

However, despite the fearless passion and creativity that fueled the eruption of cyberfeminism, the movement failed as a whole to appropriately address issues of gender and racial hierarchies. Many of the cyberfeminist writings catered to a white, educated, upper-middle-class audience, in line with the issues surrounding the concept of "white feminism".

“The narratives around liberation from racism, sexism, and so on in the brave new virtual world were promises that were empty.”
Virginia Barratt, VNS Matrix

But by the 2000's, cyberfeminism began to evolve to incorporate more modern definitions of feminism and gender-abolitionism.

Enter cyberfeminism 2.0