Outline
- Kittler speaks of the typewriter as "ambiguous:" a woman and a machine. Through this conflation, the introduction
of the typewriter
- Feminizes yet desexualizes writing,
- Denigrates yet empowers women, and
- Reinforces yet undermines relationships and power.
- Kittler's example of Nietzche's long involvement with typewriters of both sorts exposes these tensions in
a sexually hostile context.
- Networked computers, however, lead to a different sort of desk couple, and a different framework in which
sexual hostility takes place.
- In this contemporary technological context, virtual rape, conceived as
- An illocutionary speech-act,
- An enactment of the rape script, and
- A precedent-establishing incidence of sexual assault without "bodily contact,"
prompts questions about the repurcussions of virtual/digital/cyber worlds for personhood, space, and embodiment.
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